I love English and was once good enough to become an English teacher at a Japanese junior high school. However, that was in the past and since then my knowledge of English has been declining rapidly. So, as part of my language learning, I decided to submit some simple questions and comments about English language that are not easy for me (and that I should ask on HiNative or Quora) to Newgrounds. I am not an expert in English and may be making elementary mistakes, but thank you for your patience.

"Do you know how hard is it?" asked Precip.24 | English Is Not So Easy 8

Not to brag, but one of the authors of the textbook I mentioned in #7, David James, was an English teacher in Japan and I took his class. His lecture was very interesting and the content was something that even a Japanese English teacher would not know. For example, he forbade Japanese students from using "get" in a sentence. The reason, he said, is that "get" sounds a little childish. And when he was lecturing on speech in English-speaking countries, he said, "The grammatical rule of quotation marks is very complicated. Beginners should not use them." However, that is a serious problem for me because one of my goals is to write a novel in English in the future.

So how difficult is it? The best way to find out is to observe actual samples. I have a book, "ZEBRA and Other Stories" by Chaim Potok, which has probably drifted to Japan after a long journey. It is a well-known children's literature in Japan, and there are few words in it that one would have to look up in a dictionary to understand. However, through the stories, the complex emotions of children who are neither children nor adults are clearly described. It is a novel that can be enjoyed from both a child's and an adult's point of view.

I have researched a number of sample conversations from this novel.

             "You always tell such sad stories," Andrea said.

             The bell rang. Mrs. English dismissed the class.

             In the hallway, Andrea said to Zebra, "You know, you are a very gloomy life form."

             "Andrea, get off my case," Zebra said.

             ―ZEBRA

One example can be found: "blah blah blah," one said. It seems that when "one said" is placed after a dialog, the comma must be placed in an odd position for me.

             At one point during the day, I astonished myself by suddenly asking Seth why his parents had divorced. … But he took two or three deep breaths and finally said, "Because of my dad's drinking. He tried to keep it from us, but we all knew."

             By the time he finished telling me that, there were tears in his eyes.

             —B.B.

His novels sometimes contain conversational sentences without quotation marks. This is a technique unique to his novels in which the reader is never told what kind of wording the protagonist uses to ask him such a question.

             "He asks if he may touch your hair."

             "What?"

             "May he touch your hair?"

             Moon took a deep breath. All those questions, and now this. Touch my hair. Well, why not? He turned his head to the side....

             "He says he likes the way your hair looks and feels," Mr. Khan said to Moon.

             —MOON

In this scene, Mr. Khan interprets the words of a boy named Ashraf. In his novels, the past tense is basically used, but "asks" and "says" are used when the characters make statements in the speaker's conversational text.

             I said to Mom and Dad over breakfast the next morning, "I had this dream last night. Joe Redhill was carrying me."

             "What do you mean, carrying you?" said Dad.

             "Over his shoulder," I said.

             "Why was he carrying you?" asked Mom.

             "I don't know."

             —NAVA

Interesting expression used here: "blah blah blah?" said/asked one. When the speech is in the interrogative form, are the verb and subject swapped? The rule remains an enigma.

             "What?"

             "Your hair, it's so long and beautiful. Did your dad have red hair?"

             "My dad's hair was blond," Isabel said.

             "Can I touch it?" Betsy asked, and without waiting for a reply, put her hand on the hair alongside Isabel's forehead. Isabel felt Betsy's fingers lightly stroking her hair and saw a strange look enter her eyes: they appeared to grow enormous, translucent, the color of watery gray ink. She ran her tongue over her lips, drew her upper lip back, and caught her lower lip between her teeth.

             "It's like silk," Betsy said.

             Isabel stepped back. "Please don't," she said.

             —ISABEL

What is the difference between "'blah blah blah?' asked one" and "'blah blah blah?' one asked"? I give up.

Mr. James is right, it seems to be very difficult to use quotation marks. I hope this article will give you an idea of the grammatical difficulties of quotation marks and the fascination of Chaim Potok's works.