"I remember mentioning at least..."

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MarvinTheMartian

#543573 Sat, 19 Jul 08 04:33 PM

Hi, I'm a bit confused. Google returns only one hit for the phrase "remember mentioning at least". How can this be? To me, it sounds like a perfectly natural thing to say in contexts such as the one below:

Mr. A: "I bought that computer you were talking about the other day. It works great."

Mr. B: "Which one? I remember mentioning at least three different models."

Either I'm wrong... or Google is one of most inacurrate and unreliable search engines on the Web when it comes to checking grammar and syntax!

MarvinTheMartian

Joined on Fri, Jan 18 2008

Full Member (167)

Grammar

optilang

#543577 Sat, 19 Jul 08 04:41 PM

MarvinTheMartian
Hi, I'm a bit confused. Google returns only one hit for the phrase "remember mentioning at least". How can this be? To me, it sounds like a perfectly natural thing to say in contexts such as the one below:

Mr. A: "I bought that computer you were talking about the other day. It works great."

Mr. B: "Which one? I remember mentioning at least three different models."

Either I'm wrong... or Google is one of most inacurrate and unreliable search engines on the Web when it comes to checking grammar and syntax!

I see nothing wrong with your sentences.

I am not going to defend Google here, but we must remember that is is only a search engine. If it finds it, it shows it. Just because it doesn't appear in a Google search doesn't mean that it doesn't exist (it being whatever you are searching for). You should also be careful, as Google can and does return information that is not correct. It is merely a search engine and makes no allowance for the validity of the searches it finds.

optilang

Joined on Tue, May 13 2008

Poland

Senior Member (2,180)

OptiNative British English Speaker Wherever I may roam, I'm still a Londoner.

Grammar

RayH

#543579 Sat, 19 Jul 08 04:43 PM

MarvinTheMartian
Either I'm wrong... or Google is one of most inacurrate and unreliable search engines on the Web when it comes to checking grammar and syntax!

I don't know about "most inaccurate and unreliable" but I think it's very unwise to use any search engine to obtain your grammar and syntax advice. After all, much (most) of the writing you find on Web sites is unedited, a lot of it is posted by non-native speakers, native speakers are notorious for our careless and/or playful use of the language, etc., etc.

Use Google to find sites that are intended to teach English but don't use it to verify that something is correct (or incorrect, for that matter).

By the way, I see nothing wrong with your example.

RayH

Joined on Sat, Mar 22 2008

CA, USA

Regular Member (728)

Native speaker of U. S. English. Not a grammar expert.

Grammar

Avangi

#543580 Sat, 19 Jul 08 04:50 PM

I got 28,800 hits for "remember mentioning"; 195,000 for "mentioned at least"

Avangi

Joined on Mon, Nov 19 2007

Senior Member (3,297)

". . . le plaisir delicieux et toujours nouveau d'une occupation inutile." - Henri de Regnier

Peaceblinkfriend

#543583 Sat, 19 Jul 08 04:59 PM

You can use a corpus to see how or how frequently words and phrases are used in a variety of context. Try the British National Corpus. It's free as long as you don't mind it showing only up to 50 random results it gets. You can click on to each entry and check the source of each example.

PBF

Peaceblinkfriend

Joined on Wed, May 9 2007

Australia

Contributing Member (1,580)

Marius Hancu

#543592 Sat, 19 Jul 08 05:42 PM

RayH
I don't know about "most inaccurate and unreliable" but I think it's very unwise to use any search engine to obtain your grammar and syntax advice. After all, much (most) of the writing you find on Web sites is unedited, a lot of it is posted by non-native speakers, native speakers are notorious for our careless and/or playful use of the language, etc., etc.

Not if you're using Google Books, which usually are edited and published books:

http://books.google.com

BTW:

630 hits on "remember mentioning'

http://books.google.com/books?q=%22remember+mentioning%27&btnG=Search+Books

Marius Hancu

Joined on Wed, Apr 26 2006

Montreal, Canada

Veteran Member (11,673)

Grammar

RayH

#543617 Sat, 19 Jul 08 07:10 PM

Not if you're using Google Books, which usually are edited and published books

Possibly. Still I've seen several people on these forums end up confused by Google Books due to the fact that a large number of their books are many decades old (even over one hundred years in many cases). Because of that I would advise caution. At the very least be sure that you are looking at a book that was published within the last thirty or forty years.

RayH

Numbers

MarvinTheMartian

#543654 Sat, 19 Jul 08 09:06 PM

Thank you all for your advice. I understand that Google is a search engine and that, as such, it has limitations. I was just a bit frustrated, probably because I'm sometimes told by English Forums users to use Google to verify my sentence structures... So far, my experience with Google has been exasperating at best.

Just to clarify, English IS my native language... HOWEVER, I suffer from a condition which makes it impossible for me to filter information. In other words, my brain absorbs every bit of information it's exposed to, including, alas, grammatical mistakes and unidiomatic expressions ... And since I live in a cosmopolitan area, I often have to interact with people whith a poor command of English. When that happens, I literally have to "relearn" how to speak, much as an Internet user would debug their computer after visiting seedy websites... It can take me weeks and sometimes even months to be able to speak and write properly again. Does this make sense to any of you?

P.S.: Does my post contain any mistakes? I can't help but second-guess myself because of my condition...