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serving as a model; normal; regular; typical; widely accepted
incumbent
complacent
standard
preventive
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'to leave something under the mercy of someone'?



 
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ESL Forums | English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
Capable of vs. capable to | Past perfect tense.
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'to leave something under the mercy of someone'? #1 (permalink) Thu Mar 10, 2011 17:02 pm   'to leave something under the mercy of someone'?
 

Hi,

Please have a look at the following paragraph:

Quote:
The country has adopted the policy of boosting its developed parts as greatly as possible, while leaving underdeveloped parts under the mercy of rich nations. And if these rich nations see it quite foolish to go on sponsoring these areas when their own government doesn't care and decide to stop their aid, they would simply 'sacrifice' the unfortunate underdeveloped parts, so that in a few years to come, these will completely disappear, leaving a good country with only rich and buoyant parts.


1. I wonder the language use in the bold part is correct, especially the preposition 'under'
2. What do you think about the language use in the whole paragraph? Does it sound natural and all right?

Thank you very much.
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Re: 'to leave something under the mercy of someone'? #2 (permalink) Thu Mar 10, 2011 19:18 pm   Re: 'to leave something under the mercy of someone'?
 

This paragraph doesn't sound completely natural to me.

It should be "at the mercy of".

"Greatly" would sound better as "much".

Instead of "see", you should use something like "consider".

"Part" would more naturally be "region".

There should be a comma after "that" in "so that, in a few years".

It should be either "in a few years" or "in (the) years to come", not a combination.

How can part of a country "completely disappear"? I didn't get that.

The distinction between the "rich nations" and "their own government" wasn't clear to me as a reader. How many parties are there in the development you are describing?

Perhaps this paragraph is a bit hard to understand because I don't know which country "the country" is here. Generally anything without context is harder to understand.
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Capable of vs. capable to | Past perfect tense.
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