First of all, it's a long time!!! I've been not very nice with my blog or myself since I arrived Brazil!! However, I'll try to keep my posts, even if I can't write ever single day how I used to do!!! A new thing?? I'll try to improve my language, my skills and my writing as well in these months I still have here. Of course, it will be great to study and prepare myself to some tests I'm planning!! A short story just to remember how language works...
I'm always ask for my kids at home: Did you finish?? Almost everydays!! Then, Fernanda just alert me today about it! It's wrong expression! I decided to search a little bit and look what I figured out! There is two differents forms to say...
1. 'Have you finished?' could be said in any situation:
a) Mother to child eating soup: 'have you finished?'
b) Teacher to student during test: 'have you finished?'
c) Male to female who has been complaining bitterly about the ring of shaving foam and stubble round the bathroom sink: 'have you finished?'
2. 'Are you finished?', as Nona says, would mostly be said in situations like 1c, and implies a certain degree of impatience (or mock-impatience):
a) Female to male who has been explaining the workings of the internal combustion engine for the last half-hour: 'are you finished?'
b) Male to female who has been shouting abuse and at last collapses sobbing into an armchair with her hands over her face: 'are you finished?' (Reverse 'male' and 'female' for less stereotypical scenarios in the last 3 examples.)
It's difficult to pinpoint exactly why 'are you finished?' is so derogatory. We say 'is it finished?' of films, plays, tv programmes; perhaps the speaker is implicitly likening the other person to a mechanical recording.
I'd like to thank you my friends, Drea, Fer e Ser Especial, to cheers me up!!!! I could back my mind to focus!! I love ya!!
