Search results for 'tag:Constructions tag:Vowels' matching tags 'Constructions' and 'Vowels'

Re: AMERICANS PLEASE HELP!!

Kooyeen — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:19:02 GMT

First of all, you need some grammar too, because I noticed typical Asian mistakes, or non native constructions anyway.

Anonymous
i'm live in PRC <-- I live in...

Here's the best tips I can give you:

1 - Get a grammar book, and read it, learning the most common structures. "English grammar in use" by Cambridge University Press seems a good one.
2 - Learn how to recognize the sounds of vowels and how to speak like a native speaker. I used "American Accent Training", by Ann Cook. It is one of the best.
3 - Practice, replacing your first language with English every time you feel like it. You should start to think in English.

Point #2 is the most important. I improved my listening skills by at least 50% (from understanding 25% to understanding 80%). The link is http://www.americanaccent.com/ ,if you want to take a look.

Re: The reform of linguistics

Forbes — Fri, 12 May 2006 12:24:40 GMT

Anonymous wrote:
Forbes wrote:
The Phoenecian alphabet was in use for 1000 years and found to be adequate for writing Phoenecian; indeed the same system is still used today to write Arabic and Hebrew, although they do show some vowels and have the means (not in regular use) to show all vowels.
I am under the impression that the system for writing vowels in Hebrew was artificially constructed as a learning tool, and for this reason it is not in common use.

I believe you are correct.

Anonymous wrote:
The system works because they are all Semitic languages in which the important lexical information is carried by the consonants.

I do not think that this is correct. The vowels convey critical information. However, the organization of words is such that a given consonant construction makes the vowel construction apparent, such that it typically need not be marked explicityly. There are exceptions, such that a couple of consonants are used to mark the required vowels.

Obviously vowels are important. What I am saying is that the vowels are readily supplied by a (knowledgeable) reader, and I think that is what you are saying.

The Arabic alphabet consists of 28 consonants. Of theses, alif, which has no fixed value, is also used to represent /a:/; ya can represent both /j/ and /i:/; waw can represent both /w/ and /u:/.* The short vowels are not represented, except when writing the Quran and texts intended for beginners. It is only possible to read Arabic when you know the grammar (whether you have learned it or know it intuitively); if you do not know the language you cannot supply the missing vowels. Although the parallel is not exact, it is rather like English written in Pitman's shorthand. This means that the system presents difficulties for learners, but it should be remembered that English orthography is also difficult to master, though for different reasons.

*It is interesting to note a parallel with Latin where /i/ and /j/ were both represented by <i> and /u/ and /w/ were both represented by <u>.

Re: The reform of linguistics

Anonymous — Wed, 10 May 2006 18:53:16 GMT

Forbes wrote:
The Phoenecian alphabet was in use for 1000 years and found to be adequate for writing Phoenecian; indeed the same system is still used today to write Arabic and Hebrew, although they do show some vowels and have the means (not in regular use) to show all vowels.

I am under the impression that the system for writing vowels in Hebrew was artificially constructed as a learning tool, and for this reason it is not in common use.

The system works because they are all Semitic languages in which the important lexical information is carried by the consonants.

I do not think that this is correct. The vowels convey critical information. However, the organization of words is such that a given consonant construction makes the vowel construction apparent, such that it typically need not be marked explicityly. There are exceptions, such that a couple of consonants are used to mark the required vowels.

Re: Easy as Pie, Almost!

Swampy — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 21:11:37 GMT

I'd like to expand the topic of the ability to mimic another language. As said, people with "strong" native language like russian are noted for their "bad" pronunciation. That's because the vowels are all long and strongly pronunced. I am happy to boast that my native language - lithuanian - possesed lots of kinds of pronunciations, comprising short and long vowels, both strong and rolling R sounds, and almost every known sound (with the exception of nose sounds like /ng/).

Also there is one more point about learning foreign language. It is the structure of sentences. People of my language usually make a lot of non-english sentences, because lithuanian is noted for the freedom of sentence structure (that means you can put the words in any manner, and it still makes sense). But for example, the english construction "I find someone attractive" does not make any sense translated to lithuanian, however in french it's all the damn same ("je trouve quelque-un sympa" or so).

Re: English is a crazy language

pemmican — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 22:12:56 GMT

>>I've never fully appreciated the noun gender rules. Is it a case of when you are young you have to study the gender of each noun (das haus = neutral noun) or are there patterns that you follow?

No, unfortunately there are no rules - at least not for the "simple" words.
There are some memory hooks for words ending in special suffixes (which also have exceptions though) eg.
- words ending in -ung, -ion, - are usually feminine
die Achtung (caution), die Warnung (warning), die Nation (nation), die Konstruktion (construction)
- words ending in -chen, -nis are usually neuter
das BrÃ¶tchen (bread roll), das Ereignis (happening)/ exception: die Finsternis (darkness)
etc.
but you can never take them for granted! You have to learn most of the nouns' genders by heart... sorry.

>>Question Pemmican!
>Is there a rule in German when it comes to a double 's' a different symbol is used? I've been told that this 'symbol' is optional and up to the user? (The symbol looks something like an overstretched letter B!)

Are you learning German?!

Yes, here there are rules - those depend on what spelling you're learning or have learned:

If you're going to follow the New spelling rules from 1996, then it is quite easy to explain:
Is this -sound following a long pronounced vowel or a diphthong, then you write it as "Ã", in all the other cases you use "ss":

-der FuÃ (foot), grÃ¼Ãen (to greet), die StraÃe (street), groÃ (big, tall, large), der SpaÃ (fun)...
-der Kuss (kiss), das KÃ¼sschen (little kiss), mÃ¼ssen (to have to), ich muss (I must), ich habe gemusst (I've had to), das Wasser (water)...

If you're going to follow the old spelling rules (mainly from 1901), then it's a bit more complex:
A word can only end in -s or -Ã, not in -ss.
Is the -sound within the word following a long pronounced vowel or a diphthong, then you write "Ã", is it followed by a short pronounced vowel, then you spell it "ss", except the s-sound is the last sound of the word, the last sound of the stem part of the word or is (mainly in inflections) immediately followed by a t:

-FuÃ, grÃ¼Ãen, StraÃe, groÃ, SpaÃ...
-KuÃ, KÃ¼Ãchen, mÃ¼ssen, ich muÃ, ich habe gemuÃt, Wasser...

In Switzerland, however, you actually always spell it "ss". "Ã" hardly occurs.

Even if you're using the new spelling, you should keep the old rules in mind, too. You don't have to use them but most of the Germans dislike the new spelling rules as they are very confusing and go on writing with old spelling rules. Even lots of newspapers, after discovering their readers don't want to accept the new rules, changed back to old spelling.

Soon after the New rules (which btw don't just affect "Ã" and "ss", but also a lot of other grammatical and spelling stuff) came out, lots of people were disappointed by the chaos the linguists produced by their changings and now just avoid the new spelling.

"Ã" is called either "sharp s", because it is always pronounced as the strong -sound, never like , or also (this one is more popular) "Eszet" - which occupy the origin of the actual letter "Ã": It has been formed by putting together the ancient German handwriting "s" and "z".

Here you can have a look at the old handwriting:

The ancient "long s" (2nd letter in 3rd line) and the ancient "z" (2nd letter in 4th line) form the letter "Ã" (4th letter in 3rd line).

Hope I could help you out.
Greetings from Germany
Pemmican