Linguagum

Hi. How are you? This is Damian: I’m the one who writes and records the Linguagum sentences you receive every day. I decided that we’d try a change of style … just for today. If you look at Linguagum’s website (in the “very useful links” section) you’ll notice that one of the links there is to a bluegrass and old-time music radio show. Now, I love this kind of music and for some time now I’ve been trying to play it myself and I’ve recorded myself playing a very short piece on the guitar and banjo. It’s my own interpretation of a traditional American folk song called Wildwood Flower. I hope you enjoy it!

Play

Well, I hope you enjoyed that and, even though I don’t think any record companies will be signing me up very soon, I had a lot of fun recording it. If you think you might like to listen to bands playing this kind of music properly, why not have a look in our “very useful links” section at www.linguagum.com. We have a link to a site called Olde Surber Radio Station which is really worth listening to. Well, OK, that’s it from me and I’ll see you tomorrow with another sentence, so bye for now!

Language notes:

• The one = the person
• We’d = we would
• Just for today = only today - not tomorrow!
• Links = a website address - click it and you go to that site.
• Bluegrass and old-time music = two (similar) kinds of American folk music.
• For some time = for an unspecified (but quite long) period of time.
• I’ve been trying to play it myself = I have been trying to play it. Myself emphasises the pronoun I. (We studied this in Essentials 2 - do you remember?)
• I’ve recorded myself = I have recorded (me).
• Piece = piece of music.
• My own interpretation = my way of playing. Own emphasises my.
• Signing me up = giving me a contract.
• Properly = correctly / well
• Worth listening to = you won’t waste your time listening to it.

Today’s instalment looks at comprehension.

My guess is that, when you speak English, you think that you should understand everything you hear – because you understand everything in your own language, right? Actually, this isn’t true! I’m going to talk about a few examples of similarities between poor understanding in your own language and in English and hopefully show you that, by employing a few simple techniques, you can radically improve your English comprehension.

Sometimes, in conversation, you miss a few words a speaker says to you – perhaps because he or she speaks indistinctly, or because you’re not paying attention. When this happens to you in English, you automatically believe that it’s your fault you haven’t understood and that your English is terrible. Don’t think like that. Remember, it doesn’t worry you in your own language because you just ask for clarification or guess the missing words through their context. Do the same in English.

In addition to this, all of us have imperfect vocabularies in our own languages and we don’t understand every word we hear. Typically, though, we tend not to display our ignorance and, maybe 80% of the time, we are able to work out the word’s meaning through its context. Obviously, this is going to happen to you more often when you are speaking English, but, if you keep calm, you can do the same thing you do in your own language – deduce the word’s meaning from the other things the speaker is saying. 50% success is OK.

Being the only non-native speaker in a group of native speakers – for example in a noisy bar – is also something which tends to damage a language learner’s confidence. Although it really is hard to understand people in a situation like this, be realistic about it: even in your own language it can be difficult to understand a group’s conversations, especially if there’s a lot of noise. You simply compensate for the problem by talking to the person next to you - it doesn’t make you feel inadequate then – so don’t let it worry you when you speak English.

The point I’m making here is that it’s not helpful to be oversensitive about your comprehension skills. You experience very similar issues in your own language, but generally you are unaware of them, instinctively using coping mechanisms to overcome communication problems. Applying the techniques of deduction, educated guessing and asking for clarification will improve your level of comprehension. Don’t be shy: you do these things in your own language: what’s so different about English?

In the last article on students’ fears when speaking English, I mentioned that your foreign accent can be a positive enhancement of the way you speak English – and not the impediment you’re worried it might be.

I recently met an Italian who is a lecturer at Portsmouth University in England. While he certainly had a noticeable Italian accent, his English intonation was virtually perfect, which meant that listening to him was comparable to listening to a native English speaker with a regional accent. The only difference was that his regional accent was Italian! The way he spoke sounded really nice – quite exotic, really.

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that it’s not accent which makes someone sound “foreign”, but rather the rhythm he or she uses while speaking English. The most important way of not sounding “foreign”, while you still maintain elements of your native accent, is to adopt the intonation that is used by all native English speakers, regardless of where they come from.

The simplest way of explaining intonation is to look at a simple sentence:

“Jim lives in a big house with a fat cat and a dog.”

There are thirteen one-syllable words in this sentence. However, each word does not receive the same stress. There are only seven beats in the sentence.

Jim + lives + big + house + fat + cat + dog

Only these seven words are stressed and clearly heard.

What happens to the other six words? Because they’re not stressed, they seem to blend into each other.

In a becomes something like unu

With a becomes something like wuthu

And a becomes something like unu

So we get something like this:

Jim lives unu big house wuthu fat cat unu dog.

(The u I have written corresponds to something called a schwa – or an unstressed syllable. Just grunt and you’ll have the general sound. “uh”)

If you beat your hand on your knee 7 times, keeping the same rhythm, as though you were listening to music, each beat should fall on the important 7 words. (Jim/lives/big/house/fat/cat/dog.) The other compressed, unstressed words fall between the beats.

It’s interesting, because when you think about it, it makes complete sense: which words in the sentence express its essential meaning? The stressed ones (Jim/lives etc). We don’t really need to stress the other ones, because we can typically understand them through their context.

Being able to speak like this, to use this rhythm, is not that easy – it takes practice – and you need to consciously listen to the rhythm of English speakers whenever you get the chance. Sometimes, the rhythm pattern may change mid-sentence. If you listen to it and practice it often enough, though, your intonation will definitely improve, resulting in more “native-sounding” speech.

In the next few articles, I’m going to look at common problems faced by English learners and also at some ways of converting any negative feelings of inadequacy you may have regarding your language skills into more positive feelings of accomplishment and self confidence.

One of the main fears language learners face is that of sounding foreign in their adopted language. I can speak of this from a personal perspective, having spent years learning and speaking Spanish. I only have to open my mouth and Spaniards know that I’m a foreigner. While this has been a bit of an embarrassment to me, it’s actually a very common phenomenon amongst language learners: unless you are truly exceptional, your mother tongue will influence your pronunciation of a foreign language.

It seems sensible, then, to try and analyse the reasons for wanting to sound, for example, British. 1. You are an actor who is impersonating an Englishman and your job depends on a perfect accent. 2. You are a spy infiltrating MI6 and your life depends on maintaining your cover.

Assuming, then, that you are an actor or a spy, which accent are you going to choose? I can think of at least ten cities and areas with completely different accents in Britain alone, without even considering the variety of accents in Ireland, Jamaica, Australia and Canada. So which one do you want?

Well, the good news is that there are so many different varieties of English around the world that you don’t need to choose a regional accent at all– your own “foreign” accent will be just fine! In fact, and this is very important, as long as you follow a few rules which I’m going to outline, instead of your accent being an impediment to your English, it will be positively beneficial, because it will give you a unique and interesting way of speaking!

In the next article in this series on student language fears, I’m going to give you some tips on English intonation. In the meantime, here are some web sites for you to peruse:

http://web.ku.edu/idea/europe/england/england.htm

This site is quite interesting: this site belongs to an organisation called IDEA - The International Dialects of English Archive – and has a number of recordings of regional British accents. The recordings may be a bit difficult for you, but a few of them have transcripts, too.

http://www.abcounties.co.uk/counties/map.htm

www.multimap.com

In case you’re not familiar with towns and counties in Britain, these two sites will help you pinpoint where each accent (dialect) is spoken.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5277090.stm

If you’re really keen, you could read this BBC article – it seems that it’s not just humans who speak differently around the country!

A question I have often been asked as a teacher is “How long will it take me to learn English?” Well, you could equally ask, “How long is a piece of string?” I did… in the forum. There weren’t any sensible answers, either.

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