"Mi sendus al vi retmesaĝon, se vi dirus al mi, kio estas via retpoŝtadreso."
Translation:I would send you an email, if you would tell me what your email address is.
14 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Someone quoted me and replied calling me hypocritical -- and then deleted the message. Of course, I still get an email with the text of the message. I suppose a charitable interpretation is that the deletion was, in effect, an apology from the person who said it - or at least an indication that xhe thought better of saying it.
I would like to explain my comment, though - for this person, or for perhaps for future readers of the same comment.
The anonymous poster (AP) quoted me and replied:
"Maybe someone will come along in the future with the same question about English word order in the Esperanto course"
...This is exactly how forums and comment sections work.
Yes, I know how forums work. I've been using them since before many forum participants, presumably including AP, were born. The trouble it seems AP missed some subtlety in my comment. First, I italicized maybe. That is, I acknowledge it's possible but I'm asserting that it's unlikely.
My initial comment received a downvote at least six months ago, probably more, and I commented about that down-voter:
One person would rather spend their time answering old questions from people who are no longer learning Esperanto, than spending it to reply to current, timely questions, from people who are still learning.
Seriously, if there is someone out there who wants to go through various random threads and post answers JUST IN CASE someone is wondering, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. I’m simply trying to make sure people know that not all questions on the forum are from people who still want to know the answer. Make an informed decision on how you spend your time.
But the most important thing AP said was this:
AP wrote:
If I had a query about a particular question on Duolingo, I look in the comment section first to see if it's already been addressed. Many others do the same.
This is excellent advice. Multiple times daily I get notifications about questions on the forum that would not have needed to be asked if people did what you suggest here. Thanks for bringing it up.
And assuming that this final question is a sincere question (I’ve deleted the word “hypocritcal”):
Why are you complaining about Andruoduo's behaviour when you could have used that time to, in your words, "reply to current, timely questions, from people who are still learning"?
“Complaining” is a strong word here. I do think you’re missing the greater context. I don’t recall at this point because I wrote this almost a year ago, but generally I say things like this when I get multiple notifications from one person who is on a question-answering spree - making sure that obscure questions that haven’t received attention in 5 years have answers on them. This same question could be asked about any of the countless sentences in Duolingo with dependant clauses. I personally wouldn’t advocate going through Duolingo and posting answers to anticipated questions like this one, but it’s a free country and if someone wanted to to this, that would be their business.
I was saying, in effect, asking: do you want to spend your time answering questions that are not timely and not from people who are still learning? The answer to that certainly could be yes or no.
As for my own responses in this thread, I am making an informed decision on how to spend my time. Yes, I could be answering questions with this time, or shaving, or making a second cup of coffee -- things which I may go off and do now, but I also think that the things I’ve said here and elsewhere in this thread are valuable, or at least enjoyable things to say and spend my time saying.
I hope you can see it this way. If not, no hard feelings. This is the internet, of course, where people argue over the silliest things.
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This is called "second conditional" and it simply is like that for no good reason: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/conditional2.htm
English grammar is full of such weird tiny things.
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"I would send you an email if you tell me what is your email address."
Duo said: "excellent!"