英語べんきょう - toeic up!

08 Jun, 2008

Formal Written English

Posted by: Simon In: General| 英語| 英語学習

Formal written English is a version of the language that is used by educated English speakers around the world. It takes similar forms regardless of the local spoken dialect. In spoken English, there are a vast number of differences between dialects, accents, and varieties of slang. In contrast, local variations in the formal written version of the language are more limited.

While native speakers refer to American English, Australian English, British English or other varieties of English, and it is true that many regional differences between the forms of spoken English can be documented, the learner can easily fall into the trap of believing that these are different languages. They are instead mostly regional variations of the spoken language and such variations occur within these countries as well as between them.

The differences in formal writing that occur in the various parts of the English-speaking world are less pronounced.

To guide his students towards preferred constructions of written English, Paul Brians, a professor at Washington State, a west coast U.S. university, created a popular American Web site http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/ about errors in English. Certainly, disputes about pronunciation and colloquial expressions used in speech abound. Nevertheless, disputes about the written language are relatively few.

Differences in spelling such as “color” and “colour” arise more frequently, depending on the subject matter, but these cause no difficulty in comprehension. There are also some different grammatical usages such as the word ’shall’ describing the future, more common in British English, according to John Eastwood in his Oxford Practise Grammar.

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28 May, 2008

英語の母音 English Vowels

Posted by: Simon In: General| 英語

アメリカ英語や英国やニュージ英語 - 色々な英語があります。言葉も違うけど一番大きな違いはやぱり発音ですね。

それで母音の違いを分かりば色んな英語の鉛も分かる.

英語の発音と綴りの間の関係は、他のヨーロッパの言語と比べると一貫性に乏しい。これは主に中英語時代である15世紀初頭に始まり、近代英語初期である17世紀初頭に終わった大母音推移という現象にも関わらず、印刷技術が普及していたために綴りが固定化して基本的に変更が加えられなかったことに起因する。それ以前はnameはナーメと、 timeはティーメと綴り通り発音されていた(というよりも発音どおりに綴られていた)が、ネイムやタイムという発音に変化したにも関わらず、neimや taimなどと綴りが変更されることはなかったため、現在まで英語学習者を悩ませている綴りと発音の不一致が起きている。以下に発音規則を示すが、例外も多い。このことは、英語が他のヨーロッパ系言語から単語を借用する際に、多量の単語を元のつづりとあまり変えずに借用したことに起因する。

IPA Description word
monophthongs
i/iː Close front unrounded vowel bead
ɪ Near-close near-front unrounded vowel bid
ɛ Open-mid front unrounded vowel bed
æ Near-open front unrounded vowel bad
ɒ Open back rounded vowel box 1
ɔ/ɑ Open-mid back rounded vowel pawed 2
ɑ/ɑː Open back unrounded vowel bra
ʊ Near-close near-back vowel good
u/uː Close back rounded vowel booed
ʌ/ɐ/ɘ Open-mid back unrounded vowel, Near-open central vowel bud
ɝ/ɜː Open-mid central unrounded vowel bird 3
ə Schwa Rosa’s 4
ɨ Close central unrounded vowel roses 5
Diphthongs
e(ɪ)/eɪ Close-mid front unrounded vowel
Close front unrounded vowel
bayed 6
o(ʊ)/əʊ Close-mid back rounded vowel
Near-close near-back rounded vowel
bode 6
Open front unrounded vowel
Near-close near-front unrounded vowel
cry
Open front unrounded vowel
Near-close near-back rounded vowel
bough
ɔɪ Open-mid back rounded vowel
Close front unrounded vowel
boy
ʊɚ/ʊə Near-close near-back rounded vowel
Schwa
boor 9
ɛɚ/ɛə/eɚ Open-mid front unrounded vowel
Schwa
fair 10

Notes:

It is the vowels that differ most from region to region.

Where symbols appear in pairs, the first corresponds to American English, General American accent; the second corresponds to British English, Received Pronunciation.

  1. American English lacks this sound; words with this sound are pronounced with /ɑ/ or /ɔ/. See Lot-cloth split.
  2. Some dialects of North American English do not have this vowel. See Cot-caught merger.
  3. The North American variation of this sound is a rhotic vowel.
  4. Many speakers of North American English do not distinguish between these two unstressed vowels. For them, roses and Rosa’s are pronounced the same, and the symbol usually used is schwa /ə/.
  5. This sound is often transcribed with /i/ or with /ɪ/.
  6. The diphthongs /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ are monophthongal for many General American speakers, as /eː/ and /oː/.
  7. The letter <U> can represent either /u/ or the iotated vowel /ju/. In BRP, if this iotated vowel /ju/ occurs after /t/, /d/, /s/ or /z/, it often triggers palatalization of the preceding consonant, turning it to /ʨ/, /ʥ/, /ɕ/ and /ʑ/ respectively, as in tune, during, sugar, and azure. In American English, palatalization does not generally happen unless the /ju/ is followed by r, with the result that /(t, d,s, z)jur/ turn to /tʃɚ/, /dʒɚ/, /ʃɚ/ and /ʒɚ/ respectively, as in nature, verdure, sure, and treasure.
  8. Vowel length plays a phonetic role in the majority of English dialects, and is said to be phonemic in a few dialects, such as Australian English and New Zealand English. In certain dialects of the modern English language, for instance General American, there is allophonic vowel length: vowel phonemes are realized as long vowel allophones before voiced consonant phonemes in the coda of a syllable. Before the Great Vowel Shift, vowel length was phonemically contrastive.
  9. This sound only occurs in non-rhotic accents. In some accents, this sound may be, instead of /ʊə/, /ɔ:/. See English-language vowel changes before historic r.
  10. This sound only occurs in non-rhotic accents. In some accents, the schwa offglide of /ɛə/ may be dropped, monophthising and lengthening the sound to /ɛ:/.

Used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. From the Japanese and English wikipedia articles covering language.

21 May, 2008

その下に書いてよ!

Posted by: Simon In: 笑う| 英語

I found this while surfing the internet. Very funny! Can you see what is wrong?

Best Wishes!

The person who posted the picture wrote this:

A friend of mine sent this to me:
Okay so this is how I imagine this conversation went:
Walmart Employee: “Hello ‘dis be Walmarts, how can I help you?”
Customer: ” I would like to order a cake for a going away party this week.”
Walmart Employee: “What you want on the cake?”
Customer: “Best Wishes Suzanne” and underneath that “We will miss you”.

アメリカのスーパーに電話した。ウォルマートの人はちょと訛っているだな。
お別れ会のケーキを注文したけどウォルマートの人は聞き間違い。。。
and underneath that=その下に書いて!
スペルも間違えたよ!

信じられない。


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