Is English Difficult? 2

[CajunCenturion]

What is the most difficult part of English to deal with for those who've learned English as a second+ language?

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[Stella740pl]

rosieb,

o in leopard is silent, too? Really?

And I think I hear h in herb, and r in car, and many others. (In high school English I was taught to not pronounce those, but in high school I was told we are studying good English - British variety . Probably. Nevertheless it came handy here, with some real life corrections.)

Yes, you are right, English varies by locality - it's so hard for me to even understand Southern-American!

Bath as example of silent p? John is making a joke...
Oh. Not 100% sure, but I guess I am getting that. Thanks.

Stella

 

[rosieb]

stella740pl
o in leopard is silent, too? Really? Oh yes, and in jeopardy (but I can't immediately find any other examples).

Don't worry too much about "correct" pronunciation, it's usually best to go with the local flavour, communication is the important issue. I'm sure I'd have a problem with Southern-American.

(Don't let johnwm off too easily!)

PS Out of curiosity, where are you from? [That's just me being nosy, because your written English is so good. It really isn't obvious it's not your first language.]



Rosie
"Never express yourself more clearly than you think" (Niels Bohr)

 

[sleipnir214]

rosieb:
Proper nouns have always been idiomatic in English. On your post which included that perverse English place-name:

My father once gave me a very important piece of advice: Always call the name of a place as do the residents. Thus, the city where the Kentucky Derby takes place is pronounced "LOO-i-vul", the capitol of Russia is "MOSK-va", and the largest city in Louisiana is "NOO OR-lins".

So if the residents of Loughborough say it's caled "LUFF-brer", that works for me.

<facetious>
And I wouldn't worry too much about American Southern English. You probably won't understand us, but we'll likely understand you.
</facetious>

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[Stella740pl]

rosieb,

Since I didn't know that o in jeopardy is also silent, I had to go to

http://www.yourdictionary.com

and listen to both words to get an idea of how much I mispronounced them (not that I have to say them every day, but still).

http://www.yourdictionary.com

is a great site, but it is distracting to have it open all day long - it's so tempting to look up every other word. Not nearly as distracting as tek-tips, though.

it's usually best to go with the local flavour
It is, but that same flavor my daughter hears and pronounces much closer to what it is supposed to be than I do. Not really suprising, I would say?

PS Out of curiosity, where are you from? [That's just me being nosy, because your written English is so good. It really isn't obvious it's not your first language.]
Thanks, you are flattering me. But it's no big secret. I'm from Ukraine, my first language is Russian, my second used to be Ukranian - not any more. As they say, use it or lose it. English has effectively become my second language, Visual FoxPro is third, Ukranian is next along with Visual Basic, and a lot of other stuff lined up after that, either not learned thoroughly enough or long forgotten.

Stella

 

[rosieb]

sleipnir214
Ay oop midoock !

(As I might have said [phonetically] when living in Loughborough. "Midook" being written as "my duck". I'd have gone for "hinny" - Geordie term -'til I looked it up and realised that particular useage isn't in most dictionaries, a good example of how easy it is to be offensive totally unintentionally.)

I agree placenames aren't the best examples, I was looking for examples of different pronunciations of the same set of letters and Loughborough is a particularly good one, alternatively lough (lok), rough (ruff) and borough (burrer) work OK.

Stella
It was just plain nosiness (your written English doesn't give any indication of your first language), and envy, I'm an appalling linguist. Children learn languages so much more easily, somehow their ears are better attuned to the subtleties (silent b!), it's not fair!


Rosie
"Never express yourself more clearly than you think" (Niels Bohr)

 

[sleipnir214]

In terms of written English, I'd like to submit "slough".

It can be pronounced "sloo" or "sloff", depending on whether you're talking about a bog or the dead skin shed by a reptile.

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[rosieb]

Just to add to the confusion, I'd pronounce them "slao" and "sluff".

However, when it comes to to the town with the same spelling, I'd pronounce it uninhabitable.



[British - English joke; "Come friendly bombs rain down on Slough, It isn't fit for humans now..." Poem by J.Betjeman. Another example of cultural reference - most Brits would get that immediately, but not obvious to outsiders.]

Rosie
"Never express yourself more clearly than you think" (Niels Bohr)

 

[sleipnir214]

I've heard "sloo", "slao", "slow", and "slogh" (the "gh" being a back-of-the-throat glotteral "g") at one time or another.

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[Stella740pl]

sleipnir214,

Did you capitalize the stressed syllables in your examples of place names the way they are pronounced by the local residents? Then in the case of the capital of Russia it would be "mosk-VA". Sorry. Actually, Russia also doesn't sound anything nearly to what English speakers pronounce it. It would be somthing more like "russ-SEE-ya". And Ukraine sounds more like "oo-krah-EE-na", or rather "oo-krah-YEE-na".

That was slightly off-point. The point is, as for calling the name of a place as the residents do, it depends on the context and the language you are speaking. Either way it doesn't always sound right - it all depends.

By the way, I once was talking on the phone to a person whose native language was Russian, but his English pronunciation was so good, you wouldn't tell it right away. We were speaking business, so we used English. Apparently, the guy for some reason din't want me to know we have the same first language. So when he had to name one person we both knew with a long last name hard for English speakers to say correctly, he just said her first name and stopped as if he forgot the last name making me fill in the rest. It was a clever step: if he said it right, I would gather from that right away that he speaks Russian. If he broke it the way an English-speaking person would, and I am to find out later his first language, it wouldn't just look right. But the mentioned person was one of the guy's friends. He forgot the name? Come one! This maneuver, along with some very subtle, almost unnoticeable accent, made me guess what he was trying to hide (beats me, why). He was surprised I found out. I din't tell how.

Stella

 

[sleipnir214]

sella740pl:
Well, I was closer with "MOSK-va" than someone would be with "Moscow". I never have figured out how one was Anglicized into the other.


And as far as your Russian-speaking business associate goes, the ruse of keeping secret one's knowledge of a language was probably invented about the time that our species' first language evolved into two. I figure that trick was old 25,000 years ago -- but it's still useful.

There was a time when I was quite fluent in German [unfortunately not any more -- another example of "use it or lose it"]. I learned the most interesting things by pretending that my grasp of German was less than the locals thought.

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[Stella740pl]

sleipnir214,

Well, I was closer with "MOSK-va" than someone would be with "Moscow".
True.

I never have figured out how one was Anglicized into the other.
I didn't do a research, but I can try to speculate. I have a few ideas regarding the issue. First, in Russian there is no native sound close to "w", especially "w" before a consonant (same goes for all flavors of "th"), so pronunciation of English words containing "w" (or "th") is somewhat artificial for a Russian-speaking person (most of those who came here as adults will never completely master them). Russian person most often pronounces "w" as "v" (as for "th", it can be nearly anything - "s", "t", "z", "d"). Very often I've seen Russian words with a sound "v" Anglicized, or rather Latinized, with "w" instead. (I have to add here that it happens less and less often nowadays, most of the examples I have are from olden days. I guess it is possible that it was done this way with regard to some other languages.) The were old Russian words referring to Moscow, Moscova and Moscovia (sounding something like "mos-KOH-va" and "mos-KOH-vee-ya"). I'm inclined to think that some time long ago it was translated as Moscowa or Moscowia, then read the English way, evolved and lost the last letters along the way.

I learned the most interesting things by pretending that my grasp of German was less than the locals thought.
I know what you mean.

I figure that trick was old 25,000 years ago -- but it's still useful.
That's interesting. How did you date it?

 

[sleipnir214]

I didn't date it -- I just made up a number. The trick would certainly have been old 25,000 years ago. But this begs the question, :"How long ago could the ruse of hiding one's language skills from another been invented?"

In order for the trick of hiding one's knowledge of another's language to be useful, the two people must have mutually incomprehensible languages, thus requiring one or both to learn as a second language the language of the other. For languages to develop from a single language into mutually-incompresible languages, I infer that one would need two populations of humans to be sufficiently isolated from each other for a sufficiently long period.

I have no idea what "sufficient" is in either context, but I can guess some of the factors that would affect it: having a written form of the initial common language would require a longer time; efficiency of transportation would require longer time and greater isolation; natural resources available to each population could affect "sufficient" either way.

I think that sufficient isolation and sufficient time would certainly have existed not long after homo sapiens began its first large migration from Africa into the Middle East about 100,000 years ago.

So I think it is certainly possible that our species had invented the ruse of hiding one's language skills at least 95,000 years ago.

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[Dimandja]

I am joining this thread a little late, but going back to the difficulty someone would have learning English...

I learned English after 21 years of speaking 4 other languages. I also lived with - or was extensively exposed to - people who learned English at various times in their lives and under very different circumstances.

I think the ease of learning English depends on the learners background.

1. Age. The ideal time to learn English is before the end of adolescence. By the time you become an adult, no one can usually tell that English was not your native language.

2. Previous languages. If you only spoke one other language before learning English, you may be in for a shock.

People who learn English as a third or more language find it very easy to learn English; especially because English has a very liberal and forgiving grammar - as compared to French, for example.

3. Previous dominant language. Latin speakers (I was mostly speaking French) have the usual adjective placement problem. I had to force myself to use "bad" grammar in order to speak correct English.

The biggest hurdle - especially when learning English during adulthood, in my case - is pronunciation and accentuation. My English is so french tinted that most people I meet in the USA think I am from an English speaking Carribean country rather than DR Congo (where I am actually from). Which leads me to conclude that British people have a french accent in their English.

Dimandja

 

[TheVampire]

Examples or words that have always irked me:

The state names Kansas and Arkansas ( The former being pronounced CAN-SAS , but the latter AR-CAN-SAW ) Any other words that end in "sas" but are pronounced with a "saw" instead?

The silent "d" in Wednesday.

And the silent "u" in circuit.

ARGH!

Robert

 

[sleipnir214]

Which leads me to conclude that British people have a french accent in their English.

There is more truth to that statement than you know.

English, in terms of grammar, is a Germannic language. Old English and Middle English, when spoken correctly, should sound like modern Norwegian.

But after the Norman Conquest in 1066, English received an huge infusion of Romance vocabulary from Norman French. It was during this period that English began its evolution into Modern English.


Keep in mind, too, this quote from an article at yourdictionary.com, titled, "How Many Words are in English?":

It is true that English borrows recklessly from virtually every language on earth. In fact, "borrow" may be too weak in speaking of English; we should say that English aggressively mugs other languages for their lexical treasure (see 'Words: Where do they Come from' elsewhere in the library for details). We might just as well claim that the number of English words is equivalent to the number of words in all the Earth's languages. That is as true as any other figure we could come up with by any means.

This makes spelling especially difficult in English -- the language seems to have absolutely no problem importing words from other languages, even if English already has a word equivalent to the meaning of the borrowed word. (See the etymology of today's Word of the Day from yourdictionary.com: "heinous" for an example).


TheVampire:
I can think of at least one other word that end in "sas" (exluding plurals for words that end in "a"), but is pronounced with a terminal "saw": "Tensas", which, Like Kansas and Arkansas, is another First Nations word. But the pronunciation rules for proper nouns are often idiomatic.

And the "u" in circuit is pronounced in the adjectival form of the word: circuitous.


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[xlbo]

Just a bit of light entertainment in verse on the general theme for this thread:

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes; but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes. One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural of moose should never be meese. You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice; yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
f the plural of man is always called men, why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen? If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet, and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet? If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three would be those, yet hat in the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat is cats, not cose. We speak of a brother and also of brethren, but though we say mother, we never say methren. Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, but imagine the
feminine, she, shis and shim.


Rgds, Geoff

Never test the depth of water with both feet

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[CajunCenturion]

To whom should we attribute that poem xlbo?

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[Dimandja]

I love that poem, xlbo.

 

[xlbo]

Well, it was sent to a distribution list for excel that I belong to but the rhythm, rhymes and style used remind me very much of Dr Seuss (Cat in the Hat)

Rgds, Geoff

Never test the depth of water with both feet

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[ChrisHunt]

Like the poem, sounds like an extension of the passage near the beginning of Alice in Wonderland - "If cats have kittens, do rats have rittens? or mats have mittens?..." etc.

I live in another strange british place - Leicester, pronounced "lester", and incidentally just down the road from Loughborough. Local urban myth has it that a tourist seeking directions for the latter place asked for "the way to looger-bor-ooger". Sadly this has to be a myth - no tourist would want to go to Loughborough...

-- Chris Hunt

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk

http://www.napitalia.org.uk

http://www.leicesteryha.org.uk