English for foreigners

[William67]

Given that the US derives from British Imperialism that is one category, not two.

Aviation is also a factor; English is the international language of aviation. And broadcasting another; the BBC gets everywhere.

Sooooo, youre saying that the BBC is like sand at the beach?

 

[Catherineanne]

Sooooo, youre saying that the BBC is like sand at the beach?

Pretty much. And just as annoying when it gets in your sandwiches.

 

[Catherineanne]

Is this really formally because I'm English and as far as I know throughout all of school good has never meant honest it's meant a good person as in you are nice or you are feeling well so......

Good is a statement of morality; as you rightly say a nice person. Well or fine is a statement of health.

If the two are confused then that indicates Standard American English rather than Standard British English.

 

[Catherineanne]

Yes, that's excactly what makes it relatively easy. Along with the thing that it's written with Latin alphabets, unlike Russian or Chinese for example. My attempt to learn Russian was doomed from the start because of the Cyrillic letters.

For comparsion, Finnish grammar is all about inflections, there are no words like "of" "from" etc, so every single word has like 500 different inflections to cover all the possible variations of usage.

Example,
Eng: "One of our dogs was also being occasionally sick."
Fin: "Yksi koiristammekin sairasteli"

It's just three words vs english nine words, but alot of inflection to shoehorn the same amount of information into those few words. The basic forms are "koira" = "dog" and "sairas" = "sick".

That of course makes english much simpler to learn, because once you can form a sentence with some particular words, it's likely the same with some others, just replace the key words. In languages with alot of inflections, it's much more work to figure out all the inflections of all the words involved.

When I learned Russian we were given a week to learn the alphabet; it is nowhere near as difficult as it looks. But it is another highly inflected language; full of nuance.

Those who have inflected languages just have to watch for word order in non inflected ones. 'The man bit the dog' means something entirely different from 'the dog bit the man.' Playing with word order or internal stress can result in changes of meaning which may not be immediately apparent to those who are used to inflection.

 

[HopeS746]

Good is a statement of morality; as you rightly say a nice person. Well or fine is a statement of health.

If the two are confused then that indicates Standard American English rather than Standard British English.

Aaahh