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Author Topic: English grammar..  (Read 5212 times)

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vansinn

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English grammar..
« on: Time Format »

I feel pretty well equipped in the [US] English language, but seems to make some common mistakes.

Specifically, I have a problem with when to use letters 'c' and when 's'.
Simple examples are 'mashine' vs the correct 'machine'.
What's the grammar obfuscation behind 's' vs 'c'?

Same with 'e' vs 'i', and 'ou' and 'eou' constructs, like 'enormously' (correct), unambigeos (yikes) - see my problem?
Yes, I do have dictionaries, but having lived maybe like 2/3rd of my life, I ought to fare better.. :lol:

I could need a good online reference to grammar.
And I must know what the hell is this thing called a perfect tense.. ;)


Also, I could need some training sites to better cope with mental tests like word/letter combinatorics, like a string of seemingly random letters, and what does the word say, or what's missing. I never score well in such tests, and believe it's merely a matter of proper training.
I should be a woman; they have more synaptic connections between left and right brain halves (could be why they lock up: too high traffic flow).

You know, the other day I mistakenly clicked into mensa.org and tried the 30 minute quiz (real exam cost money and takes like six hours).
Yes, I could've gone for the test in Danish, but nevertheless went for the English one.
But it started with these damned combinatorial things, and it hurts my ego seeing the results. Joking, I don't care about Mensa membership, just tried for fun..
« Last Edit: Time Format by vansinn »
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MikeB

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Re: English grammar..
« Reply #1 on: Time Format »

I understand your frustration. English spelling and grammar are completely illogical. Every rule has many exceptions which just proves that they aren't really rules. You're already doing better than most native English speakers.
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MikeB

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Re: English grammar..
« Reply #2 on: Time Format »

English speakers be like, aint nobody got time fo dat!
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Kim

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Re: English grammar..
« Reply #3 on: Time Format »

In school, I was told "English is one of the hardest languages to learn."  I didn't believe it since I spoke English my entire life; of course any other language seemed harder to me simply because of that.  Nearly every other civilised (see what I just did there) country consists of a bilingual population.  Some countries are even considered trilingual.  Hablo espanol en conversaciones educadas, but I really have to think about it and the person whom I'm speaking with has to speak a bit slower than they might be accustomed to so I can hear it and process that.

My language skills are probably English 99% (to claim 100% would just be taking the piss, right?), Espanol 40%, Deutsch 20%, Polski 20%, Francais 5% and that's about it.  I've always wanted to be fluent in a few other languages, but alas there's that "old dog/new tricks" thing.  I hear good things about that Rosetta Stone learning set, but wow that's just too expensive for me.  Back in my High School years (Grade 9-12) we were required to take 4 years of English classes and 2 years of Foreign Language classes which consisted of only either Spanish or French.  I don't know if that has changed since then or not but I know many other countries start Foreign Language classes much earlier in school.

I learn what I can with help of an online translator, and I actually interact with a few other people IRL who's common language is different than mine.  So, I pick up certain accents and more of their language as I go.  Recently, a group of Latino workers hired on at my job and I have been talking with them quite a bit which is fun.  Somehow I had even started speaking with their accent even when speaking English without even realizing how I started that.  lol   But funny enough it seems to actually help both of us to understand each others' English better.  I suppose when you spend a certain amount of time interacting with people of a different region or nationality that it's normal to gradually pick up the accent in normal conversation.  I had an Irish gf one summer many years ago, and Muggins here came away with a pretty authentic Irish accent without even realizing I was doing that and how that even came about.   

If I were to actually invest the time and money in a program to become fluent in another language, I'd like to learn German or Polish.  But since I would have no practical use for that, nor would I have any real opportunities to actually use those on a daily basis....I guess I'd have to go with Spanish since it's much more common in most of my country. 

   
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vansinn

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Re: English grammar..
« Reply #4 on: Time Format »

Jeez, Kim! So.. your language skills are a whooping 184% of your actual use  :lol:

Now, my main reason for learning English pretty correct is that I'll relocate more eastbound (young man, go East), and there are always opportunities as a language teacher, even if not being a native speaker, in which case one can simply have private students.

I can pretty much do some teaching as-is in English, and partially, at least covering basics, in German. I just need to refine especially the grammar, as East-bounders are often quite well educated, and are known to demand stringent grammar.

I fare quite well in pronounciation pronunciation, phonetics, and differences in language structure between cultures, which is where many non-English have a problem, like Russians omitting 'a' and 'the', as in "car is broke and has problem" vs "the car broke down and has a problem"; the natural use in some cultures of the rolling 'r', plus how the expression pitch moves up'n'down much differently.

Apart from this, I might claim so-so French, Spanish, [Brazilian] Portugallian, Italian, Islandic, Fairy Islands, all at partial reading level, no more. Klingon merely as expressions. Kaplah ;)
« Last Edit: Time Format by vansinn »
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Peter H. Boer

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Re: English grammar..
« Reply #5 on: Time Format »

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, b*mb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité


 :banana-skipping-rope-smiley-e :banana-skipping-rope-smiley-e :banana-skipping-rope-smiley-e
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vansinn

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Re: English grammar..
« Reply #6 on: Time Format »

Ahh! could read it all, so, I'm better than the 90..

But I still suck at sucking my socks in pursuit of perverse perfection, as perplex pretense to the perfect tense has courted with my course of action to at least a fraction of the faction on which the beast that will feast on pretending the pending bending of grammatic erratics having absolutely none of the mathematics that, as we know only so well, leads to heaps and haps in the rumble of the jungle..

- whatever the hell that might mean to ya'll..

Southbound logic is dang simpler:
when I works I works
when I parties I parties
when I sleeps I sleeps
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GuitarBuilder

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Re: English grammar..
« Reply #7 on: Time Format »

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, b*mb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité


 :banana-skipping-rope-smiley-e :banana-skipping-rope-smiley-e :banana-skipping-rope-smiley-e

Brilliant!
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Chucky

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Re: English grammar..
« Reply #8 on: Time Format »

This is a great topic!!!

Especially because I do dig languages. Music is one too.
So I find it quite natural to have an interest for language since that's what we do as musicians:
Learn the music language and express it on an "outside" tool like guitar.
Quite a challenge...And no way to achieve perfection no matter how hard you try.
It's an endless quest.

Being raised french and learned english in my teens, I can say I'm at least bilingual.
For Kim's information, if anything, English has to be one of the easiest languages to learn.
Already its presence everywhere in the word makes it easy to get learning tools and find people to interact with...
Obviously, languages like Swahili (The akuna matata Lion King stuff) or Innu that have like 2000 words at most
are even simpler than english...But pointless to learn unless you move in with a tribe in Congo or export yourself
to the Great White North and decide that polar caps are your thing...

French is so tricky that most french people score really bad in orthographic duties.
I am blessed to somehow be quite good at picking up new languages and especially recall exact things in writing.
I only have to see a word once to remember its orthographic compound forever.
That skill came in quite handy in school in dictation class.
English already doesn't have the gender thing that is present in a bunch of other languages like french, greek, russian, bulgarian and so on.
That is usually one of the trickiest thing to master for an english based person because gender (especially in french) doesn't follow any rule.
A table is feminine, a desk is masculine. Une table, un bureau.
Then a penis is masculine...Quite logically, but a vagina is also masculine. Un pénis, un vagin.
And this goes on erratically through the whole idiom.

Greek and cyrillic languages add another level to this by having a "neutral" gender.
In russian and bulgarian, it is a bit structured so you can often recognize the gender by the words' termination.
But of course there are exceptions!
In Greek, it seems to be another erratic system. A chair could be feminine, a table masculine and a hammer neutral.
Go figure! And these gender don't follow the french ones.

I am currently learning Bulgarian (To honor my wife's origins and for self satisfaction).
Luckily I had started getting interested at learning russian over the last decade, so I had a base to start with!!
I was also surprised that the "russian" alphabet (Cyrillic) is actually...A bulgarian invention!!!
So for starters, learning a new alphabet is something...And adds confusion since some common letters don't have the same function.
A "B" becomes a V, a "C" is a S, a "P" is an R because their "P" (Like Greek) is the Mathematical Pi sign...
So it's pretty confusing when you try to read because your brain automatically wants to process letters the way it's used to.
Also, Bulgarian has crazy things like a capital "M" is the m sound, while the normal "m" is actually a T...  :facepalm:
There is like half a dozen characters that behave like this.

I had learned some greek (Yet another alphabet!!!) with my previous mate of 12 years and moroccan arabic through my many ventures
in Casablanca.
Arabic is a super bitch to learn...Especially the written part. It's like you have to learn how to paint at the same time.
Chinese is the same with like over 1500 different written characters to learn, remember and draw.
Good luck with that!!
And they have that subtle thing where saying "I am, you are, he is, we are, you are, they are" is all the exact same words but "chanted-accented" differently...So you have to kinda learn to sing the phrases right to express what you intend to.

Hungarian is another weird language that has no common base with any other language...So you have to learn that one from scratch without having any shortcuts.

But in the end, learning a new language gives so much reward.
You have access to other kinds of ideas, poetry and cultural stuff. It's amazing!
Like there are some jokes that are exclusive to the language they originate from...and are impossible to translate.
Laughter is one of my favorite things in the world and having access to either french and english stand-up comedy and general humor
is priceless.

The real key to learn ANY language is to put on, say, russian TV on all day playing in the house...
You keep feeding your ear with the sounds and you will eventually hear and recognize words, then you learn the meaning.
And so on.
That's how babies learn their first language...Like all of us!
Fascinating. Learning a language from scratch, with no reference to anything because you never spoke or used a language before.
You don't even have a concept of what language is.
I am witnessing my young 2 year old daughter going through the process and I am charmed and mind boggled!!!

For VanSinn, I feel the best way to perfect his writing would be to read english books all the time.
I guess that after reading fifty more novels, the word machine should be imprinted correctly in his mind...  ;)

Did I mention I love languages???   :facepalm:
« Last Edit: Time Format by Chucky »
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vansinn

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Re: English grammar..
« Reply #9 on: Time Format »

This is a great topic!!!
Especially because I do dig languages. Music is one too.
...And no way to achieve perfection no matter how hard you try.
It's an endless quest.

About music language: Lessons leads to excellence; too many lessons leads to jazz..

Quote
Greek and cyrillic languages add another level to this by having a "neutral" gender.
In russian and bulgarian, it is a bit structured so you can often recognize the gender by the words' termination.
But of course there are exceptions!

Hehe, I skydived with some Finns, and asked Harry (pronounced "Halli) if Finnish is difficult to learn..
He answered "no, not really - but then there are of course all the exceptions.." ;)

Interesting you mention Russian and Chinese. I'm working on learning both, that is, mostly the former, and indeed, it's interesting with the Cyrillic alphabet. I'm sort of getting used to it, sound-wise at least, but do find it difficult reading.
 
For a while, I worked with a guy from Singapore who taught me some common phrases. Then I had a chat with my Chinese doctor here, who's from Harbin, who corrected it all. S'porian and Harbin'ish are two quite different types of Chinese, you know..

Then, again considering English, it has come to my mind that very many people really do not even know what many English words really do mean - because a vast amount of those are derived from Latin and partially Greek.
Some examples:
Television - 'telos': 'from a distance deliver'; 'visionaro': 'create a vision' - from a distance delivering visions into [us]
Government - 'gubernare': ''to control', 'to steer'; 'ment': 'mind' - to control the mind, mind control
Hypnosis - hyp'/'hypnos': 'under' or 'sleep'; 'gnosis': 'knowledge'/'information' - burying someone under [wanted] knowledge/information
Occult - 'occultura'; 'that which is hidden', or 'that which is being kept hidden'
Aboriginal - 'ab'; meaning not, and 'originalis'; original - i.e. not the original [population], in effect the exact opposite than what we're being told it means

And it of course gets really fun examining myself. I clearly must be abnormal: 'ab' + 'normalis' - not adhering to a wanted state of normalized behavior.. :lol:
Sheez kabab, I gotta put a stop to meditation - my pineal gland is growing all the time; my vision field is expanding: you don not need eyes to see; you need vision.
If only I could get intelligent enough to enable myself to make enough money.. :dunno:
« Last Edit: Time Format by vansinn »
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