English is not my first langue and the lack of finely polished prose when crafting my reviews is the sole thing holding this community back. In order to not further subject you fine people to my peasant words, I decided to employ the help of an artificial ghostwriter to spruce up my works for this week’s Midweek Discussion. At least that was my initial course of action, but as hillarious as the results were it doesn’t leave much space open for discussion. So I decided to do start a little quiz instead. I spruce up light novel titles instead for you all to guess:
- “I have ascended to unparalleled strength, wielding diminutive incantations to obliterate all opposition.”
- “The leisurely adventures of a seasoned herder, who has embarked upon her journey at an unconventional juncture in time.”
- “Culinary Adventures: Preparing Delectable Dishes from Exotic Game Ingredients”
- “A Symphonic Odyssey through the Land of the Afterlife: A Tale of Perilous Travel to an Altered Universe.”
- “Tired of this languid existence? Having been reborn as a preeminent Elven being, my current state is one of profound ennui.”
This should be enough to get the guessing going. Feel free to add your own so that I get to guess as well. (prompt was simply "Rewirte the following to make it sound more eloquent: [TITLE]”)
edit: Answers:
spoiler
- I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything With Low-Level Spells (I left out the "Failure Frame” because the AI kept it unchanged)
- A Late-Start Tamer’s Laid-Back Life (yeah, don’t ask me where the journey in a unconventional time stuff came from)
- Cooking with Wild Game
- Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody (love the Rhapsody turning into “Symphonic Odyssey” and thought it would be the easiest to guess because of it)
- Enough with This Slow Life! I Was Reincarnated as a High Elf and Now I’m Bored (Ennui is my new favorite word)
I recognised a few but didn’t remember the names so I had to look them up.
Number 1
Failure Frame: I became the strongest and Annihilated Everything With Low-Level Spells
Number 2
No Idea
Number 3
Cooking With Wild Game
Number 4
No Idea
Number 5
Enough with this slow life! I was reincarnated as a high elf and now I’m bored
Correct on those 3.
Honestly I expected 4 to be easier to guess.
After seeing the answers it’s a lot more obvious.
Maybe it’s the difference between native speakers and people with 2nd languages.
There are a lot of words people who speak English as a second language use but I didn’t even know existed. Like “Please do the needful” , I would normally say “Please do …” or “Please do what is required”. But a lot of 2nd language speakers seem to use needful.
So maybe there’s some connection people who know multiple languages make when learning which I haven’t. (Or more likely I am just oblivious)
Original post - And your language skills are very good. I can’t judge anyone when I can barely speak my native language and don’t know any others
I never heard the term “needful” and had to look it up. I would say “please do what’s neccesary” for example.
I would guess that the people who actually use “needful" are those who are mostly translating word for word via dictionary or dumb MTL but doesn’t have much real contact with the language, which would clue them in that using that term, while technically correct, is not used in normal discussions. <- I also did not break up this sentence just to point out the main problem I have when writing in English. I’m perfectly aware that those nested sentences are beyond reasonable and that I have to break them up to make them easier to follow.
The majority of my coworkers are non-native English speakers and I find that needful is most commonly used by colleagues originally from India. So, I have always assumed it is a common way of phrasing that kind of sentence in Hindi or Tamil (or any of the loads of other languages commonly spoken in the subcontinent) and they are mentally translating it directly.
Edit: An example from my life is that I used to live in the Southwestern US and spoke in Spanish with native Spanish speakers, but I would often mess up things like word order or phrases because I was translating in my head from English. As an example, to say “I am hungry” in Spanish is “tengo hambre” (lit. I have hunger). However, I would do something like start the sentence with “Yo soy…” (lit. I am) instead because that is how I would say it in English.
How about these?
Rewirte the following to make it sound less eloquent:
Number 1 - I have ascended to unparalleled strength, wielding diminutive incantations to obliterate all opposition
I’ve gotten really strong and can use small spells to crush my enemies.
Number 2 - The leisurely adventures of a seasoned herder, who has embarked upon her journey at an unconventional juncture in time
The laid-back story of an experienced herder, who started her journey at a weird time.
Number 3 - Culinary Adventures: Preparing Delectable Dishes from Exotic Game Ingredients
Cooking Fun: Making Yummy Meals from Unusual Game Meat
Number 4 - A Symphonic Odyssey through the Land of the Afterlife: A Tale of Perilous Travel to an Altered Universe
A Musical Journey in the Afterlife: A Story of Dangerous Trips to a Different World
Number 5 - Tired of this languid existence? Having been reborn as a preeminent Elven being, my current state is one of profound ennui
Fed up with this boring life? As a top Elven now, I’m feeling really bored.
Nice try cheater! ;)