Re: A dried English walnut
This makes more sense to me:
Her hair was the color of dried English walnuts, rich and plentiful, and her complexion waxen—cream wax—-with lips of faint pink, and eyes that varied from ...
(a) one dried walnut is not rich and plentiful
Re: A dried English walnut
Dreiser wrote it, not me. Just my teacher used this text in a test and I made a mistake.
And I would like to know why Dreiser wrote this way.
Michael
Re: A dried English walnut
For an answer to that, you would have to ask Dreiser. I suspect he preferred the sound of "a dried English walnut"'; to me it makes perfectly good sense to refer to a single dried walnut to describe hair colour than to many walnuts.
Re: A dried English walnut
:up: Also, if you translate it without the article and keep the singular, you change the sense of 'walnut' (the wood rather than the nut). Given the context, this would be obviously wrong.
b
Re: A dried English walnut
Why the walnut is dried? As far as I can understand, a ripe nut is ready to eat.
I suppose the word dried is the key here. Because wood really can be dried, but I have not heard about dried Englis walnuts.
Michael
Re: A dried English walnut
I suspect that the walnut was rather old and dried, and when that happens its skin will have turned a darkish brown. A fresh walnut has a light golden brown skin.
Maybe Dreiser had some on the table where he was writing and they gave him the idea for her hair colour.
Re: A dried English walnut
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Grablevskij
Just my teacher used this text in a test and I made a mistake.
Michael
Hey Michael. How's tricks?
While we have a lot of freedom in adverb placement, your placement of 'just' is not all that natural, for your intended meaning. This placement carries a meaning like,
Just my teacher [and no one else] used this text in a test and I made a mistake.
My teacher just used this text in a test and I made a mistake.
Re: A dried English walnut
Or (the way I understood it, but making allowance for a foreign speaker [because this interpretation is not normal]) "[It is] just [that] my teacher used this text in a test and [as a result, understandably] I made a mistake."
b
Re: A dried English walnut
Thank you very much.
Michael