Search results for 'tag:Genders tag:Inflections' matching tags 'Genders' and 'Inflections'

Mistakes made by Chinese Learners

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:30:26 GMT

Hi everyone

I just wondered if anyone could help - I have to write a profile of a chinese learner of English (completely made up). In it I must put any difficulties that the learner has in learning English as an L2. I have got so far:

Intonation transfer from L1 may cause them to be perceived as rude/inconsiderate, more serious transfer may affect comprehensiveness.
No inflections in L1 - tenses difficult to learn in L2 as L1 has no true tenses and concept of time is expressed by adverbs/implicit or contextual assumptions.
Difficulty distinguishing [r] & - Does anyone know why this is as I can't find a reason?!!
Prepositions such as 'on', 'in' & 'at' have one chinese translation in many contexts, 'zai' - may be confused resulting in phrases such as 'on Taiwan' instead of 'in Taiwan'.
Use of awkward gerunds e.g. 'no noising', excessive use of verbs ending in 'ing' e.g. 'do not climbing', confusion of 'ed' & 'ing' verbs e.g. 'i am bored' vs 'i am boring' --- all of these errors occur because verbs are not conjugated in chinese, for tense or pronoun.
No equivalent word for 'the' so may be used excessively when not needed e.g. 'The China' or missed out when needed. May also be confused with 'a'/'an'.
Confusion over countable and uncountable nouns, use of 'how much?' vs 'how many?' - leads to phrases such as 'I want a soup' & 'a lot of shoe'. This is due to there not being plurals in chinese - no inflections.

Switching between 'he' & 'she' - Does anyone know why this is?

If anyone can think of anymore it would be greatly appreciated or if anyone knows the answers to my questions about gender switching and distinguishing [r] & this would also help a lot!!

Thank you in advance.

Shannon

Re: The proper plural form for status is... stati? statii? statuses? Thanks

Anonymous — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 20:56:52 GMT

Krish,
It's "declines". The form you usally encounter is "declension", which is defined by dictionary.com as (partial):

Linguistics.
1. In certain languages, the inflection of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in categories such as case, number, and gender.
2. A class of words of one language with the same or a similar system of inflections, such as the first declension in Latin.

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

Re: Origin of English literature

Jason13_32 — Wed, 25 Jun 2003 17:13:00 GMT

Introduction taken from http://www.ead.ufms.br/letras/Literature/01-Origins_Of_English.pdf

Origins of English (up to 1066)

Historical Background

Before the time of the Roman colonization in A.D. 43, Britain was populated by Celts and Britons, relatively primitive people without organized society and literary culture. Britain remained a part of the Roman Empire for nearly four hundred years, during which time Romans and Britons intermarried and the framework of society was established.

When the Roman Empire began to crumble in the 5th Century, the Romans abandoned Britain, and the remaining inhabitants were involved in conflicts with surrounding peoples.

Eventually the remnants of the Roman province were conquered by Germanic invaders from Northern Europe.

These invaders, known collectively as Anglo-Saxons, established themselves in what is now England and for two hundred years they themselves were involved in defending their kingdoms against successive invaders from Europe. The history of England from about 600 to 850 A.D. is the story of the rise and fall of petty Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and
the efforts of successive states to unify- England.

The Anglo-Saxons understood the concept of a social organization that was greater than the individual and because of prevailing warlike conditions, the warrior occupied a pre-eminent position in their society. Great feasts were a part of Anglo-Saxon life, and it was normal for legends relating to the deeds of great Germanic heroes of the past to be told. The entertainer delivered the story in a rhythmic kind of chant. Occasionally he was accompanied on a harp, but in general, there was little decoration and the epic was straightforward narrative verse on the subject of a great warrior and his deeds.

In A.D. 597 the Anglo-Saxon king was converted to Christianity by a Catholic mission from Rome. Some evidence of Anglo-Saxon paganism still exists today, in, for example, the names of the days of the week:

Monday - Mon (Moon)
Tuesday - Twi (god of war)
Wednesday - Woden (god of war)
Thursday - Thor (Jupiter)
Friday - Frio (Venus)
Saturday - Saturn's day
Sunday - Sun's day

Continually fighting against further waves of invaders from Europe, the Anglo-Saxons were finally conquered by the Normans from Northern France in 1066. This ended the Anglo-Saxon history of England.

Cultural influences and the development of the language

The original Celts spoke a type of Germanic language and took their language with them when they were pushed by the Romans and later the Saxons to the highland regions of what are now Scotland, Wales and Ireland. A form of this language is still spoken today in these parts of Britain (although only by a few people).

Despite four hundred years of Roman occupation, not many Latin words were incorporated into the language. The Latin influence came later. The development of the language was much affected by the different invaders from different parts of Europe who settled in various parts of the country. The Angles in the East ("Angleland" = "England") and the Saxons in the South. These regional invasions and settlements are the main reason that there are so many different dialects and accents in a country which is relatively small.

Christianity enriched the language by introducing Latin words related to the Church. Contact with Roman Christianity also brought a general advancement in culture introducing words like 'school', 'master' and 'grammar'. Furthermore as Church schools opened, the Anglo-Saxons' spiritual and intellectual outlook was widened. Not only did Anglo-Saxons learn about the Scriptures but also the classical writings of Virgil and the ancient Greeks.

This advance in culture also developed Anglo-Saxon words to express new ideas. In the North, Scandinavian words were adopted, e.g. 'law' , 'egg' and 'window', 'they', 'their' and 'them'. The forms of speech of invaders were continually being mixed into the language. Generally though, the language was simple, and characterized by many changes in words and inflections to show case, tense, gender, number and person.

There were several declensions of nouns and adjectives agreed with nouns. Verbs were highly inflected e.g. 'Sing, sand, sung'. Fewer than 25% of modern words are derived from Old English as it is called, but they are the most frequently used common nouns, verbs, pronouns, connectives and articles.

An example of Old English of A.D. 900:

"Ohtere saede his hlaforde, Aelfrede cyninge,
paet he ealra Noromonna noromest bude . . ."

Which is:

"Ohtere said to his lord, Alfred the King,
that he of all Northmen, northmost dwelt ...