By Pronouns, Intonations

Hi everyoneI 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...

Avangi wrote:Edit. Nope, sorry, Amy's wasn't a complex sentence. "I think he's handsome, don't you?" It doesn't refer to anything - better as two sentences, like Philip says. Yes, "don't you" might be better as a separate little mini-sentence. However, I'd disagree that it can't be...

Anonymous wrote:Ok, I see you didn't get it. I will repeat it again. Accents and intonation aren't the same things. You can emphasize something without speaking a perfect accent, let's say American one. Just rise a pitch of your voice at the right place. This doesn't depend on a concrete...

CalifJim wrote:I've read this thread several times, and it's puzzling. How are you? gets the same normal downward falling intonation and stress at the end as any other content question. I don't sense a really emphatic stress on you, just the same as at the end of any question of the same...

I've read this thread several times, and it's puzzling. How are you? gets the same normal downward falling intonation and stress at the end as any other content question. I don't sense a really emphatic stress on you, just the same as at the end of any question of the same type. In fact, I...

Languages are always losing some distinctions and gaining new ones. English lost the singular second person pronoun "thou", but we can still make the distinction between singular and plural second person when we need to, by using "you guys", "you all", etc.In the same way, we can use "literally"...

The reason is that many Spanish questions can have the same form as a statement and inversion of subject and verb is quite common in statements. Also subject pronouns are not usually expressed. In speech the difference between questions and statements is apparent from intonation. In writing the...

English people DO have trouble with Greek accents. One interesting problem is the difference in intonation. In Greek, a sentence will always end with the voice rising in tone if it is a question. In English this is not always so. In fact if you speak English like this it might give the impression...

I'm probably not the best person to ask about 'in-ness'...But I notice: 1. 'Cool!' used as a universal noise of agreement; or simply to mean 'I have heard the words you uttered'. Once upon a time, 'cool' meant someone in sunglasses. In fact, once upon a time, if you were 'cool', you would...

Having fun with us Spanish speakers, uh? Oh, well... I admit I also laughed at those lexical problems. There are some cultural explanations, too. Some Spanish speakers wrongly use "pile" because they "imported" the French word instead of the English one (pile instead of battery). In my...