Question
Updated on
24 May 2022
- Japanese
-
English (US)
Question about English (US)
Does this sound natural? which is better, rather than or not?
All they have to do is solve the problem, rather than/not sugarcoat it.
Does this sound natural? which is better, rather than or not?
All they have to do is solve the problem, rather than/not sugarcoat it.
All they have to do is solve the problem, rather than/not sugarcoat it.
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- English (US)
Both sound natural! "Rather than" sounds a little more polite and professional, in my opinion.
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- English (US)
I also think that adding "ing" to sugarcoat might help it sound a bit more natural. "All they have to do is solve the problem, rather than sugarcoating it." I feel that this would only work with "rather than", though.
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- Japanese
@moomaidens
Thank you. It helped me a lot. I thought the verb forms had to be the same (solve and sugarcoat), that's why I didn't say sugarcoating.
Thank you. It helped me a lot. I thought the verb forms had to be the same (solve and sugarcoat), that's why I didn't say sugarcoating.
- English (US)
@fukutaka Actually you might be right, it probably depends on the context. Grammatically, I think you're correct about the verb forms (but in casual speech in this situation I doubt people would notice). Sorry, when I say words over and over I sometimes mix up my own grammar 😅 Stick with "sugarcoat" then!
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- Japanese
No worry! To be honest I'm already sick and tired of obeying the rules lol and I think it's important to grasp what is acceptable and unaccetable in the reality.
- English (US)
@fukutaka Ahaha, you're right! If I was speaking out loud then I would use either "sugarcoat" or "sugarcoating" because I doubt most people would consider verb forms while casually chatting! So yeah, it's definitely important to grasp what you can kind of get away with 😁 It is important to know the grammatical rules though, so thank you for reminding me! I'd forgotten that about verb forms and I'm a native speaker 😅
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