Search results for 'tag:Pronouns tag:Intonations' matching tags 'Pronouns' and 'Intonations'

Mistakes made by Chinese Learners

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:30:26 GMT

Hi everyone

I 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 rude/inconsiderate, more serious transfer may affect comprehensiveness.
No inflections in L1 - tenses difficult to learn in L2 as L1 has no true tenses and concept of time is expressed by adverbs/implicit or contextual assumptions.
Difficulty distinguishing [r] & - Does anyone know why this is as I can't find a reason?!!
Prepositions such as 'on', 'in' & 'at' have one chinese translation in many contexts, 'zai' - may be confused resulting in phrases such as 'on Taiwan' instead of 'in Taiwan'.
Use of awkward gerunds e.g. 'no noising', excessive use of verbs ending in 'ing' e.g. 'do not climbing', confusion of 'ed' & 'ing' verbs e.g. 'i am bored' vs 'i am boring' --- all of these errors occur because verbs are not conjugated in chinese, for tense or pronoun.
No equivalent word for 'the' so may be used excessively when not needed e.g. 'The China' or missed out when needed. May also be confused with 'a'/'an'.
Confusion over countable and uncountable nouns, use of 'how much?' vs 'how many?' - leads to phrases such as 'I want a soup' & 'a lot of shoe'. This is due to there not being plurals in chinese - no inflections.

Switching between 'he' & 'she' - Does anyone know why this is?

If anyone can think of anymore it would be greatly appreciated or if anyone knows the answers to my questions about gender switching and distinguishing [r] & this would also help a lot!!

Thank you in advance.

Shannon

Re: He thinks you like my car, don't you?

Yankee — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:19:58 GMT

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. [it's conversational - like a screenplay]

Yes, "don't you" might be better as a separate little mini-sentence. However, I'd disagree that it can't be legitimately used as a tag question in my sentence.

When there is a change of person in the tag question, the intonation changes from the verb to the pronoun:
- He's handsome, isn't he? (Stress on the word isn't, falling intonation)
- I think he's handsome, don't you? (Stress on the word you, rising intonation)

Both of those sentences basically ask the listener for a confirmation of the idea "he's handsome".

"I think he's handsome, don't you?" is a very commonly used sort of sentence, and an easy one to understand. I used it as a comparison for the original sentence "He thinks you like my car, don't you?"

In the sentence "I think he's handsome, don't you?", there are two verbs: think and is. There can be no question which verb the tag question refers to. It can only refer to 'think'.

In the sentence "He thinks you like my car, don't you?", the tag question becomes muddled. Does it refer to the first verb (think), as in my very commonly used sort of sentence? Or does the tag refer to the second verb (like)?

It would be quite normal to say "You like my car, don't you?" Adding "He thinks" to the beginning of that sentence only manages to make it confusing and awkward.

Re: accents

Cvilla — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:04:44 GMT

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 accent, it is more matter of communication. Perhaps, you learnt these "tricks" at a pronunciation class, therefore you associate them only with an accent. Most learners are unaware about these topics, so most likely they will not understand you.

You're right, intonation and accent aren't the same thing. But that's because intonation is part of the accent. Like I said, other accents don't use a "trick" like the one given in the example I posted before. Additional, if you do not know how to raise your pitch, and where to raise it, you may be communicating something totally different from what you originally intented. For instance, people who often emphasize the pronoun "I" are seen as arrogant snotty people... Believe it or not. And maybe the foreigner does not know about it, and makes this "little" mistake, thus been seen by others in a bad way.

Anonymous wrote:

Believe me that international English exists, but of course not in the USA. Italians, Spaniards, Russians all have their own version of English. I'M NOT OBSESSED with fighting of accents. I just want to show that their sdudying by foreign learners are totally useless. It is because: it is extremely HARD (if you succeeded it doesn't mean that everyone will be able to do that) to tune your pronunciation to the correct one, there are not so many native speakers in the international environment; you are surrounded by various foreign accents, which you need to understand somehow, these people have various levels of English skills, they simply will not understand you if you say something like "I wanna", but you desperately need to communicate with them. Of course if you live in the terrarium like the USA then it is a different story. So, I just want to remove all obstacles in communication with everyone.

Please guide to any reliable good documentation on this "international" English you're talking about... I have never heard of it.

Now I think I get your point; however, a "common" accent is better for everybody in cases like the one you mention. If people get used to a "common" accent ~~be it American, British, or any other~~ they will have better chances of undestanding each other; instead of having portuguese, german, greek, japanese, thai, indian, arabian, and other bunch of people from many nationalities trying to undestand so many different accents (which, by the way, make their English way harder to undestand than trying to understand a native accent).

Re: How are you?

Peaceblinkfriend — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 08:09:47 GMT

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 type. In fact, I think I hear it as very nearly the way Marvin describes it - equal throughout -, though I hear a little more emphasis on you at the end, and a bit of stress on How. I don't see it as an exception. I think you can forget about the don't-stress-a-pronoun stuff. That makes no sense here. It may be the weak verb to be that blocks the don't-stress-a-pronoun "rule".

How are you? How is he? Who is she? Is she with you?
Was it for them? Was it because of us? Where were you?

Hi Clive and thank you for raising this question, Kooyeen.

When you say 'a little more emphasis' and 'a bit of stress', do you mean the same thing?

Thank you.

Best wishes,

PBF

Re: How are you?

CalifJim — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 03:09:23 GMT

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 think I hear it as very nearly the way Marvin describes it - equal throughout -, though I hear a little more emphasis on you at the end, and a bit of stress on How. I don't see it as an exception. I think you can forget about the don't-stress-a-pronoun stuff. That makes no sense here. It may be the weak verb to be that blocks the don't-stress-a-pronoun "rule".

How are you? How is he? Who is she? Is she with you?
Was it for them? Was it because of us? Where were you?

Emphasizing the weak verb to be, especially when there's a how or where in the question, seems to project a sense of excessive concern which borders on the precious. I think women are better at carrying off that shade of meaning. It doesn't sound right when men say it that way. (Just my exaggerated opinion. I could be wrong here. I'll probably get hate mail over this!)

Where were you? (I was so, so, so worried when I couldn't find you!!!)
How are you? (I really, really hope you are just fine!!!)

CJ

Re: how can we use LITERALLY?

Alienvoord — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:58:34 GMT

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" in both the factual and the figurative sense by altering the intonation and word order.
for instance
"It literally exploded." vs "It exploded, literally."
It's clear, at least to me, which meaning is intended in these sentences.

After all, this is not the only word that is its own antonym: others include cleave, trim, dust, sanction.

So I don't believe that the figurative meaning of "literally" means we have lost the ability to make the distinction. And in the future, if "literally" loses its factual meaning altogether, we can still make the distinction - we'll just use a different word.

I just don't think it's true that a semantic change would prevent us from making a distinction that we want to make. That sounds too Whorfian for me.

Re: English/ Spanish/ French/ German Phrases & Sentences!

Forbes — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:41:02 GMT

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 upsidedown question mark is to warn you a question is coming. I suppose they decided that if they were going to have upside question marks they may as well have upside down exclamation marks too.

Examples:

Usted es my amable. You are very kind.

Es usted muy amable. You are very kind.

Â¿Es usted espaÃ±ol? Are you Spanish?

Â¿Usted es espaÃ±ol? Are you Spanish?

Eres loco. You are mad.

Â¿Eres loco? Are you mad?

Re: Help - I have an accent!

Eimai_Anglos — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 21:58:44 GMT

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 that you are angry or irritated!

So it may not be the fact that you sound "foreign", or even your basic pronunciation, but that you speak in a way which sounds (to an English person) as if you are being very aggressive, annoyed or querulous.

Listen to the way an English person asks: "So, do you think I should do that?" It's often spoken with the tone going down in frequency. In Greek it will go up, making it sound (to an English person) as if there is an element of disbelief - something beyond the basic question itself. A question in English is denoted by the verb/pronoun inversion and not (usually) by the intonation.

Difficult to explain but listen to the intonation and maybe you'll hear the difference.

In addition, Greek has a very gutteral back-of-the-throat "G" (gamma) sound which English people subconsciously dislike.

Finally, English has a very short "i" sound like no other European language. In most other languages it is "ee". But the "i" in words like "bit", "hit", "sit" is *never* like "beet", "heet", "seet". You must learn to clip your "i" sound and you will immediately sound MUCH more "English" (and be a lot easier to understand).

Hope this helps.

Re: British 'spot-on'

MrPedantic — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 01:41:41 GMT

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 never use the word 'cool'. Now it just means 'ok'.

2. Ending every sentence with a rising intonation, as if it were a question, e.g.

'Good morning, MissQ, did you have a good weekend?'
'Fine, thanks, MrP? We went down to the coast? On my boyfriend's motor bike?'
'To the coast, eh. Whereabouts?'
'Brighton?'
'Really. When did you go, Saturday?'
'Well, my boyfriend's sister lives in Redhill? So we stayed there overnight on Saturday? And then early on Sunday morning we drove down to Brighton? There was a big open-air concert there? etc etc...'

It drives me up the wall.

3. 'How XYZ is that!'

This just means 'that's very XYZ!', e.g. 'how strange is that!', 'how weird is that!'.

4. '[noun/pronoun] is so (not) [noun or adj. or adverbial phrase]!'

e.g. 'that is so 90s!', 'that is so not true!', 'you are so not going to get a Christmas card from me!'.

Someone gave me a lift today. A large lorry loomed in the rear-view mirror. 'He is so on my tail!', said my driver.

I think it comes from US sitcoms.

I'll listen out for other phrases...

MrP

Re: Spanish (or German) student Vs Japanese student!

Raul — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 04:24:52 GMT

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 country, it is customary to say "pila" instead of "baterÃa" because we also make a difference: a "pila" is usually a cell (I mean, a small 1,5 or 9 volt battery), while "baterÃa" is used to refer a big one (car battery, for instance).

Talking about "constipation", when someone catch cold, you say "estÃ¡ costipado", which looks and sounds similar to "constipado" (meaning exactly what it means in English). The word "constipado" is not quite common in some Spanish-speaking countries. It's widely used in Mexico, but not in my country (Peru) for instance.

In the sentence "Said the teacher that would give we more homework", the student evidences interlingual and syntax errors: "Dijo el profesor que nos darÃa mÃ¡s tarea". Word order, as it was mentioned, is not that strict, but that doesn't mean there are no rules (most people do not follow rules). Pronouns can be omitted in Spanish, but not in English ("I" and "we" are used mostly to emphasize). Using "we" instead of "us" is also a typical mistake in other languages. The real problem here, is that the student is translating word by word from Spanish into English, which is also typical to any learner at the beginning.

I would say that pronoun omission and structure are typical mistakes in Spanish learners. Auxiliary verbs is another calvary: they simply do not exist. Questions, in any tense, are easily formed by a change in intonation or, when writing, by using "Â¿" and "?" at the beginning and at the end respectively. Prepositions are also another problem, mainly "at" which does not have an exact equivalent. Remember that even English native speakers use "in" and "on" differently! I'm sure there are many more problems that I can recall.

Hope this helps!

Raul