Hello,

I am no native English speaker and a bit clueless about what "float" means here. Regarding the use in a party context, wiktionary.org says it is a softdrink with a scoop of vanilla ice in it, but if that is the correct meaing, what is the "platform structure" the explanation talks about?

Greetings,
Stupid Dog

Silly me, I had better taken a look at a picture of it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Root_Beer_Float.jpg

Personally for stories i used the image of a "Float" as in one of those things you see in parades that people stand on.

http://www.rotaryfloat.org/images/pastfl...t1997a.jpg that type of thing.

I use the primitive 'balloon' here, just to confuse anyone who's reading my stories!

A float is a big wooden structure which is used in a street parade. Americans are big on them. Personally I've never seen one IRL so I think of floats you get at the swimming pool.

Gingerninja and harhol are right stupiddogg. I confess I didn't know what a float was either when I first studied it. Here is another example: http://mexicoenburgos.com/eventos/cabalg...arroza.jpg

If you are like me you will finish Rtk1 having learned a great deal of new English, specially from the stories from the site, so for us it is 一石二鳥

Yeah, I definitely thought of it as this kind of float: http://www.nationalnotary.org/userimages...loatLG.jpg

And yeah... I'm a native English speaker and I'll admit... I've had to look up several keywords and even a couple of primitives (silage?) throughout the book. You can tell Heisig is a big time academic.

yeah i think theres a couple keywords in there that even throw us native english speakers. not surprisngly they are the words that ive had hardest time coming up with stickable stories for.

i have seen "floats" where i live, can't say i was overly impressed. America does seem to more into them however. Think Macy's Day Parade at thanksgiving.

Hey,

I used "Floß" (raft).
Considering the following stories for the float primitive, this translation seems quite reasonable - correct me if I am wrong. At least this interpretation worked for me.

sethg Wrote:And yeah... I'm a native English speaker and I'll admit... I've had to look up several keywords and even a couple of primitives (silage?) throughout the book. You can tell Heisig is a big time academic.

You bet! Actually, I thought my English was quite ok already because I watch a lot of British and American TV every day, but I guess that cannot substitute for reading good literature once in a while.

Which, I have to admit, is not one of my greater hobbies (rule of thumb: if it is longer than a text message, you better make a movie out of it to get me interested...)

The last fiction book I started reading recently (A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroghs) had a lot of words that I decided to look up because I didn't really know what they were. One of them was "promontory," and so when that came up as a keyword I was really happy because that is the only way I would have known what it was and I already had a picture in my head from the book!

Or you could use a different primitive all together =D. I actually had no idea what you were talking about when you said float, because I call mine a Trident/Very long spear.
See my stories if you like, I use extended meanings off the initial spear one.

I think I'm the only person who used 'float' as in something which floats on water. It made scaffolding very easy: Wood which floats is used as scaffolding for those southeast asian floating villages.

i used Mardi Gras for this one

Gingerninja Wrote:yeah i think theres a couple keywords in there that even throw us native english speakers. not surprisngly they are the words that ive had hardest time coming up with stickable stories for.

i have seen "floats" where i live, can't say i was overly impressed. America does seem to more into them however. Think Macy's Day Parade at thanksgiving.

I had at least two stories where the main punchline was that I didn't actually know the meaning of the keyword.

Float wouldn't stick in my mind so I changed it to mean "Mesh" just from the way it looks. Tree + Mesh = scaffolding..
Gold + Mesh = Coin. I picture a coin with a mesh pattern on it. These stuck right away after I changed the meaning of the primitive.

I'm also not an native english speaker and couldn't understand what float was either, so I used it as the verb 'to float', and I think I did good stories, anyway...