English topic

Scotland is indeed a very interesting country… 🙂

I went there last year. I was accomodated in Edinburgh, but I also visited Aberdeen, Stirling, St-Andrews and some other little villages… I really enjoyed my trip to Scotland, even if the weather was not mild against all expectations… 😉

When I visited the Edinburgh Castle, in a shop, I bought a book about the Scottish myths and legends… Really interesting… 😜

What I prefered during my trip was to loaf in the Royal Mile… 😀

But my dream is to go to London… 🙂
Have you ever been there ?

We tend to say that there are always two good weeks for weather during scotish summers….but we never know beforehand which ones. 😂

As for London, yes indeed; I lived in Harrow for 7 years. By tube or by British Rail, the journey only takes 17-30 minutes to arrive in Central London.
If you go to visit, you should spend as much time as possible (not less than two weeks) and walk rather than always be taking the bus or the tube. you can discover much more this way. 🙂

BTW, I should have thought that "loaf" needed a preposition…. :/

You have lived in London ! Lucky you ! 🙂

Obviously, I really hope to go one day to London. London is one of these cities, as New York or Paris, that you have the impression to know before going to visit it. Indeed, we know them trough the pictures that TV or cinema transmit us… 🙄

But of course, I imagine it is not the same… 😜


About "loaf", I don't know but… I don't think it needs a preposition… :/

One hears a lot about the price of housing in London, but the cost of meals and hôtels is also very high.

Having checked up on "loaf", I note that it is an intransitive as well as transitive verb. In the latter case, it is usually followed by "away". I always associated it with "around". I hung out = I loafed around = I chilled (out).

I hope your wish comes true.

JSC, there is no stresses in english … 😜

I' ve been once in London, for 1 week, too short to explore such a town !
But I do not think I will live in any English country, I'd prefer live in Germany or Netherlands, even if I do not speak those languages…
Big towns are not my prefered kind of places where to live, quiet countryland or spacious ones are better 🙂

DON'T be riDICulous, Bonus!
Of COURSE there are STREsses; ENGlish is an acCENtual SYLlabic language.
You JUST don't know how to SING it 😉

I seem to have alternatively lived in towns and in the country. I find that it has been a balanced sort of existence. At the moment I live 11 miles from the nearest town. There is a school in my village but no shops; not even a bar.

JSC, English is accentual-syllabic in the poetic context.

I wonder whether french teachers explain the notions of stress and accent in english…I have my doubts.
Yet, it's very important, even essential to learn the language.

BOnus,
There are stresses and accent in english. What we shall call stress is lexical stress, that is to say when one syllable in a word is prominent compared to the other syllables ( and all words of more than one syllable bear a primary stress).
Accent is sentence stress, that is to say all words which have an accent in the sentence.
And it is the alternation between stressed and unstressed syllables which defines rhythm in english.

Many words are not accented in english, and as a consequence have a reduced form. This phenomenon is called Neutralization.
( for instance one pronounces "there is": ð?z in spoken english)

Neutralizations do not exist un French, so for an english ear, the French language sounds spasmodic or monotonous.

I hope the fact that the English language is accantual becomes clearer to you Bonus.
🙂

I don't understand of the eglish topic
I hate english 😐

JSC, I am speaking about HÔTEL, look up 🙂

Ina a écrit :Neutralizations do not exist un French, so for an english ear, the French language sounds spasmodic or monotonous.

I don't know about spasmodic, but certainly unmelodic. (Prayers sung on a monotone are not necessaily monotonous, strangely. 😉 )

Where I come from, we say hôTEL!

Oxford Concise gives several possibilities (although I would say the last one is only for very educated Englishmen who know how the French prononce the word, very uneducated Englishmen who drop all their aitches and…French people):
hotè'l , which is my version
hOtè'l
Otè'l

marly, do you hate the topic because you don't understand how to write and speak English, or do you not understand anything because your hate blocks your capacity to learn?
In both cases, I would say tha you had better do something to change your attitude. 🙂

Ina, I don't think neutralizations exist in English,; maybe in American! It is however possible that neutralisations existe in my native tongue.

Neutralization, does exist in your native tongue. (and also the verb to neutraliZe.

You can check JSC!

If we don't speak the same english , It's not my fault.

So please don't be categoric ( as you did for instance the last time when you said your mother tongue was syllabic… )

Please don't confuse my brutal style with being categorical, Ina. I'm not a trained linguist and my appreciation for litterature and philosophy came late on in life.

If I said that the English language was syllabic, your post did not deny this statement, only amplify it: 'accentual-syllabic'. It's not my fault if the French have forgotton their accents (see Grammont).
In any case, you know very well that I'm rather against the habit of classifying and isolating objects that really interact.

If it is true that Oxford Concise and Collins authorize the spelling with z, I think you'll find that with an 's' is also viable. In the introduction to Collins, there are remarks about the transatlantic influence (colour => color; neutralise => neutralize) but I will not be swayed from thinking that these are unneccessary corruptions. The immediate etymological origin of the word is the french (!) neutraliser.

When I hear English teachers in France speak with an American accent, I'm always surprised. Where has the entente cordiale gone?

BTW, I did say "I think" and "it is possible". This usually means that IO haven't checked or am not sure. This is far from being categorical, Ina. 🙂

Never mind!
I have stupidly lost my temper.
Let's forget that!
🙂

Hope you find it again. 😉

DON'T be riDICulous, Bonus!
Of COURSE there are STREsses; ENGlish is an acCENtual SYLlabic language.
You JUST don't know how to SING it 😉

You are talking like my literature teacher !
Or maybe I have to say that you are singing like him !

He tries to get us understanding what are rhythm and metre in English poetry.
But that is extremely difficult for me to understand this English specificity…
And I am really afraid of the final exam as I do not understand much about what my teacher talks about !

However I like reading, and as I said in another place, I just finished reading "On Chesil Beach" (Ian McEwan). I really enjoyed this novel. Have you ever heard about it ?

Before the second world war, French too was spoken with stresses and inflexions. One only has to listen to recordings of famous orateurs from between the wars to understand how they used to 'sing' the language.
Maurice Grammont in his excellent book La Prononciation française (1914, Ed Delagrave) treats accent, intonation, musical mouvment, rhythm, on 50 pages of the 200!

Concerning the novel…I'm afraid not.

I just finished reading "On Chesil Beach" (Ian McEwan). I really enjoyed this novel. Have you ever heard about it?

I'm reading "On Chesil Beach" at the moment… It really is an enthralling novel! I heard about it after reading Atonement and going to the movies to see the film (the one with Keira Knightley and James McAvoy - if I remember correctly).

I haven't heard much about McEwan. Maybe I'll try to read (or watch ?) "Atonement" one day. I read a few words concerning this novel on the Internet and it seems to me that both novels have the same subject : how things we do (or don't do) can change lives for ever. Am I right ?

I'm sorry for my late answer, I was in holidays.

I am surprised to see the english topic is popular again…
(I am not at all an expert in english, so let's try to be not too much demanding… with me 😉)
I only speak here to show my approval. (I prefer the reading than the speaking, so begin to express you here… please ? )

(PS : I am rather a sort of man who is happy when he understands "Harry Potter" )

Good luck for your efforts !!! 😀 (you have a lector 😉 )

Bonjour,

pourriez-vous me dire si c'est correct? pleaseeeee


I am a pupil in business school and I have to do a training course abroad.
I would have liked doing it in the United States; is it possible?
I was told that you could help us?.

Thks