User Name: Password:
New User Registration
 Languages

Ask questions or just talk about different languages. Since BrainKing is an international game site supporting many languages, this board can be kind of useful.

Since we will be dealing with pronunciation of words rather than their spelling, I think it's useful to have a link to The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet.


To see translations of some frequently used phrases and sentences in other languages see Languages


Messages per page:
List of discussion boards
You are not allowed to post messages to this board. Minimum level of membership required for posting on this board is Brain Knight.
Mode: Everyone can post
Search in posts:  

<< <   9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18   > >>
14. April 2006, 15:56:48
Rose 
Subject: Re:
CRY ME A RIVER: Accents have nothing to do with proper spelling though!

14. April 2006, 15:51:25
"GERRY" 
Subject: Re:
Rose: Good For Freedom Of Speech,But Some People Have Accents HE He LoL, So Excuse Us LOL

14. April 2006, 15:50:53
Expired 
Subject: Re:
Rose: According the way they read the word, in my opinion congradulations is a better spelling. Just as in during that is really pronounced with a J sound. But that's the way it is. Congratulations is written with a T, not a D.

14. April 2006, 15:46:17
Rose 
With congratulations... I saw a banner at a wedding one time that read "congradulations on your wedding". I was floored. I couldn't believe that mistake got by the printers. Does it mean that maybe folks are so lax in their English that many, many don't know the proper words/spelling etc?

14. April 2006, 15:43:43
Rose 
Subject: Re: Pet peeves.....
رضا: Yes, I realize that part. I think a lot of it is lack of written use in every day life. Most folks don't normally write or type very much except at sites like this. Maybe showing them the difference will help them to learn the difference. Just a thought.

14. April 2006, 15:42:15
Expired 
Subject: Re: Pet peeves.....
Rose: And about Congratulations, my assumption is:

The word Congratulations, according to dictionaries is pronounced /kengratsuleisnz/, with a CH sound, but people read it with a J (as in jam) sound which can occure just if a D sound and a Y sound come together, like in soldier which has originally been soldYer. So people think there must hav ebeen a D in congratulations too!

14. April 2006, 15:38:32
Expired 
Subject: Re: Pet peeves.....
Rose: The mistakes are mostly because the pronunciation of the two choices are the same.

Regarding just pronunciation:

You're = your
There = They're = Their

14. April 2006, 15:35:29
Rose 
Subject: Pet peeves.....
I am by no means a scholar or the best at grammar in the English language but I can't get over how many people make these common mistakes!

It is You're welcome, not your welcome!
It is congrats or congratulations, not congrads!
I can hear you, not here you!
It is their car, not there car!
they're going away, not there going away!

...this concludes my rant.

13. April 2006, 09:49:22
Expired 
Subject: Re:
Fencer: I wonder what Liquid means by that ....

13. April 2006, 09:43:09
Fencer 
Subject: Re:
رضا: ...or, yeah yeah, there is still something going on.

13. April 2006, 09:41:55
Expired 
What does this say?

...aneb, jo jo, pořád se něco děje.

12. April 2006, 15:26:37
Eriisa 
Subject: Re: Chinese Translation ????
Fencer: wow, I always said Fencer was great!

Thanks!


Reza. I got the question marks too, except for 85B. LOL

12. April 2006, 14:44:19
Fencer 
Subject: Re: Chinese Translation ????
Modified by Fencer (12. April 2006, 14:44:32)
Czuch Chuckers: 300 bucks Euro.

12. April 2006, 14:43:06
Czuch 
Subject: Re: Chinese Translation ????
Fencer: 200 bucks US? Lifetime membership?

12. April 2006, 14:39:31
Fencer 
Subject: Re: Chinese Translation ????
رضا: "I've just decided to purchase a Black Rook and I recommend everyone to do it as well."

12. April 2006, 14:36:58
Expired 
Subject: Re: Chinese Translation ????
Fencer: Wow! So Fencer, can you translate this too?

اين گوگل چه کار ها که ازش نمی آيد

12. April 2006, 14:34:06
Fencer 
Subject: Re: Chinese Translation ????
Eriisa: "You do not know the Chinese language can be used to communicate with you? I want 85B, section suitable? A suitable allocation of pants? Thank you"

Translated by Google Translate.

12. April 2006, 14:32:57
Expired 
Subject: Re: Chinese Translation ????
Eriisa: Let me translate the Question marks for you. Oh, and the commas!

12. April 2006, 14:31:21
Eriisa 
Subject: Chinese Translation ????
Can anyone translate this? I have an idea what is being asked but I doublt I'll be able to answer it.....


你好,不知道能不能跟你用中文沟通?我想要85B的,这款合适吗?有合适的内
裤配吗?谢谢

12. April 2006, 11:16:30
Expired 
There's a very interesting article I have about these problems with English:

Crazy English

English is crazy language. There's no egg in eggplant or ham in hamburger, neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

English muffins were not invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

we take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are suare and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig!

And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, two geese. So one moose, two meese? One index, two indices? is cheese the plural of choose?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? How can weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?

When a house burns up, it burns down. You fill in a form by filling it out and an alarm clock goes off by going on.

When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essey, I end it?

Now I know why I fluncked my English. It's not my fault; the language doesn't quite know whether it's coming or going.

12. April 2006, 09:48:31
Hrqls 
Subject: square
last holiday i had troubles finding the english word for 'square' : an area surrounded by houses.
As very few squares are actually square (at least in the netherlands) it was very tough to think of the word, whenever my mind came close to the word 'square' it discarded it because it wasnt logical ;)

12. April 2006, 07:40:43
Expired 
I have a problem with syllable divisions.

Take the word extra for example. It's pronounced /ekstra/. How do I know that it's /e.kstra/ or /ek.stra/ or /eks.tra/ or /ekst.ra/ ?

12. April 2006, 06:44:31
Papa Zoom 


Does PRD mean "fart" ? ;)

11. April 2006, 14:04:21
Expired 
Lamby: Thanks. It's a great board because there are a bunch of great people posting on it.

Thnaks for the explanation you gave us. So let me see if I've got it correctly:

If the government bans something, it means we're disallowd or not permitted to use it anymore. So basically it's forbidden from then on to use that thing and if they see us by chance that we're gonna use it, they'll prevent us from doing that.


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

Hrqls: Try this link Pedro is currently using an dyou may like it :

http://www.easypersian.com/

:-)

11. April 2006, 13:44:26
Pedro Martínez 
Subject: Re:
BerniceC: I'd say "Tak teď jsem v pěkné bryndě" :)

11. April 2006, 07:21:02
Bernice 
how do I say "I'm in trouble now" in czech?
thanks :)

10. April 2006, 22:29:09
Ewe 
Subject: Re:
Pedro Martínez: Hi there! Thanks! Im really enjoying reading this board :o)

10. April 2006, 15:50:56
pauloaguia 
Subject: Re:
Pedro Martínez: we had the same idea at the same time...
You know what they say - Great minds think alike

10. April 2006, 15:49:45
pauloaguia 
Subject: Re:
pauloaguia: Then again, googling on the subject I found both versions. Though the word prohibited shows up in 90% of the cases vs about 10% for forbidden

10. April 2006, 15:48:48
Pedro Martínez 
Subject: Re:

10. April 2006, 15:45:24
pauloaguia 
Subject: Re:
Pedro Martínez: I won't rebate it, after all my English comes mostly from the movies ;). My answer just sounds better to me that's all.
Or maybe it's just another one of those british/american things and Smoking is prohibited in London and forbidden in New York?

10. April 2006, 15:20:05
Pedro Martínez 
Subject: Re:
Modified by Pedro Martínez (10. April 2006, 15:20:36)
pauloaguia: I agree with Lamby. I think it should be 'prohibited' since it was forbidden by the authority of the city of London. Great post, Lamby, BTW...thanks for that.:)

10. April 2006, 12:44:23
pauloaguia 
Subject: Re:
Lamby: I'd agree with you in all but the second. My first intinct would be that Smoking is strictly forbidden on underground trains in London.
But then again, I'm not an expert in proper english grammar ;)

10. April 2006, 12:44:01
Hrqls 
Subject: Re: Trip, Travel, Journey, Voyage, Excursion
pauloaguia: *nod* thats the main profit that i have from having learned ancient latin and ancient greek .. some languages look like latin, but more importantly i learned how certain language groups are built and can expand on that when i hear a new language .. it certainly helps me when i am in a forgeign country :)

10. April 2006, 12:42:18
pauloaguia 
Subject: Re: Trip, Travel, Journey, Voyage, Excursion
Hrqls: the only real reason i can think of would be to study ancient texts in their original language
Or to better understand how a certain language evolved.

For instance, if you study latin, you may have an easier task finding similarities between french, spanish, italian and portuguese and understand them easier, since you'll know a strong common root between them.
(It doesn't mean you'll know how to speak them well. Linguists in so many languages are rare - but you'll understand them fair enough)

10. April 2006, 10:02:29
Hrqls 
Subject: Re:
Pedro Martínez: yes, dutch had more cases in the past ... all cases are gone .. but we still find them in some words .. never nouns though

english has a few cases left as well, like 'they, them, their'

in dutch we have 'wiens, wier' and probably some more .. few people use those forms any more though

10. April 2006, 10:00:26
Hrqls 
Subject: Re: Trip, Travel, Journey, Voyage, Excursion
رضا: why would someone learn ancient latin ? why would someone learn ancient greek ?

the only real reason i can think of would be to study ancient texts in their original language

as i am not linguist, and never will be one, my skills are more in the mathematical field, i will never translate any ancient texts .... but i did have some benefits from learning to read ancient greek and ancient latin .. it made it easier for me to understand other foreign languages. i never learned any italian or spanish, but having had ancient latin i can roughly read spanish and italian news papers. i never found a language which made me think of ancient greek .. but maybe i might have some use for it when i visit greece? .. at least it helped me during my physics study because i know the names for the symbols used to the angles .. other students always used the wrong names .. lots of fun :)

other than that i have no real use for having had those languages in school .. but since i went to a 'gymnasium-only' school i had to have both language and have exam in at least one of them (i chose ancient greek as those texts were more interesting, and the language seems more fun, and because we just had the gerundivum (i think?) with ancient latin just before we had to chose which we would do exam in .. so i dropped latin as i didnt like that special case ;))

9. April 2006, 23:41:35
Ewe 
Hi! Great board!

here is my attempt to explain...


banned....to legally take away a right

prohibited...to forbid by authority

forbidden....to command someone not to do something

prevented.....to stop something from happening (usually to stop something bad from happening)

disallowed.....to not allow something

unpermitted....never heard of this!! we say 'not permitted' and that is similar to disallow


1. banned
2. prohibited
3. not permitted
4. permitted

9. April 2006, 18:02:03
Expired 
I have another problem with choice of vocabulary. What is the difference between these words?

banned, prohibited, forbidden, prevented, disallowed, unpermitted

take these examples:

1) He was found guilty of dangerous driving and ... from driving for three years.

2) Smoking is strictly ... on underground trains in London

3) Because he got home two hours late, he was ... to go out for a week.

4) Relatives were not ... to viist patients at any time other than weekday afternoons between five and six.

8. April 2006, 19:53:05
Expired 
Subject: Re:
Pedro Martínez: It does make sense, but I'm glad they don't make us learn Czeck in university :-)

8. April 2006, 19:50:17
Pedro Martínez 
Subject: Re:
Modified by Pedro Martínez (8. April 2006, 19:51:28)
رضا: In English, there is only one case. All the nouns are written and pronounced in the same way no matter where it is in a sentence or what kind of preposition precedes it. However, in a lot of languages, nouns do change (or their articles). In Czech, each noun (and also adjective, pronoun and numeral) has seven forms. Anybody who studies Czech as a foreign language should learn all these forms and remember which suffix goes with which case. For instance if you want to say "by bus", you should know that this is a 7th case and the suffix is -em ("autobusem"). Accordingly, "without anything" is a 2nd case and the suffix is -ho ("bez ničeho"). I hope it makes some sense. :)

8. April 2006, 19:42:38
Expired 
Subject: Re:
Fencer: What does it mean you have seven cases of nouns?

8. April 2006, 07:18:11
Fencer 
Subject: Re:
رضا: 7 cases of nouns.

7. April 2006, 20:20:33
Expired 
Subject: Re:
Pedro Martínez: 7 cases of what?

7. April 2006, 20:19:08
Expired 
Subject: Re: Trip, Travel, Journey, Voyage, Excursion
Walter Montego: Thanks for the post. So I take it the use of these words is related to the distance one is going or what?

If it's related to the distance, then how ould you arrange them from the shortest to the longest?

excursion trip journey voyage ?

But you also mentioned that journey has some sort of difficulty in it. So that's a good point to have in mind.


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

Hrqls: Learning Greek would be logical to me, but what would you need ancient Greek for?

7. April 2006, 20:03:39
toedder 
Subject: Re:
Pedro Martínez: Wow! Would be nice to know more about it :)

7. April 2006, 19:56:05
Pedro Martínez 
By the way, there are 7 cases in Czech.:)

7. April 2006, 19:53:52
Pedro Martínez 
Subject: Re:
Mr. Shumway: It can be hard to distinguish masculine and neutral gender in 2nd and 3rd case. So not the whole post, just a part of it...:)

Hrqls: It's as Mr. Shumway said. BTW, what do you mean that you had more cases? You mean some earlier form of Dutch?

7. April 2006, 19:49:34
toedder 
Subject: Re: Trip, Travel, Journey, Voyage, Excursion
Hrqls: german has 4 and ancient latin 5, they had the ablative!

7. April 2006, 19:38:41
Hrqls 
Subject: Re: Trip, Travel, Journey, Voyage, Excursion
Pedro Martínez: yes, only 1 case .. but we had mores cases (i think similar to german, or maybe 1 less, german has 5 cases isnt it ? or is that ancient greek and ancient latin has 4 ? i am always confused :))

ancient greek didnt have articles i think .. its been 10 years since i had it though, and we were only taught to translate ancient greek readings to dutch

<< <   9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18   > >>
Date and time
Friends online
Favourite boards
Fellowships
Tip of the day
Copyright © 2002 - 2024 Filip Rachunek, all rights reserved.
Back to the top