Search results for 'tag:Spelling tag:Idioms' matching tags 'Spelling' and 'Idioms'

Re: Which language is most difficult language for people to learn?

Cool Breeze — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:18:45 GMT

Hi Forbes

I agree with you completely. Of course grammar includes syntax. I wrote about the very first experiences of a person who is beginning his language studies. All such experiences are very subjective!

I don't think there is an objective way or method to measure and compare the difficulty of languages. I honestly believe that just like people prefer different tastes and colours and whatever, they also vary in their ability to learn languages (and other things as well). If somebody thinks and says that a certain language is easy or difficult for him, it is his subjective view but he is certainly right. At least he feels that way. He may have a very superficial knowledge of the languages he is studying but if he finds one language easier or more difficult than other languages he is certainly right.

I know from experience that even if someone has a flair for languages, not all languages are equally easy for him. A language that is easy for some may be difficult for others. That's a fact. There are teachers who have been teaching languages for 35 years to thousands of students in Finland. They have noticed the differences.

Learning a foreign language is extremely subjective. Every student studies at least two foreign languages in comprehensive school in Finland. After that, in secondary school many students study a third foreign language. Some take up a fourth language. Students and teachers have a lot of experience in foreign language acquisition here.

With regard to English, most students never get far enough in their studies to really comprehend the intricacies of the language. They don't have to: graduating from comprehensive school calls for nothing special and it is possible to pass the nationwide Matriculation Examination, which is required if you want to graduate from secondary school, with very low language skills. Perhaps that is just as well. There are other things than languages that are also important. For many it's enough to be able to use basic English on their travels abroad and to exchange a few words with foreigners.

It's no wonder many students consider English easy. They never get far enough to encounter the difficulties, apart from the spelling, pronunciation and idioms!

Cheers, CB

Re: idiom: play a good Samaritan

JCDenton — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:48:53 GMT

Yoong Liat

[JCDenton"]Or does it mean that he just played the Samaritan in the metaforical meaning, that he offered help to someone / he helped someone?

It should be metaphorical. hope you don't mind my pointing out the spelling error. Or is it a typo?

Hi,

Yes, it is. I was writing faster then thinking...:-)). This is my frequent problem..:-)) I'm sorry for that mistake.

Thank you for pointing it out.

Re: idiom: play a good Samaritan

Yoong Liat — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:35:05 GMT

[JCDenton"]Or does it mean that he just played the Samaritan in the metaforical meaning, that he offered help to someone / he helped someone?

It should be metaphorical. hope you don't mind my pointing out the spelling error. Or is it a typo?

Re: idiom: play a good Samaritan

Yoong Liat — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:34:54 GMT

[JCDenton"]Or does it mean that he just played the Samaritan in the metaforical meaning, that he offered help to someone / he helped someone?

It should be metaphorical. hope you don't mind my pointing out the spelling error. Or is it a typo?

Re: line against/along

Avangi — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:23:22 GMT

The prepositions are both fine and natural, but in AmE we'd add a third, so to speak. We use the expression (idiom) "line up" to form a line. I guess BrE is "que." I don't know if it can stand alone, or if it's "que up," or if I'm spelling it correctly.

I wonder if "up'" becomes an adverb in "line up."

Re: multilingual Europeans

Cool Breeze — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:57:11 GMT

Koto
Why are European people so fluent in English?
People say it's becasue their languages are all derived from the same root as English but is this the only reason?
Was it easy to master English for you?

Hi Koto

I realise you may never read this but I'll post it just the same. Not all European languages are related. My native language, Finnish, isn't even an Indo-European language. It is related to Estonian and Hungarian but not to such Germanic languages as English, German, Danish, Swedish, Dutch and so on.

One reason many Finns have at least a working knowledge of English probably results from teachers of foreign languages having a very good education in the languages they teach and the teaching methods. The methods are extremely important. All language teachers are university graduates with 4 to 7 years of university studies behind them. As for English, everybody has studied it at school before entering a university, which is also an advantage. Also, the universities select the very best candidates from English-speaking countries to do the teaching. The professors are Finnish, though, and there are some Finnish lecturers as well.

I am mentioning this because I have noticed on my travels that quite a few people who tell me they are teachers of English have a rather fragmentary command of the language themselves. If a teacher doesn't know the language, he can't teach it. In many cases the student isn't at fault at all. There are amazingly incompetent teachers of languages in many countries. Some of the posters who claim to be teachers of English on these forums wouldn't pass the qualifying exams for would-be teachers at Finnish universities.

I have never mastered English. I have a fairly good knowledge of the grammar but my vocabulary could be much larger. Learning languages has always been easy for me; that is, learning the languages I have attempted to learn. I am not so sure how quickly I would learn Japanese or Thai, for instance. English spelling causes me the most problems. And of course any words and idioms I am not familiar with.

Cheers

Re: Idiom Chain

Tanit — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:07:43 GMT

If this helps, she has my Moral support ... English spelling sometimes drives me crazy!

Re: Idiom Chain

Yankee — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:55:11 GMT

Hi Maple

I think you meant play havoc with -- your original spelling was a little Wide of the mark.

Re: explaining "it"

Terryxpress — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:35:01 GMT

Thank you for making me actually think about some of the idioms we take for granted.
The meaning is the same as saying, The rumour is..." (Rumor is the American spelling, rumour is the British spelling) - and that is what people 'hear' when someone uses those words, rather than the individual words, especially the "it" part.
It actually comes from the expression "to have it", meaning "how one has understood something, grasped the meaning of something" but implying there is some doubt as to whether one is correct, as there may be different ways of looking at some situation. So, I might say: "Well, (as I understand the situation you are in from what you have told me)= (as I have it), you can either do (this) or (that). That's my opinion, (but someone else may see things differently.)"
So, in the idiom "rumour has it" from "to have it" ( I have, it has, you have, he/she has, they have) the "has it" would then literally mean, "rumour is of the opinion that she will marry soon (but until they actually announce the date we can't really be sure.)"
Hope that helps.

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.