Quote:
Originally Posted by Tdol  'Sometimes' is a particularly meaningless word to me. |
wow! You can't kill off such a useful word!
How else would one concisely say 'sometimes I really feel like having fish and chips for lunch, but sometimes I just want a salad'.
or 'On many occasions English teachers can be boring, but sometimes they can be really controversial'.
or 'Sometimes, Windows will crash for no obvious reason'....sorry....in that case replace the 'sometimes' with 'frequently'!
'Nice' has its uses too, when one wants to be deliberately patronising for example: eg. "that's nice dear, what is it?'....or if one wants to be deliberately 'middle of the road'...eg. 'Mum! What do you think of my picture?'...."its really nice!".
'Good' and 'bad' have their important uses too - they are simple words, but can be given different very meanings depending on how they are phrased. In certain parts of England they are absolutely essential to common communication, for instance in the North East it is common practice to use simple negatives, or, depending on locally specific areas (sometimes as small as a single school catchment area), simple double or simple treble negatives. eg. (note: read these carefully, note the exclamation marks, not question marks)
1. 'That was bad!' means 'I think that was really good'.
2. 'Was that not bad!' means 'I think that was really good'.
3. 'Was that good!' means 'I think that was really bad'.
4. 'Was that not good!' means 'I think that was really bad'.