English is my native tongue and I neither speak nor understand it very well. An unfortunate side effect of social anxiety.
English, the Language.
- Thread starter iBender
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Homophones are pronounced the same, so principle/principal and bear/bare sound the same. However, I wouldn't class affect/effect as homophones. I'd say they're pronounced differently. The a and e do sound different at the start of the word, at least with my accent. I think they're much closer to being homophones with an American accent though.
One of my favourite homophone pairs has to be bridal/bridle, for inadvertantly revealing so much about marriage...
Indeed. While I think English has pretty easy grammar and punctuation rules, our spelling and pronunciation can occasionally be pretty retarded.
One of my favourite homophone pairs has to be bridal/bridle, for inadvertantly revealing so much about marriage...
So...how does one know then what is a homophone and what isn´t...by the way.. can I say what isn´t or what ain´t and thats the same?
Like bear and bare...looking at the words I say it should be spoken beer and baer...
or bridal and bridel... I say it would be breiDAL and BREdel...what tells me its both spoken the same?
And what just comes to my mind..I don´t get it with that double negativations...like "Who says I ain´t got no manners"...wouldn´t it be enough to say "Who says I have no manners? Or Who says I ain´t have manners? or Who says I haven´t got manners? Why the ain´t and the no together?
TerokNor
Like bear and bare...looking at the words I say it should be spoken beer and baer...
or bridal and bridel... I say it would be breiDAL and BREdel...what tells me its both spoken the same?
And what just comes to my mind..I don´t get it with that double negativations...like "Who says I ain´t got no manners"...wouldn´t it be enough to say "Who says I have no manners? Or Who says I ain´t have manners? or Who says I haven´t got manners? Why the ain´t and the no together?
TerokNor
"Ain't" is only acceptable in certain dialects--and even then, it's colloquial.
I would say, avoid it altogether.
Nothing!
Isn't English spelling fun?
It's dialect. Never say "ain't got no" anything, unless you're African-American, or from the Southern states.
Since you're European, my advice is to avoid double negatives as well. In most dialects of English, they're considered a mistake.
Shakespearian English is actually relatively modern, thanks to Shakespeare helping to standardise the language as well as inventing half of it.
If you want real Olde English, check out Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales from the late 14th century.
Yeah, that's barely understandable. I've actually been more successful understanding contemporary works in other language than that.
Anyway, English a great language all things considered. It's willingness to absorb so many words has done it wonder. The amount of synonyms and lack of mechanical word structure (no masculine words ending in one letter, feminine in another) have created a lot of diversity that works well for poetry and songs, etc.
Hate to tell you, but you're just pronouncing words wrong.
Bear and Bare sound the same way. They are distinct from beer (although, with your method, the animal and drink would be homophones). bear and bare = [ber], beer = [bir] to use IPA.
Bridal and Bridel are BRI-del (emphasis on first syllable). In IPA it would be [braj|dəl].
I could have completely forgotten IPA, though, so don't take that as gospel. Plus, it varies by accent (I pronounce Our and Are exactly the same).
In the part of Yorkshire that I'm from, the words "int" and "ant" are used for "isn't" and "hasn't", most of the time. Contractions of contractions!
Oh, and "dint" for "didn't", as well. "Couldn't" has a very naughty contraction indeed. There's probably more...
For speakers of standard American English, affect and effect sound the same. The initial sound is a neutral, unstressed vowel (schwa).
The only exception is when affect is a noun (meaning emotion or feeling) and stressed on the first syllable: AF-fect. But it's seldom used in that sense outside of the psychiatric profession.
OTOH, for speakers of most UK dialects and for New Englanders and Southerners in the US, flaw and floor are homophones. For me, they sound completely different.
I do adore Jamaican English, 'Patois' 'Broken English', that does interest me, because it's English, but different. (And I can comprehend 90% of it.) but then, there is even the odd American English word that throws me off from time to time too, and that's like my language. To me, American English is just like the English I was taught but with different spellings sometimes; (like Colour is Color and Favourite is Favorite, Centre/Center and so on...)
I'd count flaw/floor as homophones, yes. Not 100% so, perhaps, but 95% of the way there. If I were to make a particular effor to speak clearly, there would be a tiny difference, but in normal daily conversation it wouldn't be heard.
Funny how it all works. As we've seen in this thread, it must be a bloody nightmare for foreigners trying to pick up the lingo. Easy to learn enough to get your point across, insanely difficult to be totally conversationally fluent and natural.
The funniest sounding differences between dialects is asking someone American to pronounce Buoy or Quay. To English ears, it sounds like a child reading the words for the first time. Our pronunciations of the words are greeted with equal incomprehension on most of your shores too (buoy more so than quay, admittedly). I don't know why these particular words diverged so much. You'd think sailing-related terms would tend to be similar!
Of course it gets even better when certain words can have opposite meanings depending on the context,
i.e. To Table a motion
In the UK it means to present a motion for consideration, whilst in the US it means to set aside a motion for later consideration. In the UK we would use the term shelve a motion, to set aside a motion.
I.m guessing that comes from meetings usually taking around a table. I.e to present it you place it on a table. Whilst to shelve a motion is to take it off the table and put it on a shelf.
i.e. To Table a motion
In the UK it means to present a motion for consideration, whilst in the US it means to set aside a motion for later consideration. In the UK we would use the term shelve a motion, to set aside a motion.
I.m guessing that comes from meetings usually taking around a table. I.e to present it you place it on a table. Whilst to shelve a motion is to take it off the table and put it on a shelf.
English is my third language. What I love about it is the sheer amount of words; they say English probably has the most words of any language. Although one thing it doesn't have is agglutination. My native language, Finnish, can string together words and word parts to make an infinite number of new words.. such as epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän.
Indeed. English has pronunciation rules, but they are easily broken and have many, many exceptions. There is nothing about the words "bear" and "beer" that tell you they're pronounced differently. They just are. Much of English is simply memorization. You know they're pronounced differently because, well, that's just how they're pronounced!
*Sighs of relief, thank you. I just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page.
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