Jose Carillo's English Forum
English Grammar and Usage Problems => Use and Misuse => Topic started by: maxsims on August 16, 2009, 02:55:40 PM
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Last week, i was conversing with my Filipina ward on the internet when she stated (about her son), "He want his dinner".
I pointed out that the pronoun was singular and therefore the verb should be likewise, giving "He wants his dinner".
A couple of minutes later, she stated, "Now he don't wants his dinner".
I was temporarily thrown.
Is there any other language where the form of the verb changes as much as it does in English?
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I know two: Spanish and French--and possibly also Portuguese. I earned 12 units for Spanish in college but never got to properly conjugate its verbs, which to my recollection inflect as many times as a chameleon changes its colors; in short, I never got to speak it. As to French, I never even got started to learn it although it was such a fervent desire on my part at least to speak French for, well, romancing purposes--even if I couldn't figure out how to spell its words properly. One time in high school, in fact, I thought my English teacher was kidding the class when she wrote the the words "Francois de La Rochefoucauld" on the blackboard, telling us that he was such a brainy Frenchman, but she kept on talking about somebody named "Pransschwa Laroshfuko" instead! In my simple mind, I concluded then that the French didn't know how to spell. ;D
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Well, Joe, it isn't yet late to learn to conjugate Spanish verbs.
I can always assist---for free---no fee. Mabuhay, Filipinas!
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Please...Hill. Just "free".
;D
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Haaaaay, Joe....of course, "just free"....I thought it "rhymed" well, ha ha.
What's up over there? It's still very very hot over here. I just got back
from the "mercadillo" or flea market. Cheers! ;D
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That's most gracious of you, Hill, but no, thanks! I think it's rather late in the day for me to learn Spanish with enough facility. But you'd be glad to know that a daughter of mine--she's 27--is studying the Spanish language very seriously. Someone had implanted in her head that she should make herself proficient enough in the language so she can read and enjoy Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote de la Mancha in the original Spanish. That's supposed to be a most rewarding reading experience that any well-educated person shouldn't miss. As for me, though, I have the English translation and I have been goading myself for the past two years to go beyond the first 12 chapters or so, but to no avail. It's good reading, no doubt, but I must admit I no longer have the energy to read for very long stretches.
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Talking about languages, I'd like to compare some of the wonderful languages I heard or been hearing these years....
I had a pleasant day yesterday just watching at Youtube "My Fair Lady". The scenes, divided into various segments had some dubbed in Italian, which I think sounded more like Spanish than French. I felt happy recognizing a lot of the words due to my background in Spanish ;) . (Aha!, now I can see the advantage ;D) . I realized, if there's pressure to learn a language, you'd be pushed to learn it in no time at all. I speak English at work and at home, so I never learn Japanese even at the conversation level :'(. As for my French....When did I try to learn French? ::) Oh, I think, when I was tutoring French nuns with basic English conversation skills back in the 80's. They wanted to use a bilingual French-English book, so I had no choice but to use the same book and got myself exposed to the language of the "aristocrats".
These past 5 years, my Brazilian friend, who would often chat with another friend over the phone while I set the brewed coffee on the table, has been giving me somewhat an indirect lesson in Portuguese. My kids as well get mesmerized by her loud pronunciation of Portuguese, with occasional giggles and guffaws ::). When she leaves, I'd check Youtube for additional lessons in POrtuguese. this language sounds like French and Spanish, but the endings make it more Spanish sounding.
I also wanted to learn more languages through friends, but too bad, my Russian friend for 3 years has already left for home for good. I could always hear her talk to her son with the -ish, -ish endings. Quite sweet, but this language loses its appeal because the speaker always spoke in angry, agitated tones (or was it just my friend?). Like my German friend's intonation, her accent could make any language sound not-so-romantic.
A few years back, a Mexican friend gave us a Spanish course for 3 months in exchange for my English lesson for her girlfriend. The Mexican spoke Spanish, but his Spanish was somewhat different from the Spanish I knew;lots of vocabs are different as well the pronunciation of some words. He pronounced "Castillo" as "kas-tid-yo". Hill, do you know about the other differences between Mexican Spanish and Spanish Spanish?
I have lots of other experiences meeting people who speak other languages. So far, I find Spanish as the most romantic of all (perhaps, the intonation helps?) I could find just one romantic word in Japanase....anata. you....
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You were teaching French nuns in the 80's? Madgirl09 if I may ask how old are you ;)
In my case, I was forced to learn Arabic when I worked in the Middle East. Luckily it didn't have strict grammar rules so you can just do your worse and anyway is ok. In four months I could negotiate and argue with Arabs.
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pragmatics...don't ask women their true age! well, not yet a senior citizen, and still have a long long way to go up the ladder of learning, I am below 50 :-X, dear renz....thank god, students in the philippines graduate early. i earned my BS degree at the age of 19. i'm sure you are 50 + now having joined that saudi boom in the 80's/ 90's...NO? i'm a late bloomer :'(... you know...
but japan keeps reminding us of our age; the other day, i received a letter from the government pension office asking me to confirm their calculation of my pension benefits...OUCH! in 20 years time, more than half of japan's population will be over 65 :o. OMG! time to go back home then. end of age conversation ;D.
one variety of english that is so easy to learn is papua new guinea pidgin english. but because pidgin english really sounds funny (to me), every time i heard locals speak pidgin, i always thought they're making jokes.
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Dear Madgirl09,
Kindly explain why "age" is still a big feminine issue even in this day and age ;)
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the same reason why the only business not affected by economic downturn is cosmetics! the drive to search for eternal youth potion goes on. did you know that it's this anti-aging cream that consumes much of women's regular personal budget? facebook and twitter secret topics reveal word-of-mouth ads on the most effective cream ever invented---- an extract from rice! and this secret spreads across continents; my cousins in canada doesn't stop asking me to find more of this in japan as it is so precious in canada. so why do many business people get stuck at automotive business when the sure dollar-earner is this youth cream? okay, to answer your question with a question---why do men like younger women? ???
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Madgirl09, you know more younger women wear less or no make up at all and are not so conscious about their looks unlike women from ... ehhh...earlier eras :D In fact, I see some who are seemingly haggard looking and aren't too bothered by it.
Signs of the times perhaps? What could this tell us about the way generations have evolved? Is this a manifestation of a shift in values and attitudes, but how exactly?
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i also didn't wear any make-up in my teenage years and before 30. simply because there was nothing to hide :D. it's not true that the past generations were not as conscious of their looks as the current is now. (i collect vintage items, and many of these are compact cases for face powders ;D). it's just that, women's life span is getting longer and older; women before just didn't have to worry about aging (they died young). cosmetics is as old as civilization (just what did they use to preserve the mummies?).
while there's no end rationalizing, i see some points here....current trends in women's lifestyle reflect their attempt to control the harshness of modern life, financial pressures and emerging multiple roles in the society. even in japan, women's lives are gradually changing. not only filipino women now work as office worker, mother, wife, student, community organizer, neighbor, etc...but also japanese women who used to think that marrying was an end to their multiple roles in the society. recently, when the economic downturn forced many of the heads of the family stay at home or scour the business streets for new jobs, it's when there's sudden increase in "lipsticks" sales. women laid off from their jobs grabbed this opportunity to secure a position in this reviving sector- AVON ladies!.
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Ahh..girls.
What has all this to do with English use and misuse?
>:(
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max, please correct "your ward" of any repeated errors in english usage. sometimes, when women meet each other, we check whether our englishes have improved or not...and we say: "hey, after being married to a foreigner for years, your english has not improved a bit (ahhh) ;D
same as my hubby's case; although my japanese husband has achieved an A score at TOEIC, he has stopped improving since then. we speak to each other just a few minutes every day.
the other day, at the ALT seminar, one Filipino lady was desperate to improve her english, and so asked me how she could possibly acquire an american or british accent. luckily, she's single, so i said, finding a native speaker of english as a boyfriend would suffice for now... ::) agree or disagree?
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Depends on the particular accent she wishes to acquire! As you girls are qucik to point out, there are some speakers of English you wouldn't want to know! ;D
(I am not one of them, by the way!) ::)
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i advised them to just listen to the english eagle 810 radio round the clock. that's our US base radio service at AM bandwidth...free. as for me, i kind of miss aussie accent. i worked with australian bosses and colleagues for 4 years...but maybe, i had adopted quite a few of their twang, and lost it eventually after 10 years of life in japan. :'( what's funny was that, sometimes, i'm mixing up american and british/aussie word spelling, like licence/ license, behaviour/behavior...and i always have to give the japanese learners the correct american spelling, their preferred variety. :'( it is hard to keep shifting from accent to another accent, and moving from one continent to another. in png where the english and school materials used were australian, i always had to go to cairns and brisbane on sch. breaks for short studies in order to catch up; on long vacations, take proficiency courses in UK. what's funny was that, i learned more history than english...and rediscovered the historical sites in britain :D. oh, i love english...it takes me to various places. ;)
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Believe it or not Maxims putting on cosmetics is part of communication. In fact, this is taught in finishing schools like Cora Delaroso and John Robert Powers here in the country. This is also an important part in flight attendant training I'm sure.
Finishing schools were supposed to teach social graces, proper communication, and even executive skills. Cosmetics is part of the "power dressing" concept where an individual dresses up properly before attending business functions, formal occasions, etc. in order to create the desired results by way of commanding respect.
Come to think of it, are finishing schools still relevant today? Or let me put it this way, are they still in business with the same training programs or have they evolved and offered other services to survive in today's market realities?
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Madgirl09, if you are refering to the US Armed Forces radio then maybe listeners could familiarize themselves with American English while they listen to cowboy music; how servicemen could relocate with their family; which resorts they could visit in Hawaii; what documents to fill up before a serviceman gets deployed to combat; the dental benefits of dependents; how to cope with battlefield stress and so on.
I wonder how students of English will enjoy listening to that station. Alternatively, they could listen to radio news programs on VOA (Voice of America) or the BBC.
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oh no, this radio is superb, especially on weekends when students could hear very natural english. dr. laura slazenger's time is wonderfully entertaining and enlightening not only to me and hubby but students of various levels listening to interesting conversations, etc. on saturdays, my students who drive enjoy the wacky chats between the automotve experts cracking jokes and anecdotes. the station connects on air live stations in the US of A. i love this radio station. just 20 % is japan life.
as for cosmetics, i always tell my trainee teachers to wear bright lipsticks when they teach, as students lip read their talk during lessons. lipsticks help a lot in pronunciation and listening.
of course, i also remind them that they themselves are the number 1 visual/teaching aid. they must try to look like catherine zeta jones or phoebe cates...at least try to... ;D
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Good evening, Joe. So good to know your daughter is learning Spanish seriously. I wish I could say the same to some Filipinos living here. Somehow, they fail to realise the importance of learning a major language. But how can they when they watch TFC everyday, 24 hours a day? I just learned about this when a Filipino builder whom we hired recently was here to repair our bathroom. He speaks Spanish since he surrounds himself with Spanish locals because of the nature of his job. To tell you the truth, when I first came here almost thirty years ago, I thought I'd never understand what these TV presenters were talking about...still, I sat down and began the renewed interest in the Castillan language knowing that learning another language is a skill. Here in my hometown, people speak numerous languages at the same time, especially when you're sitting in pavement cafes, a very common scene in many European cities. Sadly, I don't get to speak the language everyday since my British husband doesn't speak it.
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Good evening, Madgirl,
Greetings from Spain.
You asked about the difference between Mexican Spanish and Castillan Spanish.
Having met a few South Americans (some of them come for English lessons) the
difference would be the pronunciation. The letter Z in Spain is pronounced, "th" as in "theta",
whereas, the South Americans and Mexicans pronounce it simply as "zed". The
nuances too are somewhat different. The accent too can be confusing. Overall, the
grammar and construction wouldn't be dissimilar. As for the Andalucian region where I live,
the accent is totally different from those of the north of Spain. Andalucians, although they
speak proper Castillan, they drop the letter "s" as in "lune", marte, miercole...." which irks me
since Andaluzes spell these words they way they pronounce them. For example, Madrilenos
have a rather "posh" lilt, whereas Sevillanos or Malaguenos would be somehow foreign-sounding at first
especially those who are learning basic Castillan for the first time. But one gets used to it though.
I'm sure you will , once you get the nuances and the accent.
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Hello, Max,
We can't be too serious all the time. We need to break the monotony from time to time and have
some genuine fun. Learning a language can be quite boring. I learned to understand
those students coming to me for English lessons that they do get bored and I understand
why, especially when they come at 4'oclock in the afternoon---when human beings are
mentally "slower". ;D 8) ::)
Yesterday, while having lunch at our usual Chinese restaurant, the mother of one of the
students who also owns the restaurant approached me if I could teach her son, again.
However, the subjects she mentioned were History, Philosophy, Spanish language and
Science. I said yes, but Science isn't my cup of tea. Her son is a genius at maths but according
to her, he has been lagging behind: two years in fact. The son is a bit hesitant since he's
all grown up! What I was surprised about was when he said that in Philosophy class, the
teacher doesn't provide books. That now defeats the purpose, right, since philosophy requires
physical presence in the absence of textbooks. As for Science, I said, "no thank you..." I mean,
who am I to teach Science? I flunked my Physics. Anyway, maths is his forte. I await the son's
confirmation.
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Hi Hill, Thanks for your short lecture ;). I am back to reviewing my Spanish. There's a Spanish man who recently contacted us in Spanish through our community blog. Apparently, our villages (his Spanish town and our Phil village) share the same name. Our community was believed to have been named after one Spaniard's hometown. The Spaniard, surveying our community way back during the Spanish era, found similarities between his native town and ours. One of the descendants of that town in Spain is now interested to know more about our place and its history. I'm happy to have understood and replied to his short query. My late grandmother was half Spanish; some of my grandfather's ancestry was also Spanish. I guess, I also need to travel to Spain someday ;D.
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I think that our Spanish colonizers had made us Filipinos more Spanish-minded than we usually think. This dawned on me when I picked up and bought an old, old hardcover book a few years back from a thrift shop in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, up north in Luzon. The book, Blood and Sand by Vicente Blasco Ybañez, was immensely good and instructive reading not only about the Spanish mind but also about the Filipino psyche. Indeed, when I read that book about bullfights and the life of bullfighters in Spain, I was astounded that it was almost the same as reading about the Philippines in terms of people's names, names of provinces and towns, names of town districts and streets, objects of excessive religious veneration, fiestas and other forms of festivities--everything, in fact, except the bullfights. For instance, all the while I had thought that place names like "Pritil" and "Tetuan" are names indigenous to pre-Hispanic Manila and Zamboanga; from Ybañez's book I was to discover that they are actually names of Spanish towns! After reading Blood and Sand, it was no longer a surprise to me that practically every major provincial district and town and sitio and street in the Philippines is named after a Roman Catholic saint. Most of northern Spain, except perhaps some parts that the Moors had occupied for centuries along with southern Spain, is in fact like that--Roman Catholic through and through in social, cultural, and religious trappings. The Spanish friars had simply tried to replicate Spain in its 7,100-colony in the Pacific for almost 400 years and were immensely successful in the effort! Too bad that they didn't think that the Indios were deserving as well of speaking the Castilian language! And this, I think, largely explains why we Filipinos are the way we are today.
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Hello Joe,
I'm so glad we've "accidentally" integrated snippets of our motherland's Castillan language in this forum. Anyway, I just thought I'd let you know that "Tetuan" is a city in northern Morocco. As for
|Morocco itself, one can go by boat from Algeciras which takes only under two hours. I hope someday you and your wife would be able to do this romantic trip. Morocco is one of the safest Muslim countries around, and one of the most modern. (Algeciras is a beautiful coastal town, very clean and orderly in Cadiz province.) When you visit the EU, you can do North Africa since this is
near (to) Andalucia than Madrid, can you believe that? Cheers!
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Hi Madgirl,
It would be nice to see you in Spain one of these days. So, your grandma was half-Spanish. Well, my paternal grandfather was half-Spanish from the Basque region. Here are the top five Spanish cities I'd recommend when you come: Madrid, Sevilla, Toledo, Oviedo, Salamanca. But if you only fancy beaches, come down to the Costa del Sol although not many people know that Malaga has a rich cultural history too. Pablo Picasso was born here and he has a museum right in town. Granada and Cordoba are next-door provinces and these two are very rich in culture. Hopefully, you'd be able to see these gorgeous places within the next two years, yes?
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Oh, yes, about five years ago, I was searching the net for the cheapest Spanish course with a homestay package. My adult students studying English were also interested to venture into any Spanish city, and they wanted me to be their tour guide ;D. It's sad, my kids were still very young, so we just looked for a Spanish/Mexican teacher around (luckily found a Mexican on a scholarship here in Japan) to give us a short course. That was just three months, but we needed a replacement tutor when the guy suddenly got married :'(...so end of our Spanish study.
I want to try Madrid in the future (Hmmn, I wonder why my grandmother's maiden name was La Madrid/Lamadrid). I guess, she never asked her father what their Spanish homecity was. But maybe, if I ask her younger cousins, they could tell.
We also have a sister city in Spain (Sagunto...errr, I forgot the province), and my cousin and I are wishing we could pay that place a visit in the future. Gosh, there are so many Roman structures, something like the colosseum, even in a small city like Sagunto, Spain. Their website shows lots of historical sites.
Actually, my cousins just gave me one Spanish article to translate again, but it is too long to try transcribing in one sitting (...and I am two term papers late in my grad. course, ... :'(sigh). I have a Spanish picture dictionary, too simple to refer to in this formal translation job :'(.
Hill, do you know of any online Spanish dictionary?
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Hi, Madgirl,
You can probably find it in a multinational bookstore. Try Collins Spanish dictionary. It's what I use but it's a pocket dictionary...the proper one is expensive. It cost around €40-50...I would suggest memorising Spanish verbs...five a day, then start conjugating. There's so much to learn. I still open the Spanish dictionary to learn a few words/verbs each day. In the past, I'd even take it to the bathroom when I sat on the throne! ;D Also, I read Hola magazine, watch Spanish afternoon films during weekends, listen to the radio in the morning while memory is still fresh. There are indeed many ways to learn Spanish, or other languages for that matter. Above all, the interest must be clearly paramount. Otherwise, it's going to be a lost cause. In my case, it wasn't so much interest but necessity in case we got sick and my husbandwasn't capable of communicating with the family doctor, or when there are accidents, I can explain to the cops what just happened, or haggling in shops, defending our domain, etc. Yes, Madgirl, I had to drag myself to the table daily, in the past, to learn the language properly, four hours a day, by myself. Lonely, lonely. At times, I still fluff my lines!! ::)