Joke: men vs. women / homens vs mulheres

Very good this joke!
Really, we men aren’t equipped for these kinds of contests!!!

The man was “smart” enough to write the note but couldn’t himself set the alarm to wake him up??? MEN, all the same, all around the world!

That was the kind of comunication he chose. This teach us a lesson (an old one) never take anyone for granted.

hahaha legal

Everyone who has ever given his/her spouse the silent treatment should be aware of this story in order not to fall for it! We should take advantage of every opportunity to learn… Thanks, Mark!

Gostaria de saber porque foi usada a forma continua do verbo “to want”, no parágrafo …
not wanting to be the first to break …, pois o verbo to want, assim como alguns outros não aceitam a forma contínua …
Agradeço a resposta.

I like it!

Very funny joke! I enjoyed a lot

But I did not understand very well the sentence:

he was about to go and see why his wife hadn’t “wakened” him
Is it that corret?
past participle of wake is woke or waked?
We can use wakened too?
I think is the same Ricardo’s doubt.

Thanks

Waken vem do Old English e está correto, embora não tanto usado quanto ‘wake’.
Waken – wakening – wakened.

I’m glad everyone liked the joke. Let’s see if we can post another one in a few days!

Cheers,

Mark

VERY GOOD!! NEW VOCABULARY!!

além de divertido, aprendi palavras e expressões novas. Great!

Puts, muito legal…. e aprendi novas palavras valeu!!

Read post #18

Nossa!!Estou aprendendo muito com vcs. Thanks!

Hi Karina,

Sorry to take so long to respond. I’ve been out of the country for the last days. OK, concerning the use of ‘wanting’ in the joke …

I know that most grammars will say that some verbs are “never” used in the ‘ing’ form (never say never!!) and the verb ‘want’ is one of them. There are always exceptions to every rule, especially when you start comparing ‘usage’ (the way people really use the language) and ‘grammar’ (an abstraction or idealization of a language). Although we don’t use ‘wanting’ very frequently, there are a number of cases where we use want in the “ing” form. Here are a few examples with the same pattern you find in the joke:

Not wanting to hurt her feelings, he said he liked her cooking.
Not wanting to arrive late, we took a cab.

Or how about this exchange at a bus stop:

‘Excuse me, do you know how to get to Sherbrooke street from here?’
‘Sure. You’ll be wanting the number 10 bus. It stops there.’

and some more examples:

I’ve been wanting to meet her since I read her article in the NY Times.
The kids have been wanting to go to England ever since they saw Harry Potter.

You can even use google as a kind of ‘corpus’ to look for more examples of the use of ‘wanting’. Based on the number of hits in google, you can get a pretty good idea of the frequency of use as well.

abraços,

Mark