The boys are right. “These” are physically near, “those” are physically away. Also, “these” and “those” are plural for “this” and “that,” respectively.
However, there’s more. In a list of things, “these” are the ones you just cited, while “those” are the ones you cited before.
“I like passionfruit and bananas—these are good for dream recall, while those are good to get you sleeping.”
In Portuguese, we have isto, isso, aquilo and aquiloutro (there are actually 20 different types of pointer pronouns, these are just the neuter ones) and specific rules for the use of each one, it’s a bit tougher than just these and those.
Probably you are speaking “spanish” castellano? Cause I learned it in Ecuador, so the “aci/aca” might be an american thing.
I think both of them are synonymous and mean the same as “aqui”.
Got another one, this time english pronounciation:
In school they told us you can pronounce the word “ate” in two different ways.
With an “a” like in “a-sia”
With an “a” like “a-tmosphere”
I wonder wether you all agree that both forms a possible, and wether they are specific to regions. Like form one is british and form two is american or sth.
Same goes for some other verbs as well, most conufsing to me is the “either”. I used to pronounce the “ei” like in “bite”, perhaps a bit softer/longer. However, I started wondering wether this can be correct at all, since it seems that everybody is pronouncing it like in “iraq”.
As for the word, “ate,” I’ve only heard it pronounced in one way; I’ve never heard of any other. The “a” makes the first sound that you mentioned, as in “Asia.” If you were to pronounce it as in “atmosphere,” that just makes “at,” which is a different word entirely.
As for either, I’ve heard it pronounced in two ways:
Yes, you can pronounce the “ei” as you would pronounce the “I” in “Iraq,” but I normally don’t pronounce it that way. It seems more common to pronounce the “ei” as the “E” sounds in “English.” I normally use the latter for pronouncing “either.”
[color=#cc3333]Warning: Crazy Brazillian pronounces English stuff in this post, beware of possible consequences—such as hysterical laugher and permanent accent damage—before proceeding. [/color]
The word ate is pronounced similar or equal to the word eight in most accents. * In AmE it’s pronounced /eɪt/
Either can be both pronounced /iːðə(r)/ (especially in AmE and AuE) or /aɪðə(r)/ (especially in BrE and CanE).
AmE – American English BrE – Brittish English AuE – Australian English CanE – Canadian English
I’m not a native speaker, so if I’m not pronouncing the word in the middle of a phrase, it often sounds exaggerated… It’d be nice if some native speakers recorded their pronounciation for these words.
To know the right pronounce of words, it would be recommendable that you to kept a nice dictionary and learnt the IPA.
One which doesn’t have a gender. (The word ‘it,’ for example, is neither male or female.)
@blissfull
Thanks. Now it would be interesting to know where you come from, since the “ate” seems rather british and the “either” rather american.
@bruno
Wow, thorough explanation
Perhaps I should just stick to the british english, since this is what I learned at school. However, probably I can´t avoid mixing the accents anyways, since the practice in speaking comes from backpacker-conversations.
Btw, I just realized that I tend to pronounce neither the american way and either the british. That is, if I even remember to use neither, often I don´t. But well, an american guy told me he doesn´t use it either
I can read the phonetic alphabet a bit (especially when I now what it should mean), but I can´t write it or learn the exact pronounciation from it. Have you studied something with languages?
Hmm, perhaps there may have been a slight problem with the way I explained myself, then. If you listen to Bruno’s examples, I use the American forms for both words; which can help to clear up my location.
I know that this question was aimed at Bruno, but he is known for being the language robot on this board. I believe he studies many languages.
Oh, and by the way, I think I might also want to be cleared up on how to pronounce your username, tapir.
Nah, I’m just a language freak. If you really wanna know, * I’m a native, proficient speaker of the Brazillian Portuguese language;
I’m fluent in other 20 dialects/accents and varieties of Portuguese, and studying the Angolan litterature;
I’m fluent and proficient in English, and taught it for a few years;
I used to be a fluent speaker of French, and orally I can still communicate, but the written, formals skills are gone
I study Italian, Finnish and Arabic (although I haven’t been a good Arabic student lately)
And I know or understand a bit from other 10 languages or something…
You see, I want to be a diplomat, and I like languages, so you know… You give me the possibility of learning a new one, I think: “Why not?”
And your user information is correct, I mean that you’re 17 years old? If that’s the case, I’m in awe man!
As for me, I’m into Asian languages, especially Japanese. I lived there for some 10 months and since I came back home to Sweden, I’ve been studying it practically all the time. I’ve done some Korean as well but the best study material I have found for that’s in Japanese, so I figure I’ll perfect that language first (need to build a little on my vocabulary to read the textbooks with some fluency).
Chinese seems to be an interesting language. I like the fact that grammar in Chinese seems to be somewhat non-existent, if you will, and the language is instead built idiomatically.
And then of course what’s great about Japanese, Chinese and Korean is that all of them use the same characters (except that parts of China use a simplified set). This means the vocabulary to a large extent is the same (except it has regional variations, of course).
Ta is used in parts of the Great Brittain and Australia as a short for “thanks.” In this case, I’d guess it’s just the short form.
And in parts of the US, ta–ta is a slang for girls’ breasts. I have absolutely no idea of where this came from, but I’m guessing it was just an inside joke the spread.
In the other hand, in Australia, “ta ta” seems to be a way of saying goodbye. I’m also not sure about this one’s origin.
Nana (one of my best friends) has been studying Japanese for a couple of years now, she’s quite fluent. As for me, I can only form simple wa … desu phrases (but of course, any Japanese descendant will start liking you a bit more if you introduce yourself with:
Watashi no namae wa Bruno desu. Watashi wa tofu desu.
And then give them a wide friendly smile. (I dreamt something similar to that a while ago. )
Really? I find Chinese to be one of te languages withthe strongest grammars available. Only, it’s not a denotative language, like most indo–european languages are (Brazillian Portugese being an exception), so in order to speak Chinese, you’ve got to learn it’s “poetry,” you’ve got to learn in a Chinese’s thinkframe, their culture.
Ah yes, any Czech speakers in here?
Planing to go there this summer, so I should be able to say at least hello and thanks. Yeah, I know I can look it up on the net, but anyways… g
Generally I find the eastern european languages very interesting (or middle european, whatever you want to consider yourself ). But I don´t really have a preference as to which one I like best. Probably that is cause I don´t even now them good enough to distinct between the different ones very well.
Anyways, russian and polnish both sound very cool, and I think I´d learn one of these two if I got to much time and energy one day - or a real reason to do so
I´d also like to know which ones are similiar. I suppouse russian, polnish and slovakian got a similiar background? Hungarian is afaik rather similiar to swedish, and romanian seems to have strong roman roots? How about czech?
And do these languages (especially polnish and czech) have anything in their structure that is remarkably different to someone used to roman languages?
And Bruno, sure I want to know
That´s really cool… but now I really wonder about your age. Are you 17?!
Do the language freaks in here all enjoy language as you can find it in literature, well-written articles, good song lyrics, poems and so on. Or are there also people who are fascinated by the way language works, foreign languages, grammar and stuff like that, but are not interested very much in language-art?
If by language–art you mean Tolkien’s narratives, I don’t like that. On the other hand, I love poetry, and literature, especially marginal literature (the one written by a society’s outcast). I like living languages, and whatever they can be used to. I’m fascinated by the way a language develops and is molded by its speakers—how accents appear, and structures are changed, and words, given new meanings.
I think a language is the strongest representative of a culture, and simply knowing a language shows you are interested, understand and respect its people and their culture. ( Siiw!) I like to learn languages thinking of the culture and the society that dwells behind those structures and mindsets.
Well, introducing yourself like that would at least give some credibility to the statement “you are what you eat”.
Seriously though, Japanese is an awesome language to study. Especially the characters. I love 'em. I can spend an entire evening - heck, a day - memorizing new characters.
I’m glad though they aren’t as numerous as in Chinese. Around 3000 is enough to read pretty much anything. 1945 is the official number of common-use characters, but that doesn’t really match reality. I’ve learnt all of them and still I encounter new characters all the time, so currently I’m studying hard to bridge the gap.
What’s great about characters is that if you know a couple of thousands of them, you can build literally hundreds of thousands of words by combining them. This makes memorizing new vocabulary almost an effortless task, even though of course you’ll need to learn native Japanese words without kanji as well.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I mean with “idiomatic grammar”. I don’t know any Chinese myself but I’ve heard, for instance, that they form questions a little bit like this: “you go not go?”. Also, they don’t inflect words, right? Barry Farber, in his excellent book “Learn Any Language”, says of Chinese: “The closest thing Chinese has to what we think of as grammar is what we’ll call ‘interesting ways’.” Then he gives some funny examples, like: “You have I-belong pencil, no have?” (Do you have my pencil?)
I love languages like this that are completely different from what we are used to.
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Siiw!) I like to learn languages thinking of the culture and the society that dwells behind those structures and mindsets.