"Yesterday while playing tennis, my ex-girlfriend was slightly injured, her skin felt off and her best friend got severely wounded, her shoulders dislocated"
Is this long sentence grammatical and natural in spoken English?
Thank you very much
It's not natural to say 'her skin felt off'. I don't know what this means. I hope you don't mean 'her skin fell off'.
The second part of the sentence would be better as '. . .her best friend got severely wounded, dislocating her shoulders.'
(Dangerous game, tennis.)
Rover
You may mean she got a scrape. As a kid, you probably spent most of your time with scraped knees.
She fell and scraped her elbos pretty badly. (Even a bad scrape is not a "serious injury," assuming infection does not follow. And it wouldn't with my mother, who insisted on thoroughly washing those scrapes. Ow!)
I'm not a teacher, but I write for a living. Please don't ask me about 2nd conditionals, but I'm a safe bet for what reads well in (American) English.
My guess is "skin felt off" means it was tender or bruised... it felt "off". But I'm just guessing. It is a strange phrase.
Last edited by freezeframe; 14-Apr-2011 at 22:10.
Did she really dislocate both shoulders?
Happens all the time in tennis.
Dear members and Teachers,
- What I mean by "her skin felt off" is "her skin grazed". So in this context, I must say "her skin grazed" or "her skin scraped", correct?
Thank you very much
What? Bilateral dislocations of the shoulder? Or do you mean one at a time at different times?
It would be a very strange injury that would dislocate both shoulders.
Here's one case study though:
"However, simultaneous bilateral anterior shoulder dislocation is rare: only about 30 cases have been described in the literature"
http://www.josonline.org/pdf/v13i3p303.pdf
Here's another
"Bilateral shoulder dislocation is uncommon ..."
http://www.sicot.org/resources/File/IO_reports/02-2003/4-02-2003.pdf
Dear members and Teachers,
- What I mean by "her skin felt off" is "her skin grazed". So in this context, I must say "her skin grazed" or "her skin scraped", correct?
Thank you very much