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Thread: rolls on?

  1. #1
    bieasy is offline Senior Member
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    Cool rolls on?

    Hi,

    Can I say "he rolls on the road" instead of "he drives on the road"?
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    Default Re: rolls on?

    Quote Originally Posted by bieasy View Post
    Hi,

    Can I say "he rolls on the road" instead of "he drives on the road"?
    No, not in normal English. You could try it and let's know how you get on.
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  3. #3
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    Default Re: rolls on?

    You might hear something like "Let's roll" for "Let's go" or "Time to get rolling" to mean that it's time to leave, but as a simple declarative sentence, your suggestion would sound very odd indeed.
    Tdol, bieasy and TheParser like this.
    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.

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    Default Re: rolls on?

    Quote Originally Posted by bieasy View Post
    Hi,

    Can I say "he rolls on the road" instead of "he drives on the road"?
    That sounds like a literal translation of il roule sur la route.

    We don't use roll that way, except as Barb suggests.

    Rover
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  5. #5
    bieasy is offline Senior Member
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    Cool Re: rolls on?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rover_KE View Post
    That sounds like a literal translation of il roule sur la route.

    We don't use roll that way, except as Barb suggests.

    Rover
    It's because google translator display it, so I was wondering if we could speak that way.

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    Default Re: rolls on?

    Quote Originally Posted by bieasy View Post
    It's because google translator display it, so I was wondering if we could speak that way.
    Oh dear. It seems that Rover was right.
    No, a machine translation is not an indication that we can say something that we enter in the input field as it appears in the output field and expect speakers of the output language to understand it. Perhaps in 50 years time
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  7. #7
    bieasy is offline Senior Member
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    Default Re: rolls on?

    Quote Originally Posted by Raymott View Post
    Oh dear. It seems that Rover was right.
    No, a machine translation is not an indication that we can say something that we enter in the input field as it appears in the output field and expect speakers of the output language to understand it. Perhaps in 50 years time
    I know, I know!

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