translation-grammar technique vs non- translation-non-grammar technique

Discuss any questions in English. Practise your writing skills.

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acapnotic
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#76

Сообщение acapnotic »

Michelangelo пишет: 10 янв 2020, 11:08 Frankly speaking, I am afraid I don't remember all the details of the situation in question
That only means that you are not phenomenal at memory usage and so aren't going to make it into the new mankind. :) Sorry to say that, but if someone really decides to implement this idea, you will have to die out, together with probably 99% of world population. Or even more. Hope this consoles you a little bit. :)

And of course you don't have to isolate anyone to make them into something. Phenomenons already exist, you only have to find them and get rid of the rest. How you do this will depend on your imagination and, yes, on your finances. Hope you have a lot of money or a group of very rich friends who are crazy enough to buy this idea. :)
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#77

Сообщение ivorfuzzle »

Imho for adult learners grammar translation is the more natural approach when learning completely unfamiliar languages.
The no-grammar no-translation techniques, sometimes referred to as the "natural approach", generally tend to try and mimic the way young children acquire their first language, i.e. through internation with competent users of the language. The problem with that is that adults, unlike kids, already have at least one other language in their brain and it is impossible to keep it from getting in the way, an adult beginner will inevitably/instinctively try and process the new language through the medium of their first/native language. It happens every time, so what's the point in trying to artificially suppress that process, why not instead try and take advantage of it: you can explain some basic grammar rules and the adult learner will understand them, you can take advantage of the fact they already speak one language and use that language in the beginning stages to help them figure out how the language they're learning works. I mean, if you think about it, grammar translation is the "natural approach" in the case of adult beginners.
Of course as the learner's competence in the new language increase, they should move away from relying on their first language and towards comprehensible input.
So I would say this debate over whether grammar translation is better than more interactive approaches that don't teach any grammar rules explicitly and try to teach the language through the medium of the language itself is a bit of a false dichotomy - in reality, I'd say most adult learners will inevitably go through a grammar translation stage early on but then as they get better at their new language they will just as inevitably progress towards language acquisition through practice that involves little translation and few explanations of grammar rules if any as by that stage they won't need those any more.
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#78

Сообщение Michelangelo »

acapnotic, Sure it must mean that I am not phenomenal in anything. I think, I am just an average person. It is strange, as when in school, I was praised as the best among the students of my year±1 year, and at the technical school I was among the first quarter of my classmates, and then – in the first half, and I have never believed in my practical experience. I didn’t have big problems with executing my job, however, I have never been glad of the result. It was always average, and even now, when talking of English, I consider my level as average. It is not bad, as at least half people who are involved in the process have about lower results than me, however, maybe they don’t spend so much time for it as me. I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t know people who are phenomenal, but only those who are mediocrities. That is why it is easy for me to agree with you.
Even more strange the fact that I am approaching the belief that everything what we do is in vain notwithstandingly whether we can do our job better or worse, whether our level is higher or lower. The main idea for me now is to become confident to be happy and not be nervous and anxious. That is why I agree that if we need phenomenal society we need to divide people into castes like it was done in India or it has been done in Singapore. Or maybe we really have to get rid of average and lower people like it was intended to be done by Hitler. Our life is senseless in far prospective as even if we have an immortal soul, our Universe is doomed and our immortal soul will have no place to live in after the end of the Universe.
Последний раз редактировалось Michelangelo 16 янв 2020, 10:55, всего редактировалось 1 раз.
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#79

Сообщение ivorfuzzle »

Michelangelo пишет: 16 янв 2020, 10:23 acapnotic, Sure it must mean that I am not phenomenal in anything. I think, I am just an average person. It is strange, as when in school, I was praised as the best among the students of my year±1 year, and at the technical school I was among the first quarter of my classmates, and then – in the first half, and I have never believed in my practical experience. I didn’t have big problems with executing my job, however, I have never been glad of the result. It was always average, and even now, when talking of English, I consider my level as average. It is not bad, as at least half people who are involved in the process have about lower results than me, however, maybe they don’t spend so much time for it as me. I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t know people who are phenomenal, but only those who are mediocrities. That is why it is easy for me to agree with you.
Even more strange the fact that I am approaching the belief that everything what we do is in vain notwithstandingly whether we can do our job better or worse, whether our level is higher or lower. The main idea for me now is to become confident to be happy and not be nervous and anxious. That is why I agree that if we need phenomenal society we need to divide people into casts like it was done in India or it has been done in Singapore. Or maybe we really have to get rid of average and lower people like it was intended to be done by Hitler. Our life is senseless in far prospective as even if we have an immortal soul, our Universe is doomed and our immortal soul will have no place to live in after the end of the Universe.
So I look at the topic of this thread, then I look at your post, then I look back at the topic again, then at your message again, and I can't help but wonder how a discussion about grammar translation vs no grammar no translation in teaching/learning English could have wound its way all the way to Hitler, casts, existential dread and general meaninglessness of existence...
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#80

Сообщение Michelangelo »

ivorfuzzle, this is our usual way of communication when me and acapnotic get together, however, there is a connection to the topic, as we are talking about the natural way of acquiring languages, and for this you would need a good if not phenomenal memory. We shifted to discussing how to obtain a good memory in order to remember languages better, and then we started to discuss how we can approach the situation when all the members of the society could have phenomenal memory. It is pretty logical, isn't it?

Anyway, let's get to our previous experience in acquiring languages and let me speculate on this thing directly.

I think that the only way to study German at school (when I studied there) was that grammar-translation method. We had a standard programme for general schools and I think we study language by using about the same method throughout the country. Now it is different.
I tried to learn a language by knowing no words in the sentences. It was awful. I could memorise a sentence containing 15 words within half an hour when I knew the meanings of each words, and that time I spent seven days to learn just one sentence in which I didn’t know the meanings of words but just the general meaning of the sentence. That is why I incline to consider this grammar-translation method as better way to acquire a language than that the natural one when you don’t know the meaning of words.

It is even harder to memorise words and phrases by ear whereas I can more or less easy memorise words by spelling in their printed/written form.
I don’t know how children can acquire languages without knowing their spelling. For example, I remember that in my childhood I thought that the word “реактивный» must have been «аэроктивный» because I didn’t know its spelling and I could hear it like that. There are many other words which sounds could be heard differently by different ears, that is why for a child only easy words could be understandable and repeated, or else they must be trained in their pronunciation by adults.

That is why I deeply believe in learning by grammatical-translation method with a strong support by practice, which is a communicative method. Therefore they must be combined as it is done nowadays. If a child could read in an early age of, let’s say, two years of age, and their parents could be able to develop an interest to reading and communication, a child could be able to learn much many words and general information as compared with the course when their should learn words naturally by listening to their parents, in particular nowadays, when the parents would rather play computer games than speak to their children.

Of course there are a percentage of children who could perceive information by ear better than via reading and for them it is OK to acquire new words through television or audio materials and they could develop by themselves due to their natural features. We don’t have such children in a sufficient amount though. That is why it is better to foster love to reading in them and teach them to read as earlier as possible taking into account that no tendency that parents pay enough attention to training their children, and when they read more they could learn more. The same could be with studying languages. If a parent cannot teach the child to any language, and it is difficult for the child to comprehend it from films and radio and audio materials, maybe it is better to teach the child to read as soon as possible and then let them develop at their discretion. It will be the same as when parents let their children not develop at their discretion and wait until they started school in hope that teachers are better than parents. But teachers don’t want to substitute parents for children. However, it is another issue.
Последний раз редактировалось Michelangelo 16 янв 2020, 11:07, всего редактировалось 1 раз.
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#81

Сообщение acapnotic »

Michelangelo пишет: 16 янв 2020, 10:23 Our life is senseless in far prospective as even if we have an immortal soul, our Universe is doomed and our immortal soul will have no place to live in after the end of the Universe.
But God can create another universe, however fine, where milk rivers will flow in jelly banks. Though, we probably won't need that stuff as immortal souls. Souls don't drink milk, do they?

Maybe this universe is just a buggy version. Some god wrote it when being a student and ran it on some heavenly super computer to see how it works and to show it to his professor, but then he simply forgot to stop it, and later he forgot about it altogether. Maybe he has created a lot of other, much better, universes since then, but we are doomed to living in this one. Because we are part of its code.

Or, perhaps, he wanted to write a self-modifying program, i.e. one that can change its own code. And humans were supposed to make these changes. This is why we are in his image. We can change this world. But we still don't know how. Maybe some day our far descendants will succed in hacking the universe and will improve it tremendously. Then it will be all love and justice, and there will be no tears but those of extreme happiness.

Then we will all be resurrected and all become geniuses instead of average persons. We will be like gods. Everyone will be able to create a personal universe for himself.
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#82

Сообщение Michelangelo »

ivorfuzzle, As a matter of fact, I think I initiated this topic not because I was eager to discuss different approaches to learning language, but because I dreamt that those people who could discuss this issue so beautifully in Russian would turn up here to discuss it in English and show off how good they had learn the language due to the method they advocated. However, that hasn’t happened and acapnotic and me just decided to have an intellectual conversation which could relate directly or indirectly to the method. Actually, we started to go on talking on issues which first came into head, and that is why the topic made such a turn as you can appreciate it now.
You’re welcome to make a new turn of the topic, however, I wish those who defend their approaches could explain how they learn English in English – it would be more demonstrative as compared with their stories in Russian IMHO.
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#83

Сообщение ivorfuzzle »

acapnotic пишет: 16 янв 2020, 11:01
Michelangelo пишет: 16 янв 2020, 10:23 Our life is senseless in far prospective as even if we have an immortal soul, our Universe is doomed and our immortal soul will have no place to live in after the end of the Universe.
But God can create another universe, however fine, where milk rivers will flow in jelly banks. Though, we probably won't need that stuff as immortal souls. Souls don't drink milk, do they?

Maybe this universe is just a buggy version. Some god wrote it when being a student and ran it on some heavenly super computer to see how it works and to show it to his professor, but then he simply forgot to stop it, and later he forgot about it altogether. Maybe he has created a lot of other, much better, universes since then, but we are doomed to living in this one. Because we are part of its code.

Or, perhaps, he wanted to write a self-modifying program, i.e. one that can change its own code. And humans were supposed to make these changes. This is why we are in his image. We can change this world. But we still don't know how. Maybe some day our far descendants will succed in hacking the universe and will improve it tremendously. Then it will be all love and justice, and there will be no tears but those of extreme happiness.

Then we will all be resurrected and all become geniuses instead of average persons. We will be like gods. Everyone will be able to create a personal universe for himself.
your gods sound extremely anthropomorphic and, well, average - I mean writing buggy code, running simulations and forgetting about them, it all sounds like they were pretty lousy CS students at some third rate provincial university. So it begs the question then, how could anyone possibly expect sloppy "gods" like that to ever rewrite their third rate AIs (us) as geniuses?
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#84

Сообщение acapnotic »

ivorfuzzle пишет: 16 янв 2020, 11:10 how could anyone possibly expect sloppy "gods" like that to ever rewrite their third rate AIs (us) as geniuses?
Well, strictly speaking, I expected not them but us to rewrite ourselves. As for gods being lousy programmers, what do we really know about gods? Why should we believe that they are (all) perfect? Who said it to us? Did he actually know what he was talking about?

Gods, if they exist, may be anything. Their power may excede their intellect. Why not? There may be a whole hierarchy of gods. Some of them may be also artificial intelligences. Why should we restrict our imaginagion to the ideas of one or two old books of unclear origin? This has always amazed me.
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#85

Сообщение ivorfuzzle »

acapnotic пишет: 16 янв 2020, 11:37
ivorfuzzle пишет: 16 янв 2020, 11:10 how could anyone possibly expect sloppy "gods" like that to ever rewrite their third rate AIs (us) as geniuses?
Well, strictly speaking, I expected not them but us to rewrite ourselves. As for gods being lousy programmers, what do we really know about gods? Why should we believe that they are (all) perfect? Who said it to us? Did he actually know what he was talking about?

Gods, if they exist, may be anything. Their power may excede their intellect. Why not? There may be a whole hierarchy of gods. Some of them may be also artificial intelligences. Why should we restrict our imaginagion to the ideas of one or two old books of unclear origin? This has always amazed me.
but then again why should we assume the existence of any gods at all in the first place?
It should also be noted, imho, that in a lot of ancient civilisation gods didn't really have much to do with the creation of the universe, the universe was regarded as something that has simply always existed in one form or another and the word "god"/"gods" was simply used to refer to very powerful beings with "superpowers", I think the closest equivalent in our culture would be the superheroes in the Marvel and DC universes.

And as for us, what if we just "emerged" and now are trying to make sense of our reality but telling each other all sorts of stories about it.
For some reason I'm also reminded of how in some Christian theologies it is postulated that the Christian god exists outside of time, but I can't help but wonder whether sentience would even be possible outside of time...
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#86

Сообщение Michelangelo »

acapnotic, I cannot disagree with you. Souls don’t drink milk and God can create a new universe, one which could be better or worse depending on executors of God’s will.

Of course this universe could be God’s bug, I have been thinking of it. Maybe it is an experimental model. Maybe he just wanted to know what would happen in case of wrong initial data, or just is practising to program our universe and pushes the button “Reload” each time when he finds a bug. It could be pretty likely.

It could be seen by the fact that God, though fighting the evil, don’t want to get rid of it completely and challenge the humanity by returning new version of evil whenever they succeed in fighting the previous one. That is why people are used to the proverb “The Dragon is dead! Hail the new Dragon” – they know that there is no life without evil. Without evil the life loses its meaning at all. When there is a kindness there should be something evil or else how do we know that the kindness exists at all?
However, in my opinion “evil” is also a bug.
I don’t know how God is going to manage this contradiction. Maybe he has to populate the universe with robots who will not have any bugs and any feelings. They would execute God’s will precisely and they would not demand such destruction of the universe as people do. I think it is a good solution for God, however, he like playing and it is boring to play with robots who are too obedient, and he needed robots like people who could do kind deeds and evil deeds and whose way should be unpredictable to the extent. It is like a chess party where all the moves could be counted, but still there is an element of surprise in case your competitor gets tired or inattentive or just forgetful.

I don’t know, however, how it could help those who use the non-translation-non-grammar method. Maybe if they have this programmed memory like real robots have, they would just remember whatever they read or see or hear forever and it will be the solution to this issue. At present, however, we cannot program people’s brain to that extent fortunately or unfortunately.
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#87

Сообщение Michelangelo »

ivorfuzzle, As you could well know, God has a host of assistants and servants, called angels. God gives orders and his servants execute them. Servants could be mediocrities – why not? They could create lousy codes. With time, there will be assigned or trained other assistance-angels who may be worse or better of the previous ones and who will great either worse or better world. Let’s hope for better :)
Therefore, there is nothing strange in the fact that our world is not perfect and even lousy. It doesn’t mean that it will be like that forever. Do you remember what kind of world we had before the great flood? It was even worse than our modern world. So God got rid of it and created a new world – a better one. He promised not to destroy this world anymore, but people calculated themselves that there will be the end of not only our world but of the whole universe. Whether their calculations are correct we will see in another 15 billion years, and now we have to get used to this world which was given to us by God and which could be changed by nobody but by people themselves as God decided not to interfere with its development anymore.
Therefore we have to create an ideal society by ourselves. We don’t know yet which way we must move, and make even more mistakes than God himself, that is why we are nostalgic for that world where God could take any decision for us and prey to him to return those Eden times.
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#88

Сообщение acapnotic »

ivorfuzzle пишет: 16 янв 2020, 11:59 but then again why should we assume the existence of any gods at all in the first place?
Of course we don't have to. But so my thought went at the moment. Since the sole purpose of my writing all this is practising English and having fun, I see no reason to hobble my imagination. I simply establish a direct connection between my rambling mind and my fingertips, so that my ideas flow freely and easily out of my subconscious onto the screen of the computer and then to this forum for others either to read or to skip them. I see that Michelangelo is OK with this kind of conversation (obviously because his goal is the same), so everything is fine.

Sure we could simply have emerged from nothingness. Those who say that it's impossible to get something out of nothing can't prove it. If they have never witnessed that, so what? It may have happened just once and never more. Natural laws are just how things are, but are they really laws? Maybe tomorrow the sun will rise from the west and be of green color and square shape, and then we will realize that the whole concept of natural laws was a mistake. An illusion.
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#89

Сообщение ivorfuzzle »

Michelangelo пишет: 16 янв 2020, 12:40 ivorfuzzle, As you could well know, God has a host of assistants and servants, called angels. God gives orders and his servants execute them. Servants could be mediocrities – why not? They could create lousy codes. With time, there will be assigned or trained other assistance-angels who may be worse or better of the previous ones and who will great either worse or better world. Let’s hope for better :)
Therefore, there is nothing strange in the fact that our world is not perfect and even lousy. It doesn’t mean that it will be like that forever. Do you remember what kind of world we had before the great flood? It was even worse than our modern world. So God got rid of it and created a new world – a better one. He promised not to destroy this world anymore, but people calculated themselves that there will be the end of not only our world but of the whole universe. Whether their calculations are correct we will see in another 15 billion years, and now we have to get used to this world which was given to us by God and which could be changed by nobody but by people themselves as God decided not to interfere with its development anymore.
Therefore we have to create an ideal society by ourselves. We don’t know yet which way we must move, and make even more mistakes than God himself, that is why we are nostalgic for that world where God could take any decision for us and prey to him to return those Eden times.
How do you know the new world we have now, the one created after the flood is better than the world before it?
Because our world has rainbows in it so that now gay power can protect us against the wrath of God?
You seem to be bandying the word God around rather liberally here: God did this, God did that, God decided but where did this notion of God come from in the first place?
And how do you define God in the first place? What is God anyway? Doesn't this word mean rather different things to different people?
And agian why do you assume that the garden of Eden was an idyllic place? Becasue the bible says so? Don't you think that have one big ass forbidden tree smack in the middle of it was kind of problematic, plus the serpent/the enemy somehow managed to make his way in and talk to Eve? This whole set up does not exactly sound like anything near perfection to me...
And don't you think that having someone else make all decisions for you is ultimately little different than being a slave.
If that is something you long for, you could try and find a strong dominant person, a real person, not an imaginary friend and pledge your allegience to them or something. That could be the start of a beautiful relationship...
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#90

Сообщение Michelangelo »

ivorfuzzle пишет: 16 янв 2020, 13:52 How do you know the new world we have now, the one created after the flood is better than the world before it?
I don’t know. I just read about that in the Bible. What we could believe in if not in the Bible? Of course there are some other sources as old as the Bible, but they contain about the same ideas in them. I mean those books found in Tibet and India. They are as old as the Bible, but were created in different corners of the world. So why not believe them once they say about the same?

Nothing will protect us in case of wrath of God, but his word by which he promise not to destroy the humanity anymore but wait until it destroys itself in case people choose to be on the evil side.

You know I appeal to God not because I am a strong believer in Christian Church, but because I arrived at a decision that once we were created, it could mean that something created us. You can use the word Nature, which I once used, but many people prefer the word God, so I started sticking to this word as it has become more understandable by people. Personally I believe that the Nature and God are synonymic and actually mean the same.
Doesn't this word mean rather different things to different people?
It seems to me now, it does. Different people could see differently even rainbow colours, why should not they see this world differently?
And agian why do you assume that the garden of Eden was an idyllic place? Becasue the bible says so?
I think that people consider it idyllic because Adam and Eve didn’t have any knowledge and were light-hearted and didn’t have to do any work there. People are lazy and ready to live on a palm-tree and eat banana in exchange for hard work for a lot of money. That is why it is considered to be idyllic, however, modern people possessing knowledge about good and evil will hardly like it should they be placed there. It is just our idea of an ideal world, nothing more. So to say – illusion created by or for people not to be so disappointed and to have a belief in something where a person could be happy.
And don't you think that having someone else make all decisions for you is ultimately little different than being a slave.
Aren’t we slaves now? Just imaging how much easier to be a slave not making decisions as compared to a slave who must make their choice almost every moment of their life? Of course to be a carefree slave is more pleasurable than to be a slave responsible for their steps.

If that is something you long for, you could try and find a strong dominant person, a real person, not an imaginary friend and pledge your allegience to them or something.
I could hardly believe that a strong person could be a kind one, moreover, nobody could be forever, that is why the belief in God is much more appropriate comparing to a search for a dominant but kind authority. It won’t be practicable, however, some people could find such a person and feel happy. They could create a beautiful relationship with them as well. Why not?
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#91

Сообщение mustang »

ivorfuzzle,

Why did you ignore my question about you being Igorfa? Anyways, welcome back, bud! I am almost certain that it's you. You , of course, can try to hide your internet identity by changing the nickname but you writing style gives you away the minute you start wrtiting in English.
How do you know the new world we have now, the one created after the flood is better than the world before it?
Actually there is an alternative theory (though some of the knowledge holders aka our scientific community are still in denial) about the flood. According to Graham Hancock, there most likely had been a highly advanced ancient civilisation (comprabale to ours) right before a world-wide natural disaster struck the planet - a comet slammed into Earth reducing our god-like predecessors to a bunch of tribes scattered across the globe. Their civilisation ceased to exist but some adventure-seeking individuals moved to other places , passing on their knowledge to future generations.

Of course, there's no shortage of people calling it BS, but a growing number of professionally trained scientists ( archaeologists, historians, astromoners) are coming to the conclusion that the theory has a ring of truth to it, however far-fetched it might have seemed when it was first presented to the scientific community. I actually learned about it on Joe Rogan's show a few yeras back.

For my money, Graham Hancock is the real deal, I have no doubt in my mind that one day his name will become known to everyone - he has gathered too much evidence just to be ignored.

Yes, for now you can call him an idiot or even write him off as a lunatic, but the evidence is there , sooner or later they will have to deal with the cold hard truth.



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#92

Сообщение acapnotic »

Michelangelo пишет: 16 янв 2020, 12:04 However, in my opinion “evil” is also a bug.
That's a possible explanation. There is also another one. Since evil is essentially what is bad for us, its persistence leads us to the conclusion that this world simply wasn't created for humans. Its purpose isn't our well-being. It's something else. Maybe it's for some electromagnetic creatures that spend all their life traveling between stars and galaxies. Humans might be some kind of by-product. They are of no use for the main inhabitants of the universe but also no harm, at least so far.

Or maybe stars and planets are alive and we are like parasites living on the body of one of them. When we somehow annoy it too much by digging and drilling it, it might create a thread on some interplanetary forum and title it "What's wrong with my humans?" Other members of the forum might offer some advice like "drown them with a flood", for example.
Michelangelo пишет: 16 янв 2020, 12:04 I don’t know, however, how it could help those who use the non-translation-non-grammar method.
I suspect that nothing can help them. They are doomed. Especially the grammar haters. Grammar will inevitably take its revenge on them, one way or another. If they think they understand the language without learning its grammar, that can be just an illusion. They think there is no difference between two tenses just because they don't see it. This is a bit silly, isn't it? It's like someone trying to convince a group of musicians that there is no difference between two notes just because he can't hear it.
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#93

Сообщение Michelangelo »

acapnotic,
There is no doubt that human beings are just parasites on the body of our mother Earth. The question lays in a different plane: why the Earth tolerate its parasites for so long, and who created them and what was the reason.

Judging by what is going on on the Earth, I could have an idea that there are two ways of creation of the humanity: first is that it was really coincidence that some proteins connected together and got a kind of a rational thinking and then develop their brain, thus, became first apes and then humans. This theory could evolve into creationism or evolutionism, but they are similar to the extend. Or course, if the Earth nature created us we should be thankful to our imaginary gods, and if there was a real god who created us, who created him then?

Another hypothesis is that the Earth and other planets are living creatures with their global intellect, and they make friends with each other as well as fight with each other. Then the humanity could be a kind of a biological weapon which was created by an enemy of our Earth to kill it. They infected or infested our Earth with this type of parasite to conquer it in some near or far future. First they created some weak parasites like dinosaurs, which were not able to dig deep holes to drink Earth’s blood and weaken it enough to be conquered, and ultimately the Earth got rid of them. Then the enemy created more penetrating weapon – humanity who became able to dig deep holes and drink the blood, exterminate the Earth’s natural cover such as rainforests, destroy its natural protection like mountains and weaken it much more as compared with the previous types of parasites or viruses.

On the other hand our Earth could be a deserved planet where like you said wastage was thrown and accumulated and together with that wastage various types of micro and macro organism were delivered here, and started to live their own life destroying the environment. This theory pretty makes sense as well.

Considering those who don’t recognize learning grammar as a merit but ignore it, it would be OK if those people could show their understanding of the subject by clearly explaining their ideas, but they use such wording that few people could comprehend even if their explanation might have contained a grain of truth. I think if you are a troll and want to show off, the better way to do it to try to explain your idea doing your best by using all your power to prove and demonstrate your opinion, by showing all your perception or the subject matter. In that case even if you are on a wrong side you could praise yourself for your flowery wording, for your effective way of delivering understanding to your readers that not knowing a grammar is really an advantage and not otherwise. But when you cannot answer a simple question, if you cannot give any demonstrative examples supporting your ideas, what kind of a troll you are? You couldn’t be even called a troll, you must look for a better word like timewaster or something that could describe best of you.

I don’t know maybe he is able to communicate with people by using short phrases of two or three words, but that could only prove that he should not have a right to discuss question involving sentences of more than three words. He must first learn four and five-word sentences and phrases first and then participate in challenging topics. If one still is not able to comprehensively explain his point of view, he must read more articles on the relevant topics, and maybe even learn some grammar. Additionally, it would be a good practice if first he could find our a nationality of the person he refers to – it could be that he is living within immigrants who speaks by using two or three-word sentences like himself and they know as much as him of how to use English tenses.

I don’t want to make a haste conclusion, however, more we can read his explanation, more it seems that his purpose here is to throw dust into eyes and create as many posts as possible. We’ll see if this theory has its grounds very soon, however, he is not a novice here and I think it has been demonstrated by up to 99% by his previous behavior already. I am not against posting, if that is done in English – it is not bad to write anything whether it is relevant or not in English just for fun and practice, but I prefer more relevant messages in Russian, though.
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#94

Сообщение acapnotic »

Michelangelo пишет: 17 янв 2020, 16:17 There is no doubt that human beings are just parasites on the body of our mother Earth. The question lays in a different plane: why the Earth tolerate its parasites for so long, and who created them and what was the reason.
Yes, there must be a reason why we have been allowed to exist so long. I don't know it. Maybe all living creatures on the planet are parasites and it simply decided to wait till some of them (humans) exterminate all the others, which we have been doing rather successfully, as you know. Lots of species have disappeared due to our activities. In the end there will be just us eating one another until there is a single human being who will die of starvation. Maybe even microbes will have died out by that time, unable to live in the deadly environment that we have created. So the corpse of that last human will not decompose but simply dry and lie there, among heaps of dry shit, for millions of years.

Then the protein molecules will have a chance to combine into something better. Maybe after a billion years the surface of Earth will be inhabited by angel-like creatures feeding on sunlight and loving one another unconditionally.
Michelangelo пишет: 17 янв 2020, 16:17 and if there was a real god who created us, who created him then?
I think he could have created himself. He is omnipotent, isn't he? So he can do this as well. Don't ask me how -- I am not a god. But the Bible says that in the beginning there was a word. What if this word was just a fluctuation of nothingness? But, being powerful, the word worked and created a god, who, a little surprised but glad to be so lucky, immediately started creating the universe, because life in nothingness looked too dull. Perhaps he was also afraid that nothingness might change its mind and swallow him back, so he tried to make as much matter as possible, to make that swallow a difficult task.
Michelangelo пишет: 17 янв 2020, 16:17 I am not against posting, if that is done in English – it is not bad to write anything whether it is relevant or not in English just for fun and practice, but I prefer more relevant messages in Russian, though.
They must be relevant to the author's goal, whether he himself recognizes that goal or not. A human being is much like a rider on a horse. Sometimes he goes where the horse carries him, but he thinks that it's his conscious will and that there's some rational reason for going there. There is a reason, to be sure, only one that he may be unaware of. His subconscious mind may prefer to block it from coming into his consciousness. Well, we all know this, of course, it's nothing new. But do we always remember this complexity of ourselves? I don't think so. And even if we realize that not everything in our motives is straightforward, we may still be unable to make any practical use of this knowledge.
Michelangelo пишет: 17 янв 2020, 16:17 If one still is not able to comprehensively explain his point of view, he must read more articles on the relevant topics, and maybe even learn some grammar.
It's hard to learn something you have an aversion for. Maybe you have tried and failed, and you don't want that humiliation again. So you turn a vice into a virtue and claim that grammar is evil, that it only hampers language learning for some people and should be avoided by them, because "we are all different". But in fact you just have a learning problem. A comprehension problem. Some part of your intellect doesn't work properly. Even if you manage to achieve your goal some other way, it won't imply that you don't have that deficiency. If your legs don't work, for example, and you manage to walk on your arms, your legs still don't work, do they? And if you try to persuade others not to use their legs because you can't do it, it's a bit silly, isn't it?
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#95

Сообщение Michelangelo »

acapnotic пишет: 18 янв 2020, 09:56 Lots of species have disappeared due to our activities. In the end there will be just us eating one another until there is a single human being who will die of starvation.
People have several or many times prepared for starvation over the history of humanity. Anyway they managed to survive somehow despite all those plagues and famine and wars. I think it must indicate God’s will, otherwise it is difficult to even imagine why we are still alive. I think God want to maintain a kind of balance on Earth so that both Earth and living creature could survive for a period of time. It must be understandable that in case Earth dies, the humanity will die in a moment. Therefore God cannot allow Earth to die, and he promised to the humanity not to exterminate it too, but he didn’t promise to leave the humanity in peace and not create disasters and wars to please himself. Therefore, all live creatures for him are just toys, and humans are his most advanced toys with which he like playing the most.
If some species were wiped off the face of the earth, that happened only because he didn’t promise to those species not to kill them in full, right? Otherwise he would maintain their lives as well.
Maybe after a billion years the surface of Earth will be inhabited by angel-like creatures feeding on sunlight and loving one another unconditionally.
It could be possible that Earth is inhabited with those creatures. Maybe they are our soles that are fed on the solar energy and live invisible in the air. We don’t know. Why couldn’t it be true? I don’t see anything that could turn this theory down.

Maybe our bodies are just vehicles which serve for our soles to participate in God’s games. Don’t you think that it could be possible? We are like angels who entertain God by entering out bodies and playing our roles until our bodies are worn out to death.

In that case, protein molecules can also contain some angels within then to eat our worn bodies and to clean Earth.

Maybe our soles really love each other but they must play those roles of hatred and cruelty and despotism, etc. We don’t know. Maybe we could know it, but once we enter a new body, we just have the blank sheet of that body as our memory and have to learn everything anew.

Now we have a mass of literature and movies and theories about how it could be and there are many theories that could be trustworthy to the extend, and some of them could create a nice combination that could work, but we never can be sure that at least one of them is operative.
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#96

Сообщение Michelangelo »

acapnotic пишет: 18 янв 2020, 09:56 he could have created himself.
I know about some ideas from some sci-fi books or movies, where a person was his own father or mother or grandfather. According to the plots of such movies in times of time travelling it seems logical, however, unbelievable. Recently I watched Terminator Salvation when a man is sent in the past and becomes a father of another man, who is older than his “father” in the ongoing future. Therefore, your idea that God created himself seems rather reasonable, though, it is difficult to comprehend such a situation.
What if this word was just a fluctuation of nothingness?
Let’s give a definition to what “word” is in the Bible? Do you think it was a written character in a book? Or was it a sound in the air? If it was a word, it must contain a thought, right. Whose thought was it if there was nothingness and nothing more? I think, the Bible means that the word was before universe, meaning that it was before the Big Bang. Can you imagine something which didn’t exist, but the “word” had already existed? I cannot. I cannot imagine even nothingness. Even when you are in the open space, there could be some radiation coming from stars. Just imagine that there are no stars, no radiation, no space, and you are still there to utter that “word”. In which language you would be utter that if there was no language? In which sound it would be heard if there was no space, no air, no material? It is just unimaginable. God is easier to imagine than the nothingness, don’t you think so?

There is a novel called His Dark Material, and it is arriving at the about same conclusion – that Dark Material created somebody who appeared first in the universe and called himself God, and subdued all the people to his will. The author of the novel, however, tries to convince the readers that his was not God at all but an impostor, who had some powers which is a little bit superior of those of people’s. I don’t know, maybe you and that author are right. Maybe not. We won’t be informed about that in case it is true that God is just usurper. He won’t willingly reveal that fact had it taken place back then after creation of the universe.
Sometimes he goes where the horse carries him, but he thinks that it's his conscious will and that there's some rational reason for going there.
In that case it may be perfectly OK. I do exactly that here and there, and I even flood somebody’s threads with irrelevant ideas and posts. However, some people’s posts consist of one sentence of couple of words whose objectives are just to create a meaningless message to make a mark on the forum, just to represent his/her existence. People often do that in parks by curving their names in tree barks. When they post a train of thoughts which are consistent even if they are irrelevant to the topic, it is pretty good, particularly if they write in English, but just to announce themselves without any proper reason – do you think they cannot control their movements at all? Did they lost control over their hands which typed those meaningless messages? Maybe. Then we have to discuss whether other participants and particularly topic starters must tolerate such uncontrolled behaviour. Such post could make threads difficult to read and disinteresting.
acapnotic пишет: 18 янв 2020, 09:56 It's hard to learn something you have an aversion for. Maybe you have tried and failed, and you don't want that humiliation again.
You are completely right. There are a lot of things which we cannot do for fun, for example, studying grammar or reading books, particularly those scientific books with difficult terminology. In that case maybe it would be reasonable not to participate in sub-scientific topics but write in the topics belonging to floodilka? It would make no harm if you post your idea in your own topic where you can write whatever you wish to write and if your messages are interesting even if they are irrelevant, you will find supporters and make a good discussion in your threads. Why not?

I believe that I do sometimes, or even too often the same things. When something is difficult to comprehend from the first reading, and I don’t know whether I would ever benefit from knowing that thing, I may not read it again and just have my own fabrication in relation to the topic. Or I could just try to write something about my experience which again could be irrelevant. I understand that it is just a longing for writing and expressing yourself, however, sometimes it could be annoying. I could be annoyed with myself and then I would delete my messages or change them. You are write. In that relation, it is obvious that people who don’t have proper knowledge and do not want to study properly, have to write in English in the Subforum “Practise your English” – that would be much more beneficial for them and for their readers.

Sometimes it is a good thing to transfer and translate some topics into English like I did with that translation-nontralsation topic. However, you will never know whether your idea is going to be supported or not :)
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#97

Сообщение acapnotic »

Michelangelo пишет: 29 янв 2020, 16:37 Can you imagine something which didn’t exist, but the “word” had already existed? I cannot. I cannot imagine even nothingness.
But we don't need to imagine it. Imagination has already failed us for the understanding of quantum physics and similar things. Can you imagine an object that is simultaneously a wave and a particle? However, this notion is already old news in physics. You don't have to imagine it. You just know that it can be either one or the other depending on the circumstances. So, in some of them you can imagine it as a wave, and in others as a particle.

All we need to know is how the object behaves in this or that situation. If nothingness can produce a god, then why can't it produce a word? The form of it can be unimaginable. There are invisible colors, like infra-red or ultra-violet, but their invisibility doesn't stop you from thinking about them, does it? Can you imagine an infra-red color? You can't. So what?

If you were completely deaf, words in their sound form wouldn't be of any use to you. If you were also blind, their written form woudn't be helpful either. You might not even know about them. And, naturally, you wouldn't be able to imagine a said or written word. So if we don't know anything about the form of that first word and can't imagine it, it's no big deal.

It's enough to know that it emerged from nothingness, by accident, because it couldn't have appeared by anything else, since nothing existed yet.
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#98

Сообщение Dragon27 »

Hey, hey, what's going on here? Are you discussing the "translation-grammar technique"?
acapnotic пишет: 18 янв 2020, 09:56 But the Bible says that in the beginning there was a word. What if this word was just a fluctuation of nothingness? But, being powerful, the word worked and created a god
Well, as far as I know the Bible mythology, Word couldn't have created God, because Word was God itself. It was coexistent and coeternal with God, so if they ever appeared out of nothing, they did it simultaneously.
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#99

Сообщение acapnotic »

Michelangelo пишет: 29 янв 2020, 16:37 God is easier to imagine than the nothingness, don’t you think so?
Maybe they are the same. Since nothingness has no qualities, it therefore has no limitations on what it can do. We can't fly like birds because we are too heavy. Nothingness isn't too heavy because it has no weight. We can't swim like fish because we breathe through lungs, but nothingness doesn't breathe through lungs, it doesn't even have them. The logical conclusion is that nothingness is omnipotent. It's also omnipresent. Suppose there is only a book on the table. What else is there on the table? Nothing else. See? It's everywhere. The final question is whether it's also omniscient. This one is simple. Who knows everything? Nobody. "Nobody" is a form of nothingness.

Of course it must be hard for us to imagine nothingness, because we can only imagine something, and it's somethingness. Similarly we can't know nothingness because for that we need to know nothing. But we already know something and can't get rid of that knowledge. When Adam and Eve ate the apple from the forbidden tree, they started to know something, and so they lost the ability to know nothing.
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#100

Сообщение acapnotic »

Dragon27 пишет: 30 янв 2020, 11:22 Well, as far as I know the Bible mythology, Word couldn't have created God, because Word was God itself.
If it was God, and therefore omnipotent, it could have created anything and anyone, even itself. Are you trying to limit God's power?
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