Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 May 7

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[edit] May 7

[edit] how to speak english

I would like to speak english fluently but still I can't is there any easy way to lean how to speak english very well? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.55.65.107 (talk) 11:31, 7 May 2007 (UTC).

The easiest way to learn any language is to hear it. Do you often talk to people who speak english? Do you go to English classes? If you do not, then there really is no "easy" way. I suggest reading many English textbooks and using internet resources. I am learning Ancient Greek that way. I am sorry I can't help any more.Storeye 11:44, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
I think that hearing a language is not enough if you want to speak it well. For that, you have to speak it. The best way to learn a language is to spend time in an environment where others are speaking that language fluently. If you can possibly spend time in an English-speaking country, that would be best. Short of that, you might try working in the tourist industry or some other context where you will frequently run into English speakers. Marco polo 14:11, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

If you don't have a chance to speak it very often, while your typing, speak the words. That may help over a period of time. (AQu01rius • Talk) 17:21, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I have spent 4 years teaching English to Nepalese students and I tell them that the more ways you experience the language, the faster you will learn it. Read English for twenty minutes a day. Write English for twenty minutes a day. Speak English for twenty minutes a day. Listen to English for twenty minutes a day. In this way you are getting input from four different learning pathways. Each language can be compared to a style of music, getting the intonation, cadence and pitch is as important as the vocabulary. Idiom and colloquillism are especially important and listening to radio and television, and asking about usage that you don't understand can be very helpful with this. Also, concentrate on major differences between your native language and English. An example is the Nepali language, which does not use articles before nouns, thus saying, 'the' book, 'a' pencil, 'an' elephant, do not come naturally.--killing sparrows (chirp!) 18:23, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

In my teens I gained considerable fluency in French, and in retrospect I believe Asterix deserves much of the credit. What would be a good analogue for English? —Tamfang 19:09, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

English translations of Asterix? Or Tintin? -Elmer Clark 22:31, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jon English, and a dentist in Zagreb

Heya,
See this Jon English article edit.
I have almost no Dutch and no Croatian.... Mmmm... what's a better translation of 'Tražim zubara, Gdje je?' than simply "I need a dentist"? --Shirt58 13:33, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

It looks to me like, "I need a dentist; where is one?" However, this is based on my limited knowledge of other Slavic languages and may not be quite right. Marco polo 14:08, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Translation confirmed, but... I don't see the relevance, and Wikipedia is the only GHit for the phrase. That contrib is better undone... Duja► 14:31, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your help, MP and Duja. When I read the article, though it stayed around for a while I was pretty sure the contrib was nonsense. It has been removed.
Still, I just thought I should check. Relevance? None at all, as it turns out. Mmm... dear old Jon English is multi-talented, and does have kind of scraggly teeth ... might he have been in a Croatian-langauge rock-opera about dentists? Well, very unlikely, but no harm in asking. (See also: the Google cache of a Dutch-Croatian phrase-book).
Enough silliness. Thank you again, MP and Duja.--Shirt58 11:44, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Esperanto - How hard to learn

Some days ago, there was a question what is the Easiest/Hardest language to learn. An answer was, that the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California had statistics how long it takes, to teach a language to bring students to a certain level of proficiency. Are there similar numbers for Esperanto, is it really an easy language like it was designed? --141.35.20.90 15:08, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

It's a regular language in many respects (as it was designed to be), but regularity doesn't mean that it's trivial to learn -- you still have to learn vocabulary, inflections, and rules of grammar (such as adjectives agreeing in case and number with nouns). AnonMoos 17:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Esperanto grammar is very simple and regular and anyone can learn it in a few days. The vocabulary is often difficult to learn, particularly for speakers of non-Indo-European languages. One advantage of the regularity is that once you learn a noun you also have an adjective, a verb and an adverb, just by changing the word endings. --Tony Sidaway 17:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
The existence of two cases would present some difficulties to English speakers, but less so than the gender systems of "easy" European languages such as Spanish, where gender is not always predictable. So I'd say that it is a relatively easy language for English speakers. That said, whether a language is easy or not depends on one's native language and how different it is from the target language. I don't think that Esperanto would be easy for speakers of, say, Chinese. Marco polo 18:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
No language is equally easy for everyone (though Loglan might come close if its vocabulary were random rather than democratic). Esperanto is not as easy for Chinese students as for (say) Italian students, but it is easier for Chinese learners than other European languages. —Tamfang 19:02, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes. After several hours of study in the past weeks, I found that Esperanto word roots are hardly predictable for me. I speak English at a decent level and has been learning German for several months. I can sporadically spot word roots that are from these 2 languages, and it does help. So far, the biggest problem for me is word order. I don't seem to have got used to free word order. Chinese word order is very strict. And yes, I also have problems listening to plural nouns because the plural marker, -j, is clear to my ears. Chinese denotes plurals by adding measure words and determiners, rather than modifying the nouns. It is not inflected at all!--Fitzwilliam 04:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Experanto morphology is very simple and regular, and can be learned quickly. Esperanto grammar is (with a few exceptions) Standard Average European, so most of it comes readily to speakers of European languages, but not necessarily so easily to speakers of other languages. Marco Polo has pointed out that English speakers may have difficulty with cases, but, to take a very obvious example, Esperanto shares with most European languages that number is obligatory. This is not restricted to languages of Europe, but there are many languages in which number is more or less completely optional. --ColinFine 20:30, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comma's

I remember being told in High School English at St. Helena's in the Bronx NY that a comma denoted a change of thought in a sentence, that is, to separate TWO distinct thoughts, could someone verify this, I have tried many time to verify this particular view, to no avail, thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 208.199.22.248 (talk) 21:02, 7 May 2007 (UTC).

It is hard to define what "distinct thoughts" means, and therefore this does not appear to be a useable rule. In fact, wouldn't distinct thoughts typically be expressed in different sentences, separate by a full stop or other sentence delimiter? While sometimes commas may separate parts of a single sentence that could be considered distinct thoughts, it is much more likely that the purpose will be served by a semicolon (to separate parts that could also function as sentences on their own) or a dash (to set off a parenthetical remark). Commas as punctuation serve a large variety of purposes, about which you can read more in our article Comma (punctuation).  --LambiamTalk 21:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
A comma is a way to signal a pause you would make in speech; depending on the kind of pause made (and depending on the sentence structure) you might use a colon or semicolon or dashes or parentheses instead. So in a nutshell: it isn't really based on thoughts. We actually use full stops for that. --Kjoonlee 22:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
And IMHO, "thoughts" in this case is just a way of avoiding saying, "Sentences end with a full stop. Don't create run-on sentences." --Kjoonlee 22:09, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Comma use is much more complex than that. New writers often err in using it as "a way to signal a pause you would make in speech" or "a break in thought"; writers who do this often leave off commas that are grammatically necessary and add ones that are unnecessary. This makes their prose appear uneducated, stilted, and often confusing to the reader. In fact, the number one way to make your prose look bad (and often even make it difficult to understand) is to use commas improperly based on some simple rule.
It's made even more difficult by the fact that comma use differs from region to region. I often see sentences like this on Wikipedia:
"The dog failed to bark in the nighttime, however he did wag his tail."
That makes me scream (figuratively) NO NO NO NO!!! because in proper Canadian English the word "however" used in this manner MUST have a semi-colon or a period before it and a comma afterwards. No exception, no discussion. But the above sentence is perfectly good British English. --Charlene 01:09, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
That sounds pretty categorical, Charlene. I thought the Canadians were a little more phlegmatic than that. :) The word "however" is widely used as a synonym for "but". "But" requires no semi-colon or period before it; a comma is more usual, but even that's not mandatory. Indeed, many would say it should never start a sentence, so it cannot possibly be preceded by a period. But I disagree with them. JackofOz 11:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Charlene, by "depending on the kind of pause made (and depending on the sentence structure) you might use a colon or semicolon or dashes or parentheses instead" I think I pointed out that a comma is not just a pause; it can also give semantic syntactic cues. BTW, I speak British English but I find your example awkward. --Kjoonlee 16:38, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
The most annoying comma usage I see on Wikipedia is what I call the "Shatner comma", that is, a comma inserted directly between subject and verb. I see more and more of these every day, usually in longer sentences that are missing commas in other places. It's like the writer knew a comma belonged somewhere, but couldn't figure where, so just stuck one in the least appropriate place. — Laura Scudder ☎ 22:17, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh dear God, look at that apostrophe! Why is it there, WHY? Aaadddaaammm 03:41, 11 May 2007 (UTC)