This month in the Facebook Group we are reading Ethan
Frome by Edith Wharton, an American writer. Although there are some differences between American and British English the biggest challenge is the informal dialogue that has characteristics common to both variations of the language. I remember my first days in Paris as a university student were utterly bewildering. The French I had learnt at school was grammatically correct, in complete sentences and always polite. My heart sank when after having plucked up enough courage to finally go into a bakery and ask for some bread, I was greeted not by 'Vous desirez?' ( translation 'What would you like?') but by 'Messieursdames?' ( a contracted form of Ladies and Gentlemen') I mean is that even a word?? The truth is we all make mistakes when we speak our own language so just get over it, the word on the street is brief, simplified and straight to the point. Here I will speak about the three main types of informal Language - omission, informal contractions and simple mistakes. To beginner students I often explain that we must always specify the subject, otherwise as verb forms change little it is not clear who we are refering to. But this is not strictly true. In fact, if the person you are talking to is clear, you CAN omit the subject and even the auxiliary verb. Someone asking you the time in London will rarely say 'Have you got the time?' but rather 'Got the time?'. The most important objective when speaking English is to communicate your message, we don't care if it sounds elegant or clean, we don't have time to lose speaking, just say it! In Italy where I live the weather is generally good so people can take their time speaking and expressing themselves carefully; in England you just want to do your business and get back to the dry and warm of your home. Examples of ommission in Ethan Frome are '(I) Guess you forgot about us Zeena', '(Is) That all?'. On the excellent website, English Club, you can find an explanation of common informal contractions, such as the use of expressions like 'gonna' ( going to ), 'wanna' ( want to ) and 'lemme' ( let me ). Check out the website to discover the meanings of these phrases and more. https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/contractions-informal.htm One informal contraction that we see in Ethan Frome is 'kinder' 'kind of', but the most common contraction is 'ain't'. But is it the negative form of 'have' or 'be'? Both actually! 'Ain't you riding Mattie?' = 'Aren't you riding Mattie?' 'Ain't it lucky?' = 'Isn't it lucky?' "I hope Zeena ain't broken anything she sets store by," - I hope Zena hasn't broken anything that is important to her. Can you honestly say that you speak your mother tongue 100% correctly all the time? Of course you can't! Sometimes you apply a rule incorrectly, or you repeat something you have heard without knowing the real meaning. Well, English is no different. We all know that irregular verbs and past participles are a nightmare for students but they are also difficult for native speakers. Mother tongue children often class regular verbs as irregular, with the aim of making some sense of the mess. For example a child would say 'I goed' instead of 'I went'. So it should come as no surprise to see past simple and past participle forms confused as for example in the phrase 'The cat done it' (The cat did it). When I was at school and I was talking with friends about regrets about things in the past that perhaps didn't go exactly how we expectedwe would say ' I should of come'. What we really wanted to say was 'I should have come'. However each word in English that has more than one syllable has one part that is stressed more than the ohers, for example we say 'comPUter' and not 'COMputer' or 'compuTER'. This stress is present also in phrases where certain words (nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs) are more important than Others (articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs). So also for native speakers words like 'have' have a softer sound and 'have' can be confused with 'of'. 'Of' can be further abbreviated to 'a' ( If I'd supposed you'd 'a' made any objection.
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What is this?When I started lostinclassics I looked for language lessons in the books I was reading, such as for example the use of phrasal verbs or inversion in conditionals and I explained them through examples found in the text. I also did reviews of the books I read and tried to give some advice on how to read classics using the various resources I know of. Then I switched to just reviews and lately I have been doing a bit of creative writing inspired by my reading. Who knows what I will come up with next! Archives
September 2020
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