Search results for 'tag:Phonetics tag:Conversations' matching tags 'Phonetics' and 'Conversations'

Re: how to learn English

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:30:48 GMT

i. Observe the mouth movements of those who speak English well and try to imitate them.

When you are watching television, observe the mouth movements of the speakers. Repeat what they are saying, while imitating the intonation and rhythm of their speech.

ii. Until you learn the correct intonation and rhythm of English, slow your speech down.

If you speak too quickly, and with the wrong intonation and rhythm, native speakers will have a hard time understanding you.

Don't worry about your listener getting impatient with your slow speech -- it is more important that everything you say be understood.

iii. Listen to the 'music' of English.

Do not use the 'music' of your native language when you speak English. Each language has its own way of 'singing'.

iv. Use the dictionary.

Try and familiarise yourself with the phonetic symbols of your dictionary. Look up the correct pronunciation of words that are hard for you to say.

v. Make a list of frequently used words that you find difficult to pronounce and ask someone who speaks the language well to pronounce them for you.

Record these words, listen to them and practice saying them. Listen and read at the same time.

vi. Buy books on tape.

Record yourself reading some sections of the book. Compare the sound of your English with that of the person reading the book on the tape.

vii. Pronounce the ending of each word.

Pay special attention to 'S' and 'ED' endings. This will help you strengthen the mouth muscles that you use when you speak English.

viii. Read aloud in English for 15-20 minutes every day.

Research has shown it takes about three months of daily practice to develop strong mouth muscles for speaking a new language.

ix. Record your own voice and listen for pronunciation mistakes.

Many people hate to hear the sound of their voice and avoid listening to themselves speak. However, this is a very important exercise because doing it will help you become conscious of the mistakes you are making.

x. Be patient.

You can change the way you speak but it won't happen overnight. People often expect instant results and give up too soon. You can change the way you sound if you are willing to put some effort into it.

Quick tips

Various versions of the English language exist. Begin by identifying the category you fall into and start by improving the clarity of your speech.

~ Focus on removing the mother tongue influence and the 'Indianisms' that creep into your English conversations.

~ Watch the English news on television channels like Star World, CNN, BBC and English movies on Star Movies and HBO.

~ Listen to and sing English songs. We'd recommend Westlife, Robbie Williams, Abba, Skeeter Davis and Connie Francis among others.

Books to help you improve your English

Essential English Grammar by Murphy (Cambridge)
Spoken English by R K Bansal and J B Harrison
Pronounce It Perfectly In English (book and three audio cassettes) by Jean Yates, Barrons Educational Series
English Pronunciation For International Students by Paulette Wainless Dale, Lillian Poms

Re: Which language is most difficult language for people to learn?

Hoa Thai — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:43:06 GMT

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 country, a couple of TV hosts and many shop owners speak our language fluently and write better than most of our people do. Amazingly, all of them have lived in Vietnam for only a few years. For instance, Joe Ruelle, who has been in Vietnam for only 3 years or so, has his own blog written in perfect Vietnamese and speaks the language without a foreign trace. People say that Joe is a Vietnamese who had plastic surgery in order to look like a Canadian!

For me, after years of learning French, English, Japanese, and Korean in that order - I find that:

1. Korean is the easiest to learn. After learning its unique phonetic vowels and consonants, one can arrange them together to form / spell various monosyllabic words; and string the words together, using a few grammar rules, to make sensible sentences. After two years learning the language, I now can comfortably watch KBS TV- programs.

2. French is second. Its grammar is structural and without exceptions. Spelling the words is as they sound. The hardest part is to memorize the gender of its vocabulary (i.e., masculine vs. feminine).

3. English is next. This multi-syllable language has the richest dictionary in the world with all of the borrowed words from a score or more foreign languages, including Latin / French / German / Japanese / Vietnamese, etcâ¦you name it. It also has too many exceptions in both grammar and pronunciation, along with its homophones and all of its nym's (homonym, capitonym, etcâ¦) that give Spelling-Bee contestants nightmares.

4. Finally, Japanese is the hardest with its two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana, plus about 8000 kanji's. This multi-syllable ideographic language is too culturally, hierarchically, and gender sensitive. I was told, one needs to know about 2000 kanji's to reach college-level proficiency and 2000 more or so to be considered as a scholar. In number, those are not huge compared to hundred-thousands in English but they take a decade or more to learn! Thus, the language is VERY difficult.

After 2 years learning the language, I can only manage to limitedly engage in daily, social conversation and no more. Now my Japanese friends rather use their broken English to talk to me! I owe them a lot since they have to deal with the language, to them, is the most difficult one in the world.

Having said that, I must say all languages are equally difficult for foreigners, who are not familiar with the cultures in which they are used, to learn. Absorbing literal meanings might be manageable, but understanding the deep connotation is often impossible.

CIAO,

Hoa Thai

Is the internet destroying the English language?

Cuckoosnest — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 04:31:10 GMT

I can recall back in college I wrote an essay about the internet and how it would change our lives. I wrote that the biggest change would be the amount that the average person writes in their lifetime. I believed, and still do, that, with email and web forums, the internet created for the first time a place where amateur writers could freely express their ideas. Though I don't have any statistics to back up this claim, I do believe my prediction was correct, and I'm sure most of you would agree.

There was one thing, however, that I didn't anticipate-- the deterioration of English's written grammar. I'm assuming it began with chat rooms and instant messages, where a quick response outweighs grammatical quality. The end product became a hodgepodge of phonetic abbreviations (wat r u doing), acronyms (imo, btw, brb, g2g), and lower case letters (i am fine), some of which is virtually indecipherable unless you are in the know.

This may be suitable for chat rooms and instant messages, where part of the goal is to communicate as quickly as possible, but now this new English "grammar" has settled into other areas of the internet, such as forums, blogs, and personal web pages, where time is certainly not of the essence. Chat room conversations and instant messages disappear shortly after they are posted, but now people are posting for posterity their messages written with these new grammar "rules" in forums where the message is saved indefinitely. In the end, these posts simply look like they were written by someone who couldn't pass their elementary grammar class. As an English teacher, they're quite literally painful to read.

IMHO, dis iz a sine of da destruction of our written language, but im obviously biased on da issue. so wat do u think? iz dis sumthin we shud b ashamed of, or has ben franklins dream of a simpler english language finally cum of age?

Re: What your name?

CalifJim — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:54:37 GMT

What's your > Whuch your is completely explainable from glide absorption and the phonetic "definition" of ch.

s + y = sh [glide absorption; c.f. impression > impreshin]
t + sh = ch [the "affricate" sound "ch" is a plosive ("t") combined with a fricative ("sh")]

wha t + s + y our > wha ch our
__________

What are you > Whuch you is not explainable that way. The are in an are you question is frequently dropped in casual conversation, leaving What you / Where you / When you. As far as I can tell, only What you sets up a situation where glide absorption can form Whuch you.

In the past the did you questions work in a similar way.
What did you / When'd you / Where'd you > Wudijoo / Wenjoo / Wairjoo

CJ

Re: The Seven Deadly Sins of Grammar

Drewauerbach — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 20:08:48 GMT

Alienvoord, I appreciate you're constructive criticism. Allow me to rebute:

1) Comprehensible, yes. But many expressions are comprehensible even without being gramatically sound. The nuances I try to reveal in this post are to help you write better gramatically, not to sound or to write comprehensible.

2) I cannot refute this well supported argument. In fact, there is a sliver of the article that directly weakens my point. I quote:
-------BEGIN EXCERPT FROM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive -----------

Problems caused by trying to avoid the split infinitive

Stylistically, the careful placement of another word between to and the bare infinitive sometimes avoids ambiguity or ugliness. The old prohibition on split infinitives is particularly surprising when one observes that there are a number of expressions in English that are weakened considerably by avoiding the split infinitive.

[edit]

An example

R.L. Trask uses this example:

She decided to gradually get rid of the teddy bears she had collected.

Clearly, what is implied here is she took a decision to get rid of her teddy bears, and the disposal would happen over time. 'Gradually' splits the infinitive 'to get'. But if we were to move it, where would it go?. Consider the following:

She decided gradually to get rid of the teddy bears she had collected.

This implies that the decision was gradual.

She decided to get rid of the teddy bears she had collected gradually.

This implies that the collecting process was gradual.

She decided to get gradually rid of the teddy bears she had collected.

This sounds awkward to most native speakers of English.

She decided to get rid gradually of the teddy bears she had collected.

This is almost as awkward as its immediate predecessor.

Not only does the original example sound right to a native speaker, it is also the only semantically sound possibility.

The best way to avoid using split infinitives is usually via a change in lexical choices. However, in spoken language, phonetic stresses and timing is usually all that is needed for a sentence's actual implications to be understood.

In other instances, use of a split infinitive is for many people the most natural way to add certain kinds of emphasis in conversation:

Student A: "I'm going to do better next year."Student B: "I'm going to really do better next year."

On a historical level, it is possible that years of attacks against split infinitives by prescriptive grammarians have cowed some people into needless reluctance to split other compound verb forms. For example, people will contort sentences to avoid placing an adverb in its usual position between the auxiliary verb and the participle, leading to constructions such as, "The argument originally had been usedâ¦" instead of "The argument had originally been used", which is more natural for most speakers.

It is probably not possible to disentangle this argument from the modality of English grammar. Typically, in a phrase such as "I am going to", the verbal construct "to be going to" acts as a modal verb, analogous to other standard modal verbs "will", "could", "can" etc. In this sense, it becomes apparent that the preposition 'to' does not belong to the infinitive verb, but rather to the modal verb. In this case, it becomes impossible to split an infinitive.

-------END EXCERPT FROM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive --------

3) By saying, "I only <want to go to the movies>," you do NOT imply that you also <do not want to breathe.> Again, you got to pay attention to what "only" is modifying, the verb. By placing the limiting modifier before the first verb in this sentence, you imply limitations to what you can do, including breathing (although the idea sounds exagerrated initially, it really is correct). Now, you say that the sentence implies that the speaker <does not want to breathe>. Not so! In fact, the speaker implies that (s)he CANNOT breathe, regardless of desire. In fact, the speaker implies that (s)he is capable of only desiring to go to the movies. In my last sentence, I would have been correct to say, "In fact, the speaker implies that (s)he is only capable of desiring to go to the movies," or, "In fact, the speaker implies that (s)he only is capable of desiring to go to the movies."

4) The point I'm trying to make here is that using "it" as a dummy subject is gramatically incorrect; therefore, we should reject its use as a dummy subject (think prescriptivist rather than descriptivist).

5) I do not understand your argument here; therefore, I cannot refute it.

6) Your "counterargument" seems to be more like a historical basis that I would use to set up my argument. Which side are you on: yours or mine?

7) You're correct; I have not. Here is my evidence: Passive voice is boring. End of discussion.

Re: :::::: HOW TO SPEAK AND LEARN EGNLISH ::::

Exclusive — Thu, 04 May 2006 22:16:55 GMT

Part I: Want to 'neutralise' your accent?

Many deserving candidates lose out on job opportunities because of their vernacular accent.

Can I 'neutralise' my accent?

Yes, you can. All you need to do is train yourself to speak English as comfortably and perfectly as you speak your mother tongue.

How do you train yourself? By inculcating certain practices in your daily lifestyle. These will get you closer to sounding like a native English speaker and equip you with a global accent -- and you will speak not American or British English, but correct English.

This is the first step to learn any other accent, be it American or British or Australian.

Lisa Mojsin, head trainer, director and founder of the Accurate English Training Company in Los Angeles, offers these tips to help 'neutralise' your accent or rather do away with the local twang, as you speak.

i. Observe the mouth movements of those who speak English well and try to imitate them.

When you are watching television, observe the mouth movements of the speakers. Repeat what they are saying, while imitating the intonation and rhythm of their speech.

ii. Until you learn the correct intonation and rhythm of English, slow your speech down.

If you speak too quickly, and with the wrong intonation and rhythm, native speakers will have a hard time understanding you.

iv. Use the dictionary.

Try and familiarise yourself with the phonetic symbols of your dictionary. Look up the correct pronunciation of words that are hard for you to say.

v. Make a list of frequently used words that you find difficult to pronounce and ask someone who speaks the language well to pronounce them for you.

Record these words, listen to them and practice saying them. Listen and read at the same time.

vi. Buy books on tape.

Record yourself reading some sections of the book. Compare the sound of your English with that of the person reading the book on the tape.

vii. Pronounce the ending of each word.

ix. Record your own voice and listen for pronunciation mistakes.

x. Be patient.

Quick tips

Various versions of the English language exist. Begin by identifying the category you fall into and start by improving the clarity of your speech.

~ Focus on removing the mother tongue influence and the 'Indianisms' that creep into your English conversations.

~ Watch the English news on television channels like Star World, CNN, BBC and English movies on Star Movies and HBO.

~ Listen to and sing English songs. We'd recommend Westlife, Robbie Williams, Abba, Skeeter Davis and Connie Francis among others.

Books to help you improve your English

Essential English Grammar by Murphy (Cambridge)
Spoken English by R K Bansal and J B Harrison
Pronounce It Perfectly In English (book and three audio cassettes) by Jean Yates, Barrons Educational Series
English Pronunciation For International Students by Paulette Wainless Dale, Lillian Poms

more info: www.ingilizcepratik.net

Cockney Accent

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 10:16:17 GMT

I'm searching for assistance to learn several lines of a play with an authentic cockney accent.

Best to have recording of a male voice - WAV or MP3 file. Otherwise phonetic text spelling, or even learn it by phone conversation. Want to get the inflections correct.

Here are the lines....

Yes, all right, all right, I can hear you.

Nigel's having a spot of trouble.

We've had nine sugar plum fairies, three country and western and
A Night In Old Vienna, we're doing our best.

You want a follow spot - all right, darling, I heard you before.

- you want the cyc and boom to start,
in with the spot, bring up the front of house
and kill the spot. Next?

For you, darling, the lot.

Sorry, ladies, our mistake, whenever you're ready.

Five seconds.

Re: American Accent Training!

Amboy — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:56:10 GMT

Hi All,

I have been conducting Neutralized American Accent Training in Makati, Malate, Libis, and Quezon City for the last three months now. I have worked with Korean, Japanese, and Filipino executives, high school teachers, university students, and Filipino professionals. I utilize the book by Ann Cook, but I have developed my own module and literature, which I intend to have published here in the Philippines. I am a Fil-Am professional from Las Vegas, NV, and I attended elementary, high school, and college in the US. I was a university writing consultant for three years and won numerous awards in debate, forensics, public speaking, and dramatics. If anyone is interested in the training program, feel free to contact (email address removed, please add it to your profile) visit neofilipino.bravehost.com for more information...FYI, my module includes phonetics, blending, intonation, conversation, commonly mispronounced words, among many other things...

Chris

Any Ideas?

Guest — Wed, 11 May 2005 14:41:42 GMT

The distinction between phonetics and phonology has a number of implications beyond simply establishing that distinction. Consider 1) an L2 English speaker who can pronounce isolated words of English in native-like fashion, but who does not sound native in conversation; 2) the organization of gestures and signs in signed languages (BSL, ASL, etc.), and 3) the English shared by a Geordie speaker and a Liverpudlian and the fact that they can typically understand each other's spoken English. In each of these cases, discuss the insight offered by recognising that phonetics and phonology are fundamentally different.

Any ideas anyone?

Re: Rules of Pronounciation for regular verbs in the Simple Past needed

CalifJim — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 05:07:06 GMT

If you need a detailed description for American English, here's something I came across in some old notes of mine. It's got some exercises at the end too! The phonetic transcriptions aren't really anything standard, but I think you can figure them out.

Past tense of Regular Verbs
Phonetic Considerations

/xxxxx/ shows how the word is pronounced.
"xxxxx" shows how the word is written.
These guidelines do not apply to irregular verbs.

1. Verbs that end in /d/.
Add /id/.

/pad/ /padid/ ("pad","padded")
/land/ /landid/ ("land","landed")
/bOrd/ /bOrdid/ ("board","boarded")
/trAd/ /trAdid/ ("trade","traded")

2. Verbs that end in a consonant and /t/.
The final /t/ remains the same. Add /id/.

/akt/ /aktid/ ("act","acted")
/irupt/ /iruptid/ ("erupt","erupted")
/lift/ /liftid/ ("lift","lifted")
/twist/ /twistid/ ("twist","twisted")

The verb form "wanted" drops the /t/ in most everyday conversations.
"wanted" = /waunid/. Use /waunt'id/ only in careful speech.

3. Verbs that end in a vowel* and /.t/.
*This includes R-colored vowels.
Change the /.t/ to /d/ and add /id/.

/pa.t/ /padid/ ("pat","patted") Intervocallic "t" and "d"
/stAR.t/ /stARdid/ ("start","started") are neutralized!
/sE.t/ /sEdid/ ("seat","seated") That means "t between vowels"
/nO.t/ /nOdid/ ("note","noted") and "d between vowels"
/wA.t/ /wAdid/ ("wait","waited") are pronounced the same.

/.t/ represents an unreleased /t/.
Final "t" after "r" or after a vowel graph is normally unreleased.

If you need to be very precise, keep the /t/, for example, if you didn't understand a word, ask:
Did you say "seated" or "seeded"? ... "waded" or "waited"?
/sE-t'ed/ or /sE-ded/ /wA-ded/ or /wA-t'ed/
It would obviously do no good to ask "Did you say '/wAdid/' or '/wAdid/'?" !!!
But in normal conversation in the U.S. and in Canada, these /t/'s are pronounced as /d/'s. /sEdid/ = "seated" or "seeded"; /wAdid/ = "waded" or "waited".

4. Verbs that end in an unvoiced consonant other than /t/.
(That is, those that end in /p/,/k/,/f/,/s/,/Sh/, or /tSh/.)
Add /t/.

/hO.p/ /hOpt/ ("hope","hoped")
/bA.k/ /bAkt/ ("bake","baked")
/laf/ /laft/ ("laugh","laughed")
/lAs/ /lAst/ ("lace","laced")
/wauSh/ /wauSht/ ("wash","washed")
/latSh/ /latSht/ ("latch","latched")

Since /tSh/ = /Ch/, the last example could have been written phonetically as:

/laCh/ /laCht/

5. Verbs that have any other ending (voiced consonants other than 'd', or vowels).
Add /d/.

/nAm/ /nAmd/ ("name","named")
/nab/ /nabd/ ("nab","nabbed")
/shO/ /shOd/ ("show","showed")
/beg/ /begd/ ("beg","begged")
/rAn/ /rAnd/ ("rain","rained")
/dodZh/ /dodZhd/ ("dodge","dodged")

Since /dZh/ = /j/, the last example could have been written phonetically as:

/doj/ /dojd/
____________________________________________

Practice saying the base form (shown) and the past tense of these verbs.
Write out the phonetic form of at least 5 of each type.
Type 1. afford, add, fade, pad, kid, side, confide, card, board, weed, wend, blend, befriend, sand, attend, heed, aid, bread, hood
Type 2. act, twist, conduct, select, perfect, construct, elect, dust, toast, fast, evict, dent, vent, opt, adopt, rust, salt, bolt, tilt, predict, lift
Type 3. start, bait, state, sight, depart, court, assert, avert, create, plate, bleat, tote, coat, boot, loot, bat, fret, edit, inhibit
Type 4. rope, soap, cope, nap, trap, trip, skip, bake, rake, fake, poke, soak, lock, nick, ache, laugh, quaff, rough, cough, doff, roof, miss, place, trace, wish, fish, finish, polish, abolish, itch, reach, leach, cinch, enrich
Type 5. bathe, fan, yell, empty, try, cry, snow, flow, pardon, consider, pray, saw, prove, love, live, smile, mine, team, steam, scream, ding, file, fool, fill