Jurgen's English [split]

[dEhiN]

I heard my nephews, living in Örebro, today, 11 and 7 years old, and I believe that they do not even have thick l, but I am not certain. Wickedness and decay apparently roams free in the land, and the righteous must stand firm against evil and depravity.

Jurgen your first sentence is somewhat unwieldy. I think it would sound more natural to say "I heard my 11 and 7 year old nephews, who live in Örebro, today, and I believe that they don't [do not] even have a/the thick l, but I'm not certain."

I know you know that don't = do not. But frequently, nowadays, the uncontracted form is used when you want to emphasize the negative of the verb. Whereas here, because the focus is more on your nephews lacking a phoneme, it sounds more natural to my ears to use the contracted negative form.

Also, you definitely need an article before "thick l". Which article you use depends on what you are trying to emphasize. If you want to add that, in addition to missing other distinctive dialectal differences, your nephews are also missing the "thick l" phoneme, then you can use "a thick l". But if you want to focus on the fact that your nephews are missing the "thick l" phoneme (as oppose to other phonemes), then you would use "the thick l".

PS. If I came across as a "grammar nazi", I'm not! I just came back from practicing French and Spanish in a language exchange situation. So I'm in a "help non-English natives with their English by correcting and explaining their mistakes" mode.

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[Jurgen Wullenwever]

But I aim at being a foreigner using semi-formal slightly broken English (i.e. what I am). I wonder what regional accent of English would suit me best to try to emulate? Scottish, perhaps, or American Southern drawl. Or a mix of those. Hm.

PS. If I came across as a "grammar nazi", I'm not! I just came back from practicing French and Spanish in a language exchange situation. So I'm in a "help non-English natives with their English by correcting and explaining their mistakes" mode.

Feel free to do so.

I know you know that don't = do not. But frequently, nowadays, the uncontracted form is used when you want to emphasize the negative of the verb. Whereas here, because the focus is more on your nephews lacking a phoneme, it sounds more natural to my ears to use the contracted negative form.

The thing is, that don't is way harder to write than do not. And my English intonation does not sound natural to me anyway, and I would say do not in that sentence.

Also, you definitely need an article before "thick l". Which article you use depends on what you are trying to emphasize. If you want to add that, in addition to missing other distinctive dialectal differences, your nephews are also missing the "thick l" phoneme, then you can use "a thick l". But if you want to focus on the fact that your nephews are missing the "thick l" phoneme (as oppose to other phonemes), then you would use "the thick l".

That is a difference between Swedish and English. To me, using "the thick l" sounds as if it is a specific item, sort of like "that red thick l over there on the shelf, but not the blue thick l in the cardboard box" or "the thick l left the murder scene in a hurry", while I wanted to convey the feeling of a general ubiquitous archetypal thick l that has faded away and been forgotten with the leaves of last fall. Think of biblical English in different periods: I sympathise more with "he was on acre" than with "he was in the field".

Mark Anthony would start his funeral oration with "Thick l, thin l, supradental l, toneless l."

[dEhiN]

But I aim at being a foreigner using semi-formal slightly broken English (i.e. what I am). I wonder what regional accent of English would suit me best to try to emulate? Scottish, perhaps, or American Southern drawl. Or a mix of those. Hm.

Those 2 accents are quite different? I can't imagine what a mix would sound like! :O

I know you know that don't = do not. But frequently, nowadays, the uncontracted form is used when you want to emphasize the negative of the verb. Whereas here, because the focus is more on your nephews lacking a phoneme, it sounds more natural to my ears to use the contracted negative form.

The thing is, that don't is way harder to write than do not. And my English intonation does not sound natural to me anyway, and I would say do not in that sentence.

You find the contracted form harder to write than the uncontracted? As for intonation, I'm not sure what yours sounds like. I also don't know enough Swedish to know how a Swedish native's mind works. But I know, for example, that most Brazilian Portuguese natives have a hard time with the [t] and [d] past-tense phonemes (ie, "walked"), because they view it as a separate syllable. So with "walked", instead of pronouncing it as [wawkt], they pronounce it is as [wawkət]. (I took the IPA transcription from an online dictionary, but personally I don't think there should be a second [w]; I think the transcription should be [wakt]). In a similar way, perhaps the sounds in Swedish make it difficult for you to intonate a negative contracted form?

Also, you definitely need an article before "thick l". Which article you use depends on what you are trying to emphasize. If you want to add that, in addition to missing other distinctive dialectal differences, your nephews are also missing the "thick l" phoneme, then you can use "a thick l". But if you want to focus on the fact that your nephews are missing the "thick l" phoneme (as oppose to other phonemes), then you would use "the thick l".

That is a difference between Swedish and English. To me, using "the thick l" sounds as if it is a specific item, sort of like "that red thick l over there on the shelf, but not the blue thick l in the cardboard box" or "the thick l left the murder scene in a hurry", while I wanted to convey the feeling of a general ubiquitous archetypal thick l that has faded away and been forgotten with the leaves of last fall. Think of biblical English in different periods: I sympathise more with "he was on acre" than with "he was in the field".

But in English thinking "the" is used for a specific item. In this case, the specificity is for the phoneme itself, and would, in effect, contract that particular phoneme - "thick l" - against other phonemes. So instead of "that red thick l over there on the shelf, but not the blue thick l in the cardboard box", it's more like "this sound called thick l, not any other sound".

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

In a similar way, perhaps the sounds in Swedish make it difficult for you to intonate a negative contracted form?

I do not intonate anything in writing. If I write "do not" I only use letters and space. If I write "don't" I have to find the apostrophe at the right somewhere on the keyboard AND place it not between the words of the compound, but inside the second word, AND grumble about silly spelling conventions. I usually avoid the contracted forms, since they are unnecessary and less informative.

As a comparison, why use an apostrophe in "don't" < "do not" but no apostrophe in "dunno" < "do not know"?

Swedish does make some English soundcombinations hard to pronounce, but as I usually do not have to speak English, it does not matter. (I have read critiques of books where people have found usage of contracted forms in writing to be debasing the English language, and I agree with them.)

We do have contracted forms in Swedish speech as well, but those are treated rather haphazardly, so some are standard in writing, while others are nonexistent in writing, and as spelling-pronunciations take a firmer hold, they become as they are written.

[dEhiN]

In a similar way, perhaps the sounds in Swedish make it difficult for you to intonate a negative contracted form?

I do not intonate anything in writing. If I write "do not" I only use letters and space. If I write "don't" I have to find the apostrophe at the right somewhere on the keyboard AND place it not between the words of the compound, but inside the second word, AND grumble about silly spelling conventions. I usually avoid the contracted forms, since they are unnecessary and less informative.

Yeah I didn't think that the difficulty would be in writing the contracted form based one the keyboard layout you have.

As a comparison, why use an apostrophe in "don't" < "do not" but no apostrophe in "dunno" < "do not know"?

"Dunno" is a slang form that is used only in spoken speech and very casual (like almost all slang). "Don't" is now an acceptable standard form that can be used in both speech and writing. In fact, the negative contracted form is commonly used. If you want to use an apostrophe in "do not know", you could write "don't know", which is frequently used. However if you wanted to write the phrase as one word, with only one apostrophe, you would probably need to write "don'now". But that would give you a pronunciation of "don" from "don't" plus "now", not "know". So if you want to use apostrophes and have the same pronunciation as "don" plus "no", you would have to write "don'no'" with two apostrophes. I'm not sure why or how the slang spelling became "dunno" with the pronunciation usually being like "done' plus "no".

Swedish does make some English sound combinations hard to pronounce, but as I usually do not have to speak English, it does not matter. (I have read critiques of books where people have found usage of contracted forms in writing to be debasing the English language, and I agree with them.)

I used to think this same way. In fact, when I was in high school (in the late 90s), the full and contracted forms of almost all contracted words in English were used side by side. The typical grammar textbooks at the time taught that it was wrong to use a contracted form, and that was bad English form. But over time the contracted form (again of almost all contracted words) has become a part of regular usage. I think at this point English has changed to the point that these naysayers need to "wake up and smell the roses". Arguing about which form is better from two competing changes in a language, is one thing. But once one change has pretty much won out over the competition, I personally think to argue that the language was better in the past is irrelevant and stupid. Irrelevant because language changes; this includes all the dead languages, they changed significantly while they were living. And stupid because every generation has its naysayers saying that about the previous generation's speech patterns. So it's really just nostalgic people not wanting to change with the times!

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Yeah I didn't think that the difficulty would be in writing the contracted form based one the keyboard layout you have.

The keyboard causes no problems with that, but I usually do not use apostrophes, so they are not part of my known territory, so to speak.

Arguing about which form is better from two competing changes in a language, is one thing. But once one change has pretty much won out over the competition, I personally think to argue that the language was better in the past is irrelevant and stupid. Irrelevant because language changes; this includes all the dead languages, they changed significantly while they were living. And stupid because every generation has its naysayers saying that about the previous generation's speech patterns. So it's really just nostalgic people not wanting to change with the times!

So you are saying that one should stop using a specific form just because a bunch of other people with media dominance has done so.

The late nineties were/was/is/are (?) only fifteen years ago, so claiming that grammatical norms have changed decisively in that time seems a little extreme to me, and the negative reader's comment I referred to concerned a book from 2009. For my part, I always change into the full form when reading contracted ones such as "I'd", that have multiple meanings.

And I have not so far found that full forms are unused in writing. Are you sure that they are nonexistent in 2014?

[Koko]

Full forms will never be nonexistent. They will just pop up every now and then when one thinks it's important to use them. Contracted forms are the one part of English that I like. If I said the full form of every contraction, my sentences would be way too long. As for everyone else's. I think the reason you don't like contracted verbs is because you don't speak English often, and so you don't have to endure the pain of saying "I would have done something else," "You are not the one I am looking for," "Let us(this I actually wouldn't mind) expand these contractions because a non-native speaker wants that we do not say don't."

The second of these examples sounds much better as "You aren't the one I'm looking for"/"You aren't the one I am looking for"/"You are not the one I'm looking for," but not what was given unless you are disgusted by the fact that you isn't whom I was looking for.


Also, "I'd" may have different meanings, but it is only ambiguous when alone. For example, would you mistake I'd rather jump into a pool of lava for I had rather jump into a pool of lava? No.

What about I'd (just) spent the rest of my money on a pizza? With or without the "just" the sentence only makes sense as I had (just) spent the rest of my money on pizza.

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

I think the reason you don't like contracted verbs is because you don't speak English often, and so you don't have to endure the pain of saying "I would have done something else," "You are not the one I am looking for," "Let us(this I actually wouldn't mind) expand these contractions because a non-native speaker wants that we do not say don't."

I do not think I mentioned any opinion concerning how anything is spoken. He commented on my written use of full forms, and I replied that I enjoy writing full forms, and that they are not obsolete for me, as I still find them in current print.

Now, if we consider how I would say your examples, that is a different matter.

"I would have done something else,"

a:wʊdvdənsəmθnɛls

"You are not the one I am looking for,

jə:ɹnətðəwənamlʊknfə:ɹ

I had (just) spent the rest of my money on pizza.

a:dʒɪspɛnðɹɛsəvməməniɑ:npi:tsə

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

I made a recording of my previous post to state what I mean. My microphone seems to have gone bad recently, so the sound quality is a bit painful.
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0SX4l6qyU3b