062Y54A00 26/03 Differences Between Oral & Written English

This week I started talking about the differences between spoken and written English in most classes. Those who are really interested could scroll down and have a look at some of the vocabulary in other posts this week as its all part of the same subject and there are gonna be things in there we didn't deal with in this particular class.

I know its difficult for you guys who are learning two foreign languages at the same time and bound to get mixed up at times: I often use French words when I am trying to speak Chinese myself.

I think that one of the values of having a foreign teacher is that so much of the spoken language is not available to you in books. But you must keep in mind that each person has their own personal lexicon [lists of words]. This personal lexicon depends upon their nationality, interests, education and other factors. For example, a foreign teacher from America might use the word 'swell' a lot; an Australian would use 'mate' a lot, a South African 'man' and an English person 'sorted". So each foreign person you meet might come up with words you are not familiar with - because I move around a lot I am always learning new English words I have never heard before.

We all ask each other what these words mean and tease each other or argue about them so I have tried to give only the ones which are used by all English speakers.

More important though, I think, is trying to show how the spoken language works. And, though English is not tonal, it does work on stress. We have already spoken of how, usually, it is the second syllable of a word that is stressed and most of you know that a sentence that asks a question always goes up at the end. But stress works throughout the whole rhythm of English.

We all learn to speak originally through our ears: that is we come to recognise that a particular collection of sounds indicates a particular object or action. In most languages the words for mother and then father are usually the first ones learned - closely followed by "No!"

As English speakers we learn from the very beginning to recognise the pattern or rhythm of a collection of words. My eldest son, whenever he was looking for something started saying "r u theadjoyse?" in a high-pitched voice. It was only one day day, when I was at his Carer's house that I saw her go to the wooden fence that separated her garden from her neighbour and call "Are you there, Joyce?" that I realised why: he thought that particular collection of sounds was the one everybody used when looking for someone or something!

Because nouns and verbs are the most important words in any sentence the rhythm of English speech patterns goes up and down due to the stress that we automatically stress these words - and sometimes adjectives. The words that come in between are not as important and so we tend to say those faster - almost as if we were racing to get past them to the most important stuff.

This is why, sometimes, an English speaker has difficulty understanding someone who is not a native speaker: we are used to that up and down rhythm and our ear is trained to catch the important words. When someone speaks English to us with no rhythm or stress we are easily confused for a minute and often ask to have the sentence repeated. This is unfortunate in China where the Chinese person immediately thinks they have made a mistake, gets embarrassed, starts searching their mind for another way to say what they just said and, nine times out of ten, completely refuses to say exactly what they had said the first time. Or sometimes, to even say anything at all!

So one rule to remember is that, if a native English speaker says "I beg your pardon?" or asks you to repeat something, its not because what you have said is wrong. Its because our ear has to adjust to the different rhythm. The worst thing you can do is try to say the same thing again in a different way because then the process starts all over again. We really DO want you to say exactly what you said before.

For this reason too we sometimes find it difficult to understand a particular word. Its usually not because the word is not correct, but because we have not heard it said in that way before and it sounds completely different to the sounds we associate with that word. So remember...its not your mistake, its ours. Don't be embarrassed or confused, just clearly repeat yourself and have pity of daft [silly] foreigners who can't even recognise our own language!

There are certain words that are often said together and so always said very quickly. So quickly in fact, that they sound like just one word. For an ESL students this is confusing as they are waiting for us to separate each word by a tiny pause and when they don't hear us pausing, think we have said something unfamiliar. We started with a list of things commonly said so quickly together:

would you...woodja
could you...koodya
what's up?...wassup?
don't know...dunno
going to...gunna
want to...wanna
are you...arrya
what are you...wotcha

We tend to pronounce an ing ending as en. So,
doing = doowen
going = gowen
having = haven

the words to and the are the most common words we use and so not terribly important so we rarely say them clearly. Instead we don't pronounce the vowel so that
to = t'
the = th'

Thus the sentence I am going to go to the shop sounds like : I'mgunnago t'th'shop. Which is fine because all you really need in that sentence is the word shop which, being a noun, is stressed and quite clear.

In the same way, the sentence What are you doing? sounds more like wotchadoowen?

We'll do some more of these next week and then, as promised, we'll look at some of the photos of what English Universities look like.

One of the very first nursery rymes little kids learn is Mary Had a Little Lamb. Kids who can even make a sentence on their own yet can still recite this little poem. It also clearly illustrates the up and down, stress/no stress rhythm of English which is why it is so easy for them to both say and remember. How would you say it?

Mary had a little lamb,
It's fleece was white as snow,
and everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.