Search results for 'tag:Speak english tag:Nouns' matching tags 'Speak english' and 'Nouns'

Re: nominative and objective pronouns.......confusing!

Huevos — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:28:09 GMT

This problem of the subject complement is an ongoing debate. It caused because nouns in English don't differenciate between subjective and objective. Only English pronouns do that. In everyday speech and writing the pronouns used in this instance are almost always objective case and if someone were to use the subjective case pronoun it would be seen by most as a deliberate break from convention, or that they were raised in an environment where they where exposed to the infuence of an old conservative prescriptive grammarian who believed the rules of Latin grammar should also be applied to English. That's my opinion by the way.

Incidently, English is my native language but my children's is Spanish. When I speak English I always use the objective case pronoun in these instances. My children, who have no contact with English speakers other than me, always use the subjective case pronoun here. No one has taught them one way or the other, it's just what comes to them naturally, maybe because that's what's used in Spanish.

Re: have or has?

Yoong Liat — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:27:33 GMT

Hi Kooyeen

I believe the natives seldom refer to grammar and English usage books because they speak English since they were very young, and so they do not have to refer to such books, If you bother to refer to grammar or English usage books, you will be able to find the rule and that is the verb has to agree with the noun closest to it. GG mentioned this earlier if I'm not wrong..

If you refer to a dctionary, you will also find the rule there.

Re: "s" and "z"

Carson21 — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:25:56 GMT

I don't know what you guys are all on about with devoiced /z/. It's not a devoiced /z/, it's just /s/. In the example that someone above used, "vases"... I don't know about up North or across the pond (either one), but American Standard has that as /s/ in the medial and /z/ in the final. Well, if you pronounce the <a> like you do in "bratwurst" or "father", then the medial would become /z/.

Pter, the basic rule is this: final <s> becomes voiced to /z/ when it is final in most verbs and/or after a voiced stop (/g b d/ etc). It remains unvoiced /s/ for most nouns and adjectives. It also can voice when the closest (previous) consonant was already /s/. (Abuses, vases, faces, places)

Here's the other basic rule that will probably help you, even if at first it seems to be "maddening the unhelpful": In English, there are a million rules, and every rule has a million exceptions. English is probably as far removed from a loglang as you can get, so it helps to just accept what you learn at face value and imitate it, rather than trying to figure out "why". You can ask "why" all day and use up all the time where you could have been moving on to the next rule. Look at the general rule for each case, then apply it. You learn irregularities as you go (much like learning Spanish verbs).

The perfect example of an exception: assess. It has /s/ in the medial AND final. D'oh! Just have to remember that one.

As for how important it is that you learn the difference between /s/ and /z/... I don't think it's that big a deal. If the spelling shows <s>, then saying /s/ or /z/ won't make much of a difference if your goal is to just be understood. They're allophones, essentially. We could drop <z> from our orthography and get along just fine. However, if your goal is to sound like a native speaker, then, yes, it's quite important that you can make the distinction.

Last, if you pronounced all <s> as /s/... You might sound strange to most people in the UK and the northern United States (plus the commonwealth), but anywhere in the West, Southwest, South East, and Border states in the US, no one would think twice about it! There are a lot of people in those regions that speak English as a second language with Spanish as their first, and they tend to always use /s/ for <s> , regardless of typical conventions.

Re: He insisted on my/me singing a song.

Goodman — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:13:46 GMT

Hi,

This is how I was taught. The terminology can be confusing. I was taught that gerund is the noun form of a verb. Although itâ not a real noun by definition, it functions like one. Another confusing aspect of the âingâ form is that, itâs often mixed up with participle and gerund.

i.e. I love my family. Family is a noun. To replace âfamilyâ with dancing, it becomes âI love dancingâ. Therefore, âdancingâ in function is a noun, (a gerund)

On the other hand, â I saw her standing thereâ where standing is a participle, not gerund. Likewise, âI heard the police shouting at the burglar to stop runningâ. Shouting and running are both participles.

With the subjunctive use, âI insisted on his speaking Englishâ, itâs [his], not [him]. But Iâd prefer to say âI insist that he speak Englishâ for that context.

Re: He insisted on my/me singing a song.

Grammar Geek — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:38:29 GMT

You're right - gerunds are not nouns, but rather they act like nouns in many situations.

As you know, without an English Academy, language will evolve along, and eventually what enough speakers use in any given context becomes the correct form.

(For your last example, I'd rewrite, by the way. I insist that everybody speak English.)

Re: so good English/such good English

MrCurious — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 13:17:37 GMT

Yankee wrote:

Only sentence (b) is correct.

No, I can't think of any situation in which "so+adjective+uncountable noun" would work. In that structure you need a or an: "so+adjective+a/an+noun". If you wanted to use an uncountable noun, then you would need to add words:

- so bad a piece of advice

Thank you Yankee,

What about the following sentence.

a) How come you speak English so good ?

b) How come you speak English so well ?

Whic one is correct ?

Re: Complexity of grammar

Cool Breeze — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:35:32 GMT

Orpheus wrote:
Do you think that the complexity of grammar of a language reflects the elaborate thinking of its speakers?

No, not in the least. If that were true, present-day Anglo-Saxons' thinking would be greatly inferior to that of their forebears 1200 years ago. While Old English wasn't grammatically complex compared with the language I know best, Finnish, it was a lot more complicated than modern English. In many respects Old English grammar resembled modern German grammar: three genders for nouns, strong masculines, verbs inflected more than today, many plural endings etc.

In my opinion English-speaking people can be just as complex and articulate as speakers of other languages and they can have just as lucid thoughts as other people. The English language just isn't the best tool possible to convey these thoughts because the language is sometimes ambiguous and inexact even though the speakers aren't. There is more often room for misunderstanding when people speak English than there is when a more exact language is employed.

The absolute superlative is a good example. Many educated linguists say there is no absolute superlative in English! Yet they use the absolute superlative in their speech. Who's to know what they really mean when they utter their sentences? For a speaker of a language where there is always a difference between the relative and the absolute superlative it may occasionally be too demanding a task to figure out what exactly is meant.

Cheers
CB

Re: Who's to decide the future?

Cool Breeze — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:27:29 GMT

Milky wrote:
That is because you, though claiming your thoughts on the matter of English and easiness are subjective, seem to want us all to agree with you. Your posts on the matter, before you began backpedaling, seemed insistent that you were right, on a gemeral level, about English.

I would indeed like to think that I am right, on a general level, about the number of forms an English noun has and fully understand that four forms may be difficult for a nonnative learner of English in whose mother tongue a noun has only one form. Everything is relative.

I wonder what has given you the idea that I consider English easy and that I am backpedalling now? I have mentioned twice that the spelling is difficult and the idioms are difficult. What I consider easy is the grammar, of which there is so little. That's why it's easy to acquire a working knowledge of English. Mastering English is just as difficult for me as it is to master any other language I have ever studied. A friend of mine puts it nicely: It's easy to speak English badly. These are just my personal opinions and I am definitely not trying to impose them on anyone.

I have mentioned in other threads that difficulty is relative: what is easy for some may be difficult for others. I already think about difficulty the way you want me to think about it.

Re: How to make sentences?

Yankee — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:50:28 GMT

Maverick9211 wrote:
I can't differeniate between ~~abt~~ nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.

I am not very bad at English. I do understand English very well. I can speak English, but not in fluently. I can't write it very well. Let's ~~make~~ do it this way: You give me some topic and I will write 10-20 lines about that topic. Then you will ~~come to know~~ be able to see where I am lacking or what ~~is the~~ my problems are. Or you suggest what to do.

Hi Maverick

Judging from your posts here, spelling, capitalization and punctuation are some of the things you need to improve.

If you want to practice grammar, you might try English Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy.

Your idea about posting a few sentences isn't bad. You can post sentences for correction, but you should limit the number of sentences you post in each thread to a maximum of about 5. You can write about any topic that interests you. You can also post specific questions. This would be a specific question, for example:

What is the difference between "I do speak English very well" and "I speak English very well"?

Re: Is this subjunctive?

Grammarian-bot — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 02:11:01 GMT

Cool Breeze wrote:
Grammarian-bot wrote:
Congress is debating a bill requiring certain employers to provide workers with unpaid leave so that they can care for sick or newborn children.

I have a serious problem with deciding when to use prepositions before verbs and when not to. Any help/suggestions.

Hi GB

The to in your sentence isn't a preposition. It's a particle that is part of the infinitive. As a rule to is used

1. after verbs: I want to go there.
2. after nouns: I had an opportunity to visit Cairo.
3. after adjectives: It's easy to speak English.

Some common cases in which to is omitted:

1. after do, does, did: Did you see him? I do like that hat!
2. after a defective/modal auxiliary: I will see him tomorrow. Can you come with us?
3. after a verb denoting perception in the active voice: I heard him say that. I didn't see him come.
But: He was seen to come.
4. after make in the active voice: It made me smile. John's mother made him do his homework.
But: John was made to do his homework.
5. after let: Let me go! (Let is not used in the passive voice; allow or permit should be used instead: I was allowed/permitted to go out.
6. In question-like exclamations beginning with why if a verb follows immediately: Why do it now? Why not do it now?

There are other cases but you'll be just fine with these for a start.

If to is a preposition before a verb, the verb must have an ing-ending:

I am used to warm weather. (To is a preposition, we can tell that from the fact that warm is an adjective and weather is a noun.)
So: I am used to getting up early.

Cheers
CB

Great Job every one. Thanks a lot.

Cool Breeze, this post goes directly on my desktop.

Thanks a zillion.

GB