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 #32 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 1:25 am What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| prezbucky wrote: |
...it's the Southern way of saying it.
to nearly everyone else, it's "LOO-ee-vil" |
Okay, let me try to put it into some approximation of IPA, in which @ will be the schwa.
Most Americans pronounce Louisville as [lu wi vIl]. It comes from Louis the king of France (don't now which one), whose name is pronounced [luwi], and "ville", which as an English suffix is pronounced [vIl].
People in Lousiville pronounce it [lu w@ v@l]. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #33 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 1:37 am What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
It comes from Louis the king of France (don't know which one), whose name is pronounced [luwi], and "ville", which as an English suffix is pronounced [vIl].
People in Lousiville pronounce it [lu w@ v@l]. |
It doesn't really matter, since nobody tries to render a perfect French pronunciation (which would probably sound incongruous). 'Louis' in French is [lui] (in two syllables and without the [w]) and the sound of 'ville' has no English equivalent (except for the 'v'). |
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Conchita
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| #34 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 1:41 am What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Conchita wrote: |
| and the sound of 'ville' has no English equivalent (except for the 'v'). |
Depending on the dialect, French "ville" is almost exactly like English "veal", except that our [l] is darker. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #35 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 20:50 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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Jamie
yep... ee-ih
vs.
uh-uh
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Prezbucky
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| #36 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 20:54 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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Re: ville/veal
...which would be the standard Latin-based pronunciation of "ville" -- with I pronounced as E
most Americans, faced with such words, pronounce them such that they rhyme with will, bill, pill, kill, sill, etc -- the I is IH (spelling the phoneme).
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Prezbucky
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| #37 (permalink) Sun Jan 07, 2007 17:39 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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Hi Jamie (K),
| Quote: |
| like English "veal", except that our [l] is darker. |
The dark [l] is prevalent only in some English dialects. And why do you say that 'our [l] is darker'? Do you mean that you and some others own the English language?
Englishuser |
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Englishuser
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| #38 (permalink) Mon Jan 08, 2007 5:19 am What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Englishuser wrote: |
| Quote: |
| like English "veal", except that our [l] is darker. |
The dark [l] is prevalent only in some English dialects. And why do you say that 'our [l] is darker'? Do you mean that you and some others own the English language? |
I have NEVER heard a native English speaker speak with an [l] that is as "bright" as the French [l], and I've heard native speakers from all over the world. That dark [l] may not be present in some dialects, but no English dialect I've ever heard, in or from North America, in or from the UK, from Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Jamaica or anywhere, has an [l] like the French one. They may not be what you would call dark, but they're certainly darker than in French. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #39 (permalink) Mon Jan 08, 2007 20:16 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Quote: |
| They may not be what you would call dark, but they're certainly darker than in French. |
You're probably right.
Englishuser |
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Englishuser
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| #40 (permalink) Tue Jan 23, 2007 13:36 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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I think one of most common mistakes here on our forum is to think that advice is countable. Unfortunately if you google 'an advice' you will find more than a million of results. It's really difficult to get people change their habit of saying 'an advice' into 'some advice'.
Any advice on how to accomplish this?
TOEIC listening, question-response: Which dates will you be on vacation? |
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Torsten
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| #41 (permalink) Tue Jan 23, 2007 22:13 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Torsten wrote: |
I think one of most common mistakes here on our forum is to think that advice is countable. Unfortunately if you google 'an advice' you will find more than a million of results. It's really difficult to get people change their habit of saying 'an advice' into 'some advice'.
Any advice on how to accomplish this? |
I just browbeat the students until they stop. :D
Another bad, annoying mistake is making "information" plural. Even though it's wrong, you get 350 million hits for "informations" on Google.
Another stinker is using "actual" instead of "current". If a student says to me something like, "Here is the actual newspaper," I respond, "And where is the fake one?" |
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Jamie (K)
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| #42 (permalink) Tue Jan 23, 2007 22:45 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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I just browbeat the students until they stop.
...no "brow" about it!
I bet you open up a can!
;)
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Prezbucky
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| #43 (permalink) Tue Jan 23, 2007 23:56 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Torsten wrote: |
It's really difficult to get people change their habit of saying 'an advice' into 'some advice'.
Any advice on how to accomplish this? |
If you want my piece of advice on this: people first have to change their way of thinking before they can assimilate these peculiarities of the English language!
Saying 'one advice/information/furniture' is perfectly accepted in a whole bunch of languages (by the way, in what language can’t you say that, apart from English?), so trying to erase or even challenge such deep-rooted concepts from their minds is no mean feat. |
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Conchita
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Torsten
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| #45 (permalink) Fri Mar 28, 2008 18:13 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Quote: |
| If you want my piece of advice on this: people first have to change their way of thinking before they can assimilate these peculiarities of the English language! |
It's the case when you are learning any language, for that matter. One encouraging aspect for non-native speakers of English, which I can think of off the top of my head, is not having to worry about the gender of nouns.
I think most of the European languages have genders. Even Hindi, widely spoken in India, has genders. It's very difficult for a non-native speaker to decide whether a thing is masculine or feminine.
In my native language, two words can sometimes combine to become another word which may sound a bit different from just putting the two words together. This doesn't come naturally to a non-native speaker.
I remember reading somewhere that some of the African languages have a click sound which only a native speaker can make while speaking.
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