Leaning Tower of Pisa
 

Google ‰æ‘œŒŸ�õŒ‹‰Ê: http://www.physics.gla.ac.uk/~pmurray/LeaningTower.jpg

Hi.
I want to describe the picture, but my English is poor, and my description might not make sense.
Does my English make sense?
Any help will be appreciated.

This is a nice photo of Leaning Tower of Pisa. A man who I suppose to be a tourist on the right side is huge enough to support the tower by his both hands not to lean down toward the right side.
Of course it is not the truth. The photo is a kind of faked photo using the optical illusion of perspective. Actually the man is much near to the camera and pretends to hold the tower by his hands.
This technique of picture as a souvenir picture of Tower of Pisa is so familiar to us, and we don't surprised to see it.
Yet, very good execution like this photo would appeal to us.
What do you think?

Re: Leaning Tower of Pisa
 

I think your english is enough to understand. "Suggestion" maybe it's right to be more confident in speaking english, don't bother to speak as long as you feel it is good! :)

Re: Leaning Tower of Pisa
 

Thank you very much for your reply.:)
I understand your suggestion, and I will practice it from now.

I'm very happy to know that my sentences make sense, maybe as international communication language.

Yet, I wonder that my English must be "weird" or "unnatural".
I believe that native-English speaking people can recognize my English as "non-native's English".

Suppose that I were your brother who is a native-English speaker, spoke those sentences with PERFECT pronunciation, with PERFECT natural speed, and with full of confidence,
don't you think that your brother's gotten speaking disability?

If so, I wanted you to show me more natural wording to mean the same context....
I would like to know points where you natives would thought them as "wired".

For example, collocation mistakes, matching of formal-and-informal, matching of spoken-or-written, and grammar as well.

This is what I thought for the first time, but my English question sentence was so poor that I couldn't convey exactly what I was in mind.

Thank you, for reading, and for your patience.
BTW, I just found your homepage which seems fantastic to me, and I'll try it. :)

Thank you again!

Re: Leaning Tower of Pisa
 

Hi.
According to a native's advice, I corrected it myself.
Improved? :)

This is a nice photo of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. A man who I think is a tourist on the right side might be huge enough to support the tower with his both hands and prevent it from falling down.
Of course it is not true. The photo is a kind of faked photo enhancing the man using the optical illusion of perspective. Actually the man locates much near to the camera and just poses to hold the tower with his hands.

The picture framing is well known to us as a souvenir picture of the Tower of Pisa for tourists, and we aren't surprised to see it.

Yet, the excellent outcome of this photo would appeal to us.
What do you think?[/quote]

Re: Leaning Tower of Pisa
 

Still a few mistakes :
1) huge sounds strange here - better : tall
2. Should be : with both his hands - or even better just with both hands
3. Sentence 4 : Avoid repeating photo by saying : The photo is a kind of fake ...
4. Enhancing is wrong. It means improving, or making more beautiful/valuable. You probably meant enlarging - ie making larger
5. This sentence also has two verbs with -ing - it sounds better if you change one. I'd write the whole sentence as :The photo is a kind of fake, which uses the optical illusion of perspective to make the man seem larger than he really is.
6. locates is wrong - it would have to be is located, but I prefer is standing. Similarly, poses should be is posing - it's not a habitual action but an on-going one at the moment the photo was taken.You also need a comma aftter actually, and near should be a comparative. The sentence should read : Actually, the man is standing much nearer to the camera and is just posing in order to look as if he is holding ....etc
7. Framing in the next sentence doesn't make sense. I think you mean : The composition of the photo...
8. The last sentence shouldn't be in a new paragraph - it's a continuation of the previous topic. Also I don't like outcome here. And why would ? ? It's not hypothetical- so :
... to see it. But even so, the result obtained in the photo is excellent and still appeals to us.

Re: Leaning Tower of Pisa
 

Thank you very much, susan53, for your detailed explanation.
I got it. I could understand every detail, and it became crystal clear just now.

Thank you again for taking your time to correct me. :)

Re: Leaning Tower of Pisa
 

Hi, susan53, I want to ask one more thing, OK?
It is about "huge".

From your lesson in the previous post,
I thought that the adjective "huge" is used for non-living things.
I thought that "a huge man" sounds unnatural because of collocation.

Yet, I found it in a novel written by Sidney Sheldon, The Chase.
"The chauffeur was a huge, ugly man named Higashi, who was built like a wrestler".

In the novel, Sidney Sheldon used the word "huge" quite many times.
I wonder he had preference to the word?

What do you think about the bold sentence above?
Thank you.

Re: Leaning Tower of Pisa
 

It's fine. Here are some other examples I've found of "huge" referring people/parts of the body etc :

1. oh, he's HUGE! He's only about five foot !
2. ....if you went up to ten stone you'd look HUGE
3. He was a HUGE young man of twenty-four, clothed in muscle
4. the world of my childhood, the towering HUGEness of my mother and father and my grown-up brother,
5. Ryan hefted his bulk up and supported it on one elbow. He rubbed his eyes sleepily with one huge paw.
6. a patient walked in with a HUGE swollen nose.

There's a difference between a tall person and a huge person. Tall just refers to height - a person may be tall and thin, like for instance a lot of basketball players. But huge suggests not necessarily height but rather (or possibly as well as) bulk - because of muscle, fat, general bone structure, inflammation, retention of liquid etc. It describes a body (or body part) which is unusually developed. For instance, a woman might describe herself as huge during the last month of pregnancy, or if you sprain your ankle and it swells up you might describe it as huge. The answers above can all be explained by this (though note that in 1 huge is used ironically - you get the idea of a small, weedy person- and 4 describes a child's perception - his family appear huge to him because he himself is so small).

This is also why I suggested "tall" for the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It's certainly a tall building, but not unusually so, and not particularly broad either. Here's a description of a "huge building" :

The Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is the fourth largest building in the world by volume. The interior volume of the building is so large it can create its own weather including reports of “rain clouds forming below the ceiling on very humid days.”

Now that's a huge building...

Re: Leaning Tower of Pisa
 

Thank you, for your detailed answer, susan.

I misunderstood why my "huge" was wrong.
Now it is clear.

So Sumo-wrestlers in Japan are described as "huge", for sure.

Thank you for the picture of the huge building of NASA.
I would like to see it someday.

BTW, just out of curiosity, why the national flag is not only vertical but also "inside-out" in that huge building?