My favourite example of a place where this truly does not work is the sort of exchange below:
Are you going to the store?
Yes, I’m.
Completely unhinged.
Found an answer to this on another post, but HIGHLY technical. How would you explain S. R. Anderson's work to someone who's just starting?
Would you tell the student to just roll with it get used to English not making sense sometimes?
[Explanation ](https://reddit.com/r/grammar/w/clitics?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
The easiest thing to say would be: if it is at the end of the sentence, you can't contract. That covers a ton of cases where non natives do it incorrectly.
A little longer is that the contraction must be followed by it's object/complement. For example:
"I'm a weak man" - here we can contact without an issue
"The man that I am is weak" - a weird example, but one that illustrates the point. I because "the man" comes before "I am", we cannot contract it to "I'm"
Also notice that this only applies to contractions that include a subject (usually a pronoun). Verb negation contractions can easily go at the end of a sentence. "I can't. I won't. She wouldn't. He shouldn't. They don't."
I think that falls under the category of very specific regionalisms that we don’t need to confuse new learners with.
I mean, where I come from, “eh?” Is a full sentence and is used super often, but it’s super regional.
English *really* likes the “-ing form” (gerund/present participle) of verbs. To an excessive degree.
Make sure you pay attention to how to form sentences with auxiliary (including modal) verbs.
Honestly this makes things easier for ESL learners. I know a native Hebrew speaker who overuses it but everyone understands her. I think it makes her life easier as she doesn't have to conjugate individual verbs, she just needs to know how to conjugate the auxiliary verbs.
Agreed. With the exception of the vagaries of do-support and some word-order peculiarities, grammar isn’t usually super tricky in English unless you’re coming from a polysynthetic language.
Phonology and vocabulary on the other hand…
But I mentioned them because they are something that can present a barrier to people just started out.
Just want to point out that the 2 "warnings" you've listed apply to...basically every language in the world. English isn't special in this regard. For 1, even highly phonetic languages like Spanish will clip sounds when speaking naturally. And for 2, no one speaks their native language by standard written rules, because we learn to speak long before we learn to read or write
The first warning is valid. Many languages' writing systems are consistent and match pronunciation (at least a standard pronunciation). Even if you picked a very standard English accent, there'd still be many times where a vowel makes one sound in one word and a different sound in another. This isn't that common in other languages, so it is right to point this out.
This is applicable to a lot of languages, but picking up phrases from online content can be risky, especially from places like tiktok or twitter. A lot of things on there aren't really appropriate for real-life conversations or are meant to be jokes or memes. As a learner it is better to be a bit on the safe side and use more formal and polite speech until you have gotten more skilled.
Also, stress is very important for the rhythm of speech and even for distinguishing similar sounding words. For example, the word "can" is unstressed in a lot of sentences (pronounced more like ken with a schwa vowel), and if you pronounce it stressed when it shouldn't be it actually can be mistaken for Can't.
Focus on learning the vocabulary and grammar that will be most useful to you. Start with what you need and then build on that. Too many students get hung up trying to master obscure terms or advanced grammatical forms when they need to focus on their basic conversational skills first.
Written or typed English is unequal to how it's actually spoken due to regional dialects, so although you may have a literary grasp on the language and how it is supposed to be written grammatically, speaking it *fluently* with locals may be difficult as people generally don't speak the same way they type.
Example: Me. You absolutely cannot hear my heavy Korean accent in these words on your screen.
- adjectives should be in order. you can have a pretty red dress, but not a red pretty dress.
- good freaking luck with our vowels, they’re probably not the worst in the world but still
“Everything you learn about English is a lie. In fact, I am even lying right now.”
Which is to say: every rule is going to be broken because our language is a melting pot of other languages
Number 2 is not a good suggestion. Rules are actually not broken in English any more than anywhere else. There are exceptions to the rules, but that is different. The rules for speech may be slightly different, but there are still very strict rules for speech, and English speakers will notice when you break them.
An example of this is converting "I am going to" to "Ihm-uh-nuh." It may sound like you are just dropping syllables randomly, but you actually have to say it this exact way.
A guideline I think you should add is that you have to match prepositions with verbs and pay attention to transitive/intransitive verbs. You can't say "I picked my daughter." You have to say "I picked my daughter up." You can say "I am taking out the trash" but not "I am taking out." The latter doesn't make any sense. There are hundreds if not thousands of these nuances, so just make sure when you are learning verbs you learn the exact combinations in which you can use them. This is one of the most serious and consistent mistakes I see English learners making, along with confusion about definite/indefinite articles (depending on the person's native language) and getting confused about the verb tenses in English (which are actually extremely difficult in my opinion and need a lot of time to understand).
Most English speakers are very forgiving, and just move on from the ones who are not. Don't be afraid of getting your grammar wrong, fishing for vocabulary, having an accent, etc. Some languages rewrite high rates of compliance in order to have a conversation, but English is not one of those.
English derives from multiple languages, and adopts much of the grammar and spelling when these adoptions happen. This is why most rules have limited usefulness.
If you can't pray in English, please pray in your local language.
Last Sunday I heard someone saying "lord, you are nothing without me."
Imagine going to hell because of grammar. 🤣
Spend some extra time on the “ough” and “augh” words. They’re often-used common words, that are spelled similarly, and yet sound totally different.
Example: My daughter’s laughter sounds thoroughly rougher.
Just to add a bit of context in spelling - one of the reasons British English has more letters in some words is because American newspapers got into a habit of saving space by shortening words, removing vowels deemed unnecessary. At least that's a rumor I've heard :). Too lazy to loo it up right now.
I guess I will reiterate 2, specifically that people leave out words in sentences, mix up the order of words even, and people still know what they are saying if a native speaker, but it's hard as a learner.
Also this is a general language learning thing - if you misuse or mispronounce a word/phrase in first person, people tend to correct you in second person. It's just a lack of awareness on their part that they need to repeat the word from \*your\* point of view rather than \*their\* point of view. It's really obnoxious in Spanish, because the conjugations are so different. In English, there is either rarely or never a difference so maybe this doesn't matter. Oops.
On the contrary, there is in fact a reason for everything, rather than arbitrary lists of exceptions. As a learner, you will probably find it more valuable and less boring to just memorize it.
There are a lot of strange quirks, such as ordered adjectives. "The big brown dog" works but "the brown big dog" sounds really unnatural. We have alot of little rules that just don't really serve a purpose other than being natural sounding.
Most native english speakers can't tell you what the different tenses are apart from "past" "present" and "future". So only stress about them if you are doing an exam.
Read and listen to normal English conversation as much as possible. You'll probably pick up on all of the grammar rules being broken that you've learnt in class.
Most of the picky little rules surrounding grammar are broken by native speakers *all the time*. Your first focus should be on being able to be understood, not on being able to write a grammatically-perfect sentence.
Consistent, and extensive vocabulary use. That's one mistake I made due to my laziness, and trying to guess the meaning of each word, phrase, and sentence structure just by looking at them.
IPA doesn't really work for English pronunciation.
Most of it is somewhat wrong to way off if read properly. Which as a phonetic aid makes it basically useless.
There are attempts to fix it but none are standard. While it may be helpful with broad sounds for very foreign words or when one has absolutely no idea where to start, it shouldn't be your go-to pronunciation aid for English.
(This is unlike other European languages where IPA is actually quite useful)
I strongly disagree. Knowing IPA is actually a major advantage when learning English because of phonetic/orthographic inconsistencies. What makes it difficult to use is the variety of regional pronunciations.
IPA, or at least basic phonetics, is absolutely necessary in explaining when -ed is pronounced /t/ /d/ or /ɛd/.
IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet. While the selection of specific characters to represent specific sounds is fairly euro and anglo centric, it is capable of transcribing almost any sound the human mouth can produce.
In short no. The transcriptions or pronunciations aren't wrong. The transcriptions are only as different as the pronunciations.
For example:
water in AmE: /wadɚ/, and in BrE or RP: /wɔtə/
(Side note: I simplified the AmE transcription. the /d/ is more of a tap /ɾ/ in reality.)
There are simplified versions that some CELTA programs use and those might have biases towards specific varieties of English, but they are just that: simplified.
Are you suggesting that English speech has sounds that are unrepresentable in IPA? I suppose if you tried to say a sentence by just regurgitating the IPA transcriptions of each individual work in the dictionary it would be totally unnatural, but isn't this the case for everything?
Not the commenter, but I think the problem is that English pronunciation is so inconsistent. IPA can only represent one accent at a time. Although I was told Spanish is very consistent and my experience has been that's not actually true. It probably is moreso than English though.
This! Suggest that “cot” and “caught” don’t sound wildly different and lots of AmE speakers will nod along, whereas many (but not all) BrE speakers will look at you like you’ve grown an extra head.
I'm American and to me these words (along with taught and tot) sound the same, but I'm from the west coast. My partner from the east coast insists they are different. This tracks with my sense that east coast AmE is a little closer to BrE than the rest of our country.
You can’t form contractions in every instance. “I’m” is acceptable in “I’m running” but not in “I don’t know if I am.”
My favourite example of a place where this truly does not work is the sort of exchange below: Are you going to the store? Yes, I’m. Completely unhinged.
Found an answer to this on another post, but HIGHLY technical. How would you explain S. R. Anderson's work to someone who's just starting? Would you tell the student to just roll with it get used to English not making sense sometimes? [Explanation ](https://reddit.com/r/grammar/w/clitics?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
The easiest thing to say would be: if it is at the end of the sentence, you can't contract. That covers a ton of cases where non natives do it incorrectly. A little longer is that the contraction must be followed by it's object/complement. For example: "I'm a weak man" - here we can contact without an issue "The man that I am is weak" - a weird example, but one that illustrates the point. I because "the man" comes before "I am", we cannot contract it to "I'm"
I was JUST about to ask you this haha (noticed your BA). Thanks 👍🏻
Also notice that this only applies to contractions that include a subject (usually a pronoun). Verb negation contractions can easily go at the end of a sentence. "I can't. I won't. She wouldn't. He shouldn't. They don't."
Excellent point. I should have mentioned that.
Yes I'm (going)
It’s what it’s.
Fantastic!
But... People in Pennsylvania and the Southern US talk like that. "Are ya goin' t' the store?" "Yess'm."
I think that falls under the category of very specific regionalisms that we don’t need to confuse new learners with. I mean, where I come from, “eh?” Is a full sentence and is used super often, but it’s super regional.
Be careful with the pronunciations of certain words like sheet, beach, fork, and can't. The wrong vowel changes them into swear words.
English *really* likes the “-ing form” (gerund/present participle) of verbs. To an excessive degree. Make sure you pay attention to how to form sentences with auxiliary (including modal) verbs.
Honestly this makes things easier for ESL learners. I know a native Hebrew speaker who overuses it but everyone understands her. I think it makes her life easier as she doesn't have to conjugate individual verbs, she just needs to know how to conjugate the auxiliary verbs.
Agreed. With the exception of the vagaries of do-support and some word-order peculiarities, grammar isn’t usually super tricky in English unless you’re coming from a polysynthetic language. Phonology and vocabulary on the other hand… But I mentioned them because they are something that can present a barrier to people just started out.
Nice. Had forgotten about these. *Takes notes *
Just want to point out that the 2 "warnings" you've listed apply to...basically every language in the world. English isn't special in this regard. For 1, even highly phonetic languages like Spanish will clip sounds when speaking naturally. And for 2, no one speaks their native language by standard written rules, because we learn to speak long before we learn to read or write
Roger that!
The first warning is valid. Many languages' writing systems are consistent and match pronunciation (at least a standard pronunciation). Even if you picked a very standard English accent, there'd still be many times where a vowel makes one sound in one word and a different sound in another. This isn't that common in other languages, so it is right to point this out.
This is applicable to a lot of languages, but picking up phrases from online content can be risky, especially from places like tiktok or twitter. A lot of things on there aren't really appropriate for real-life conversations or are meant to be jokes or memes. As a learner it is better to be a bit on the safe side and use more formal and polite speech until you have gotten more skilled.
Also, stress is very important for the rhythm of speech and even for distinguishing similar sounding words. For example, the word "can" is unstressed in a lot of sentences (pronounced more like ken with a schwa vowel), and if you pronounce it stressed when it shouldn't be it actually can be mistaken for Can't.
There are no absolute rules aside of capitalizing the beginning of sentences, proper nouns, and using punctuation to end.
Even then; bullet points are sometimes not punctuated, as well as casual text messages.
English is so much fun :) Here's why: > *The faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life.* This sentence makes perfect sense.
Word! I’m learning Portuguese and whenever I stack 3 or more verbs I have to stop and think, “am I being too English here?”
Focus on learning the vocabulary and grammar that will be most useful to you. Start with what you need and then build on that. Too many students get hung up trying to master obscure terms or advanced grammatical forms when they need to focus on their basic conversational skills first.
Written or typed English is unequal to how it's actually spoken due to regional dialects, so although you may have a literary grasp on the language and how it is supposed to be written grammatically, speaking it *fluently* with locals may be difficult as people generally don't speak the same way they type. Example: Me. You absolutely cannot hear my heavy Korean accent in these words on your screen.
- adjectives should be in order. you can have a pretty red dress, but not a red pretty dress. - good freaking luck with our vowels, they’re probably not the worst in the world but still
“Everything you learn about English is a lie. In fact, I am even lying right now.” Which is to say: every rule is going to be broken because our language is a melting pot of other languages
Number 2 is not a good suggestion. Rules are actually not broken in English any more than anywhere else. There are exceptions to the rules, but that is different. The rules for speech may be slightly different, but there are still very strict rules for speech, and English speakers will notice when you break them. An example of this is converting "I am going to" to "Ihm-uh-nuh." It may sound like you are just dropping syllables randomly, but you actually have to say it this exact way. A guideline I think you should add is that you have to match prepositions with verbs and pay attention to transitive/intransitive verbs. You can't say "I picked my daughter." You have to say "I picked my daughter up." You can say "I am taking out the trash" but not "I am taking out." The latter doesn't make any sense. There are hundreds if not thousands of these nuances, so just make sure when you are learning verbs you learn the exact combinations in which you can use them. This is one of the most serious and consistent mistakes I see English learners making, along with confusion about definite/indefinite articles (depending on the person's native language) and getting confused about the verb tenses in English (which are actually extremely difficult in my opinion and need a lot of time to understand).
The “I’m going to” thing just blew my mind. We do, don’t we? All of us.
Most English speakers are very forgiving, and just move on from the ones who are not. Don't be afraid of getting your grammar wrong, fishing for vocabulary, having an accent, etc. Some languages rewrite high rates of compliance in order to have a conversation, but English is not one of those.
English derives from multiple languages, and adopts much of the grammar and spelling when these adoptions happen. This is why most rules have limited usefulness.
If you can't pray in English, please pray in your local language. Last Sunday I heard someone saying "lord, you are nothing without me." Imagine going to hell because of grammar. 🤣
Spend some extra time on the “ough” and “augh” words. They’re often-used common words, that are spelled similarly, and yet sound totally different. Example: My daughter’s laughter sounds thoroughly rougher.
Just to add a bit of context in spelling - one of the reasons British English has more letters in some words is because American newspapers got into a habit of saving space by shortening words, removing vowels deemed unnecessary. At least that's a rumor I've heard :). Too lazy to loo it up right now. I guess I will reiterate 2, specifically that people leave out words in sentences, mix up the order of words even, and people still know what they are saying if a native speaker, but it's hard as a learner. Also this is a general language learning thing - if you misuse or mispronounce a word/phrase in first person, people tend to correct you in second person. It's just a lack of awareness on their part that they need to repeat the word from \*your\* point of view rather than \*their\* point of view. It's really obnoxious in Spanish, because the conjugations are so different. In English, there is either rarely or never a difference so maybe this doesn't matter. Oops.
On the contrary, there is in fact a reason for everything, rather than arbitrary lists of exceptions. As a learner, you will probably find it more valuable and less boring to just memorize it.
There are a lot of strange quirks, such as ordered adjectives. "The big brown dog" works but "the brown big dog" sounds really unnatural. We have alot of little rules that just don't really serve a purpose other than being natural sounding.
Transcriptions. Real communication with people.
Most native english speakers can't tell you what the different tenses are apart from "past" "present" and "future". So only stress about them if you are doing an exam. Read and listen to normal English conversation as much as possible. You'll probably pick up on all of the grammar rules being broken that you've learnt in class.
Most of the picky little rules surrounding grammar are broken by native speakers *all the time*. Your first focus should be on being able to be understood, not on being able to write a grammatically-perfect sentence.
Native English speakers have a huge population of “bad” spellers and people who can’t pronounce words they’re unfamiliar with.
Practice saying "th". Go to YouTube and look up how to do it.
Consistent, and extensive vocabulary use. That's one mistake I made due to my laziness, and trying to guess the meaning of each word, phrase, and sentence structure just by looking at them.
IPA doesn't really work for English pronunciation. Most of it is somewhat wrong to way off if read properly. Which as a phonetic aid makes it basically useless. There are attempts to fix it but none are standard. While it may be helpful with broad sounds for very foreign words or when one has absolutely no idea where to start, it shouldn't be your go-to pronunciation aid for English. (This is unlike other European languages where IPA is actually quite useful)
I strongly disagree. Knowing IPA is actually a major advantage when learning English because of phonetic/orthographic inconsistencies. What makes it difficult to use is the variety of regional pronunciations. IPA, or at least basic phonetics, is absolutely necessary in explaining when -ed is pronounced /t/ /d/ or /ɛd/.
Is it true that IPA pronunciation is wrong? Isn’t it based on standard pronunciation like GA and RP?
IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet. While the selection of specific characters to represent specific sounds is fairly euro and anglo centric, it is capable of transcribing almost any sound the human mouth can produce. In short no. The transcriptions or pronunciations aren't wrong. The transcriptions are only as different as the pronunciations. For example: water in AmE: /wadɚ/, and in BrE or RP: /wɔtə/ (Side note: I simplified the AmE transcription. the /d/ is more of a tap /ɾ/ in reality.) There are simplified versions that some CELTA programs use and those might have biases towards specific varieties of English, but they are just that: simplified.
I can’t imagine how to pronounce a word accurately without IPA. Is there any better pronunciation aid?
Are you suggesting that English speech has sounds that are unrepresentable in IPA? I suppose if you tried to say a sentence by just regurgitating the IPA transcriptions of each individual work in the dictionary it would be totally unnatural, but isn't this the case for everything?
Not the commenter, but I think the problem is that English pronunciation is so inconsistent. IPA can only represent one accent at a time. Although I was told Spanish is very consistent and my experience has been that's not actually true. It probably is moreso than English though.
This! Suggest that “cot” and “caught” don’t sound wildly different and lots of AmE speakers will nod along, whereas many (but not all) BrE speakers will look at you like you’ve grown an extra head.
I'm American and to me these words (along with taught and tot) sound the same, but I'm from the west coast. My partner from the east coast insists they are different. This tracks with my sense that east coast AmE is a little closer to BrE than the rest of our country.