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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| simonov Senior Member Portugal Joined 5594 days ago 222 posts - 438 votes  Speaks: English | Message 57 of 122 22 December 2010 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You and your spontaneous speech. Most native English speakers I know make the distinction between 'there is' and 'there are' spontaneously. If it's a peculiarity of the written register, why don't you use it in your posts? There are plenty of English learners here who want to improve their English and use it for work. If they are truck drivers, fine, but if they want better jobs, they'd better use correct English, not "colloquial" as you advocate. The same goes for your "ain't" and your "I gave it to John. - To WHO?" Keep colloquial for your mates. You say you have a degree in English, with distinction even, so you should be able to switch between correct and colloquial without even having to think. If I can do it, without a degree, spontaneously, then you certainly could and should. It's just a question of automatically choosing the correct register.
Quite right, I don't believe you. For the simple reason that I can't find anything on the internet corroborating your assertion. Where are we supposed to find proof that most native English speaker use "There is trees in my gardern"? Spontaneously"! My ex mother-in-law (Swindon, Wiltshire) used to say: "I sits me down and has me a cup of tea" and other such quaint utterances, perfectly acceptable to you as "that is what people say". Everyone around her did! But even she said: "There are some nice mince pies on the table. Our Bill (her husband) loyk my mince pies, he do." According to you, what native English people say can't be wrong, can it? Even the bits they say spontaneously correctly?
Now here I would have agreed with you, if you hadn't resorted to such a silly comparison. Why should anybody say "am me"? And what have "sono io" or "soy yo" to do with it? Translated exactly into English that would be "I am me". In English that sounds stupid, not because it's wrong, but because it is not the anwer to "Who is it?" In their languages it sounds perfectly fine and corresponds to our "It's me" (it's I for people who choose that option). [The correct translation of "I am me" would be "io sono io" and "yo soy yo"] "Me" is, as you correctly say, the equivalent of French "moi", either for emphasis, or when used on its own. Neither French "je", nor English "I" can stand alone. The anwwer to the question "Who did it?" will have to be either "I did" or plain "Me". I think that the "me, him, her, us, them" emphatic forms were introduced by the Normans when they enriched the English language with nice French words, like: "Me eat pig, or cow? Not me, I want pork and beef!" I'd also use, like in French: it's not him, it's me (Ce n'est pas lui, c'est moi). It's not them, it's us (Ce n'est pas eux, c'est nous). I would however use "I" in constructions like: "The King and I" so wouldn't say "The Queen and me", and "I, Claudius" because, for better or for worse, these are part of the English language heritage. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6680 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 58 of 122 22 December 2010 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
If I hadn't started reading English online with online dictionaries, I wouldn't been able to listen, read or speak English at all. Edited by slucido on 23 December 2010 at 1:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 59 of 122 22 December 2010 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
...and now we're into the realms of hypercorrectness. Classicaly, "he and I" is in nominative position only, so the classical stance would say that never saying "the queen and me" would also be wrong, as that would be correct in the accusative (including post-prepositional) case -- ie "The King and I" = "we", "The Queen and me" = "us". Wherever hypercorrection occurs, it is a sign that the distinction isn't covered by the speaker's model of the language. This sort of agreement is dead in natural English, and it's not even the norm in written English. "Whom" is almost completely dead -- most modern grammar books for learners say to avoid it. Most professional writing style guides say to ignore it. Oxford says that "Although there are some speakers who still use who and whom according to the rules of formal grammar as stated here , there are many more who rarely use whom at all; its use has retreated steadily and is now largely restricted to formal contexts. The normal practice in modern English is to use who instead of whom (and, where applicable, to put the preposition at the end of the sentence): who do you wish to speak to?; who do you think we should support? Such uses are today broadly accepted in standard English." You don't lose marks in the Cambridge exams for saying "who" as accusative/dative (but you do lose marks if you use "whom" as nominative). And if you do learn "whom", then you end up having to learn another alien idea -- not ending sentences with prepositions. It looks really incongruous to have "whom" with a preposition at the end of the sentences. But English sentences end with prepositions all the time, and learners need to do that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| kthorg Bilingual Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5232 days ago 50 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, Norwegian*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 60 of 122 22 December 2010 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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slucido, I think the problem is this.
You're claiming that there is ONE TRUE way and that we should accept it because that's the way it is. Some people remember things the first time they see them... but that usually will happen with maybe only a few words that you don't ever forget for SOME reason. For example if you are studying French and you see the word "puis" and just never forget it... then that's not repetition. Of course this doesn't happen with everything the first time you learn it, but it could theoretically happen. It's very easy to say "repetition is the key and some need more and others need less" because essentially everyone knows this. To learn something you simply have to learn it (it doesn't happen by itself)... It's like saying "to ride a bike you have to ride a bike" and calling this sentence a bicycle manual. It frustrates to have things swept over and taken credit for because it makes people feel stupid. Cainntear, why are you so attatched to you're ideas? To say that slucido's English is bad because someone else used a different book is ridiculous, he's learned English well the way he's done it and you seem to be very determined to nitpick to prove him wrong. The fact is this... people haven't always had methods, if someone dropped a five year old in another country they would learn the language without a book, without necessary intention or effort... and no, it's not because the five year old is at an age with accelerated language skills, it's because the human brain doesn't really need help with language learning because it's part of our species makeup. And if you mean to pull that five-year-old quality argument again, I would like you to realize that while "Me want biss-kit" (completely ungrammatical of course) may sound like something a child MIGHT say (from movies, books or wherever this idea came from) I have NEVER heard a child say anything but "I want" or because no one has ever said this to them. More common kid's mistakes are like "my foots" or "I speaked" because the correct form breaks the rule and the child's mistake is actually logical. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 6123 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes Speaks: German* | Message 61 of 122 22 December 2010 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
...and now I am in stitches. It is clear, at least to me, that in your multi-post stretching of semantics, credulity, grammar, and descriptivism, there are things* at work other than a dogged scholarly determination to iron out the most excruciating minutiae of the most granular punctilios. *At this point, you would say "there's things at work"; you would, of course, be wrong. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6680 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 62 of 122 22 December 2010 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I disagree. I am saying that are endless ways to learn languages. As long as you have input and output, interaction, TIME (repetitions) is the most important factor. Regarding methods, the best methods are the ones that make us interact with the language more TIME and with more INTENSITY. What's the quality factor that makes a method better? EMOTIONS.
I agree. What I am saying is pretty obvious, basic, but people forget it. Yes, it is possible to learn some word or sentence the first time or forever. What I am saying is that the best method is the method the makes you work more time and harder. A method where this fast learning happens. What's the formula? Emotion. This is the "repetition-emotion" hypothesis. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5701 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 63 of 122 22 December 2010 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I don't see what the controversy is over. Slucido is saying of all the factors time is
the most important one and that emotion aids memorization. I may not agree with it completely but I think that's a pretty reasonable position, if not particularly profound—certainly nothing commensurate with eight pages of heated discussion. As for there is/are, I don't think I have observed there is for plural nouns very much, even in spontaneous communication. To produce it seems very unnatural to me, with the exception of when I haven't figured out the noun yet, e.g. "there's, there's... problems with that." Even then it feels like I have violated my internal syntax but cannot shove the words back into my mouth. I say this as a pretty staunch descriptivist. I will not bat an eye when someone says "me and Joseph went to the supermarket" and in fact regard it as the only sane unmarked way of doing it. It doesn't bother me in the least when someone uses double negatives (or negative concord if you will) or misusing the subjunctive, not declining who, etc. Perhaps my case is atypical, but I believe most English speakers are like me (alas the common fallacy!) and inflect for number. Cainntear, I don't want to dismiss your data out of hand, do you think you could tell me which corpus you're using? I'd love to convince myself that I'm wrong about this. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6555 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 64 of 122 23 December 2010 at 1:42am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I believe he's also saying no matter what method people use, he who spends the most time will advance the furthest. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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