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

Re: Some grammar questions

dionusos — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:14:37 GMT

CalifJim
dionusos

Would you say "the party would" or "the law would incriminate people who blah blah blah"

instead of "the party will" or "the law will"?

You can use either one. If it is enacted, the law will ... vs. If it were enacted, the law would ... The first shows more certainty that the law might
really be enacted.

That's what I suspected.

dionusos
I notice "which is" is occasionally omitted in writing.
It's called Whiz-Deletion. It's the deletion of a relative pronoun like which or who followed by a form of the verb to be, for example is. If you take the wh of which and the pronunciation of is (iz) you get "whiz". Whiz-Deletion is optional.

The person who is sitting in the corner is Dan. = The person sitting in the corner is Dan.

Is this also a matter of choice?

dionusos

When do you say "said that" or merely "said" when using attribution at the beginning of a sentence?

that is optional. Say it or don't say it. It's your choice.

I remember someone snapped at me online a while back about failing to use 'that' or using it incorrectly after the 'said' part. The person sounded rather rude, so I didn't bother asking her to elaborate on why it's apt or inapt to use it. Are you sure it's optional?

dionusos
Federal authorities said Tuesday that they "had" cracked ...
This is reporting the actual words they said: "We have cracked ...". In reporting "have" + past participle, use "had" + past participle.

"I have seen that movie three times."

I said that I had seen that movie three times.

CJ

Outside of paraphrasing a quote, would it be correct to simply rewrite those two lines: "I saw that movie three times" and "I said that I saw that movie three times"? It seems that using "have" or "had" with the past participle would only be preferred if it were used in a sentence describing action that had occurred regularly and was completed (had) or is still ongoing "have."

Re: Some grammar questions

CalifJim — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:00:16 GMT

dionusos
Would you say "the party would" or "the law would incriminate people who blah blah blah"

instead of "the party will" or "the law will"?

You can use either one. If it is enacted, the law will ... vs. If it were enacted, the law would ... The first shows more certainty that the law might really be enacted.

dionusos
I notice "which is" is occasionally omitted in writing.

It's called Whiz-Deletion. It's the deletion of a relative pronoun like which or who followed by a form of the verb to be, for example is. If you take the wh of which and the pronunciation of is (iz) you get "whiz". Whiz-Deletion is optional.

The person who is sitting in the corner is Dan. = The person sitting in the corner is Dan.

dionusos
When do you say "said that" or merely "said" when using attribution at the beginning of a sentence?

that is optional. Say it or don't say it. It's your choice.

dionusos
Federal authorities said Tuesday that they "had" cracked ...

This is reporting the actual words they said: "We have cracked ...". In reporting "have" + past participle, use "had" + past participle.

"I have seen that movie three times."

I said that I had seen that movie three times.

Re: Either

Yoong Liat — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 03:26:24 GMT

hkqq

How to pronouce Either when I say "I don't know either". Pronouce as "ai" or "i:"

Main Entry: ¹eiÂ·ther Pronunciation:

\ËÄ-thÉr also ËÄ«-\

The word can be pronounced either way, as shown above. Most Americans, I believe, pronounce the "i" way, while the British prefer the "ai" version.

Re: Why a capital I as a subject?

Philip — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:11:07 GMT

Cool Breeze wrote:
In Old English the pronoun was ic and it became reduced to i in the 12th century. People began to capitalize it in the mid-13th century to mark it clearly as a distinct word. In those days everything was written by hand and it was also quicker to draw just one vertical line without a dot.

CB

I knew someone would come up with the linguistic history of the word, which is really better than "because". Thanks!

Was the pronunciation at the time of [ic] similar to the German [ich]? If so, when did it change to [eye]? Before or after the dropping of the ?

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: Proficiency alongside "poverty".

Cool Breeze — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:36:41 GMT

Forbes wrote:
Cool Breeze wrote:
Fortunately English is structurally so simple...

?

Hi Forbes

In the days of Old English the grammar of the language was more complicated than it is today: nouns had three genders, and there were even strong masculines as there are in modern German, 's' wasn't the normal plural ending for nouns etc. These days an English noun can have a maximum of four forms: boy, boys, boy's and boys'. A verb normally has only four forms: ask, asking, asks, asked. Countless adjectives have only one form: beautiful, difficult etc.

Adjectives have no plurals: old cars (not: olds cars).
Relative pronouns have no plurals: The cars that are parked in the street are mine. (Not: The cars thats are parked...)
Relatives that and which have only one form each, which serves many purposes:
The cat which looks old is mine. (subject)
The cat which you saw is mine. (object)

And so on. There are languages that use a different form of a verb for every grammatical person in all tenses and even the negative word (not) is inflected for all grammatical persons. If that happened in English, sentences like these might be correct:

I am not tired.
You are nott tired.
He is note tired.

We are net tired.
You are nette tired.
They are nottem tired.

In my native language all nouns have a basic minimum of about 30 inflected forms but for greater expressiveness far more forms are used.

The difficult thing about English is the fact that spelling and pronunciation are worlds apart. There are at least eight ways to pronounce ough, for instance: rough, though, plough, through etc.

Cheers
CB

Re: What makes English so difficult to learn?

Bldudas — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 02:34:42 GMT

Saska wrote:

Guest wrote:
Why many foreign speakers have such problems with the English language? I mean, I came to the U.S. about two years ago, and in the beginning I've had problems with the language (probably just like eveybody else), but what makes English such a difficult language to learn? Most people (like in Europe) they grasp the [other] languages right away. The pronunciation is a lot easier, but still? What is so difficult about English? I know that there is stress, and that a lot of people shorten the vowels, but what makes English so hard?

Thank You for taking Your time reading this

To the original poster, I do not believe English is a language hard to learn, much easier than all the other languages I am learning at the moment, (excluding ONE) and I am learning 6 languages. English is fairly easy, if you compare it to lets say French or Croatian ... What's difficult is to learn it PROPERLY.

That is right. Many native speakers do not even know proper English. It would definitely be difficult for a non native speaker to learn Proper English.

I am currently learning Icelandic, and it is really hard. Everything declines, nouns, numbers, adjectives, and the definite article. At least only pronouns decline in English.

Re: How are you?

Kooyeen — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 17:13:08 GMT

Hi Yuki,
thank you for your opinion.

L.Yuki wrote:
Hmm I normally heard people say how are you as well.

Though, my native American friend told me it doesn't really matter how you stress it. Just depends on the situation, you can even stress any word you want >_> if it is needed.

I asked a native speaker too, and she said that "How are you?" would be something you say after someone has already asked you "How are you?" So she said "How are you?" is not ok as a general question when you meet someone.

L.Yuki wrote:
Also, in one of the pronunciation book I have, there is this exercise on stressing:

I didn't say he stole the money.

Hey, I remember that "I didn't say he stole the money". I have that book too! (American Accent Training).
But if you remember what the author says, she says that "pronouns" are usually not stressed, unless there is a reason to stress them. For example, you say "Thank you", not "Thank you", unless it is a reply to another "Thank you" and you stress "you".
I love you. (default) I love you. (you, not another one)
Why don't you come with me? (default) Why don't you come with me? (me, not another one)
How are you? (default or not?) How are you? (is this an exception then?)

She said you don't stress pronouns unless there is a good reason. What is the good reason for saying:
Mike: Hi, how are you?
John: Fine. What about you?

Re: On &quot;data&quot; pronunciation

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:55:44 GMT

I don't think there is a hard and fast rule here. However:

If you have a two syllable word that ends with an 'a', it's typical that the vowel in the first is short. Like 'dada', 'feta', etc. This is not a rule so much as a pattern that should be observed. Following it, the 'da' in 'data' should not be pronounced like 'day'. Nevertheless, pronunciation and spelling in English are complicated by a number of things: most commonly from words that come from other languages. 'Datum' and 'data' belong to that category.

As for the who/whom question, since when is this controversial? Whom is an object pronoun like 'her', 'him', 'them' etc.

(a) I went to the movies with Sarah.

(b) You went with WHOM?

It's out of popular use, but I don't think anyone who teaches grammar would say there is any argument to how it was designed to be used.

Re: English influence on other languages

Cool Breeze — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 11:21:43 GMT

Francesca wrote:
For example: the word 'plus' is Latin, so it must be pronounced as 'pl-oo-s', at least in Italy! Most people pronounce it in the English way, because they really think it's an English word or simply that the English pronounciation is better

Hi Francesca

Most interesting! As I am not a spring chicken any more, I don't necessarily have knowledge of all the English words teenagers use, but I assure you I have never hear a Finn say plus in the English way when speaking Finnish. We have the same Latin word and the Latin pronunciation.

I think one grammatical phenomenon deserves being mentioned here. In Finnish the personal pronouns are always used in a very exact way; in other words, you refers to the person who is being spoken to and cannot be used in a general sense. Sentences like you never know what will happen are incorrect unless you really means the person standing in front of you.

In spoken Finnish, however, especially young people have begun to use you in the English way. This is quite perplexing because there is no need for it. There is an even shorter way to say such things in Finnish: one can use the third person singular form of the verb without a subject. This is not possible in English, but if it were, we would have sentences like this:

Never knows what may happen.
Shouldn't do such things.
If eats too much, puts on weight.

Even though there is no grammatical inadequacy, this English use of the second person singular is spreading like wildfire. English grammar has not altered Finnish grammatical structures, but some youngsters have adopted an inexact English way to use a Finnish personal pronoun.

Some people call it 'the HÃ¤kkinen passive' after Formula One driver Mika HÃ¤kkinen, who was good at the wheel but languages were not his forte -- not even the Finnish language. HÃ¤kkinen is not the originator of this awkward construction, though, he just used it a lot.

Finns realise that Finnish is not under threat and have not resorted to such rather extreme measures as the French. In 1994 a law was passed in France which meant that the use of foreign terms for example in advertising could result in a thousand dollar fine. And a dictionary containing 3,500 French words to replace English words was published in the 1990s.

The French Academy has done a good job of standardising the spelling and defending the French language. The French may sympathise with the purpose of the Academy's efforts but English words are likely to stay in use.

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

Re: Some grammar questions

Re: Some grammar questions

Re: Either

Re: Why a capital I as a subject?

Re: accents

Re: Proficiency alongside "poverty".

Re: What makes English so difficult to learn?

Re: How are you?

Re: On &amp;quot;data&amp;quot; pronunciation

Re: English influence on other languages

Re: On "data" pronunciation