Like the alternating long/short. Imma start paying more attension to that maybe ppl actually use it, and I’ve just been ignoring it.
This is basically just a trick to sound more natural with less grammar, so feel free to pick and choose when to use it. So far I think you’ve struck a pretty good balance!
Is it correct to phrase it like: “the increase in X tells me” or “the increase in X leads me to”?
Yes, both of these sentences sound very natural to me. I think you’ve gotten the hang of it
Also what is that “new language” that you been trying to learn, maybe just maybe, it’s mine :)
Japanese! I’m a mega-weaboo lol
I’m fucking ashamed that probably the single largest info drop that I got for speaking tips came from me being a fucking slob… (I should change)
Yeah, you might want to work on your hygiene… It’s OK, though. We all have our circumstances and other people on the internet are rarely as perfect as they claim to be!
Does the focus have to be on X (only giving it adjectives, I believe you’ve done that)?
It’s less about the pattern of the sentence and more about a grammatical concept called the “agent”. The agent is the “doer” of the sentence. In English, the agent is usually (not always!) based on the sentence subject and native speakers will use one of several different tricks to shuffle the agent around when talking about an inanimate subject. I’ll list a few additional ways of doing this below to help illustrate:
Unnatural: My shirt wrinkled
This is a normal type of sentence, so the agent is the subject (“my shirt”). An inanimate agent sounds unnatural, so try to avoid this
Natural: My shirt is wrinkled
In this sentence we’ve introduced a copula (“is”) as the main verb of the sentence. Copula-based sentences like this one describe states of being and thus contain no action at all (e.g.: “My shirt is red” – no action!). No action means no agent. No agent means no problem!
Natural: My shirt got wrinkled
This is a way of speaking called the “passive voice” which implies a hidden agent as the true doer of the action. Since the agent is hidden, it won’t be based on the subject, so an inanimate subject can be used without sounding unnatural.
Natural: My shirt wrinkled itself
This is a way of speaking called the “reflexive voice” which you can use if the verb in question also has a transitive form (AKA: if it’s a “labile verb”). In the reflexive voice, all agents automatically become animate. No inanimate agent means no problem!
Natural: The sun rose
Some non-living things are still considered to be animate. These are almost always things which appear to move of their own volition, such as celestial bodies (“The moon shone”) or vehicles (“The boat sank”). There’s no problem with using animate things as the agent!