a lecture about Egypt in Calais by Robert Solé friday March 14th

Hi Jean-Pierre,

Thanks for your message about the event in Calais.

> Please feel free to point out big mistakes in my messages . Thanks to your remarks, I'll be able to improve my level.
I noticed a few dodgy points:

> Friday night I attended in Calais (Cité de la Dentelle) a lecture about ... by...
Unless you want to insist on the location ("in Calais") the complement order is not correct.
Roughly you must not set anything between verb and object - your "in Calais" has to be placed before the subject or after most of the complements.
( see a recent message https://www.cafe-polyglotte.com/t3272-language-learning-base#18932 )

> Through a brilliant speech, scattered with few pictures on a screen, he focused the topic on...
I don't know if I understood poorly but to me "scattered with" implies a rather big quantity while "few" means small quantity.
Don't you confuse between "few" and "a few"?

> This country and its civilisation held always a huge fascination for...
"Always" is not correctly placed - don't put it b/w verb and object.

> We don’t even knew that the monuments we know today were temples or tombs and not only palaces .
We didn't even know...

> with a huge crew of scientists and scolars whose aim was to help the french army as well as to study...
Scholars
French (capital letter)

> translated in three scripts
Translated into

> (where the french were also involved with Ferdinand de Lesseps)
French

> and the Dam of Assouan
Aswan Dam

> beginning of the 21th century
21st century.

> Clear informations
"Information" is an uncountable noun hence no plural.

HTH

Thank you Gerard for these corrections and links.
Concerning my sentence : "Through a brilliant speech, scattered with few pictures on a screen, he focused the topic on..." I meant his speech was so brilliant that any picture on a screen was useless, his words were enough in order to picture what he meant. I'd better write : "his speech was accompanied with some pictures".
Concerning the order of the words in the sentence ( which turns out to be a usual mistake for me !) I never think I could put the adjectif before the word and not behind.
> This country and its civilisation held always a huge fascination for...
If I can write :This country and its civilisation always held a huge fascination for....then I'm relieved ! But this mistake shows that the french patterns (based on translation) are still strongly acting in me !
Thank you

Hi Jean-Pierre,

> Thank you Gerard for these corrections and  links.
You're very welcome Jean-Pierre.
Note that after a "thank you", an American (possibly true for Brits too but I don't know much about Brits) always respond by "You are welcome", which is not frequent for the French.
Also note, exclamation points are very rare in American English as it rather means the writer is angry or is shouting... exclamtion points are way more frequent in French and that's the cause of misunderstandings between Americans and French.


Of course and again, you can ask questions if something is not clear or if you don't agree, if you are doubtful, etc.


> his words  were enough in order to picture what he meant.
"In order" is useless here, better to write: "his words  were enough to picture what he meant."
The shorter, the better.

> I'd better write : "his speech was accompanied with some pictures".
An equivalent to "some" is "a few".
Please note that normally "a few" has to be used for countables and "some" for uncountables; however "some" can be used with countables when you want to show the number is vague/unknown (and is not important - sometimes pejorative like in "he graduated from some uni" meaning it's a small university that you don't value much).

> This country and its civilisation held always a huge fascination for...
> Concerning the order of the words in the sentence ( which turns out to be a usual mistake for me !)
> I never think I could put the adjectif before the word and not behind.
I don't understand...
- "always" is not an adjective but an adverb.
- except predicative adjectives, an adjective is always before the noun
- never separate the verb and its object
Note that "to be" is a special verb so you will often find an adverb after "to be" such as in my "an adjective is always before the noun"
- for a verbal group, the adverb is often set before the main element; eg "I had never heard such stupid words" (my adverb is between "had" and "heard" - always before the main part which is "heard")
> the adjectif before the word
I guess you meant "verb" instead of word, don't you?

Yes the right sentence is "This country and its civilisation always held a huge fascination for..."

> the french patterns (based on translation) are still strongly acting in me !
... French... (capital letter)
French patterns are tricky, in any other language; never translate word by word.

> Thank you
You're welcome.

hello Gerard, I think I forgot to thank you for this last correction. I would like to write something about the Thames Barrier. We've heard of it during the last winter flooding in England, and this may be interesting, but before I wil try to find how I can add a picture in my article. At the same time I will try to implement your advice.