@Ivana, English has complicated grammar? Since WHEN?! o____o I've always thought it's the easiest one, though I've only studied English (10yrs), German (8yrs), Swedish (6yrs) and French (3yrs). The reason might be that we hear a lot of English here in Finland, because there are so many tv shows in English so...

Funny thing about grammar in German, Swedish and French. As far as we got in school the basic grammar is identical except for one or two little things so you don't have to study the grammar as a whole again and again, only the small tricky parts

That's because we're probably learning English at a young age. We're not looking at their point of view. Example, like my Chinese classmates, they're puzzled why we must have singular/plural form, "a", "an", "the", the change in tenses etc. We don't have that in Chinese. If we want to say "books", we'll just add 'many' or say the number specifically. If we want to say we did said thing a while ago, we just add 'a while ago' and don't change the verbs.

@leelah: say what? English is simple? Than what's up with all the exceptions, and exceptions to exceptions, and exceptions to exceptions to exceptions

English is my first language and I still don't know how or why it works the way it works. "Gut Feeling" for grammar isn't exactly reliable (meaning, I'd fail any grammar test given to me yet I can write an okay article) XD

English isn't simple as you think. Just so you know, there are varieties of English. To wit, Philippine English, British English, American English, etc. Each variety has certain linguistic features though certain rules are still to be followed (which I find it so inconvenient to discuss here).

Huh? Doesn't Philippines just follow American English? o_O

@KTC
I agree with what you say about English.

English is also my first language and I still have a lot to learn.

I normally go with gut feeling and never really paid a lot of attention to the rulings until I actually had to teach them when I worked as a teaching assistant in Kumon.

Growing up in a country with many "multi-s" -- multiracial, multicultural, multilingual society, I (speaking for myself)am lost in all the language rulings. Thus it wouldn't be surprised to hear us "blend in" our local language and thus giving rise to "new versions of English", such as Manglish: (unofficial)Malaysian English & Singlish: (unofficial) Singaporean English.

In unofficial settings where casual conversations between speakers of multiple langauges get together, I "blend in" several languages and dialect into the conversation so if you're not familiar with several languages or the way I speak, it can sound really strange and confusing

It's a bad habit in a way but sometimes, some things will be lost in translation and doesn't give it the full impact of the expression the expressed phrase intended to make.

Quote:

Philippine English somehow resembles American English, but there are noticeable distinctions between the two:

1) Speakers of Philippine English do not have the American Twang/Accent
2) Some words in Philippine English is not in the American vocabulary (like presidentiable, senatoriable, etc.)
3) Other distinctions which is hard to discuss without drawing diagrams. I certainly won't do it here. I'd do it in a classroom, or in my research cubicle.

"American Twang/Accent"
^what does this mean?

Seriously, get someone from boston, a californian, and a texan. We don't sound alike >.>

I'm talking about the Standard American English. (I will edit this one later on.)

Re: American accent
My idea of an American accent is what you'd typically hear on mainstream American television shows.

Of course, there are regional variations but you'd get that in any part of the world.

Also probably what you mean by Philippines English is we speak the 'f' with 'p' sound? Agree with you about the accent though, I hate it when they use tagalog/bisaya accent when speaking English.

Same goes to people who aren't actually bad at English. Why can't they just imitate the accent?

Also with the pronunciation of some words with the letter R. Some would pronounce the letter as "Ar" or as "ahr (like our)". XD

There's one basic reason why they can't imitate the accent: It's hard. Comprehension is also another problem. You might mean "flower" but you were actually saying the word "flour". XD

Our professor in ESL/EFL Teaching told us not to imitate another accent without proper training, or we are shaming in front of the people.

Huh? Isn't 'r' supposed to be arr like in 'are'?!

Well I think you should imitate it if you have a good sense of hearing. I wouldn't want to give off that when-Chinese-speaks-English stereotype image to people.

@KTC

Now that I've lived in California for 2 months I know what you mean I was better in English before I got here! Better stay in Finland lol! But I still think English with it's grammar is easy, just as easy as all the other languages' grammar I've studied.

And what KTC said about the "Gut Feeling".. when I was writing the abstract of my thesis in University I didn't follow my "gut feeling" all the time while translating it in English. And the result was that all those parts that I tried to write like in a real research abstract I had to write again (like my GUT FEELING said I should have!) haha

Flour vs flower = AUGH. For the longest time, I pronounced "flour" as something akin to "floor" and I would confuse flour and flower a lot when I hear them.

^
Still confused on how to pronounce them. This is how I -

Flower= Fla-a-wah
Flour= Fa-loor

In the northeast USA, flower and flour are pronounced exactly the same. You need the context of the sentence to know which word you are talking about.

I don't or won't pronounce flower as a one syllable word. I will always just say it fla-wer. Is it that hard to pronounce them separately? *raises eyebrow*

So, "Fla-wah" is American or British? *raise eyebrows at Ivana* XD

And yeah, I had, and am, and will always pronounce it as "fla-wah" for 'flower' XD

I say flower like flar or something like that. My flour and flower sound the same.