Search results for 'tag:Singular verbs tag:Learn English' matching tags 'Singular verbs' and 'Learn English'

How to explain, âHe lives in London.â but âWhere does he live?â?

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:01:25 GMT

Greetings:

I am helping a student learn English but I am having trouble explaining some grammar to him.

In the sentence, âHe lives in Britain.â, he understand that the third person singular verb always has an â-sâ or â-esâ attached to it. However, he (and I) donât understand the following.

Why does âliveâ lose the âsâ in the sentences âWhere does he live?â or âDoes he live in Britain or France?â. Similarly, â-sâ in âHe drives cars.â but no â-sâ on the verb âdriveâ in âDoes he drive a car?â

Also, the sentence âHe fixes cars.â is easy to understand but why does the verb âfixâ loses its â-esâ in the negative sentence âHe does not fix cars.â

Any advice anyone can give us in this matter is greatly appreciated.

Re: "s" and "z"

Pter — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:41:41 GMT

Thank you very much CJ, Zerox, and Carson. You all have given me very valuable advices. After reading through all you said carefully, and then watching a couple of English TV programmes, I believe I can now tell the difference! The ending /z/ in most cases are much shorter, voiced but less audible than the hissing sound of the ending /s/. Now, I found out what's the problem. Those sound files I was listening to are from a pronouncing dictionary. And perhaps in trying to make them as clearly audible as possible, both the ending /s/ and ending /z/ are spoken very "clearly" and become unnatural.

For people like me that learn English as a second language, we are often influenced heavily by our mother tongue. This is like looking at something through a piece of tainted glass. In those aspects where our mother tongue has big differences with English, unless we are told the rules explicitly, we often never realize how people really say them in English just by listening. My mother tongue does not have any voiced consonants and consonant clusters, therefore, it is quite a challenge for me to learn how to pronounce a cluster of voiced consonants, such as /-ndz/, /-gz/, /zd/.

Again, thank you very much to you all. You really helped me a lot!

=======================
EDIT:

Let me summarize what I have learnt here plus a little that I have discovered myself.

1. Final voiced consonant (b, d, g, l, m, n, ng, r, v, voiced th) + s ---> /z/
2. Final voiceless consonant (f, k, p, t, voiceless th) + s ---> /s/
3. Final vowel + s ---> no rules, except when any of the following rules apply
4. Some words that can be used both as verb and noun/adjective ---> verb: /z/, noun or adjective: /s/
5. Words ending in -as, -is, -os, -us:
when the s is part of the word in its basic form (not plural or third party singular verb) ---> /s/
when the s is added to make it a plural or third party singluar verb ---> /z/
6. Words ending in -ces, -des, -oes, -shes, -ses, -zes ---> /z/
7. Words ending in -sis, -nce, -nse, -ss (including -less, ness), -sce ---> /s/
8. /z/ is more common than /s/ overall

[Feeling] Annoying English

Wai_Wai — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 07:22:48 GMT

[Feeling] Annoying English

I have learnt English for a long and long time.
Today I would like to express my crazy two cents again... (I may offend some people unknowingly...)

Whenever I say such ridiculous things, a lot of people will point the finger at me.

So be prepared! 8)

Q: What is the use of English? What are the uses of rules/usage in English?
A: Once in a while, I ask this question to people all over the world. Most of them says:
- to communicate, to facilitate communication.
- it is used to avoid confusion.
- Rules/Usage (I simply say "rules" afterward) are necessary because if different people use English(Eng) differently, it can be a trouble! No one will understand what you are talking about.
- Without rule, you will feel difficult to learn English. So rule make you easier to use English
- Rule is a useful guide to tell how people use English in the best way
etc.

It is just one side of the coin. People seem to forget another side.

English is at the same time to trouble and burden people. Its rules are not only to eliminate confusion but to raise confusion. On one hand, rules make you easier to handle the language tool (English). On another hand, they make you harder to handle the language tool (English).

English is somewhat playing tricks on us!

Be excel at rules/usage does not mean you really make use of the language tool (English) wisely to achieve the purpose of communication.

- Please eliminate redundant/burdensome/useless English rules
Top 4 outrageous rules
- singular noun; singular verb, vice versa
- Irregular plurals (noun)
- Irregular tense form (verb)
- Make-it-Complex comparatives (adj)
[Extra!] - unreasonable classification of (un)count noun (noun)

I am going to explain how they are annoying (especially to learners, but not limited to learners only. Native speakers suffer too!)

...

Search results for 'tag:Singular verbs tag:Learn English' matching tags 'Singular verbs' and 'Learn English'

How to explain, âHe lives in London.â but âWhere does he live?â?

Re: "s" and "z"

[Feeling] Annoying English

How to explain, âHe lives in London.â but âWhere does he live?â?