Doubt in English Expressions

[Bobby Sharma]

"I am a boxer for name sake only but I do wrestling actually."
"I am a boxer , you say but I do wrestling actually."

I know the above sentences are incorrect.. I want to ask you guys how to express if a person is something else and doing something else.. I hoped I conveyed the message to you.

thanks in advance.

[Bobby Sharma]

sorry for asking this question, American English doesn't have the expression I am looking for. I tried to translate Hindi expression into English which did not work. I will use this thread for my further doubts.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I think you didn't get a response because of lack of understanding of what the original expression is intended to convey.

I'd probably say "I call myself a boxer, but I'm actually a wrestler." I think this missed the point you are trying to make though.

[Joanne Neal]

The only thing I can think of that comes close to your examples would be if someone had an honorary title.
Then you could say something like

The Queen is head of state in name only. It's the government that runs the country.

Is that at all close to what you were trying to ask ?

[Bobby Sharma]

first of all, thank you very much. You have cleared my doubt.

and yes , I could not ask the question properly.

One more doubt:

1. The best thing you can do "is find a person" who loves you for exactly what you are.
2. The best thing you can do "is to find a person" who loves you for exactly what you are.

the second sentence uses an infinitive , while the first one doesn't ? which one is correct. please do tell.

[Ryan McGuire]

Bobby Sharma wrote:
1. The best thing you can do "is find a person" who loves you for exactly what you are.
2. The best thing you can do "is to find a person" who loves you for exactly what you are.

The answer depends on whether you want to be technically correct or to sound like a native speaker.

At its base, the format of the sentence is "<noun> is <noun>". "Find", as in the first sentence, is a verb, while the phrase "to find", as you pointed out, is an infinitive, which acts as a noun. That means that "to find" is correct in this case.

However, I would guess that a majority of native (American) English speakers would use the fist version of the sentence and not think twice about it.

Do any native speakers either support or disagree with my "guess"?

[Chan Ag]

My first language is not English, but here's my attempt.

First since you've written both your sentences in English only, it's difficult to know what you actually wanted to translate to English.

Did you mean to say one of the following sentences--

The best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for who you are.
The best thing you can do is find a person who loves you regardless of who you are.
The best thing you can do is find a person who loves you.

I'm not sure whether any comma should be required in those sentences. And I changed 'what' to 'who' ( so I have also changed the meaning of your sentences ). I'm not sure which one is closest in the meaning to what you wanted to say. I just took a guess. If you meant 'what', you can change that part.

Edit : I am guessing you don't exactly mean to say 'find a person....'. If yes, I think that whole sentence could be changed. But since I don't have the context, I'll let that slide for now. Otherwise I think, what I said might be correct. :-)

[Bear Bibeault]

Ryan McGuire wrote:Do any native speakers either support or disagree with my "guess"?

Close, I would say that when spoken most people would say:

The best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are.

If written more formally, then:

The best thing that you can do is to find a person who loves you for exactly what you are.