Meryn Stol

Ben Werdmuller Then who did we bury? See question on Quora - Meryn Stol

Anne W Zahra "Come see" and "go see" are binomial phrases, and these are very common in spoken English. They can be said with and ("come and see") or with no "and." Not saying the "and" is typical in the United States. Other verbs that form binomial phrases include try and, more rarely sit, watch and wait. The only purpose of this form seems to be emphasis on the outcome of the action. I can tell you that binomials with sit and wait are like idioms. They're usually for complaining :) Now the big question... why?! I don't know, honestly. I'm not a linguist-- just a teacher. If I had to guess why we have these binomials, I would guess it's because they come from literature, or they're very old or (less likely) because they're like the bare infinitive, as in these sentences: 1. She lets her friend drive the car. 2. She watched her mother cook dinner. The action in all these sentences seems to be concurrent (happening at the same time). In most sentences with a verb and an infinitive, the... - Meryn Stol

Bora Güler Why do some people affirm that "there is no evidence for flying monkeys that shoot fire out of their eyes in space" when the only claim one can make about a lack of evidence is from an ignorance perspective, "I don't know of any evidence for flying monkeys that shoot fire out of their eyes in space."? See question on Quora - Meryn Stol

Jaap Weel There's a lot of regional variation in the pronunciation. Some Flemish dialects and "plat Haags" (the lower-class sociolect of The Hague) even turn it into a monopthong. The standard IPA, though, inasfar as a standard exists, is /œy/. That reduces it to a previously unsolved problem: figure out how to pronounce /œ/ and /y/. The latter (/y/) you'll need anyway, since it's used in Dutch words like "fuut" (a type of bird), and the closely related /y:/ in words like Dutch "muur" ("wall"). The former (/œ/) is actually a lot less critical, because it varies so much across dialects that I would dispute there's even really a standard. The /œ/ symbol appears to have been picked mostly because they had to pick something. You can substitute something like /ɛ/ or /ʌ/ or even /ɑ/ and no one would be the wiser. Before I looked it up, I honestly expected the transcription to be /ɛy/. So anyway, the hard part is to learn to pronounce /y/ as in "fuut". There, the best you can do is just... - Meryn Stol

Philip Newton German has four noun cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative), and while the genitive is wobbling a little in favor of preposition+dative, the system is still pretty robust. Dutch essentially only has one case for nouns, except in certain fixed expressions (such as ‘Koningin der Nederlanden’ with the old genitive). Pronouns still have a subject–object distinction (e.g. ‘ik’/‘mij’). So, pretty much like English in this respect (no cases in nouns, two cases in pronouns). See question on Quora - Meryn Stol

Joachim Pense Christian Witjes mentioned Word order. I add noun genders: German has all three, while Dutch has only the distinction in "de" and "het" nouns. See question on Quora - Meryn Stol

Meryn Stol followed a question. 56 Answers See question on Quora - Meryn Stol

Meryn Stol voted up this answer. Darrell Francis It really depends on the person. For most decent writers, it's pretty much impossible to tell a native speaker from a non-native speaker. There might be subtle clues, such as uncommon word choices, but what they write is correct even if it sounds a little awkward to a native speaker. The thing to look for is mistakes in the writing. Native English speakers also make mistakes, but the mistakes they make are different than the ones non-native speakers make. Misspellings are a bad clue as they could just be a typo and anyone could make that mistake. One telling mistake are homophones, words which sound alike, but have different spellings. A native speaker is more likely to confuse "your" and "you're" because it sounds correct and they aren't thinking about grammar. A non-native speaker doesn't have that innate sense of what "sounds correct", therefore they're less likely replace a word with a homophone. For example, I just saw a question... - Meryn Stol

Meryn Stol voted up this answer. Kaicheng Liang This is a technique known as 'shadowing' that I learnt in Japanese class, which I find tremendously helpful for short-term oral fluency improvement. Watch your favorite English language TV show or movie, and as the characters speak, repeat loudly the exact words they are saying the moment you hear them. In other words, 'shadow' their dialog in real-time. Don't worry about getting every word or sound right - focus on listening carefully, moving along quickly and keeping pace. After the movie ends, repeat the exact same movie and do it again. And again. By forcing yourself to speak at native speed, your brain becomes hyper-receptive to what you are hearing, and you will find yourself not only picking up the words quicker and quicker, but also unconsciously mimicking the inflections and vocal nuances that are usually difficult to learn for a non-native. It will also fix the stammer that comes with uncertainty or lack of confidence. In this... - Meryn Stol

Meryn Stol voted up this answer. Patrick Wallace Typically, when native speakers speak with non-native speakers, especially overseas, the native speakers speak much more slowly and clearly, using fewer idioms and much less slang. I find that this is true of myself--when I return to the US I find that my speech is much slower and easier to understand than most Americans. It is no doubt part of the legacy of living overseas for all these years. The speech you see in films is more like that in real life when compared to the speech of expatriates and language teachers, and the speech most often found on language-learning tapes. This is one reason why I suggest to my students that they watch English-language films and practice the on-screen dialogue by reading the subtitles using the same speed and intonation as the actors. Such a tactic will better prepare them to go to the US or Britain, by improving both their overall fluency and listening ability. See question on Quora - Meryn Stol