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English as the universal language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| pfwillard Pro Member United States Joined 5699 days ago 169 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 33 of 206 22 October 2009 at 1:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
If pronunciation and grammar are not exact, you might find that you have said something quite surprising. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 34 of 206 25 October 2009 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
My wild guess here is that this is connected with the fact that English is your native language. Of course, Chinese morphology is also quite simple, depending of course on where you draw the line between syntax and morphology, but no language is particularly easy. As I've said before, I believe that Chinese is even more practical than English for saying the very simple things in life, because you can construct well formed sentences by just putting the verb and noun next to each other in a way that is impossible in most languages. "I" + "GO" + "STORE" (or even without the pronoun) may sound simplistic in Chinese, but in English you would sound like Tarzan. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 35 of 206 25 October 2009 at 12:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well, not really. Or at least not more so than in most languages. It is of course not true that spoken Chinese is much less redundant than any other language, you can make numerous mistakes and sitll be understood. Think about it, if X with the 4rd tone meant "beef" and X with the 1st meant "sunrise", anyone who is not afflicted with autism would guess your meaning when you sat down at a table and ordered "stir fried X1". When I lived in a village in China (completely free from English speakers) my friends completely ignored proper pronunciation of vowel and consonant sounds, and even tones to a very large extent, but managed quite well all the same, studying wushu, having long-term girlfriends, running a small export business etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 37 of 206 25 October 2009 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
My point is that in the context this is still quite irrelevant to the argument, considering that English is the UNoffical language of almost everything everywhere anyway.
-- The differences between "read, red, rid, etc." are pronunciation, not word accent or inflection. I have only taken one semester of Japanese, but examples given by my native-speaking instructor showed that misplacement can change both the meaning of what you are trying to say, and the way it is taken; forceful vs. respectful, apologetic vs. accusatory. etc. You don't have to take my word on it, but you should find out for yourself. [/QUOTE] Well, first of all, accent of course falls within the realm of pronunciation, as does inflection but I don't know what you have in mind there. It is true that there are several words that would be homophones if it weren't for different accents, like hashi "bridge" and hashi "chopsticks", but those words are not alarmingly numerous, it is often obvious from the context if you intend to eat the noodles with a bridge or chopsticks, and the accent is almost always different between the dialects, something that has not caused any breakdown in communications that I know of. The inflection of your voice will obviously affect the way people receive the message, but this is true in any language. Formality/informality and respectfulness is not signalled with inflection (more than in English) but rather by adding prefixes, using different words or different 'conjugations'. So you don't need to worry, you will probably not insult anyone inadvertently by using the wrong musical accent... Edited by Gusutafu on 25 October 2009 at 1:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5574 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 39 of 206 25 October 2009 at 3:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Word accent and inflection is pronunciation, particularly in the languages that we are talking about here. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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