Search results for 'tag:Present tenses tag:Vowels' matching tags 'Present tenses' and 'Vowels'

Re: id/t/d

Philip — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:27:10 GMT

CB's explanation is 100% right on. It is a linguistic question dealing with phonology.

By the way, the same principle is in play with the plural noun ending 's/es': 's' after a non-voiced consonant (lamps, desks); 'z' after a voiced consonant or a vowel (dogs, monkeys); and 'iz' after the sound of 's' or 'z' (classes, noises).

The same with the third person singular of the present tense of verbs: 's' (hits); 'z' (plays); and 'iz' (misses).

(Printing note: in my examples, and in CB's, the vowel indicated as 'i' should be the schwa (Ó) sound.

Re: help with æ

Marvin A. — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 19:44:02 GMT

>> I'm getting a little confused here. "> Could you go over that again? "> <<

Lol. Sorry. I meant to say "upper-case vowels represent lax vowels, and lower-case vowels represent tense vowels."

Re: help with æ

CalifJim — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 19:02:05 GMT

upper-case vowels represent lax vowels, and upper case vowels represent tense vowels.

I'm getting a little confused here. Could you go over that again?

CJ

Re: help with æ

Marvin A. — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 17:25:26 GMT

Yep. I'm serious. Here's how I say these words as compared to General American. "N" represents "ng"; upper-case vowels represent lax vowels, and upper case vowels represent tense vowels. I listed the word, first, the General American pronunciation second, and my pronunciation third.
<ul class="anf_list">
<li>Word GA Me
</li><li>bang bæN beN
</li><li>bag bæg beg
</li><li>beg bEg beg
</li><li>vague veIg veg
</li><li>bay beI be
</li></ul>

Re: English is a crazy language

pemmican — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 02:54:21 GMT

Deepa, I totally agree with you!

As examples always enlighten a lot, I'll give you some impressions of my mother tongue German:
I have to say that English in many cases is simpler than my native language. You mentioned e.g. the gender of a noun which is usually expressed by the article. In English, there are no genders, everything is "the", while in German you have three genders: der (masculine), die (feminine), das (neuter). With human beings, the grammatical gender usually agrees in the natural gender as 'the man' is 'der Mann', the woman is die Frau and the child, when you don't know whether it is a boy or a girl is das Kind. But - already here you have exceptions as e.g. the word for "girl" is neuter: das MÃ¤dchen even if it's obvious that a girl is female!

According to the gender, also the adjectives have to be inflected:
a good man is in German ein guter Mann
a good woman is eine gute Frau
and a good child is ein gutes Kind.

For all the "simple" nouns you have to learn their genders by heart as there is no rule to cling to when you need to know the noun's gender. If you have a compound word, i.e. a noun that consists of two or more own nouns, e.g. buttercup or sunshine, the word takes over the gender of the last noun -> sun is Sonne in German, feminine: die Sonne, Schein is masculine: der Schein, so sunshine is masculine, too: der Sonnenschein.

Speaking of compound words, German has an incredible ability to form new words out of already existing words. Unlike English, that takes over Latin terms to get new words, e.g. accept, surprise, German forms them this way: accept = annehmen from nehmen =take and an = on => take on; surprise = Ã¼berraschen from Ã¼ber = over and rasch =quick => overquick, etc.
Compound words can be put together out of many single words - they are written as one word then, e.g. "DampfschiffahrtskapitÃ¤nsuniformfarbe" which means "colour of the uniform of a captain of a steamboat". Farbe = colour here is the last word and has the feminine gender, so the whole compound term is feminine: "Die DampfschiffahrtskapitÃ¤nsuniformfarbe".

English, with some very few old exceptions, usually adds an -s to the noun and you have its plural form: dog-dogs, car-cars, tree-trees.
German nouns form their plural in different ways:
adding -(e)n: Frau-Frauen (woman)
adding -s: Auto-Autos (car)
adding -e: Brot-Brote (bread)
adding nothing: Teller-Teller (plate)
umlauting the stem vowel: Vater-VÃ¤ter (father)
umlauting the stem vowel and adding -er: Haus-HÃ¤user (house)
umlauting the stem vowel and adding -e: Sohn-SÃ¶hne (son)
...

Also the cases in German still have their own forms, that means instead of forming a case by taking a preposition and keeping the noun in its actual form, German nouns add endings and in addition, the article changes as well:

------------------------Singular-------Plural
Nominative case --- das Haus-------die HÃ¤user------------the house------the houses
Genitive case--------des Hauses----der HÃ¤user------------of the house---of the houses
Dative case----------dem Haus(e)--den HÃ¤usern-----------to the house---to the houses
Accusative case-----das Haus-------die HÃ¤user-------------the house------the houses

(this is only one paradigm though - other nouns follow a different pattern)

Verbs in German still keep inflecting endings for all the persons, also in past tense, sometimes an umlaut occurs in 2nd and 3rd person singular, eg: tragen (to carry)

Present--------------Past
ich trage-------------ich trug-----------I carry------------I carried
du trÃ¤gst-------------du trugst---------you carry---------you carried
er trÃ¤gt--------------er trug------------he carries---------he carried
wir tragen-----------wir trugen--------we carry----------we carried
ihr tragt-------------ihr trugt-----------you carry---------you carried
sie tragen-----------sie trugen---------they carry--------they carried

As you can see here, there are also two different forms of "you": du and ihr. You have to differenciate between whom you're adressing: If it's only one person, you use 'du', if it's 2 or more people you use 'ihr' - and additionally: If you want to address one or more person who you don't know very well, you have to use the polite form "Sie" - so all in all there are 3 pronouns for English "you".
Of course, also these pronouns have different forms when they are used in the four cases.

Ok, I'll leave it with this now - I don't wanna type a whole Grammar here *hehe*
I hope you can now see that in many parts, Grammar English is a lot easier than in other languages. BUT on the other hand I have to say that there are also things that are easier in German - tenses for example. German e.g. doesn't have progressive tenses and it's also not necessary to use future tense when referring to future happenings, usually everyone uses the present tense instead...

But *blahblah* - I hope this info might have helped you a bit. Comparing languges to each other often opens doors, you haven't seen before and it's usually very helpful to have a closer look also at Grammar of your native language when learning a foreign language.

No -s for 3rd person!

pemmican — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 22:01:22 GMT

I guess I should maybe explain this:

The reason is not a grammatical one, eg that they are auxiliaries, but sooner a historical one:
(It's a bit difficult but be patient while I'm trying to explain it *lol*)

Ok here we go:

First of all you certainly have seen, that, beside the missing -s for 3rd person singular "present tense", these verbs also either have no or at least no "real" past tense form:

I can - I could
I may - I might
I shall - I should
I must - -/-

(I'll take the verb "can" now as an example) and I'll come back to this later - first another aspect:

As you might know the so called strong verbs are the older ones, while the weak and regular verbs (that build their past tense forms and past participles by adding -ed to the stem) are the newer ones in the history of language.
The strong verbs use the "Ablaut" for building the past tense i.e. instead of adding "-ed" to the stem, they change the stems-vowel in order to get a new form:

strong: fall - fell, run - ran, grow - grew, etc.
weak: fell - felled, work - worked, live - lived, etc.

The vowel-changes for strong verbs usually follow a regular pattern e.g.

drive-drove-driven goes exactly like ride-rode-ridden or like write-wrote-written (i-o-i)
and sing-sang-sung goes exactly like drink-drank-drunk or sink-sank-sunk (i-a-u)
etc.
(Try it out with other verbs if you want to, you'll see you usually find another verb that also fits in that row)

Now compare the forms of "can" and "run" to each other:
Pay attention to where and when an -s is added to 3rd person singular!

PRESENT TENSE +++ PAST TENSE +++ "PRESENT TENSE"
I run ------------------ I ran --------------- I can
you run --------------- you ran ----------- you can
he run+s ------------- he ran ------------- he can (!!)
we run ---------------- we ran ------------ we can
you run --------------- you ran ----------- you can
they run -------------- they ran ----------- they can

As you now can notice, the stem vowel of the past tense of "run" is the same as the stem vowel of the present tense of "can" - beside this, their forms are quite the same, including the missing -s for 3rd person singular.

What I want to show by this is, that (even if it sounds quite strange):
The present tense forms of the verb "can" are actually its past tense forms!!

The verbs belonging to this group are called "Preterite-Presents" i.e. that the former past tense forms of these verbs now appear as their present tense forms.

The explanation for this is that some time long ago, the past tense forms of a few verbs took over the present-tense meaning while the original present tense forms got lost.

Past tense forms never add an -s for 3rd person singular (he took, he went, he ran, he saw, he sang...), therefore there is also no -s added to the forms of the Preterite-Presents, just because of the fact that they actually are former past tense forms.

Now, that there hasn't been a past tense form any longer for these verbs, a new form was needed - so special new ones had to be created or, if not possible, needed to be paraphrased.

"can" e.g. therefore now has "could" or "was able to" as its past tense forms.
The forms of "may" are "might" and "was allowed to", the form of must is "had to".

Even if it is a bit confusing, I hope I could have helped you out a bit!!