Search results for 'tag:Pronunciation tag:Analogies' matching tags 'Pronunciation' and 'Analogies'

Re: Need on-line English teacher

Old Man Gordon — Thu, 22 May 2008 09:30:35 GMT

It's true that a low-level student may just need to begin to speak; I encourage you to find someone to talk with. Skype may provide a nice forum for speaking, but I'm not familiar with it.

Naturally, we usually don't correct a baby's grammar. However, if you are going to begin with just speaking, please be careful to remember the grammar that you already know. I have tried to help many students who started bad habits during casual conversatiom ( working with people who didn't correct their grammar or word choice). It sometimes takes more effort to undo some bad habits. If I may continue the baby analogy, my wife and I corrected my daughter's language, grammar, and pronunciation as she got older, while some parents just assumed that school would correct those things later. In 2nd grade, she is already well ahead of most of her classmates. Some of that may be because of her nature, but another portion is because she got proper guidance. I hope you find the same.

Re: Inferior dialects?

Randy_Tam — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 16:55:40 GMT

O, I thought you were, as your quote is in Chinese.

Yes, L(x) is a function indicating whether a language is 'native' or 'foreign' to a person. It is not restricted to Language Acquisition though, as it is widely used in such topics as Language Teaching (see for example, Eric Hawkin's <Awareness of Language>, Psycholinguistics (Fodor's <Language of Thought>... If I remember the name aright), Applied Linguistics (eg. Andrew Radford et al., <Linguistics: an Introduction>.

I am not a specialist in the development of Sino languages though. I am only taking Mandarin as a complusory second language credit course, my L1 being Cantonese Chinese, now considered a 'dialect' for no justifiable reasons, as there has never been a clear distinction drawn between a 'dialect' and a 'language': do the 2 not share the very same traits of a 'language' (a consistent grammar embedded so that an L1 speaker can tell whether an expression is acceptable in his language)? I feel really sorry for my professor, whose views as to a 'language' seem to me simply ignoring the dynamic nature of language. According to her (and the course book), Putonghua was 'designed and standardized (by a committee of linguists... sadly enough), where the lexicon and pronunciations are fabricated according to the dialects spoken around the northern provinces, to be the common language of the entire Chinese population'. Anything that is not in the prescribed list (of words, of the so - called 'syntax', and of pronunciation) is considered 'wrong', the list's constantly changing and being enlarged notwithstanding (direct sources are not available, as I am, as always, but a small potato). The matter on which I want to draw you attention is not this bare matter of fact, but the reason why the list requires constant change.

Given the assumption that the government policy of 'linguistic genocide' (as my French teacher, who used to teach in China and can speak Putonghua even better than most of my classmates, calls that prescription and its making compulsory Putonghua learning in primary schools) is effective, the initial linguistic state of the country ought to be homogeneous, ie. people speaking the 'very same language' at a 'very same standard'... um... to take an analogy from English, if a British calls a person a 'chap', given that policy exists among English speaking countries, you would expect an American, instead of calling a person a 'guy', a 'noob', or a 'pal', to say 'chap' as well. This might well have worked perfectly if 1: people were brainless and non - innovative such that they don't know to invent new expressions or words. 2. if the community (in this case, China) were close against contact with other communities. But neither is true of China (although, from a racist point of view, one may talk of '*** noobs' as he talks of 'frogs'... no puns here, again... just to name an example). As a language is used in daily discourse, deviations related to 1. the phonemic form 2. syntactic constructions 3. pragmatic uses 4. stylistic variations 5. logical interpretations and the like, make language change inevitable. I quote again the examples I came across earlier: 1. the use of 'er' being more flexible these days (as more non - L1 speakers of Putonghua now communicate in that language, whereas the use of 'er' is simply insane in their native language, Cantonese for example) 2. the more flexible use of the '5th tone' (probably brought about by intercourse between Mainlander Chinese and Taiwanese Chinese) 3. words borrowed from other Chinese 'dialects'. All these blur, if not make impossible, the precise definition of the shape of a language. It is for this reason that even though Putonghua was intended as a prescribed language for the entire population, speech variations nevertheless take place (Though asserted as 'wrongs', Chinese linguists have devoted much effort in addressing 'common errors' of a particular group of speaker, a prelude to 'language variations') and eventually prevail over such prescriptions.

Re: Nike

Clive — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 01:11:55 GMT

Hi,

Why is it that Americans pronounce "Nike" (the brand) as /naiki/, while here in Argentina we pronounce it just /naik/ (without the final /i/ sound)?

I don't know, so let's guess. Perhaps Americans, with /naiki/, feel they should give it a 'foreign' pronunciation. Perhaps people who say /naik/ are just trying to anglicize the sound, guided by analogy to an English word like 'like'.

Here in Canada, I hear people saying it both ways.

Nike is actually a Greek word. She was the goddess of victory, in war, in athletics, etc. My understanding is that the classical Greek pronunciation is actually 'neekay'. I never hear anyone saying it that way.

Then again, if you want to extend the discussion, there's the Nikkei, the Japanese stock exchange. Japanese readers, how do you pronounce that?

Best wishes, Clive

Re: How come

PASTEL — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 11:15:17 GMT

Pieanne wrote:

Maybe "basicly" became "basically" for the sake of pronounciation, and by analogy with the other -ally adverbs? There may be a better reason, though, but I don't know it.

Bonne journee, Pieanne!

I thought so too, for the ease of proNUNciation. But to give it a second thought, I wouldn't agree with myself now. The ending consonant 'c' is a velar stop which sounds fine when preceeded by an alveolar 'l'.

basicly clam clap

Un moment, SVP!

(Pastel returned from the restroom. 'Basicly' still echos in the restroom.)

I pronounce it 'basicly' instead of four-syllable 'ba-si-ca-lly'.

Re: Hypercorrection

Sindy — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 10:54:53 GMT

Hypercorrection [From Greek hyper- (over) + correction.] is

-a construction or pronunciation produced by mistaken analogy with standard usage out of a desire to be correct, as in the substitution of I for me in on behalf of my parents and I.

-the production of such a construction or pronunciation.

- a grammatical, usage or pronuciation mistake made by `correcting'
something that's right to begin with. For example, use of the word whom in
"Whom shall I say is calling?"

- In grammar and usage, hypercorrections are the new mistakes we make in the effort to avoid old ones.

Hope that this will help you.

Re: How would you pronounce these foreign names?

Mister Micawber — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 22:36:49 GMT

Hi Demicjusz (whom I call 'Demi' not because I thought you were female, but because the combination of vowels in your suffix are difficult to remember and copy down),

No excuses, no analogies-- I just incorporate what sounds I seem to remember about some foreign languages of which these might be examples, and plunge in. 'Genre' is English, retaining (to a varying degree) its French pronunciation, so that is general knowledge. I have no precedents to rely on for my Chinese pronunciation; I have a little for my Germanic, hence the 'Ã¼' in '-bruk'. I use that knowledge if I have it.

Also, I don't have a full set of IPA symbols, which I would dearly love to find somewhere. Any sources?

Re: How would you pronounce these foreign names?

demicjusz — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 21:08:58 GMT

Thanks for having a go, Mr M.
Well, I'm afraid I have no idea how well you did
I'm not surprised about 'lei' in 3 (I see a parallel with 'Venezuela'), but as for 5, I expected 'ge:'.
In 4, why 'g' rather than sound heard in 'gem'? Any analogies?
And in 8, the last vowel is not from the English vowel system. Does it imply that when you see a foreign name you try to guess the original pronunciation rather than read it in accordance with the English pronunciation system?
Does this phenomenon occur with the word 'genre'?

Best regards,
Demicjusz /de 'mi:ts yoush/
(At first, my nick was demi1, I used it on Polish forums, then on English ones, but I soon realised people understood it as a female name, so I added '-cjusz', which, at least in Polish, immediately shows masculinity; then I found I was addressed as 'Demi' again...
but I don't mind

P.S. Looking forward to other interpretations of the eight examples.