Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Username

jayles

Member Since

August 12, 2010

Total number of comments

748

Total number of votes received

228

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Latest Comments

“Anglish”

  • April 3, 2014, 10:39pm

@AnWulf Yes, freme. Seems to come up as frame with slight meaning change too :

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/frame

I just balked at putting "behoof" as a tellable word as in :
"the drawbacks outweigh the behoofs" (or behooves, clip, clop!)

@HS You are mistaken in your deductions. I just never watch cricket at all, TV or live, alhough "footie" is another matter. The pron just does not bother me - not even "chintz" for "chance" - there are after all more weighty matters in life - (global warming and nuclear waste spring to mind) - and having worked in an Aussie-owned multinational one learns to go with the flow if you wish to fit in and keep your job.

Debut is interesting as "dayboo" is actually closer to the French pronunciation I think (my French is very poor), - evidement le pronunciation en Australie est superieur.

In practice I think the footie commentators at the World Cup did qute a good job in getting out all those names like Ma'a Nonu at speed, whether or not the pron was good.

What exactly is the "correct" pron for Nepal?

I sit corrected - although the notion that someone's pron could be "superior" is perhaps inherently flawed.

Just one more thing: in my life I encounter various Sanskrit terminology almost every day, and I'm pretty sure the pron is anglicized, but so what if we are in an "officially-English" speaking country: words like Ahimsa, Ardha Chandrasana, Supta Baddha Konasana, Sukhasana, Surya Namaskara, Veerasana, Adho Mukha Svanasana. These are very much part of my normal daily "English" word-bank. Some show spikes over the last decade or so on Ngrams, and numerous hits on Google. Quite whether they are "English" words yet is a moot point.

Perhaps I should outline one technique which over time tends to improve pronunciation awareness. Basically one needs to force the situation where the listener doesn't just gloss over or pretend to understand the badly pronounced bits; but instead interrupts with "what?", thus forcing a correction. I arrange this in class by getting students of different nationalities to explain stuff (like news articles) to each other, by demanding the listener take notes so that they can later re-explain it all to yet-another student - a sort of Chinese whispers approach. This does up their pronunciation skills, but you need heaps of it, hours and hours to imbed the (hopefully improved) output, and all the time the teacher needs to "hot" correct.
And lastly, try learning to say Uttar Pradesh properly yourself.

"trailing scwa." SB trailing schwa - as in "You speak-e to my wif-e; I kill-e you"

As a matter of fact, over the past few years I have had several students from India and Ceylon, some with Gujurati as their first tongue, some with Tamil, and other "Indian" languages. Generally they need to pass and IELTS English test with a score of at least 7.5 (minimum 7.0) in order to work professionally as a nurse or whatever or proceed with a Masters. One major hurdle is to develop an accent that will get them at least 7.0 in the speaking test. Often in class I am going "Pardon? What?" because I don't immediately understand, so to my mind there is an issue.
Against this I freely acknowledge that there are probably far, far more people speaking English on a daily basis in Indian than there are in England, Canada, and other dominions put together, so one can hardly insist that "English-as-she-is-spoke" is the norm; it is just a matter of what the examiners will accept and that is not altogether clear either.
As for correcting an "Indian" accent, well, that's just as difficult as any other, be it Japanese, Chinese,Vietnamese,Thai or whatever. The L1 habits are hard to break. Even if (as one student asserts) they practice in front of the mirror every day before breakfast, they slide back in the heat of a conversation. My own view is that once you are past your teens, you are pushing shit uphill to master "foreign" pronunciation features. For myself I find a palatalized Russian "R" between two vowels very difficult despite decades of practice.
So the aim is not to produce a 100% Oxbridge accent, simply to hit some of the most confusing features and focus on those. Usually this comes down to "th", "w" and sometimes "L vs R", but essentially every L1 potentially brings a new set of issues. So with Koreans work on "F vs P", "V vs B" all the time; with Mandarin and Cantonese, focus on enunciating the final consonant, almost Sicilian style with a trailing scwa.
Frankly I haven't yet sussed out what to focus on with Gujurati-speakers and it's been three or four years now, so unless you've got some fantastic solution (pray tell), I think correcting is a waste of time; unless of course they ask for it. Despite all this right now I have just five days left to help someone with a strong Gujurati accent before they take their exam. HELP! I sense yet another failure in my life looming.
Finally on a politically correct note: The British Raj => the British occupation; The Indian Mutiny => the first revolution; curry is NOT a word in any of the languages native to the the sub-continent; the people of India were in fact civilized and had been so for thousands of years, even before the British arrived.

@HS Given the PC world in which we live, one would try not to give offence, which usually means pronouncing these things as close a possible to the original. In your case let people with mana be your guide.

“Anglish”

  • March 25, 2014, 6:37pm

@AnWulf Thanks. All I could find was "frame" but that seems well and truly dead in the meaning of benefit.

A New Correlative Conjunction?

  • March 20, 2014, 6:17pm

@WW you meant "@Jasper" ?