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How to improve spoken English | ||
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| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4281 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 9 of 29 09 January 2014 at 7:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Irregular verbs in Dutch seem to have singular and plural irregular verbs for the
tegenwoordige tijd, verleden tijd, and the verleden deelwoord, and this is essentially the same in English. If you can channel this from Dutch into English, it helps, and English is easier because often the irregular verbs have forms that are the same for both plural and present: ik/jij/hij/zij/het was, wij/jullie/zij waren, ik/jij/hij/zij/het is geweest, wij/jullie/zij zijn geweest I/you/he/she/it was, we/you(pl.)/they were, I/you/he/she/it has been, we/you(pl.)/they have been But then there is "to begin" which has I begun, we begun, which is the same for both singular and plural, which is more simplified than Dutch and other Germanic languages. So in the preterite, memorising the two forms is basically the only difficult part, followed by the past participle. I think only memorising and practising them is possible. I remember in primary school, many of my classmates messed up the irregular verbs, i.e., "I gived him the book yesterday", "We eated at the restaurant", "I swimmed in the pool", and these were native speakers. It probably takes some practise, to have in one's mind that a verb should have this "odd" conjugation that breaks the rules and is essentially a random conjugation pattern, just like how in cuocere, the <u> is dropped in cossi, cosse, and cossero. Edited by 1e4e6 on 09 January 2014 at 7:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| josepablo Tetraglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 3981 days ago 123 posts - 141 votes Speaks: German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Turkish | Message 10 of 29 09 January 2014 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It is not "I begun", but "I began" Everyone makes mistakes from time to time. That's okay. But using a wrong form to examplify a simple grammatical fact? As for the rest of your confused non-native sounding English composition, what do you mean by:
What two forms? Why possible? And what on earthy does this mean:
The mind boggles. "To be" is the only English verb that is totally irregular, so are you by any chance referring to that? According to what precedes you're not, you're referring to "regular" past tense forms like "swimmed, eated and gived" used by toddlers who've worked out the rules of tense formation but haven't yet had enough exposure to irregular forms. By primary school most native English children hardly ever make that kind of mistake. What kind of primary school did you go to? I'd understand some using "I swimmed", but "I eated" or "I gived"? Edited by josepablo on 09 January 2014 at 12:54pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5000 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 11 of 29 09 January 2014 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The irregular verbs take some time and they are worth memorising. Given enough time and practice, it should go well.
However, it is one of the strange situations of today's world. YOu have a place full of romance languages natives and they are to use English among themselves. Isn't that absurd? Yeah, it's just the way it is but it is totally stupid. By the logic, French should be the main language in such a situation and the few English natives should be expected to conform to the norm. After all, aren't there three main languages of the EU? For models, I didn't mean your friends. I meant immitating natives with great pronunciation and accent you can see in the media. Such immitation practice can help change your habits. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4698 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 12 of 29 09 January 2014 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Voltooid deelwoord (not verleden deelwoord) for past participle, and to say "Ik ben begonnen" is way more common :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6694 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 29 09 January 2014 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Actually people in the future may be saying "eated" and "gived" - the tendency is that strong verbs are made into weak verbs, and while the change goes on the future correct form will be counted as an error.
The strong verbs are simply constructed in another way than weak ones, namely with a vowel change instead of an ending. The trouble is that there are more variants of vowel changes than there are of past tense endings in modern English, and that the phonetical factors that resulted in the choice of a certain change pattern aren't visible any longer. So therefore we have to learn two forms of strong verbs - and we consider them as irregular, even though there is a strict logic behind the different patterns. The only truly irregular verbs are those that use totally different stems (like go, went), and only "to be" (and to some extent "to have") is so irregular that even their present tense is built on several diffeent stems. Edited by Iversen on 09 January 2014 at 3:00pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5719 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 14 of 29 09 January 2014 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Achieving good pronunciation shouldn't be too hard, it's just going to take time. You're conscious of your shortcomings and ambitious so I'm sure you'll do fine. English Pronunciation in Use from Cambridge should be good. I had their books for vocabulary and they were excellent. And of course input. You're studying other languages, so time management might be an issue, but if you're serious about your goal, there's no other way. Most of the shows (be it on TV or radio) I watch and listen to are British and I can tell you, there's a lot of great stuff out there. For good pronunciation models I recommend BBC Radio 4.
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4819 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 15 of 29 09 January 2014 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hi, If it's British English you want, then you need to concentrate on RP, and leave regional accents until you maybe come to live here and maybe live in an area with a regional accent, and pick it up naturally. Trying to learn a regional accent from a distance is very unwise, IMO, since it will sound artificial, there is a danger people will think you are taking the micky, but more seriously, you can't guarantee to get authentic sources of the accent, and you may never be sure what accent people in your sources are speaking. Having got that out of the way, the best free source of RP is BBC Radio, and specifically Radio 4 and Radio 4 extra, since they are speech-oriented, and RP tends to predominate, although not exclusively. You will not be able to listen live outside of the UK (unless you use a proxy or VPN), but you should be able to listen on demand to any already broadcast programme via their iPlayer service, for up to 7 days afterwards (sometimes more). There are also some podcasts, but not every programme (by a long way) comes out as podcasts (unfortunately)). Radio 4 Extra Radio 4 I tend to go to the schedule and look through for programmes of interest and click on the play link, but if you know what you are looking for, you can use the iPlayer search, or follow any of the links on the main page. However, that's mainly going to help passive skills, although it will give you an idea of what to imitate. You also are going to need to practice speaking with native British speakers if you can make opportunities - how about a language swap? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5719 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 16 of 29 09 January 2014 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree totally. How bizarre would that be to meet an Italian guy living in the Netherlands speaking with a wannabe Geordie accent. ;) Also, you CAN listen to any BBC radio station online live. I've been doing it for years without any problems. Edited by pesahson on 09 January 2014 at 4:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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