Re: "s" and "z"

Pter — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:41:41 GMT

Thank you very much CJ, Zerox, and Carson. You all have given me very valuable advices. After reading through all you said carefully, and then watching a couple of English TV programmes, I believe I can now tell the difference! The ending /z/ in most cases are much shorter, voiced but less audible than the hissing sound of the ending /s/. Now, I found out what's the problem. Those sound files I was listening to are from a pronouncing dictionary. And perhaps in trying to make them as clearly audible as possible, both the ending /s/ and ending /z/ are spoken very "clearly" and become unnatural.

For people like me that learn English as a second language, we are often influenced heavily by our mother tongue. This is like looking at something through a piece of tainted glass. In those aspects where our mother tongue has big differences with English, unless we are told the rules explicitly, we often never realize how people really say them in English just by listening. My mother tongue does not have any voiced consonants and consonant clusters, therefore, it is quite a challenge for me to learn how to pronounce a cluster of voiced consonants, such as /-ndz/, /-gz/, /zd/.

Again, thank you very much to you all. You really helped me a lot!

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EDIT:

Let me summarize what I have learnt here plus a little that I have discovered myself.

1. Final voiced consonant (b, d, g, l, m, n, ng, r, v, voiced th) + s ---> /z/
2. Final voiceless consonant (f, k, p, t, voiceless th) + s ---> /s/
3. Final vowel + s ---> no rules, except when any of the following rules apply
4. Some words that can be used both as verb and noun/adjective ---> verb: /z/, noun or adjective: /s/
5. Words ending in -as, -is, -os, -us:
when the s is part of the word in its basic form (not plural or third party singular verb) ---> /s/
when the s is added to make it a plural or third party singluar verb ---> /z/
6. Words ending in -ces, -des, -oes, -shes, -ses, -zes ---> /z/
7. Words ending in -sis, -nce, -nse, -ss (including -less, ness), -sce ---> /s/
8. /z/ is more common than /s/ overall

Re: Grammatical gender

Miche — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 09:22:13 GMT

Hi, Khoff and all you native English speakers!
I've always been sympathetic with English/American people trying to study my native language, Bulgarian. We are lucky, because it is easier for us to learn English. It doesn't sound strange that inanimate nouns do not have gender in English - it just makes it simpler. That's one of the reasons why I believe English will certainly become an universal language one day (if it hasn't yet).
As you note, you can guess the gender in Russian by the spelling. It's the same in my native language (it is similar to Russian). However, little children tend to make mistakes with the gender of words that do not fit the pattern (e.g. feminine nouns ending in a consonant and vice versa - these are the exceptions). In Bulgarian, there is no set rule for "Caterogry A" and "Category B" nouns, but it is not that difficult to tell the gender in most cases.
However, you sometimes use gender for inanimate nouns in English and they do not always correspond to the gender in my native language. Such for instance is the case with "ship" - feminine, right? It is masculine in Bulgarian. Also, in literature, you can sometimes refer to Death as he. In Bulgarian death is feminine. However, Moon (f.) is the same gender in my language, while Sun (m.) is neuter in Bulgarian. I just remember them - they are not too many in English and most of them are rarely personified.
A curious point to mention is that the words for girl and boy in Bulgarian are neuter, while woman and man are feminine and masculine, respectively. I guess the explanation has something to do with cultural/social notions.
Hope somebody from France will give you a clue for remembering gender.

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Re: "s" and "z"

Re: Grammatical gender