BWL

Apologies for bumping this thread. Here's the eternal question: How many different accents are there in the United States?

Apparently, more than 15 of them!

One of the most apparent differences between North American English and many (but not all) British dialects is the pronunciation of syllabic final 'R'. Most American accents are rhotic (except in some areas in the Northeast and eastern seaboard like New York and New England and in the South like parts of Georgia and New Orleans) and speakers pronounce the 'R' in words like, "bar", "car", "bird" etc. Many English accents (but not necessarily all of them), as well as the accents of Australia and New Zealand tend to be non-rhotic, meaning the 'R' at the ends of syllables are silent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English

How did this situtation arise? Here's a tantalising clue, Elizabethan English in London and the South of England; meaning the language spoken during the time of Shakespeare and in which he wrote his famous plays and sonnets, was rhotic.

Shakespeare's original pronunciation sounded a little bit like how modern West Country people speak in the UK and it does sound eerily American as well. In the clip above, a comparison of modern RP and Elizabethan English pronunciation starts around 2:58 mins.

Apparently sometime around the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in London and other cities in the South of England, members of the aristocracy dropped their final 'R's and this then became the origin of a "posh" British accent. The R-dropping had already begun in informal speech much earlier but it was only around Jane Austen's time that it became a part of "proper" English.

American and Canadian (as well as many rural UK dialects) actually preserve some pronunciations that had become unfashionable among upper-class English people in Southern England more than two centuries ago.

I find turmeric to be a great booster. I use it a lot in curries and soups as well as in stir-fried foods. A friend of mine who's into Ayurvedic medicine swallows a turmeric pill a day. Not only has his memory improved but he claims that his swollen joints (he's an elderly gentleman suffering from gout) have become much less inflamed.

It's definitely a great way to learn Levantine Arabic while getting involved in a worthy cause! I think more programmes like this should be established elsewhere

I recently discovered NaTakallam: http://natakallam.com/

It's a startup that matches Arabic language students with native speakers living as refugees in Lebanon, most of whom are of Syrian origin. The project aims to help provide work opportunities for jobless Syrian refugees. Arabic language students who are keen to learn the colloquial Levantine dialect would definitely appreciate having the opportunity to learn from native speakers, besides making new friends from a totally different background from their own.

On 11/10/2015, 5:25:41, Saoirse said:

I have been subscribed to TG Lurgan for a few years now and they just keep getting better and better! I love the videos they put together too - I often get chills watching them, seeing all those young voices in unison as they help to preserve their language. I don't listen to much pop music in English but it is so lovely to have the option in Irish - otherwise our option is mainly folk music. I love traditional Irish music but it is high time for more variety in this language.

Some of my other favorite covers:

Fun. - Some Nights

Imagine Dragons - It's Time

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Can't Hold Us

Their rendition of 'Some Nights' in Gaelic sounds better than the original! I think it's because the song and melody itself has a hint of Celtic influence in the first place.

In Malaysia, where the English is definitely British-influenced, cheque book is the only way we spell it To "check" would be to "examine" or to "verify". 

One of the most effective ways to learn a language is through music. For me, while I was learning French by myself as a teenager, one of the first songs I heard was the incredibly beautiful "La Corrida" by Francis Cabrel (which also has lyrics in Spanish, by the way).

What French songs have you listened to that were useful to you while learning the language?

I had learned to read basic Chinese before hiragana, so after finding out that hiragana was invented over a thousand years ago by simplifying cursive Chinese characters, I just used their source characters as mnemonic devices. For example:

あ (a) was derived from the kanji 安 ('an' in Mandarin as well as in Japanese onyomi).

い (i) was derived from the kanji 以 ('yi' in Mandarin)

か (ka) was derived from the kanji 加 (pronounced 'jia' in Mandarin, but 'ka' in Fujianese, my native dialect) etc, etc

It was the highly stylised and squarish katakana that I had problems distinguishing when I first started studying Japanese rather than hiragana

If I'm not mistaken, I remember seeing instances where 'damit' (but never 'umzu', which must always be used with the same subject) could be used both in sentences with the same subject as well as different subjects in both clauses. I can't remember the exact example sentence I had read, it would be something like this: Ich bin ins Kino gegangen, damit ich mir den neuen Abenteuerfilm anschauen konnte.

The subject is 'ich' both in the main clause and the final. Would this sentence be grammatical?

I would love to hear what native speakers think  

Thanks!

On 13/10/2015, 6:43:23, FrenchFries said:

Cet été je suis allé au pays étranger: le Philippines. Ma famille y habite et je les vois rarement parce que j'habite aux États-Unis. Quand j'étais là, j'ai visité beaucoup de lieus célébré comme le centre commércial d'Asie. Aussi, j'ai rencontré la plupart de ma famille qui je ne connaissais pas avant. Mais maintenant, nous nous entendons bien et nous parlons souvent.

J'ai visité les Philippines il y a 5 ans. Beaucoup de choses à faire, la nourriture était superbe (malgré le manque de plats hyper pimentés comme je les préfère), plein d'endroits historiques à voir, et surtout les gens là-bas qui sont très gentils et accueillants. Ang Republika ng Pilipinas me manque!

On 29/07/2015, 8:17:56, CorieHens said:

From what I know, Chinese is the most spoken language. With the large population of China and add to that the Chinese-speaking Chinese outside of China, there's a lot than English speakers. Most countries I know have Chinatown like the Philippines, US, even in London there is Soho. So I really think that Chinese speakers are the majority in the world.

Apologies for bumping an old thread yes agreed, Chinese does have the largest number of native speakers of any human language. However, whether or not Chinese (specifically the Mandarin dialect) can replace English as a lingua franca, studied by millions of non-native speakers and be used for worldwide communication is debatable. For one, speakers of the world's top 10 most commonly-spoken languages (English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Hindi etc....) besides the Chinese dialects of course, all use alphabetic writing systems.Would they be willing to learn to read a language that uses a logographic writing system instead? Anyone can learn the ABC's or the Arabic Alif-Baa-Taa or the Hindi Ka-Kha-Ga in a few days or a couple of weeks at most, but learning to read even the most basic Chinese characters takes months and more advanced reading requires years of study.

It's certainly not impossible but it is a long shot, I think. (I'm a native Chinese speaker myself)

Mine is a little complicated, like for most Malaysians I grew up speaking a southern Chinese dialect and English. These I would certainly count as my "first languages" while I learned Malay (our official language) in kindergarten and primary school and was fully trilingual by the time I was 7 or so (not unusual in my country). I studied Japanese and French in university and picked up Mandarin (also commonly spoken in Malaysia) at work. My language-learning craze went out of control soon after

I forgot to add, besides the massive inventory of clicks, the !Xóõ language also has tones like Chinese, pharyngeal sounds like Arabic and glottalised ejective sounds like Georgian!

For hardcore language enthusiasts, I strongly recommend visiting the UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive : http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/

It has recordings of native speakers of hundreds of languages, even rarely heard ones like Eastern Arrernte, Oro Win and Itelmen!

There is even a word list of the now-extinct Ubykh language, yes the language that is supposed to have one of the largest number of sounds in the world. If you think learning Chinese or Arabic or Russian is difficult, wait till you hear the !Xóõ language from the Kalahari Desert. Yes, it's a Khoisan language with so different types of click sounds that at least two-thirds of the sounds in the language do not exist anywhere else except in Southern Africa.

I've met Benny personally and I must say that despite whatever criticism that may be levelled against him as a person, his methods seem to work, at least for some language learners. I do agree that while his methods are good for acquiring new vocabulary (and that the pinyin table is a good learners' guide) but his description of Mandarin pronunciation and tones is indeed lacking especially for new learners who are completely unfamiliar with Chinese dialects.

Wow that's quite a treasure trove!

I've been fascinated by the language since I heard the Amdo dialect while on a trip to China years ago. I was quite surprised to learn that the Lhasa dialect has tone (although less than in most Chinese dialects) while the Amdo dialect is atonal. Recently I had the opportunity to listen to someone speak Ladakhi and it sounds even more remote from Amdo dialect.

I'm definitely going to look through these materials!

Cheers!

For me, learning Japanese was a very interesting experience. I tried watching Japanese movies and anime while reading comics for children (well when you're an absolute beginner what better to start?). I find that being in a Japanese-speaking environment helps tremendously, just the fact that you need to use the language to get by in your daily life was a tremendous push, so to speak. The problem for me was that I wasn't living in a Japanese-speaking environment. Sure, I used to work for a Japanese firm in Malaysia, but talking to the boss and writing formal emails in Japanese was a whole new ballgame.

Part of the complexity of course is due to Japanese culture. The way you speak with your parents is totally different from the way you speak to your siblings and this in turn is different from the way you speak to a stranger, to your boss, to a client etc. English has this as well, only not as strictly codified. In Japanese grammar, if you do not know WHOM you are speaking with, you literally cannot conjugate verbs. A simple sentence like, "Where are you going?" can have 3 or more different forms depending on these socio-linguistic factors.

For me at least, being in a non-Japanese-speaking environment meant that I could learn all these different grammatical nuances from a textbook (and practice with a Japanse-speaking colleague, on one of those rare occasions when we get to sit down and talk ) but I did not have practical knowledge of when to apply them.

For example, in manga, when a male character gets hurt, he often says "iteeee!" ("ouch!"). This when said by a young male in an informal situation is fine but for women, for example, it is considered quite rude and "itai" must be used instead. In more formal situation forms like "itai desu" might be more appropriate etc. etc. Knowing when to use these different forms of a word is a mark of fluent Japanese.

Just my two cents worth ) In any case, good luck!

I first heard about this website while browsing through Youtube. It's called Phonemica:  http://phonemica.net/

Users can record short texts in their own dialects, in fact there are already several recordings from almost every region in China. The site was set up in an effort to help preserve China's various dialects and to serve as a linguistic record. I encourage Mandarin learners / speakers to start from the area around Beijing and slowly make their way south and see how far you can go until the language becomes unintelligible!

As a Tagalog-learner I always stick to Po/Opo, just to be safe Unless I'm chatting with really close friends, then I either switch to Ho/Oho or drop it altogether. No one seems to mind or perhaps their just being nice to a clueless foreigner

Thanks @pesic87 ! Everyone's a little bit different, and learning languages is quite a personal matter, some people prefer one technique over another. I think the important thing is to know yourself; what types of learning methods work best for you how you can incorporate them relevantly into your life. I have a Scandinavian friend who started learning Chinese because he was interested in learning how to cook authentic Chinese regional cuisine. He now speaks at least two Chinese dialects, so I guess having one hobby stimulate another worked to his advantage

Anyway, good luck on you language-learning adventure!

It's interesting, I have a friend from Mindanao who speaks Cebuano and he tells me that most people in his hometown try to avoid speaking Tagalog unless absolutely necessary. He says that most of his Cebuano speaking family and friends regard Filipino as nothing more than "glorified Tagalog"

Interesting topic. I think there is some parallels with what happened during the transition from Old English to Middle English and then to Modern English, where by the genitive was gradually lost and replaced by the preposition, "of". In the Romance languages,, the Latin genitive was lost entirely to be replaced by "de" and its variations. This seems to be a general trend in European languages.

I'm thinking of improving my Georgian (spoken in the Caucasus) and would be keen to teach English, French, Malay, Chinese in exchange. Any Georgians around ?

I've always had difficulties with gairaigo or words borrowed from English and other foreign languages that have been nativised in terms of pronunciation to fit Japanese phonology. "Lion" is written phonetically as 'raion" in katakana. imagine longer words like "sorubitooru" for "sorbitol". It always takes me a ridiculous amount of time to read and try to map out these sounds to match the original source words.