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US vs UK English for learners | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| paparaciii Diglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6337 days ago 204 posts - 223 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, Russian Studies: English | Message 41 of 136 06 May 2009 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6035 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 42 of 136 07 May 2009 at 1:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think the opposite is a more prominent problem - Americans perceiving the British accent(s) as effeminate. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5713 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 43 of 136 07 May 2009 at 4:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
English is a very heavily stressed language, so I don't see where you're going with this "even/uneven" stress thing....[/QUOTE] It's not supposed to be "very heavily stressed." I guess I should have said, "In general, I feel that English should be more evenly stressed than it is. ESPECIALLY nouns." It's supposed to be as evenly stressed as possible unless you're talking about initial-stress derivation which further substantiates my point. I can turn "record" into a verb by saying "reCORD." There are rules you have to follow though. To me, saying "adver-TISE-ment" sounds like some sort of bastardized version of the verb, not a noun. You're Scottish so I assume you use police/umbrella stress.. (PO-lice UM-brella). This is a deviation from the way I speak. What's so hard to understand about that? I don't speak French, I speak English. I don't say "Ber-NARD" I say "Bernard." I don't understand what's so hard to understand. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 44 of 136 07 May 2009 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The noun is REcord, the verb is reCORD. Both have a stressed syllable.
Where did you get that idea from? Like every other Scottish person I either say "poLICE and umBRElla" in English, or "POEliss" and "BROlly", if I'm using Scots.
French is a much more evenly stressed language than English. The BERnard/berNARD thing is an artefact of borrowing a foreign word into English, and is the same as GARage/garAGE. As I said, in French, stress is almost equal, but in English, stress is very heavy. This means that when we borrow a French word, we can choose which syllable gets the stress. GARage and BERnard are the result of choosing the "most English" stress. garAGE and berNARD are the result of something more subtle -- the ear that is used to hearing one set of stress patterns will exaggerate any differences. The English-speaking ear expects to hear GARage and hears GARAGE. The different bit is the age/AGE, so that's the bit that gets noticed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5713 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 45 of 136 07 May 2009 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Did you even think about that before you typed it? French has the common tendency to stress the last syllable (petit garçon)? Hence the American pronounced loanwords we were talking about. REcord (Sounds like southern country accent in the United States "REH-kurd") is pronounced different than record ("REH- CAWRD")which is pronounced different than reCORD. Perhaps that's something that you can't notice, but I certainly can. Excluding initial-stress derivation or bound inflectional or derivational elements, the word should be as evenly stressed as possible. It's a rule so it may have a few exceptions (John Wayne evenly stressed everything which gave him a unique way of speaking) but it is a rule. I know what you're attempting to say; you're saying I don't notice a stress in garage, but if you heard me say it you'd realize it sounds like I'm saying to distinct words. Gah-rudge. NOT guh-RODGE. NOT GAR-idge. Maybe one day I'll upload a soundbite. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| WFU03 Groupie Norway Joined 6676 days ago 62 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, French | Message 46 of 136 08 May 2009 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Rout,
Where did you get the "rule" that English words should be pronounced as evenly stressed as possible? I've never heard this rule in my life (and I've had several family members that taught English in schools). If you have any links that I could read, I would love to see them. I was under the impression, like Cainntear, that English is a heavily stressed language. In learning French, one of the first things you learn about pronunciation is to go away from the natural English tendency to stress different parts of words and instead give them an even stress throughout. Edited by WFU03 on 08 May 2009 at 10:45am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5713 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 47 of 136 08 May 2009 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You're right, I made the whole thing up. What does your family have to do with anything? If there are no rules then there is no wrong way to stress or pronounce a word, right? I stated the above rule on verbs and initial-stress derivation, to which the other end of the scope is the noun not throwing stress on some random syllable in the middle of the word, IMO. "Huh-RASS-ment" to me sounds like nails on a board. I don't want to sound like I'm tergiversating so I'm going to state as clear as possible what my point initially was. American English typically uses seemingly groundless rules for syllabic stress, or it tends to follow the original stress of the loan word. There has been a shift recently in English (and French) to become more and more unevenly stressed and I DON'T LIKE THAT. British English often has more conformity in its syllabic stress and to me sounds better. My accent is unmistakeably American, I use mostly American vocabulary but I think if I was living in England I would love to use more British vocabulary, I use British syllable stress. Therefore, I feel a mix between the two is not a bad thing at all. If you can't draw a conclusion from that then please ask your family members to clarify. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| WFU03 Groupie Norway Joined 6676 days ago 62 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, French | Message 48 of 136 08 May 2009 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I never said or implied that you made the whole thing up. All I did was mention that I was unfamiliar with the rule that you claimed (my family was relevant here because they did provide me with exposure to English language rules and grammar, having been teachers). I then asked if you could provide any support for this rule. I guess I will ask again. Do you have any support for this rule? A link to a guide on English stress or something of the sort? I also never said or implied that there were no rules, so I'm not sure where that came from. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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