Hi all. Fortunately I have found an internet cafe not very far from our house, but still I'm too lazy to go there everyday. So I'll be online from time to time just checking my message box and playing in the few games that I have left unresigned.

I've added Walter as a moderator just in case none is available to moderate the board. Have fun.

gogul: I got what you meant. In written form, only the 'normal' way of reading a sentence is done unless we have enough clue leading us to read a sentence differently. So it's almost no trouble in written form. And in spoken form, well you hear what the speaker says. So no serious problem really.

gogul: I didn't fully get what you meant. Did you mean that the sentence 'I have this from a book' has 6 meanings?

Czuch Chuckers: Got it. I'll make sure to go there sometime and cause you a lot of trouble then :-)

Czuch Chuckers: I fully understood what you said. I gave that example just because English was the only word I could think of that is both the name of a language and a nationality, beside French. That's why I asked that question.

Maybe it would have been better if I had given 'I'm a French teacher.' as an example.

But when you say you never have the stress on teacher, do you mean that when you want to say you're a teacher from Italy, you still put the stress on Italian in the sentence below?

I'm an Italian teacher.

Harley: Thank you very much for your replies. Sometimes, some questions cannot be answered without the help of native speakers.

harley: I think it's hard for you or anyone to be so detailed about this minute points, but I'd appreciate it if you could give it a try.

In the phrase 'English history teacher' you either want to have English and history together as a unit, or history and teacher.

I, based on what I know theoretically about English, think that when English and history are together, since English is an adjective for history, the stress should fall on history. Just like in 'a beautiful girl' which has the stress on girl, not beautiful, normally speaking.

Then, 'English history' is the subject that I'm a teacher of, and therefore, if I want to indicate that I'm a teacher teaching it, I have to stress 'English history' rather than 'teacher.' Just like in 'math teacher' that has the stress on 'math.'

So, if I want to give numbers based on how strongly the words are pronounced to the phrase 'English history teacher,' I do it like this:

English = 2
History = 1
Teacher = 3


1 is the strongest and 3 is the weakest.

Now about the second case, if I consider 'history teacher' as a unit, then 'history' will take the stress. Now in 'English history teacher', since English is the nationality, the part 'history teacher' takes the stress. So, This time, the numbers will be like this:

English = 3
History = 1
Teacher = 2

So based on my theory, in both cases it's the word History that takes the primary stress, but English and teacher take different stresses in different cases.


Do you find any of it true in reality?

Is that at least close to the way you say that sentence in those two different situations?

I know it's a tough question, but you take your time with it.

Thank you

Hrqls: I agree that in written form they are both ambiguous. English and all other languages are full of sentences that are not clear in meaning. However, I do believe that there should be a way to distinguish between the meanings of those sentences when they are spoken. I am almost sure of my theory about the first sentence --I am an English teacher.--

If you're a teacher who teaches English, you never put the stress on the word 'teacher' when you're saying that sentence. You somehow say the word 'English' more strongly.

I think a similar way should exist with regards to the second example too. But I'm not sure of the details.

Czuch Chuckers: About my first sentence, I myself have an opinion, but about the second, I think the theory will still work, but how, I don't know!

If you say: I'm an English teacher.

With the 'English' stressed, then it should mean you teach English, just like a geography teacher who teaches geography.

But if you say: I'm an English teacher.

With the word 'teacher' stressed, then it should mean you're from England. Just like you say an American teacher is from the U.S..

Czuch Chuckers: So you mean they don't have secondary meaning?

I'm not talking about the written forms, but the spoken forms. Is there any chance that by changing the stressed word in those sentences, you can change the meaning?

Hrqls: If they are all pronounced exactly the same, yes. Then the phonetic symbols will be the same too.

I have no idea about how those words are pronounced in languages other than English, so I cannot give you my word for it.

But I can give you other examples:

In English, They're, their, there are all pronounced exactly the same and therefore, all are shown this way in phonetic symbols: /ðea(r)/

How do Native speakers of English distinguish the two different meanings of the following sentence?

I'm an English teacher.

1)I'm a teacher who teaches English.
2)I'm a teacher from England.

And, how about this one?

I'm an English history teacher.

1)I'm a teacher that teaches English history (the history of England).

2)I'm a teacher from England, who teaches history (any history).

Pedro Martínez: So I was right in thinking that Ach refers to our خ . I already knew German to sound like a'tough' language because of the frequency of that sound in it. When I listen to German radios or TVs, it sounds like they're just yelling at eachother!

gogul: English does not have many sounds that exist in other languages. I think I may know what sound you're referring to by Ach. We have it in a tougher form in Farsi. But that sound does not exist in English. I think in French they have it.

When you're using the phonetic symbols, you don't pay attention to the spelling of the word. So the ...tion at the end of examplification is simply written as /...ʃn/. Not /ʃion/.

gogul: Not bad for the first try, But the correct way would be: /igzæmplifi'keiʃn/

pauloaguia: Sure.

gogul: Yes. ^ represents the sound short a as in BUS or CUP.

Using phonetic symbols gives people the ability to distinguish sounds from eachother. For example in a word such as examplification there are to letters represented by 'a' symbol in alphabetical letters. But do they both sound the same? No.

If you write that word in phonetical alphabet, it's easily shown that the two A's are not the same in pronunciation.

gogul: It's quite simple. Until when Fencer adds the symbols to the site, I'm using the link below:

http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm

So that will be:

/ w^z^p /

I don't know why, but the symbols are copied with spaces.

Pedro Martínez: I don't know how much you're familiar with technical phonology terms, but /t/ is a voiceless alveolar plosive while /d/ is a voiced alveolar plosive. The place of articulation in both of them is the alveolar ridge and therefore, a switch from one to the other is quite simple. The only difference is in one of them being voiced, and the other a voiceless consonant.

So I think there must be a rule. Why don't they say the /t/ sound in 'better' in a way close to /z/ for example?

Pedro Martínez: But I really want to know if there's a rule. Have you too noticed that the way many people say 'better' is different from what a dictionary says: /beter/ with a clear /t/ sound?

Pedro Martínez: To the best of my knowledge, only /h/ and glottal stop are glottal! What do you mean glottalize?

Walter Montego: Oh come on! You're making me put aside all I already know. You mean the word 'butter' is pronounced with a clear /t/ sound as is 'tremendous' or 'ture'?

How about mutter? matter?

I'm sure I've heard 'better' pronounced with a /d/ sound many many times. Well, if it's not a /d/ sound, at least it's not a clear /t/ sound either.

Let's call that sound X. Is there any rule to change a clear /t/ to /x/?

Can it be done in a word like 'article' or 'utilization'?

KotDB: Yes. I was saying that they often do that. After all it's just an option. But many do it.

Now, I have a question:

Will it sound odd to you if I pronounce the word utilization with a /d/ sound instead of a /t/ sound?

I mean do I hav ethe option of replacing the 't' after 'u' with a /d/ sound just like we do it in words such as 'better' or 'later' ?

Is there a rule as to where we can replace a /t/ sound with a /d/ sound? Or is it dependant on whether we wish to do it or not?

Thank you.

KotDB: I'm sorry it took me so long to reply. But here it is anyway:

But I'm not entirely comfortable with generalizations such as "Americans say /inkrejeles/ and Brits say /inkredyeles/". Such patterns may hold in many cases, but certainly not in all.

Well, I personally have never been to the U.S. nor to the U.K. . I haven't seen a native speaker of English, be them from America or England or Australia or wherever else that they speak English in, in my whole life either. So the only thing left to do for people like me, if they want to check on things like that is to consult dictionaries. My favorite one is Oxford Advanced Learners. It does directly say that /inkredyeles/ (Where are my phonetic symbols Fencer?) is a word said in British English while /inkrejeles/ is an American English word. Just like car is a British word if said /ka:(r)/ and an American one if said /ka:r/. In fact I have noticed some very great differences between American English and British English by watching BBC prime and comparing it with VOA. Oh yes Walter, we do have satellite T.V. here in Iran!


It's not uncommon to have four consecutive consonantal sounds. Think of words like explain, exclaim, and extract. Or perhaps backstroke. Now that we're thinking about swimming we mustn't forget the breaststroke, which has a string of five consonants. I can get six if you let me use a two-word phrase such as next spring.

Wow. Thank you for the examples. But I think I haven't been clear enough in asking my question. In fact, now that I'm reading it once more, I'm sure I haven't been clear enough.

In English there's a specific syllabic pattern. It is:

CCCVCCCC

C stands for consonant and V, for vowel. Of course by consonant I mean consonantal sounds. So if a word supposedly starts with an X which is pronounced /ks/ it counts as two consonants.

As you can see, an English syllable cannot start with more than three consonants and cannot end in more than four consonants.

The examples I can provide are:

Street

Prompts

All the above mentioned, we get back to your example: breaststrok.

Firstly, in all my dictionaries I found it only with a hyphen and written breast-stroke instead of breaststroke, which supports my little theory. Secondly, even if it is written whithout a hyphen, it is syllablized as breast.stroke which again supports me. Those consonantal sounds are not located in a single syllable so technically speaking, when you are saying the word, after the first part -breast- a new chain of speech starts for saying the latter part -stroke.

Therefore, all the consonantal sounds are not actually said exactly after one another.

In other words, you cannot have the bold part in breaststroke at the end of a word such as Meststr!

So you don't say them exactly consecutively. I hope I am clear enough now.

But to look at it just in its written form, an dif it can be written without a hyphen, it's a very nice example of so many consonants exactly after one another. Thank you.


********************************************


Lamby: Wow, a six-letter word that has only vowels in it. How do they read it then? It looks to me like it's the abbreviated form of six seperate words, rather than a single word. If that's the case, then it doesn't count!


**********************************************


Walter: I liked this example Sequoia. I had already heard its name in Farsi. However, the ponunciation is different in Farsi. Whenever we come across a word to which we hav eno equivalent in our kanguage, we just try to read it as it is writen in the source language. So we read that word /seku:ya:/ in Farsi.

I liked facetious too. I may assign it as a research project to my students. "Find an English word in which all vowels appear in the exact same order they appear in the English alphabet."

But about this part:

That ten bird stuff further down sounds ridiculous. They're all pronounced the same. Ten is ten. A real tongue twister can make you talk funny.

I have to slightly disagree with you. If ten is ten, then I take it did is did, and didn't, didn't. But even if you don't say them differently sometimes, I'm sure you have seen people who do. Take the following examples:


Did he meet you at the party?

Did you meet him at the party?

Did, in the first example is simply pronounced /did/ but in the other one, it's rather pronounced /dij/ with a /j/ sound as in jam, than /did/.

The reason is that it is followed by a /y/ sound which affects the way it is pronounced.

Now take these other examples:

Didn't he meet you at the party?

Didn't you meet him at the party?

In the first example, Didn't is simply said didn't, with a /t/ sound at the end. But in the second one, it is rather /didnch/ with a /ch/ sound as in Chair, than /didnt/.

Here, it is because /t/ is followed by /y/. Reading the following sentences, I think you'll se that whenever a /t/ sound is followed by /y/, it gets some changes, even if they are minor changes, in pronunciation:

Watch what you say!
I saw that he kicked you.
Aren't you gonna stay a little longer?
Put your hands in the air!
He cursed you.
.
.
.


Sometimes, this process which is called assimilation, changes the pronunciation of a word forever. take the word soldier for instance. Have you ever given it some thought why it's spelled with a D but you don't here any /d/ sounds when it is pronounced?

If you look up that word in a dictionary and look for it's history, you'll see that it sometime in the history has been indeed pronounced with a /d/ sound. Something like /soldyer/. But as time passes, because of the /d/ and /y/ that are consecutive, the pronunciation has changed to this that we hav etoday, with a /j/ sound.

It's just like ....Did you .... that I previously mentioned. The difference is that assimilation in 'did you' is occasional and dependent on the situation and context, but in 'soldier' is is a fixed and permanent one.

Assimilation exists in Farsi too. We write Shanbe but we read /shambe/ due to /n/ and /b/ coming together.

I bet you use assimilation in almost every sentence you say without sometimes even realizing it.

By the way, the alternate spelling you gave for Sequoia, Sequoyah, looks a lot more similar to how we read the word in Farsi: Se-Ku-'Ya.

gogul: I think we should 'push' Fencer to give us the phonetic symbols for now!

And, by using the link in my profile, you can hear some Farsi.

gogul: Yeah. I'm sure it isn't. Maybe Fencer should enable a voice chat system too?

I'm sorry I made a mistake regarding /r/. It's not a semi-vowel, but a liquid or a syllabic consonant. here's a link:

http://wwwa.britannica.com/eb/article-9048468

Lamby: No. You're quite right. In many words such as 'incredulous' the American pronounciation differs from the British. They say that word /inkrejeles/ but you say it /incredyeles/. So you don't tend to mix differnt sounds together. But they do. I'm waiting for Walter to respond now!

Lamby: If you do, then I take it you don't say "That's whaCH you said." either. Or "ThiSH year, we're gonna visit Boston." ???

Lamby: Oh come on! It's not wrong to say Dij you.
You mean you clearly pronounce the last /d/ sound in did and the /Y/ sound in Yes?

Pedro Martínez: /r/ is a semi-vowel. That proves my theory.

رضا: And yes, many may not say tem birds if they are too careful about what they say. But you don't deny that you say DiJ you .... instead of DiD you .., do you?

Lamby: I made a mistake about saying tem boys instead of ten birds! Just misplaced the words. In rapid speech, you may say tem birds, instead of ten birds.

Pedro Martínez: You mean you can? That's very odd then!

Lamby: So I win, huh? Assimilation is when a sound changes the pronunciation of another sound. It mostly changes just the place of articulation.

Ten birds is actually in rapid speech said : tem birds

That's because /n/ is a voiced, alveolar, nasal sound and /b/ is voiced, bilabial, nasal. When they come together, /n/ changes into /m/ which is voiced, bilabial, nasal.

As you can see, it is easier to pronounce /m/ and then /b/ than /n/ and then /b/.

Now see if you can get it about my other examples.

Pedro Martínez: Pedro, if you write them with only consonants, it doesn't matter. But I'm sure you cannot read them with just consonants or I'll hav eto say you have a really tough language to learn.

maybe it's helpful if I mention actually the way you pronounce 'n' in bank is different from how you pronounce it in nerve.

Lamby: This phonological process is called assimilation if it is any help :-)

Lamby and Rose: Haha! Try more. Pay attention to the way you pronounce the last 'n' in Ten.

Fenceeeeeeer ..... Where are my phonetic symbols?

Lamby: Oh yes. I'm sure you haven't. I also bet you have never thought about the fact that the pronunciation of the word 'ten' changes in the examples below:

Ten cats
Ten birds
Ten vests

Pedro Martínez: I'm sure of the pronunciation of the word "faxed." It is /faekst/.

Whenever a verb ends in a /s/ sound and it gets ed to change its tense to past, the 'ed' is pronounced /t/. But I'd like a native to confirm it.

About blue-eyed, it has three vowels after one another. Queue has four. That's if you don't coundt 'y' as a vowel, which I can assure you is not one!

I have two questions:

1) How many consonantal sounds can come exactly after one another in English?

For example in the word "Faxed" we have /..kst/ which is three consonantal sounds after one another.

Do we have four or five or more?

2) How many vowels can come exactly one after one another?

In the word "serious" we have i, o, u and in "queue" we have u, e, u, e.

Do we have more?

Walter: Although this board is not meant for a chat on movies, I am really willing to talk about that specific movie more. Actually the two of them. There's a Saw I too as you may know.

Well, in Iran we do have cinemas, we do have T.V. channels -- not as many as you do, but around 10 or 11 -- and we do have stores that sell movies on both CDs and DVDs.

I can assure you Iran has the best dubers in the world. I have watched many French movies that hav ebeen dubbed into English, and I've found the dubbing rather stupid and funny sometimes.

In Iran dubbers even try to keep the tone of voice, intonation, feelings, etc, as well as the length of the sentences. You sure do understand that an English sentence and its equivalent in farsi don't have the same length and number of words. Yet the amazing part is that in movies that are played on T.V. you hardly can realise the speaker is speaking a language other than Farsi. I, just because I'm familiar with English to a great extent, sometimes lip-read the speakers and admire the work of the dubbers.

The movies that are played on T.V. are both Iranian movies and those from many other countries and are all dubbed. That's mainly because many many people in here don't understand any language other than Farsi.

In cinemas, only Iranian movies are played for rhe same reason. If they play an English film, not many will go to watch it. Not becaus ethey don't like it, but becaus ethey don't understand it.

On T.V., all movies are censored , both regarding sexuality and violence. And if a movie is full of these things and if they censore the parts, nothing remains actually, just like this Saw movie, they just don't play it.

But you can find almost every movie on the blackmarket. The price is quite low, lower than what you can imagine. I buy any DVD, for $1.5! That's cheap, isn't it?

They're not original DVDs, but they have the same quality. And I'm quite grateful I can have all the movies I want.

To my surprise, some movies get here on DVD even before when their internet site says is the release date!

So that's how it is in Iran.

Now regarding the movie, I do recommend you watch both Saw I and II, and in order of course. I was very satisfied with both of them. There's more to them than just killing people and torturing them.

I have a few questions regarding both of them, in regards with both the language used, and the movie itself. So if anyone is willing to help me understand a few points, just let me know.

I have, as you said, watched those movies many times to understand all of it. maybe 5 times each. A bigger surprise may be that I have watched each of The Lord of the Rings around eight times too!

KotDB: Thank you for your thorough explanation. I really really thought may and probably had the same meaning. So they do cause different impressions when used. Knowing this, I will look for some words that I think are the same, and will post them here to see if they are or are not the same after all!

Since in Iran the teachers are not native speakers, students never get to know the small subtle points of the language.

About that movie, well let me share the whole thing with you so that you can have abetter understanding of the situation:

It starts with a man in a room, having a strange device around his neck. It looks like a sphere having been cut into two halves. One half is in front of his face, the other, at the back. And the two of them are full of nails that are pointed towards his face. Then suddenly a T.V. is turned on and we see a clip. In the clip a doll, with the voice of a man says:

Hello Michael.

I want to play a game.

So far, in what could loosely be called your life, you have made a living watching others.

Society would call you an informant, a rat, a snitch.

I call you unworthy of the body you possess...

of the life that you've been given.

Now, we will see if you are willing to look inward...

rather than outward...

To give up the one thing you rely on...

in order to go on living.

The device around your neck is a death mask.

The mask is on a spring timer.

If you do not locate the key in time...

the mask will close.

Think of it like a Venus flytrap.

What you are looking at right now is your own body...

not more than two hours ago.

Don't worry.

You're sound asleep and can't feel a thing.

Taking into account that you are at a great disadvantage here...

I am going to give you a hint as to where I've hidden the key.

So listen carefully. The hint is this...

it's right before your eyes.

[ And we see an X-ray photo of Michael's head with the key inside it. The key has been put in fron of one of his eyes.]

How much blood will you shed to stay alive, Michael?

Live or die. Make your choice.



So I guess now you know why that adverb, loosely, has been used. I think the speaker on that T.V. means that being and informant i snot really a job and a person who does that, doesn't actually live a normal life, but a low-level life. So he calls it a loose life. Of course that's what I get from that sentence.

About the position of an adverb in sentences with multi-word verbs, one of the members of this site once mentioned to me that it shouldn't break the verb. So I guess I'd want to know if in a sentence such as "He may already have gone out" which part is the verb.

Is the verb gone, or gone out, or have gone, or have gone out, or may have gone, etc.?

And, thanks for that info on End Credits and Opening Credits. I really was beginning to think by End Credits they meant we shouldn't expect any Saw III. So I guess I'll be eagerly looking forward to watching Saw III, if they make any.

Thanks again for your post.

By the way, at the end of that movie instead of the normal End or The End, it says End Credits. Is it just another way of saying end, or the end, or does it mean something special?

ScarletRose: Nope, you haven't confused me at all. Well, the first sentence is a direct copy-paste from a movie named Saw II. So I wouldn't say it's wrong. Maybe not polite enough? If that's the problem with it, well that movie isn't a kind of 'polite' movie at all.

About the second example, I just figured it out that you're saying that because both may and probably have the same meaning.

So what if I change probably with already?

1)He may already have gone out.

2)He already may have gone out.

3)He may have already gone out.

4)He may have gone out already.

I have a question regarding the position of adverbs in a sentence with multi-word verbs.

For example, which one of the following sentences is O.K.?

1) In what could loosely be called your life, you've made a living watching others.

2)In what loosely could be called your life, you've made a living watching others.

3)In what could be loosely called your life, you've made a living watching others.

4)in what could be called loosely your life, you've made a living watching others.

************************

1)He may probably have gone out.

2)He probably may have gone out.

3)He may have probably gone out.

4)He may have gone out probably.

Lamby: Very interesting a link. Thank you.

Walter: Maybe it's not a bad idea to write congratulations with a D after all.

Take the word incredulous for example. Oxford Dictionary says it's to be pronounced /in'kredjeles/ with a Y sound as in 'Yes.' But it also says that the U.S. pronunciation doesn't have a Y sound, but a J (as in Jam) sound.

I know that whenever the sound /d/ and /j/ (it's not J as in Jam, but Y as in yes) come together, the sound /d3/ is pronounced. So if you read congratulations with a /d3/ sound, you have to change the spelling too. or, if you want to keep the spelling, you have to change the pronunciation!

About are and our, I have no trouble because I pronounce are /a:r/ and our, /aue/. But I know they both can be pronounced /a:r/.

Same is true about our and hour. They have the exact same pronunciation. But according to the context they're used in, one can tell which one is meant.

Oh, and no one answered my question regarding syllable divisions. How do I understand if it is /prog.ram/ or /pro.gram/ ?