sensei_mike wrote:Hey Guys,

In the sentence:
We were dismayed to learn that our neighbours were untidy, disagreeable, and they were uninterested to make new friends.

Are either of these fixes equally correct?
uninterested in making
or
uninterested to make

Or is one more correct than the other? And if so, why?

Thanks!

In principle you can breach the parallel structure in the sentence, if necessary, to continue idea expression. In the given case you would have to eliminate 'comma' after untidy, put 'and', finalize your sentence with the new clause -->

We were dismayed to learn that our neighbours were untidy and disagreeable, and they were uninterested to make new friends.

yea, in the new clause you are free to frame your idea with any of the proposed grammatical structures
- uninterested to make
- uninterested in making,

its the matter of style

I would just say

We were dismayed to learn that our neighbours were untidy, disagreeable, and uninterested in making new friends.

parallel structure

neighbours were untidy
neighbours were disagreeable
neighbours were uninterested in making new friends.

garuhape wrote:I would just say

We were dismayed to learn that our neighbours were untidy, disagreeable, and uninterested in making new friends.

parallel structure

neighbours were untidy
neighbours were disagreeable
neighbours were uninterested in making new friends.

Adjective class mis-pair {-y, -able, -ing, -ed, ly ...}
untidy - simple adjective
disagreeable - faded participial adjective
uninterested - pure participial adjective

none of them are parallel to the finest point; still we can put the faded adjective next to the simple adjective, but not @ the pure one

Cool, thanks!!

sensei_mike wrote:Hey Guys,

In the sentence:
We were dismayed to learn that our neighbours were untidy, disagreeable, and they were uninterested to make new friends.

Are either of these fixes equally correct?
uninterested in making
or
uninterested to make

Or is one more correct than the other? And if so, why?

Thanks!

It will be uninterested in making.

That is because (un)interested is followed by Gerunds (-ing forms of the verb). This is just a usage issue and you can think of it as idiomatic usage.

Indeed -- "interest" (the verb) goes with "in", not "to". I believe the noun "interest" will only appear next to "to" when "to" is part of an indirect object (it is of no interest to me).