an English question
By dufresne
@dufresne (137)
China
June 4, 2009 9:27pm CST
In the sentence "In both mining and refining ,you would need transportation to support the movement of supplies, equipment, and personnel.", can I replace "movement" with "move" and "transportation" with 'transport"? I mean I really get confused about the usage of such things.
1 person likes this
3 responses
@scarlet_woman (23463)
• United States
6 Jun 09
not really in that sentence.
"movement" here would be in the sense of "distribution".
you can exchange it,but it's not really proper.
@scarlet_woman (23463)
• United States
6 Jun 09
that's the problem with english.so many words can be exactly the same seeming,and yet they're not.it must be utterly confusing to one learning it.
well.."move" can mean "push","sell","transport", or "get rid of" depending.
then "movement" is more "the act of moving"..does that make sense?
basically when you see "ment" on a word it's often to show the act of going forward,where as "move" would be stating the need to get a thing in motion.
"movement" can also mean a cause in english,like "the peace movement"
@wmfhed (121)
• Canada
5 Jun 09
As for the "transportation", it seems that British English uses "transport" to refer to a system or method for carrying passengers or goods from one place to another, while "transportation" is used more often in American English for the same meaning. Sometimes a verb can be a noun, but it has another form of noun. The only thing we can do is to read more and listen more to decide which word to use.
@savak03 (6684)
• United States
5 Jun 09
The short answer is no. I looked up the definitions in the dictionary and if you only have that as a reference it does seem as if you should be able to. In fact though the sentence would not sound right if you did. This is one reason English is such a difficult language to learn as a second language. While there are many ways that appear logical to say something they don't always work.
