Geekety geek geek geek.

[go_team]

The anal-retentive English teacher who lives in my forebrain is still in fine form, I see:

English Genius

You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 83% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

You too can try The Commonly Confused Words Test; if you're like me, you'll probably find yourself thinking, "That's a change in progress! I'm going to get this wrong, but in 20 more years I bet this'll be common usage!" Usually my inner linguist can shut up during grammar tests; her domain is spoken language, not the written stuff. Oh geez.

And those of you who are language nerds enough to have read this far might be interested in The Eggcorn Database, which takes the "commonly confused words" idea and runs with it in a way that I find truly wonderful.

Comments

[triath.livejournal.com]

Heh, I think cookies are turned off on this computer. I ended up getting 0% for beginner, intermediate, and advanced, but 77% for expert. So I ranked "oddly expert".

I'm going to assume that I actually rocked those sections.

Cool test.

Re: Feeling stupid . . .

[iainuki.livejournal.com]

Never mind, I'm stupid.

English Genius
You scored 93% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 83% Expert!
You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

I think that test was definitely pushing into ambiguous areas in the language with some of those questions.

[conform.livejournal.com]

i got a 66 on the expert portion, but several of the questions made me cranky. i don't think that several of those questions are useful without an annotated answer key; the answers aren't always clear. the dictionary confirmed my suspicion that "enquire" is an acceptable variant of "inquire". i am well aware that "nauseous" in the past was primarily used to mean "nauseating" and not "nauseated", but now is used more to mean "nauseated", so i'm at a loss as to whether they want to hear the traditional use, the modern use, or both. "phenomena" is not only and solely the plural of "phenomenon" but has historically been used occasionally as the singular (with the odd "phenomenas" as its plural). m-w.com asserts the equivalency of both "toward"/"towards" and "while"/"whilst"...

i'm torn. i like to be right-minded in my use of the language, but often i can't convince myself that "right" is meaningful.

[goteam.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I distinctly remember the "nauseous" vs. "nauseating" question as one where I had to choose between the answer I think is right vs. the answer I'm pretty sure the testmaker thinks is right. For some reason, today I had an extra-hard time convincing myself to remember that the test was about being pedantically correct and not "what sounds okay."

I've taken enough linguistics to be highly skeptical about the question of right vs. meaningful, but on the other hand questions of usage are a good place to look for language change in progress, so for me that makes them kind of fun on a descriptive as well as a prescriptive level.

dork dork dork? dork dork dork.

[foolmonkey.livejournal.com]

I really want to know what I didn't get right. I got all of the beginner ones, then 93%, 93%, and 61%.

I'm sure it was partially those darn semicolons. My personal view is that (apart from coding) you get about 3 semicolons in your life, and after you've used those, each additional one should cost you a finger.

So yeah, I might quibble with some of the answers if I could see what they actually are.

[goteam.livejournal.com]

I would so be out of fingers and probably toes if your semicolon rules were applied to my writing; I am, after all, the queen of the run-on sentence, and when I learned that semicolons could be used to extend my ramblings still further (I think it was in 8th grade) I latched on to those babies and never once looked back.

[mycrust.livejournal.com]

OMG, the Eggcorn Database is awesome.

[amoken.livejournal.com]

yeppers

whoa

[cosyne.livejournal.com]

You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 83% Expert!
kinda makes me wonder if it's working properly...

Re: whoa

[harobed.livejournal.com]

oh come on. You are such a grammar nazi, I'd be surprised if you didn't get high scores.

Re: whoa

[cosyne.livejournal.com]

it was more that it was the exact same score.
and i preffer grammar fascist....

[drunkpotato.livejournal.com]

W00t. Soy un ingenio.

You scored 100% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 77% Expert! I am clearly not as expert as you, nor as intermediate.

[scarla.livejournal.com]

what i found odd was that it told me that 100% of people in my age group scored lower than me on every section. i feel that this is first of all impossible because i am in my age group, but that may just be a bit too strict. it is at least unlikely, because i didn't do all that well, just something like 83%, 83%, 77%, and 61%. and you and at least some of you other friends here aren't much older than i am. i refuse to believe no one in my "age group" knows more of this grammer than i.

[goteam.livejournal.com]

I thought that was weird, too. So far everyone I know who's taken this test and posted their results to LJ has been scoring better than just about everybody else in their age groups, and I've seen a pretty wide range of scores. Also I want to see an age distribution of people who've taken the test, because the results claim that people in the 55-59 group have been scoring highest across the board, but I'm guessing that this test isn't all that popular in that age group, so the people who took it are a small self-selected sample of grammar nerds, who of course did really well on the test and skewed the data six ways from Tuesday. I also suspect that the testwriter cares way more about grammar than about statistics.

[msmithma.livejournal.com]

I feel shamed, and I can even use the bi-lingual pity card cause it should help

93% Beginner
93% Intermediate
87% Advanced
50% Expert

[goteam.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the "even Professor Sparks has given up and concluded you must have an undiagnosed learning disability" card!