In Numbers^x, Pronunciation^x, Vowels^x

CalifJim wrote:I read somewhere that Mario Pei, the linguist, tried to learn a different language every year. He supposedly claimed that Vietnamese was the most difficult. CJ I disagree with the linguist Mario Pei not because I am a Vietnamese. It is because I have seen, in my...

According to John Wells at University College London: "I do not understand the proposed distinction between Mainstream RP and Contemporary RP (unless the writer thinks, wrongly, that ‘contemporary’ means ‘young’)." You can read more of what he says about it at:...

It's easy, count the number of vowels in a word (but pronunciation is what counts, not writing!) and that's the number of its syllables.

Thanks, anon. Without your post, I would have missed this thread. Goodman wrote:Hi CJ, What an impressive thread you have posted. You have slowly made me a fan of yours. Yep! CalifJim wrote: In any case, the struggle for the learner is always making the conversion from 'computing'...

Saska wrote: Guest wrote:Why many foreign speakers have such problems with the English language? I mean, I came to the U.S. about two years ago, and in the beginning I've had problems with the language (probably just like eveybody else), but what makes English such a difficult language to...

I don't think there is a hard and fast rule here. However: If you have a two syllable word that ends with an 'a', it's typical that the vowel in the first is short. Like 'dada', 'feta', etc. This is not a rule so much as a pattern that should be observed. Following it, the 'da' in 'data' should...

This is really badly off topic but I couldn't resist the temptation to comment on your correct observation. I understand very well that native speakers of English mispronounce foreign words because foreign languages are not studied much in English-speaking countries.Well, can you really blame us?...

To tell you the truth, I've never heard any foreigner (unless they learned English when they were very young, or had lived in an English speaking country for at least a decade, and had extensive, and personalized accent coaching) ever be able to pull off either an American or British accent....

In my opinion, foreign students are taught the pronunciation of words according to the their first entry in the Pronunciation Dictionary (John Wells' Pronunciation Dictionary or Daniel Johns' English Pronouncing Dictionary - these two hold a good reputation in the field). I believe that the first...

Su Cheng Zhong wrote:During the long linguistic history, I can only find three models of language. These do not seem to be models of language to me, but instead models of writing systems. Do you really believe that Semitic languages do not need or use vowels? Semitic languages are highly...