Learner English																		
SECOND EDITION																		
A teacher 's guide to																		
interference and other problems																		
M ichael Swan and																		
Bernard Smith																		
IR\I CAMBRIDGE																		
V UNIVERSITY PRESS																		
PU BLISHED  BY  THE  PR ESS  SYNDICATE  OF  TH E  UNIVERSITY   OF  CAM BRI D GE																		
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CAMBRI D GE UN IVERSITY PRESS																		
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© Cambridge University Press 2001																		
"This book is in copyright, which normally mea ns that no reproduction of any part may ta ke"																		
"place without the written permission of Cambridge  University Press. The copying of certain parts of it by individual teachers for use within their classrooms, however, is permitted without such formality. To aid identification, pages which are copia ble by the teacher without further permission are identified by a separate copyright notice:"																		
© Cambridge University Press 2001.																		
First published  1987																		
Second edition 2001																		
Fourth printing 2002																		
"Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge"																		
Typeset in Sabon 10.5/12pt     [CE]																		
A catalogue record for this book is available from  the British Library																		
Library of  Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data																		
Learner English: a teacher's guide to interference and other problems I [edited by] Michael Swan and Bernard Smith. - 2nd ed.																		
p. cm.- (Cambridge ha nd books for la nguage teachers) Includes bibliographical  references and index.																		
ISBN 0-521-77939-1  ( pb) -ISBN 0-521-00024-6  (audio cd) -ISBN 0-521-77497-7  (cassette)																		
1. English la nguage - Study and teaching - Foreign speakers. 2. Interference (Linguistics)																		
"I. Swan, Michael.  IL Smith, Bernard, 1937- .  III. Series."																		
PE1128 .A2 L36 2001 428'.0071-<lc21															00-046785			
"ISBN: 0 521 77939 1pa perback
ISBN: 0 521 77497 7 cassette
ISBN: 0 521 00024 6 CD (a udio)"																		
Contents																		
Notes on contributors        vu																		
Introduction      ix																		
Note for teachers of American English        xu List of phonetic symbols        xiv																		
Acknowledgements        xvI																		
Dutch speakers     1																		
Speakers of Scandinavian languages      21																		
German speakers       37																		
French speakers       52																		
Italian speakers       73																		
Speakers of Spanish and Catalan         90																		
Portuguese speakers      113																		
Greek speakers        129																		
Russian speakers       145																		
Polish speakers       162																		
Farsi speakers       179																		
Arabic speakers        195																		
Turkish speakers       214																		
Speakers of South Asian languages																		
Speakers of Dravidian languages Speakers of West African languages																		
227																		
244																		
251																		
Swahili speakers						260												
Malay/Indonesian						speakers			279									
Japanese speakers						296												
Chinese speakers						310												
Korean speakers						325												
Thai speakers						343												
The cassette and CD       357																		
v																		
Dutch speakers																		
"Guy A. J. Tops, Xavier Dekeyser, Betty Devriendt and Steven Geukens"																		
Distribution																		
"THE NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM, Surinam, Dutch Antilles; about 20"																		
"million people. (Its mutually  intelligible  descendant  Afrikaans,  spoken by about 6 million native speakers and used as a lingua franca by about 15 million  people in South Africa and Namibia, is now officially considered a separate language.)"																		
Introduction																		
"Dutch is a member  of  the  (West)  Germanic  branch  of  Indo-European,"																		
"and as such is closely related to Frisian, English, German and the Scandinavian languages. It is the standard language in the Netherlands and in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium, where it is often but unofficially called 'Flemish'. The use of the standard language as the first language is far more widespread in the Netherlands than in Flanders. There most people habitually use one of the many local dialects or an approximation of the standard language. The variation, though diminishing, is still very great. The standard language is under­ stood almost everywhere, but dialects tend to be mutually unintelligible, both in the Netherlands and in Flanders."																		
"Dutch and English being so closely related, they have many sim­ ilarities in all areas of their grammars, and Dutch speakers regard English as easy to learn, at least initially, when they make rapid progress."																		
Phonology																		
General																		
"The Dutch and English phonological  systems are broadly similar, so"																		
that  speakers  of  Dutch  do not  normally  have  serious difficulties  in recognising or pronouncing most English sounds.																		
"Many learners may use strong regional accents in their Dutch, and"																		
their problems with English tend to vary accordingly. Universal features																		
of Dutch giving rise to a Dutch accent in English are:																		
"- Devoicing of final consonants and a corresponding shortening in the length of preceding vowels: dock for dog, leaf for leave, etc."																		
"- A much narrower intonation range, not reaching the same low pitch areas as English."																		
- Pronu nciation of r whenever it occurs in the spelling.																		
Vowels																		
1!	I		e		re			ei	a1		JI							
a:	D		J!		u			au	gu		1g							
u:	A		3:		g			eg	ug		"aI;}
f----
au;}"							
"Shaded phonemes have equivalents or near equivalents in Dutch, and"																		
"should therefore be perceived and articulated without serious difficulty, although some confusions may still arise. Unshaded phonemes may cause problems. For detailed comments, see below."																		
"1. Depending on the learners' region of origin, /I/ may be pronounced too close (leading to confusion between pairs like sit and seat ), or too open (with confusion between pairs like sit and set )."																		
"2. Standard Dutch /e/ is somewhere between English /e/ and /re/. This results in confusion of the latter two (in pairs like set and sat or then and than), especially since Dutch has no vowel corresponding to /re/."																		
"3. Many learners pronou nce English /a:/ very far back; it may sound similar to h:/ (which is often very open), leading to confusion between pairs like part and port."																		
"4. lo/ and /A/ may not be  distinguished,  leading to confusion  in pairs like not and nut. Some learners may  also pronounce  !Al rather  like"																		
/;}/.																		
"5. Dutch speakers find English h:/ and /;m/ difficult,  and may confuse pairs like caught and coat."																		
"6. Dutch has no equivalent of /u/, as in book . It may be pronounced rather like /A/ (with confusion between look and luck , for example), or like /u:/ (making pool similar to pull )."																		
"7. /3:/ (as in heard , turn) is usually pronounced with lip-rounding by Dutch learners."																		
Consonants																		
p	b	f			v			e	6		t		d					
s	z	J			3			tf	d3		k		g					
m	n	IJ			1			r	J		w		h					
"Shaded phonemes have equivalents or near equivalents in Dutch, and"																		
"should therefore be perceived and articulated without serious difficulty, although some confusions  may still arise. Unshaded phonemes may cause problems. For detailed comments, see below."																		
"1. The lenis ('voiced') consonants lb!, Id!, !vi, lo/ , lzl, /3/ and /d3/ do not occur at the ends of words in Dutch. Learners will replace them by their fortis ('unvoiced') counterparts: Bop for Bob; set for said; leaf for leave; cloth for clothe; rice for rise; 'beish' for beige; larch for large. (Most learners also fail to make the English distinction in the length of vowels before voiced and unvoiced consonants.)"																		
"2. In other positions in words, too, many Northern Dutch learners pronounce /fl instead of /v/, Isl instead of /z/, and If / instead of /3/: file  for vile; sue for zoo;  'mesher' for measure."																		
"3. Dutch lacks the phoneme /g/ as in get. Learners will use either /kl,"																		
"the fricative / xi (as in Scottish loch), or its voiced equivalent /y/."																		
"4. / pl, /ti and /k/ are not aspirated at the beginning of a word in Dutch; this can make them sound rather like lb/ , /di and /g/: bay for pa y; den for ten; goat for coat."																		
5. ltf l is often reduced  to If /  and /d3/  to /3/  (or /f /):  shop  for  chop;																		
/3rem/ or sham for jam.																		
6. /8/ is usually pronounced Isl or /t/: sank or tank for thank . lo/ is usually pronounced /z/ or /d/: zen or den for then.																		
7. Northern  Dutch  speakers may make Isl rather like /f /: sheet  for																		
seat.																		
"8. Learners may make /w/ with teeth and lip, leading to confusion with /v/: vile for while."																		
9. Dutch /r/ exhibits a lot of variety; none of the versions are  like English /r/.																		
"10. Dutch postvocalic 'dark' /1/ is very 'dark', with the tongue further back in the mouth than in English, especially after /i:/, /I/ and /e/. Some Dutch accents have 'dark' /1/ before  vowels,  where  English has 'clear' /1/."																		
11. /hi can be a problem for learners with a dialect background from																		
the coastal provinces of Belgium : they produce a /:xi-like fricative.																		
Consonant clusters																		
English clusters are not in general difficult for Dutch speakers. Students																		
may insert / ;;J/  between /1/ and certain other consonants : '-{ilium' for film; 'millock'  for milk .																		
Influence of spelling on pronunciation																		
1. The Dutch system for spelling vowels and diphthongs is fairly simple																		
and  consistent. Learners  have  great  difficulty  therefore  in  disso­ ciating a word's spelling from its pronunciation.																		
"2. Learners tend to pronounce the letter r wherever it occurs, leading to mistakes if they are aiming at standard British English."																		
"3. Dutch lacking a /g/, the combination ng is always pronounced /fJ/ in Dutch. This leads to problems with words like fing er, hunger, etc."																		
4. Even very advanced learners will pronounce the letter o in words like																		
front and mother as lo/ instead of !Al.																		
5. The letters u and w in words like caught and saw lead many speakers to use an /;;Ju/-like sound instead of h:/.																		
6. Final -w is often pronounced as /w/: how pronounced /hauw/; saw																		
"pronounced  /se>:w/; draw pronounced  /dre>:w/, etc."																		
"7.  Learners will tend to pronounce the silent letters in words like knot, gnaw, comb, bomb, half, sword , ps ychiatrist, etc."																		
Stress																		
Dutch  and English  stress patterns  in words  and  sentences are quite																		
"similar. There are some problems, though."																		
"1. Dutch compounds regularly have stress on the first element, leading to problems where an English compound does not. Hence ''·'ap pletart for ap ple 'tart (Dutch 'appeltaart)."																		
"2. Dutch stress patterns are not susceptible to variation depending on grammatical category, as in con' vict (verb) vs 'convict (noun). This leaves learners very uncertain about the stress patterns of many words."																		
"3. Dutch does not have as many weak forms as English, nor does it use them so consistently. Many speakers will overstress words like and , but, than, etc., using  strong forms throughout ."																		
Intonation																		
Dutch intonation moves within a much narrower range than English.																		
The Dutch intonation range is on the whole relatively high and does not reach the same low pitches as English. Learners trying to widen their voice range tend to move it upwards rather than downwards.																		
Juncture and assimilation																		
1. Dutch  does  not  have  final  voiced  stop  or  fricative  consonants.																		
"Learners who have acquired final lb/ , /d/, /g/, /v/, lo/ , lzl, /3/ and /d3/ will still tend to make them unvoiced if the next word begins with an unvoiced sound. Conversely, Dutch word-final unvoiced sounds will often become voiced before a word beginning with a voiced stop or a vowel. This leads to problems in English. For example:"																		
Dad comes pronounced 'Dat comess'																		
if it is Tom pronounced 'iv id iss Tom' this is Kate pronounced 'thiz iss Kate' back door pronounced 'bag door'																		
"2. In Dutch, a sequence of two identical or similar stop consonants is usually reduced to one:"																		
sharp pins pronounced  'sharpins' hard  times pronounced  'hartimes'																		
Punctuation																		
Dutch  puts  a  comma  after  restrictive  relative  clauses;  hence  mistakes																		
like:																		
"''"" The concern they show, is by no means exaggerated."																		
Commas may be used between unlinked clauses:																		
"''"" This is somewhat  surprising,  as  they are forbidden   m Dutch too, they nevertheless occur regularly."																		
Quotation marks are written like this:																		
"''"" ,,I am thirsty, "" he said."																		
"Abbreviations entirely in lower case or ending in lower case are normally followed by periods: hence M r. and M rs., even in texts that try to write British English. And ie for traditional i.e. may be found confusing."																		
"With some exceptions,  Dutch  compou nds  are written  as  one  word, no matter how long they are, even when they are borrowed from or inspired by English (e.g. marketinginformaties ysteem ). This leads to spellings like ''·marathonrunner, ''·satellitechannel."																		
Grammar																		
General																		
"Typologically speaking, the Dutch language occupies a position midway"																		
"between English and German. Word order is virtually the same as in German; Dutch still has grammatical gender,  and a high percentage  of its vocabulary  betrays its Germanic origin."																		
"However, Dutch is not a variety of German. Apart from a fair number of language-specific differences, its morphology comes close to the English system. The inflectional system is relatively simple; neither verbs nor prepositions govern 'cases'; there are only a few relics of the old subjunctive."																		
Interrogative and negative structures																		
1. Dutch  has  no  do-support.  Interrogatives  are  formed  by  simple																		
inversion; negatives  by placing niet (= not)  after the verb or before the first non-finite verbal element:																		
"'"" What mean you?"																		
"'"" Thank you, I smoke not."																		
"'"" I have her yesterda y not seen."																		
"2. Preposition-stranding in questions is unknown in  Dutch (see however section 3 and 'Relative pronouns', section 5), and has to be taught explicitly. It takes a while before Dutch speakers will nat­ urally produce Who are you talking to? instead of To whom are you talking?, a stilted construction that is liable to persist in their speech."																		
"3. Dutch uses interrogative adverbials beginning with the equivalent of where to ask questions about things (see also 'Relative pronouns'). They are separable and thus might inspire preposition-stranding, but the substitution of where for the pronoun is a real danger:"																		
"'"" Where are you thinking of? (for What are you thinking of? ) '"" Where do you need that for?"																		
"4. Questions  with inversion can have falling intonation  in Dutch. This is sometimes transferred to English, which can make a simple, innocuous enquiry like Are there no theatres open in Lond on? sound almost belligerent."																		
"Tags, short answers and reply questions"																		
Dutch has no construction comparable with the English question tag;																		
instead it uses particles and adverbs:																		
"''"" She is your best friend, eh? I or not? (for She is your best friend,"																		
isn't she? )																		
"Unlike Dutch, English has quite a number of fixed subject-plus-auxiliary patterns which are frequent in conversational exchange. The over-short answers of a Dutch speaker may sometimes give an impression of abruptness, aggressiveness  or rudeness."																		
"'Are you coming with us?' 'Yes.' (for 'Yes, I am.' ) 'Your glass is empty.' 'Oh,yes.'  (for 'So it is.')"																		
"'They never listen to good advice.' 'No.' (for  'No, they don't.' or"																		
"'No, they don't, do they?' )"																		
"'You can't speak without a regional accent.' 'Yes!' (for 'Yes, I"																		
can.' or 'But I can.' )																		
Auxiliaries																		
"The general perfective  aspect-marker, in Dutch as in English, is hebben"																		
"( = have). However, zijn (= be) is used to form the perfect tenses of zijn, of blijven (=  remain,  stay )  and  of  common  intransitive  change-of-state verbs:"																		
"''"" He is been here, but he isn't stayed long."																		
"''"" He is left ten minutes ago."																		
"The Dutch marker of the passive voice is worden (= become) in the simple tenses; however, in the perfect tenses Dutch uses  the  simple forms of zijn (= be). Speakers of Dutch tend to translate this zijn as a present tense, all the while thinking that the English verb in, e.g., the report is published , is a perfect tense and that they will be u nderstood as having said the report has been published . Their problem is com­ pounded by the existence, in English, of constructions like the article is written in a racy style, which seems to provide a model for ''·the article is translated by John. This type of mistake is very persistent, even in the English of fairly advanced learners."																		
"Time, tense and aspect"																		
A. Past time																		
"To refer to a past event Dutch can use both a past tense and a perfect tense, without much difference in meaning. The latter is the more usual form. Conversely, Dutch can use a past tense where English would use a present perfect:"																		
''·J have seen him yesterda y.																		
''.All my nineteenth-centur y ancestors have lived here.																		
"'""Since I made my report last year, there was a stead y improve­"																		
ment in the company's trading position.																		
B. Present time																		
"To express how long a present state of affairs has been going on, Dutch normally uses a present tense, not a present perfect:"																		
"'""I know him for five years."																		
"'""I live in Amsterdam since I was a child."																		
C. Future time																		
"1. Even though Dutch has a future tense formed with an auxiliary (roughly equivalent to the shall/will future of English), it often uses the present tense to refer to the future:"																		
"'""I promise  I give it to him tomorrow."																		
"2. To express how long a future state of affairs will have lasted, Dutch often uses a simple future or even a simple present:"																		
"'""In 2015 I will work here for 17 years."																		
"'"" Tomorrow I work here for five years already."																		
3.  Dutch can freely use the future in a subclause of time:																		
"'""He'll be an old man when he'll get out of jail."																		
D. Aspect																		
Dutch does not have progressive verb forms:																		
"'""I lived in London at that point in my life."																		
"'""I have a lot of trouble with John at the moment."																		
"'Progressive'  meanings  can however  be expressed, if necessary,  by the use of certain adjectives and adverbs:"																		
"'"" What were you  busy with yesterda y? (for What were you doing yesterda y? )"																		
"'"" You've worked  on this non-stop  this last week, eh?"																		
Some beginners overgeneralise the English progressive:																		
"'"" The house is belonging to my father."																		
Conditionals																		
1. There are no such sharp distinctions between the use of verbal forms																		
"in the Dutch subclause and main clause as there are in English; apart from the equivalents of the normal English forms,  Dutch  allows those of shall/should/would in the subclause, and past tenses of full lexical verbs in the main clause. Hence mistakes like:"																		
"''"" If I shall see him, I shall tell him."																		
"''"" If you would know him, you wouldn't (or even didn't) say such things."																		
"''"" If he would have work ed harder, he had succeeded."																		
2. It is common in Dutch to use the adverb dan (= then) in the main clause of a conditional construction:																		
"?''"" If  you  see him tomorrow, will you  then tell him I won't be at home  next week?"																		
"?''"" Had I known in time, then I would have come along."																		
Modal verbs																		
"On  the  whole,  the  Dutch  and  English  systems  of  modal  verbs  are"																		
similar. But:																		
"1. English must is deceptively like Dutch moeten (= must, have to, be to); hence the frequent use of must when this is not the appropriate modal:"																		
"''"" When must you  take up your new appointment?  (for When are you to . . .?)"																		
"''"" In Venice peo ple must go everywhere by boat. (for . . . have to"																		
. . .)																		
"The negative moest niet means should  not, ought not to: ''"" You mustn't smoke too much, if I may say so."																		
"2. More specifically, learners may take must to be the equivalent of the Dutch past tense moest ( = had to or was to)."																		
"''"" I must go to London yesterda y."																		
"''"" The  wedding  must  have  taken  place   yesterda y,  but  it  was post poned."																		
"3. In Southern Dutch moet niet means don't have to, needn't, and is therefore completely different from must not:"																		
"''"" Parking here is free today so you mustn't pa y."																		
4. Dutch kan (infinitive kunnen) denotes all types of possibility; there is no equivalent of English may/might  used in this sense:																		
"''"" It can rain tonight: don't forget  your umbrella. ''"" I can have told you already."																		
"5. The past tense of Dutch kunnen, kon (sg) I konden (pl), when denoting ability, usually implies more than mere ability: it almost invariably suggests that the action expressed by the main verb was actually carried out. Even advanced Dutch speakers may be misled by this:"																		
"''"" Yesterday he could just catch the 7 o'clock train. (for . . . was able to catch . . .)"																		
6.  Permission  is mostly  sought and granted in Dutch  by means  of the																		
"modal  mag  (infinitive  mogen),  even  in  informal  registers,  leading"																		
"students to overuse may  and avoid can. English might looks like the past tense of mag, which is mocht ( = could , was allowed to):"																		
"'"" She might go out every night when she was sixteen."																		
"7.  Dutch zou has several different meanings, only a few of which can be expressed by 2nd or 3rd person should:"																		
"'"" They did not know they should never see each other again. (for"																		
. . . would never see . . . or . . . were never to see . . .: destiny)																		
"'""He should leave on Sunday, but there was a problem with his visa. (for . . . was going to leave . . .: unfulfilled intention)"																		
"'""Andrew should be ill. (for Andrew is said to be ill.: rumour)"																		
Non-finite forms																		
Dutch  uses  considerably  fewer  non-finite  forms  than  English.  This																		
"causes various problems, especially in the area of verbal complementa­ tion. This varies from word to word, both in English and in Dutch, and a Dutch speaker must pay special attention to learn the English complementation of a word if it differs from its Dutch equivalent."																		
1. Dutch speakers will substitute that-clauses or adjectival or adverbial constructions for infinitives and gerunds after verbs:																		
"'""He wants that I go."																		
"'""I've always gladly gone there or '"" I have always been glad to go there (for I've always loved going there.)"																		
"'"" This entails that the whole configuration  changes."																		
"2. Dutch has no equivalent of the English gerund, and will often substitute a to-infinitive for one. A few very typical examples:"																		
"'""I don't mind to do it."																		
"'""If you can't avoid to go, you risk to upset your dad . '""I suggest to go to the pictures instead."																		
"'""It's no use to ask her. '""I am used to do this."																		
"'""I look forward  to hear from you."																		
"Incidentally, the absence of a gerund equivalent will also lead to the occurrence of to-infinitives after prepositions: '""Instead of to fight, they laughed ."																		
"3. There is no equivalent of the structure 'verb + object + past participle', whose meanings are expressed in a nu mber of different structures:"																		
"'""I hear my name call."																		
"'""I like that it is done quick ly."																		
"'"" Try to make yoursel f understandable."																		
"Finally, present participle clauses are rare in Dutch. Dutch learners"																		
"are liable to replace postmodifying participle structures, like  the  girl sitting in the corner, by relative clauses ( the girl who is sitting in the corner). Also, it takes a while to get them to use adverbial present participle clauses, like Realising that she was pregnant, she panicked . Making them write present perfective participle clauses, like Having secured his position, he did not fail to proceed {which has no Dutch equivalent at all) will take even longer."																		
Word order																		
Word order in Dutch is less simple than in English. Some of the most																		
"striking differences will only interfere at an elementary level, but other Dutchisms may be so deeply rooted that they will yield problems at a more intermediate or even advanced level."																		
A. Main clause																		
"1. In  Dutch,  the  subject  and  the  finite  form  of  the  verb  are  not"																		
separable:																		
"''"" He work s sometimes on Sundays."																		
"2. The Dutch finite verb group tends to be separated from the rest of the verbal group (infinitives, past participles):"																		
"''"" I must at once my sister see."																		
"''"" They were of everything robbed ."																		
"3. In contrast to English, Dutch can have its verb and (simple) objects or complements separated by adverbials:"																		
"''"" I hear every day the bells ring from my bedroom. ''"" Bill loved passionatel y his wife."																		
"''"" She kept fortunatel y her mouth shut."																		
4.  Inversion   always  occurs  in  Dutch  if  the  sentence  opens  with  a constituent other than the subject or a conjunction:																		
"''"" Tomorrow shall I see him. ''"" Incredible is that!"																		
"''"" This have we already examined ."																		
"5. The internal order of  adverbials is also different, time adverbials tending to precede those of place:"																		
"''"" She has already been living for two years in London."																		
6. The adverb particle tends to come at the end of the clause:																		
"''"" He got quick ly up."																		
"7. In Dutch, the article can be separated from its noun by a complex participial clause or by an adjective and its complement:"																		
"'"" The by the Senate with unanimity voted down pro posal."																		
"'""He is a hard to convince man."																		
"8. For word order in interrogative clauses, see the section 'Interrogative and negative structures'."																		
"9. Dutch often begins sentences with the equivalent of also and already: '"" We told the Smiths. Also they were shocked . (for They too were"																		
shocked .)																		
"'""Alread y in 1992 I went there."																		
B. Subclause																		
A verb or verbal group comes at the end of a subordinate clause:																		
"'""He asked whether we John had seen. (or even ''·. . . seen had )"																		
Constructions with it and there																		
"1. Clauses  identifying  people  and  things  begin  with  het, the  Dutch"																		
equivalent of it. But het is followed by a plural verb form when a plural noun follows. Even advanced students will persist in produ­ cing sentences like:																		
''.It are the Joneses.																		
''.It were the soldiers that shot first.																		
2. Dutch also uses het in initial position of be-sentences to introduce information  about persons mentioned  previously.																		
"'Is Ralph a friend  of yours?'  ''·'No, it's just a colleague.'"																		
"3. Dutch er is used in far more constructions than its English equivalent there / fol, which is almost invariably followed by  a form of be. Dutch speakers will overuse there and say and write things like:"																		
''.There lay twelve book s on his night table.																		
''.There  were  made  many  mistakes.  (sometimes   ''·There  were many mistakes  made.)																		
''.There happened a lot of accidents that night.																		
''.There is said in the pa per that the government will not survive.																		
Articles																		
The Dutch system of definite and indefinite articles is basically the same																		
"as  in  English.  Apart  from  a  number  of  differences  of  an  idiomatic nature, the main points to note are:"																		
1. Dutch sometimes uses a definite article with uncountable and plural nouns referring to something/things/people in general:																		
"''"" The wages have been rising recently."																		
"''"" the lif e in modern Britain"																		
"2. Dutch has no indefinite article in a subject complement with a countable noun denoting a profession, occupation or status, a religion or a nationality; nor after the equivalents of as and without:"																		
"''"" She is pro fessor, Buddhist and Swede. She's also widow."																		
"''"" As basketball pla yer he is hopeless; as friend he's wonderful. ''"" She came to the party without friend ."																		
"3. There are many  words in English (like  bed, church, prison )  which are preceded by the article when they denote what seems to be their primary meaning, a place, but which lack the article when the sentence is rather about the activity for which that place is typically used. Though Dutch has some parallel  phrases  without  the  article, like naar bed/school gaan (= go to bed/school ), they  are far fewer; hence mistakes like:"																		
"''"" to go to the church (for to go to church) ''"" be sent to the prison"																		
4. Names of meals and seasons are normally preceded by an article. This leads to a reluctance to use in winter rather than (rarer) in the winter and leads to mistakes like:																		
"''"" Let's talk about that during the lunch."																		
"5. The  numerals  100  and  1,000  have  no  article  m  Dutch;  hence"																		
"''"" hundred and ''"" thousand ."																		
Adjectives and adverbs																		
Adverbs are identical with the uninflected form of the corresponding																		
adjective. This use of unmarked adverbial forms is so deeply rooted in the Dutch speaker's competence that even advanced learners tend to make mistakes like:																		
"''"" She drives very careful."																		
"''"" You speak English very good ."																		
or in noun phrases:																		
"''"" an economic weak theory"																		
Quantifiers and determiners																		
1. Dutch does not use different quantifiers with countable and uncount­																		
"able nouns; hence mistakes like  ''·much books and, less often,  ''.little persons (for few persons )."																		
2. The  distinction  between  some  and  any  will  have  to  be  taught																		
"explicitly, as there is nothing that comes close to these quantifiers in"																		
Dutch. The same holds for either/each/ever y. Some typical mistakes:																		
"''"" I don't have some books. ( beginners only) ''"" . . . too expensive  to buy some"																		
"''"" Can I have any more cake? ''"" Take a ball in every hand."																		
Interrogative pronouns																		
"Here the only problem is the appropriate use of which, there being no"																		
exact equivalent for this in Dutch; hence:																		
"''"" What is your second language, English or French?"																		
Relative pronouns																		
1. Dutch  does  not  have  different  relative  pronouns  for  people  and																		
things.  The  use  of  which  with  a  personal  antecedent  ( ''·A person which . . .) is difficult to eradicate.																		
"2. There being no distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses as far as the choice of pronouns is concerned, beginners often do not understand why structures like ''·My parents, that were born in France or ''·My father, you met in Amsterdam are ungrammatical."																		
"3. Wat has a much wider coverage than English what: it is used with clause antecedents, with quantifier antecedents, and in very recent usage also with neuter nouns. This explains the use of what in a number of cases where English requires which:"																		
"''}ohn went to Brussels, what explains  everything. ''.This is all what I know."																		
Occasionally also:																		
''.The picture what I was drawing . . .																		
4. Contact clauses (clauses without overt relative pronouns) and pre­ position stranding are totally unknown in Dutch syntax; therefore beginners tend to make excessive use of structures like:																		
the woman whom I met in Glasgow the other day the pen with which Jane was writing yesterda y																		
"5. Instead of relative pronouns + stranded prepositions, Dutch often uses compound relative adverbials of a type that is now generally obsolete in English, viz. where- + preposition. In informal Dutch they are even used after human antecedents. They are optionally separable, which would be a great help in teaching preposition stranding, except that it leaves where instead of (zero) relative:"																		
"''"" The technology  where he had  relied  on proved  to be untrust­"																		
worthy.																		
"''"" The man whereof I speak is a good friend  of mine."																		
"6. For commas with relative clauses, see 'Punctuation'."																		
Reflexive pronouns																		
"Dutch does not inflect the second half of reflexive pronouns for number,"																		
"hence mistakes like ''·ourself, ''·yourself and ''·themself (for themselves; ''·theirself and ''·theirselves also occur). And they are overused, in combination with what are normally middle verbs (simple intransitive verbs referring to things that people do to themselves) in English, which have no Dutch equivalent:"																		
''·He never shaves himself after he has washed himself.																		
The indefinite pronoun one																		
"Men is not nearly as formal as its English equivalent one, and Dutch"																		
speakers should be told that it has a range of stylistic equivalents:																		
",,.In the M iddle Ages one actually believed that. (for . . . it was actually believed that or . . . people actually believed that)"																		
One could just as well claim . . . (for less formal You could just as well claim . . .)																		
''·One intends to build a sk yscra per here. (for They intend . . .)																		
Gender																		
The natural gender system of English has no match in Dutch: Southern																		
"Dutch speakers have mostly preserved the tripartite  Germanic  system (just like the Germans), while  speakers of Northern Dutch now use a binary system (masculine and neuter) with a limited and shrinking number of feminine nouns. Whichever system is adhered to, Belgian and Dutch students are often inclined to treat certain inanimate nouns  as either masculine or feminine, in agreement with their Dutch equi­ valents:"																		
",,.The English language . . . she . . ."																		
",,.The state . . . he . . ."																		
Countability and number																		
"1. In Dutch, collective nouns are always followed by singular verbs. It"																		
takes a while before students are willing to let English ones be followed by plurals when appropriate; they will go for the entire famil y has decided rather than the famil y have all decided . A collective that requires a plural verb will keep trapping speakers into errors like:																		
"''"" The police has arrested him."																		
"2. Pair-plurals are unknown; jeans has been re-interpreted as a singular in the borrowing process, leading to:"																		
"''"" Where's my jeans? I can't find  it. (or him; see 'Gender')"																		
A more common  type of  error involves  the plural formation:  ''·two p yjamas instead of two pairs of p yjamas.																		
"3. Dutch also distinguishes  countable  and  uncountable  nouns,  but  not all equivalents belong in the same category; hence mistakes like ''·an information,  ''·an advice, ''·give me two breads, please."																		
"4. If the first element of a noun + noun compou nd denotes a plural, it is mostly singular in English. In Dutch the number can vary, leading to mistakes like ''·a books shop and ''·a ten-miles trip."																		
"5. Students need to be told the difference between, for example, They'll all go to another university and They'll all go to other universities, for in Dutch the singular phrase would be used in both cases. Hence mistakes like"																		
''.They fell on their face.																		
Conjunctions																		
The only real problem here is the common confusion between if and																		
when:																		
",,.When it rains the trip will have to be cancelled."																		
Prepositions																		
Though it is possible to indicate rough equivalences between  Dutch and																		
"English prepositions, there are so many instances where there is no match that students will have to learn many prepositions in their collocations. A few common mistakes, by way of example:"																		
",,.on the part y"																		
''·He lives on number 9.																		
''.with/by my aunt (for at my aunt's ) ''·good in games																		
"''"" on the meadow"																		
"''"" on sea"																		
"''"" That is typical for him."																		
"''"" There's no proo f for that."																		
"''"" to discriminate women (for to discriminate against women)"																		
"The list is endless. However, a few systematic remarks can be made:"																		
1. Sinds translates as either for or since; students tend to use since only:																		
"''"" I've lived here since four years."																		
2. Achter translates as either after or behind; students confuse them:																		
"''"" He stood after me."																		
3. In translates as either in or into; students tend to use in only:																		
"''"" Go in the room."																		
Vocabulary																		
Dutch and English share the same basic Germanic vocabulary (e.g. voet																		
"= foot, groet = great, zien = see, mij = me, in = in), which greatly facilitates learning, in spite of the numerous false friends. Learning the Romance part of the vocabulary is facilitated by the fact that Dutch has borrowed fairly extensively from Romance and that many educated people know French (especially in Belgium) and even some Latin."																		
False friends																		
The close genetic relationship and the geographical proximity between																		
"Dutch and English plus the fact that both have borrowed extensively from Romance necessarily results in the existence of numerous false friends. Many of those mentioned in the chapters on related languages and on French apply to Dutch as well, as do the following:"																		
English word used like       Dutch                          to mean																		
dramatic                            dramatisch                  tragic																		
"solicit                                   solliciteren                     apply (for a job), go job-hunting"																		
become																		
mark bring camping parking smoking chance technique																		
bekomen																		
merk brengen camping parking smoking chance																		
techniek																		
"get, acquire"																		
"brand, make take"																		
camping-site																		
"car park, parking lot dinner jacket, tuxedo luck"																		
technology																		
concurrence							concurrentie								competition			
control							controleren								check (up on)			
nephew							neef								cousm			
niece							nicht								cousm			
actual							actueel								current			
actually							actueel								"at present, currently"			
defect							defect								defective			
ride							rijden								drive (a car)			
amuse oneself							zich amuseren								enjoy oneself			
eventual							eventueel								possible			
learn							leren								teach			
miss							missen								do without			
fault							fout								error			
novel							novelle								short story			
stage							stage								traineeship			
back side							achterkant								back			
Some typical mistakes with high-frequency words																		
make vs do																		
what vs how own																		
please																		
already vs yet																		
though vs however a(n) half																		
just now =F just once																		
Compounding																		
''·J still must make my homework .																		
''·How do you call that? ''·She has an own room.																		
'Can I have your book?' (handing it over:)																		
''·'Please. '																		
''·Have you finished already? (for Have you finished yet? )																		
"''·Though, he was still in trouble. ''·a(n) half hour ago"																		
''·J have seen him just  now.																		
''·J must once talk to her. (for I must go and talk to her.)																		
English compounds less frequently than Dutch and students will make																		
such odd compounds as ''.life-habits.																		
Multi-word verbs																		
"They exist in Dutch, too, but they are used far less than in English, and"																		
it will often be necessary explicitly to draw the students' attention to																		
everyday prepositional verbs that they will otherwise fail to notice and																		
use:																		
Dutch				Simple verb						M ulti-word verb								
zoeken beschouwen verdragen				"seek , search for consider
bear"						"look for look  on
put up with"								
"(Many  multi-word  verbs  fortunately  pose  no  problem,  as they  are"																		
matched by similar or compound but separable verbs in Dutch.)																		
A sample of written Dutch with a word-for-word																		
translation																		
"Vele    malen heb   ik al           meegemaakt, als          in een gezelschap"																		
"Many times  have I  already experienced, when/if in a     company"																		
iemand    zo onhandig               is te verklappen dat ik taalkundige																		
someone so unhandy [clumsy] is to betray      that I linguist																		
"ben, dat men reageert met:    'Oei,     dan  mag ik wel                        op"																		
"am, that one reacts    with: 'Oops, then may I  well [I'd better] on"																		
mijn woorden letten!'.  Misschien dat  een politiecommissaris     dat																		
my  words   watch!'. Maybe    that a   police commissioner that																		
"wel herkent,        maar de wijnkoper,    de  hondenfokker of de"																		
"well recognises, but    the wine buyer, the dog raiser      or the"																		
leraar            wiskunde heeft zoiets               niet. Hoe   komt   het																		
teacher (of ) maths      has    so something not. How comes it																		
toch                  dat   de  taalkundige of de   leraar             Nederlands in																		
yet [on earth] that the linguist       or the teacher (of ) Dutch         m																		
hetzelfde  schuitje                   zit   als de   politiecommissaris?       lk weet																		
the same boat [diminutive] sits as  the police commissioner? I   know																		
"het niet, maar Nederlandstaligen, aan beide zijden van de   grens,   zijn,"																		
"it   not, but  Dutchophones,     on  both sides  of  the border, are,"																		
"als     het om    hun  taal          gaat, v66r                 alles onzeker, voorzichtig,"																		
"when it   about their language goes, before [above] all   unsure, careful,"																		
"bang.   Bang gemaakt, lijkt               me. Terwijl     de meesten"																		
"scared. Scared made,   (it) seems (to) me. Whereas the most [most people]"																		
toch minder reden tot schrik          hebben dan  in de																		
yet  less    reason to fear [noun} have    than in the																		
nabijheid van de   politiecommissaris.      Vreemd        genoeg  zijn het																		
nearness of   the police commissioner. Strange(ly) enough are it																		
juist de  leraren             Nederlands en   de taalkundigen die																		
just the teachers (of ) Dutch          and the linguists       who																		
in taalkwesties               veelal    het meest tolerant   zijn. Veel																		
in language questions mostly the most  tolerant are. Much																		
toleranter          dan  vele    anderen buiten   hun   kring.  Niet																		
more tolerant than many others  outside their circle. Not																		
"vreemd  wegens    hun   opleiding,    maar wel             vreemd"																		
"strange owing to their education, but   well [yet] strange"																		
omdat     het ijzeren schrikbewind                          dus   uit           andere																		
because the iron    fear government [tyranny] thus out (of ) other																		
bron    moet voorkomen. Lag het aan                        de  doorsnee­																		
source must forthcome. Lay it  on [Were it up to] the average																		
"taalgebruiker,    men zou       onze taal           onmiddellijk    tot kerntaak"																		
"language user, one would our  language immediately to core task"																		
uitroepen van een minister  tot                    Bevordering van de																		
proclaim of  a   minister to [for] (the) Furthering  of   the																		
deugdzaamheid en   Preventie      van het kwaad.																		
virtue                and Prevention  of   the evil.																		
"('Joops column' by Joop van der Horst, in Over taal 37 (1998) p. 62.)"																		
Speakers of Scandinavian languages:																		
"Danish, Norwegian, Swedish"																		
Niels  Davidsen-Nielsen  and Peter  Harder																		
Distribution																		
"DENMARK,   NORWAY,  SWEDEN,  FINLAND   (Swedish),   Germany"																		
(Danish).																		
Introduction																		
"The Scandinavian languages are Inda-European languages belonging,"																		
"like English, to the Germanic branch. Considerable contact in past and present between the English and Scandinavian languages, as well as common outside influences, have served to keep up and reinforce the close relationship between the languages. English is therefore relatively easy for Scandinavians to learn."																		
"For the sake of simplicity, the following  description concentrates on the major problems which Danish, Norwegian and Swedish learners of English have in common. Less attention has been paid to issues which require cross-Scandinavian  comparisons  (though  it has  been  necessary to deal with some points of this kind in  the  sections  on  phonology). And, for reasons of space, it has not been possible to include the difficulties of Icelandic and Faroese learners."																		
Phonology																		
General																		
All three  Scandinavian languages  are phonologically  broadly  similar to																		
"English, and most features of  English pronunciation do not  present serious difficulty to  speakers of these languages. The  phonological systems of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are characterised by considerable similarity, both with respect to sound segments (for example the rounded front vowels) and to prosody, and, as will appear below, there are many common Scandinavian errors in English. Never­ theless, several pronunciation features do exist which separate the Scandinavian languages from each other, and it is therefore only from a"																		
bird's-eye view that it makes sense to speak about English pronounced																		
"with a 'Scandinavian accent'. In the vowel and consonant charts below inter-Scandinavian differences have not been marked, but some differ­ ences of this type are described in the text."																		
Vowels																		
1!	I		e		re			e1	a1		I							
a:	D		:		u			au	gu		1g							
u:	A		3!		g			eg	ug		"a1;:i
au;:i"							
Shaded phonemes  have  equivalents  or near  equivalents  in all three																		
"Scandinavian languages and are perceived  and  articulated  without serious difficulty, although some confusions may still  arise. Unshaded phonemes may cause problems to speakers of Danish, Swedish and/or Norwegian. For detailed comments, see below."																		
1. /I/ is often pronounced as a close vowel /i:/: seat for sit.																		
"2. /re/ is often pronounced by Swedish speakers as /e/: bed for bad . Conversely, some Norwegians tend to pronounce /e/ as /re/ : bad for bed ."																		
"3. /u/ (as in book ) is often pronounced as a close and clearly rounded vowel by Danes and Swedes. Norwegians tend to substitute a more advanced, less closely rounded vowel."																		
"4. /u:/ (as in too) is often pronounced as a central vowel by Nor­ wegians, and as a strongly advanced and somewhat lower vowel by Swedes."																		
5. Swedes and Norwegians frequently replace /A/ (as in  duck )  by  a more rounded  front vowel.																		
"6. Danes characteristically replace /A/ by a vowel intermediate between English IAl and /o/. They also tend to partly unround /o/, and consequently find it very difficult to keep hut apart from hot, luck from lock , etc."																		
7. /3:/ (as in turn) is typically rounded and advanced by Swedes and Danes.																		
8. /;J/ is not always sufficiently reduced ( 'unstressed').																		
9. Norwegians may pronou nce /e1/ (as in take) too open: /re1/ .																		
"10. /;Ju/ is often pronounced by Swedes as /u:/ ( soup for soap ), by Danes as hu/or  /u/, and  by  Norwegians  as /au/  or  /ou/. Norwegians"																		
typically find it difficult to distinguish between English /;Ju/ and /au/																		
"(as  in  load  and  loud )   and,  at  a  more  advanced  level,  to  distribute them  correctly."																		
"11. /I;J/, /e;J/and /u;J/ (as in here, there and tour) are usually pronounced with /r/ instead of /;J/ by Norwegians and Swedes. Danes typically replace them with the diphthongs /io/, /eo/ and /uo/ respectively."																		
Consonants																		
p	b	f			v			e	6		t		d					
s	z	J			3			tf	d3		k		g					
m	n	IJ			1			r	J		w		h					
Shaded  phonemes  have  equivalents  or  near  equivalents  in  all three																		
"Scandinavian languages and are perceived and articulated without serious difficulty, although some confusions may still arise. Unshaded phonemes may cause problems to speakers of Danish, Swedish and/or Norwegian. For detailed comments, see below."																		
"1. /8/ does not occur and is typically pronounced as /t/ or ( by Danes) as /s/: tank , sank for thank ; tree for three."																		
2. lo/ does not occur in Norwegian and Swedish and is often pronounced as /di: den for then; udder for other; Danes tend to replace it with a much more loosely articulated /o/.																		
3.  /z/  does not  occur  and  is typically  replaced  by I sl: racer  for razor.																		
"Once they master /z/, some learners tend to overuse it and to 'buzz' too much."																		
4.  /3/  does  not  occur  and  is  typically  replaced   by  If /:   'mesher'  for																		
measure.																		
5. ltf l does not occur and is often pronounced as /t j/.																		
"6. /d3/ does not occur. It is often pronounced as /dj/ by Danes and Norwegians, and as /j/ by Swedes: year for jeer."																		
7. Ir/ is pronounced with the back of the tongue by Danes and some (southern) Swedes. Norwegians and most Swedes replace  it  by other non-English  tip-of-the-tongue  r-sounds.																		
8. /w/  does not occur and tends to be replaced  by a lax /v/: vine for																		
wme.																		
"9. 'Dark' /1/, as in full, fill, occurs only in some Swedish and Norwegian dialects; students tend to replace it by 'clear' /1/, as in light."																		
"10. Danes tend to replace word-final lb/ , Id/ and /g/ with /p/, /ti and /k/:"																		
"pu p for pub; set for said; dock for dog. Between vowels, the opposite may happen: rabid for rapid; ladder for latter; bigger for bick er."																		
"11. In Swedish and Norwegian, consonants are pronounced very long"																		
after short vowels; this may be carried over into English words like																		
"cof fee, letter, cuf f."																		
Influence of spelling on pronunciation																		
Spelling and pronunciation are more closely related in the Scandinavian																		
"languages (especially Swedish and Norwegian) than in English, and there are fewer ambiguities. Mistakes may be made in cases where a letter has different values in English and the mother tongue; or where English orthography lets the learner down after he or she has worked out the basic rules for correspondences between letters and sounds in English. Note particularly:"																		
"1. Beginners may pronounce the letter i as /i:/, y as /y/ (like German ii"																		
"or French u ), a as /o:/, and (depending on nationality) u as /u/ and au as /au/, leading to mistakes in words like ride, symbol, parade, rush, automatic. (For example, Danish beginners sometimes use pronun­ ciations like /' ri:o;)/and /po' ro:o;)/.)"																		
"2. fa/ is always spelt e in Scandinavian languages. When /;)/ is spelt with another letter in English, students may use  an unreduced vowel, pronouncing for example /o/ in commercial, /rel in alliance and /o:/ in particular."																		
"3. Even after Scandinavian students have learnt to pronounce English lzl, they commonly mispronounce the letter s as Isl in words such as cousin, trousers, reserve, president."																		
"4. Even after Scandinavian students have learnt to pronounce English lo/ (as well as /8/), they may mispronounce th as /8/ in smooth, with, etc."																		
"5. The r may be pronounced in words like mattered, bothered, won­ dered , leading to mistakes in British English."																		
Rhythm and stress																		
Patterns of word and sentence stress are quite similar in English and the																		
"Scandinavian languages, so there are relatively few problems  in this area."																		
"Note, however:"																		
1. Scandinavian  compound  nouns  are  usually  stressed  on  the  first																		
element. Mistakes are common in English compounds which do not follow this pattern:																		
"''"" 'prime minister (cf. 'statsminister) ''"" 'town hall"																		
"Conversely,  compou nd nouns made  up of  'verb + adverb' combina­ tions tend to be stressed on the second element:"																		
"''"" break'down"																		
"''"" come-'back"																		
"''"" hang'over"																		
"''"" hold-'up"																		
"2. The Scandinavian languages have fewer 'weak forms' than English, so students often wrongly use the stressed forms of words like and, but, a(n), the, than, as, have, was, giving them their 'strong' pronunciations in too many cases. This prevents learners from acquiring a natural sentence rhythm. Beginners may have difficulty in perceiving weak forms."																		
Intonation																		
1. Unstressed  syllables in Danish (and very often in Norwegian  and																		
"Swedish) are pronounced on a higher pitch than a preceding stressed syllable. This is often transferred to English, together with a tendency to pronounce the first stressed syllable of a tone unit on too low a pitch:"																		
•• • •  • • • •  •																		
(Danish)																		
I was talking to M ary on Sunday.																		
•• •    •     • •       (Norwegian)																		
"2. Danes are inclined to use a pitch range which is too narrow, and to a lesser extent this also applies to Swedes and some Norwegians."																		
3.  The fall-rise tone is difficult for Scandinavian learners.																		
4. Norwegians  (and some Swedes) tend to use too many rising tone units and to make their upglides too long and too high.																		
Orthography and punctuation																		
Spelling																		
Those who have become aware of the distinction between /v/ and /w/																		
"but do not fully control it tend to replace v by w ( ''·wery, ''·wolley ball ), probably because this spelling is assumed to be the more 'English'. Influence from German may make some students write sch instead of sh ( ''·schoot, ''·schut up ). The letter k is used much more frequently than c in the Scandinavian languages, and this may lead to errors  like ''·kapitalism,  ''·kannibal."																		
Punctuation																		
"1. As most Scandinavian compounds are written as one word, the use"																		
"of the hyphen in words like fire-alarm  (brandalarm), and of spacing in words like front  door (ytterd0r) create difficulty."																		
"2. Scandinavian students sometimes use a comma instead  of  a  semi­ colon between main clauses which are not separated by a co­ ordinating conjunction,  but are felt to be closely related:"																		
"''.That's the way it had to be, he was not ashamed of it."																		
3. Danes tend to use commas before object clauses and restrictive relative clauses:																		
"''·J think, there has been a mistake."																		
",,.What's  the  worst  thing, that  could  happ en  to  you  in that minefield?"																		
"4. Apostrophes are not used in the same way as in English. This leads to confusion, especially when there is a minimal contrast ( ones/one's; its/it's )."																		
Grammar																		
Order of constituents																		
"In the  Scandinavian  languages,  it is easy  to begin  a  sentence  with"																		
"something other than the subject - which is then placed after the verb. In English, only adverbials are regularly 'fronted', and this does not generally cause subject-verb inversion . To give prominence to objects, complements, etc., English tends to use intonation. Typical mistake:"																		
",,.That have I not seen."																		
Position of adverbs																		
"In  the  Scandinavian  languages,  mid-sentence  adverbs  are generally"																		
placed after the finite verb. This leads to mistakes in English sentences with one-word verbs:																		
"''"" Children leave often home nowadays."																		
"However, in subordinate clauses adverbs are placed before  finite verbs in Scandinavian languages. This leads to mistakes in English sentences with complex verb phrases:"																		
"''"" . . . that children often will leave home nowadays."																		
This can happen with quite long adverbials:																		
''Be said that they in the northern part of Jutland speak  a special dialect.																		
Constructions with it and there																		
"1. In Norwegian and Swedish, the equivalent of the there is construc­"																		
"tion uses the pronoun det, which also means it. Beginners tend to overuse it as a consequence:"																		
"''"" It is somebod y at the door."																		
"2. In all three languages, the there construction is used with a wide range of verbs (whereas in English it is only common with be used as a main verb). This results in mistakes like:"																		
"''"" It/There was shot a man here yesterda y."																		
"''"" It/There happens something strange here quite often. ''"" It/There left a lot of tourists because of the epidemic."																		
"3. Scandinavian languages tend, more often than English, to avoid having indefinite noun phrases in subject position. This may result in overuse of there-cleft sentences like There was someone who told me that ... instead of the less cumbersome Someone told me that . . ."																		
Nouns: countability and number																		
1. The  countable/uncountable  distinction  is  found  in  Scandinavian																		
"languages,  but there are some differences of distribution which give rise to problems:"																		
"''"" informations    ''·an advice   ''·a work (for a job )     ''·a progress"																		
2. The Scandinavian counterparts of money are plural:																		
",,.How many money have you got?"																		
"3. Collective nouns as a special group do not exist in the Scandinavian languages. Pronominal reference like The government . . . they . . . occurs, but is felt to be colloquial."																		
"4. In some cases where English nouns are in the plural, singular nouns"																		
"are used in the Scandinavian languages. Possible mistakes: ''""a p yjama ''·a scissor ''·the custom (for the customs) ''.the M iddle Age (for the M iddle Ages )"																		
''.The police is on its way.																		
"5. In some cases it is the other way round, leading to errors like:"																		
''·Public expenditures  are too high.																		
''.There were many frictions between them.																		
6.  Difference  of  usage  in some numerical  expressions causes mistakes like:																		
''.in the 2nd and 3rd chapter ''.in one and a half hour																		
Articles																		
1. The definite article occurs in Scandinavian languages before uncount­																		
able and plural nouns used in a general sense. In English it is normal to use no article in these cases. This leads to errors like:																		
''·Some peo ple always blame the society for everything.																		
''.The horses were introduced into America by Spanish soldiers.																		
"2. In subject or object complement function, and similarly after as, the Scandinavian languages do not use the indefinite article when reference is non-specific, which leads to errors like:"																		
''·He has been teacher for many years.																		
''·As member of the famil y he wanted to come.																		
"3. In a large number of more or less idiomatic cases the same tendency is found, particularly when the noun is in object position and can be seen as forming a semantic whole together with the verb. Thus phrases like get an answer, take a seat, drive a car would have no article in the Scandinavian languages. Articles are also commonly left out after the words for with and without:"																		
''·a man with hat    ''·a cat without tail																		
Premodification																		
1. The 's genitive (without an apostrophe) is found in the Scandinavian																		
"languages, and is not subject to the restrictions that limit its use in English. This may lead to errors:"																		
''.the car's driver    ''·the water's temperature																		
"2. Nouns can be used to modify other nouns, as in English. However, in the Scandinavian languages the two nouns form a compound, written as one word and stressed on the first element (see earlier sections on stress and punctuation)."																		
"3. In official styles, attributive adjectives or participles can have sen­"																		
"tence elements attached to them, as in Danish:"																		
den  i de gamle  regler  beskrevne  made  (=  the  in  the  old  rules described manner)																		
Learners may occasionally try to transfer this type of construction to English.																		
"4. The rules for using adjectives without a head noun in the Scandin­ avian languages are considerably less restrictive than in English, which leads to errors like:"																		
"''"" A poor never gets the chance to have a good life."																		
Postmodification																		
1. The Scandinavian languages often use full relative clauses (e.g. the																		
house which was built to accommodate the library or a man who is waiting to join ) in cases where English prefers less cumbersome participle constructions (e.g. the house built to accommodate the library or a man waiting to join ).																		
"2. In some cases English uses a prepositional phrase with of as a post­ modifier, where the Scandinavian languages use an apposition. This leads to a common mistake in the use of the words sort and kind:"																		
"''"" this sort cheese"																		
Adjective or adverb?																		
1. Scandinavian   adverbs  of  manner  tend  to  be  similar  m  form  to																		
"adjectives, which leads to frequent mistakes:"																		
"''"" She spoke to me quite polite. ''"" You don't sing very good."																		
"2. The opposite mistake can occur in sentences with the verbs look, sound, smell, taste, feel , which in most cases take adverbs, not adjectives, in Scandinavian languages:"																		
"''"" I feel terribly."																		
Pronouns and determiners																		
1. The  who/which  distinction  has  no  counterpart  m  Scandinavian																		
languages:																		
"''"" the man which I told you about"																		
2. Some and any have a single equivalent:																		
"''"" Sorry, I haven't got some."																		
"3.  In  front  of  a  noun  followed  by  a  relative  clause,  Scandinavian"																		
languages use a type of demonstrative determiner:																		
"''"" That man we're talking about is sitting in the next room."																		
"4. The Scandinavian languages have a completely unspecific personal pronoun man, which corresponds to the English 'general' use of you, they and one, and may be used where English has a passive in cases like It isn't done. Many learners tend to use you as an equivalent in all cases."																		
"5. In some cases where the possessive determiner is obligatory in English, but where it is clear from the context who is the possessor, the Scandinavian languages use the definite article: ''·He put the hand in the pocket."																		
Verb forms																		
There is no inflection for person or number in Scandinavian languages.																		
Consequently   learners  tend   to  drop  the  third-person   -s;  even  very advanced speakers slip u p in their speech on this point occasionally:																		
''·He fly to Copenhagen twice a week .																		
"Are (the form of to be most similar to the single Scandinavian present tense verb form er/ar) tends to be used for am, are and is:"																		
''·J don't know if she are ready yet.																		
Do																		
Scandinavians  have  the  same problems  with  the do construction  as																		
"other types of learners, and need practice to get used to the formation of questions and negatives. Negatives are especially difficult in subordinate clauses:"																		
''.They asked why he not came.																		
Note the common use of 'double' past/present forms:																		
''·He didn't came. ''.She do(es)n't listens.																		
-ing forms																		
1. The  Scandinavian  present  participle  plays  a  very  limited  role  as																		
"compared with English, being used mainly as an attributive adjective (as in a sleeping child ), and with certain verbs (as in he came running). Consequently  learners have problems with the present participle in a number  of cases, for example in adverbial clauses (as"																		
"in Going home that evening, I called at the chemist's for some razor"																		
blades.).																		
2.  The  absence  of  the  gerund  in  their  own  language  tends  to  make Scandinavians use the infinitive in cases like:																		
"''"" I really must stop to smoke. (Meaning '. . . stop smoking.') ''"" Instead of (to) get on with his work he slept all afternoon."																		
Progressive aspect																		
Scandinavian languages have no progressive verb forms. Elementary																		
students often generalise the English 'simple' forms:																		
"''"" The band pla ys now."																		
Intermediate students may overwork progressive forms as the result of intensive practice in their use:																		
"''"" In  Scandinavia  we're  putting  peo ple  in prison  if  they  have struck another person."																		
Tense																		
"1. In Danish, perfect tenses are commonly formed not only with the"																		
"auxiliary have but also with the equivalent of be. Transfer of the be-perfect, which is used to express change from one state to another, is not uncommon among elementary Danish learners:"																		
"''"" The prisoner is escaped."																		
"''"" They are become famous."																		
"2. The Scandinavian present perfect can be used with definite past reference, leading to mistakes like:"																		
"''"" Dickens has written many novels. ''"" He has left school in 1982."																		
"3. In Swedish, the present tense is often used in sentences constructed with sedan (= since/ for ):"																		
"''"" I know him since a long time."																		
"4. In the Scandinavian languages, future tenses are not used when the sense of the verb, or accompanying adverbs, already makes it clear that the reference is to the future. This leads students to use the simple present instead of the will future (and the present perfect instead of the future perfect):"																		
"''"" She doesn't come anyway."																		
"''"" I don't tell you. You only forget  it. ''"" We talk about it next week ."																		
"''"" By this time tomorrow I've finished  sorting out the replies."																		
The simple present  is also used with future reference instead of the																		
present progressive or going-to form:																		
"''""Jane moves to the States. ''"" I think I faint."																		
Voice																		
In the Scandinavian languages the passive voice is expressed in either of																		
two ways: with the suffix -s or with the auxiliary blive/bli (which can also mean become). Both of these structures result in occasional transfer mistakes:																		
"''"" It finds not. (for It is not found.) ''"" He became killed."																		
The passive may also be under-used in favour of the impersonal structure with you  (see the section 'Pronouns').																		
Modal verbs																		
Although  a  number  of  the  English  modals  have  rough  Scandinavian																		
"equivalents, there are various differences in the use of modals, with consequent learning problems. Some of the most important are as follows:"																		
"1. Kan, unlike can, is used in affirmative sentences to talk about whether things are the case, or may happen in the future:"																		
"''"" Peter can be in London now."																		
"''"" The time can come when the educational system is mixed."																		
"2. Skal is used to express compulsion or command (like English must, have to, is to). The similarity with shall leads to confusion:"																		
"''"" You shall lie down quietly now."																		
3. Skal can also express the idea of report or rumour (like English  is said to or is supposed to):																		
"''"" He shall be a poor researcher."																		
4. Another use of skal is to talk about arrangements (English is to or is going to):																		
"''"" M y daughter shall start school in August. ''""John shall pla y football tonight."																		
"5. In Swedish and Norwegian, the past tense form skulle corresponds to a number of English verbs besides the apparent equivalent should . This leads to mistakes:"																		
"''"" She said she should do it. (for She said she would . . .)"																		
"''"" She looks as if she should be ill. (for . . . might . . . )"																		
Complementation																		
1. Problems   arise  where   a  Scandinavian   verb  is  used   in  different																		
patterns from its English equivalent. Indirect objects are sometimes differently distributed:																		
"''"" She told that she was fed up with her job. ''"" He explained  me what he meant."																		
2. Verbs with obligatory reflexive pronouns are much more common in the Scandinavian languages than in English:																		
"''"" Hurry yoursel f!"																		
"3. The 'object + infinitive' structure is rare in Scandinavian languages, and students will tend to avoid it:"																		
"''"" He caused that the prisoners were put  to death. (for He caused the prisoners  to be . . . )"																		
"''"" I don't want that there is any misunderstanding."																		
Prepositions																		
1. In the Scandinavian languages a preposition can be followed by an																		
att/at-clause (the equivalent of an English that-clau se ). This may lead to errors like:																		
"''"" He convinced me of that he was innocent."																		
"''"" They insisted on that they knew nothing about it."																		
2. A preposition may also be followed by an infinitive construction. Possible mistakes:																		
"''"" They dreamed of to emigrate."																		
"''"" I long for/a fter to see the mountains again."																		
"3. In passive sentences the agent is introduced by the preposition af/at, resulting in errors like:"																		
"''"" The bone was eaten of the dog."																		
4. The highly frequent preposition i is often used where English uses other prepositions than in. The leads to errors like:																		
"''"" the floor in the house    ''·go in school"																		
Vocabulary																		
The close relationship between  the Scandinavian  languages and English																		
"makes a large proportion of English vocabulary easily accessible to Scandinavians. Words like can, have, good, man are virtually 'the same'; and in a number of cases the spelling, which reflects older stages of the language, helps to establish familiarity where the pronunciation differs markedly, e.g. in cases like side. Some of the similarities, of"																		
"course, are deceptive; below will be found a list of English 'false friends'"																		
that are problematic for speakers of all three languages.																		
False friends																		
"In the following list, common meanings of Scandinavian cognate words"																		
"are shown in brackets. For instance  'announce (S = advertise )'  means that there are Scandinavian words that look like announce but which actually mean advertise. (The words in this case are Danish annoncere, Norwegian annonsere and Swedish annonsera.) In some cases, Scandin­ avian words listed may have not only  the  'false  friend'  meaning  but also, in some contexts, the same meaning as the English cognate. For instance, komme/komma corresponds to come as well as to get ( some­ where ) and arrive."																		
"actual (S = of  current interest, topical ) announce (S = advertise )"																		
"bear (S = carry, wear ) blank (S = shiny )"																		
"branch (S = trade, line of business)"																		
"come (S = arrive, get  (somewhere) as well as come) cook ( S = boil )"																		
control (S = check ) critic (S = criticism ) delicate (S = delicious )																		
"eventual(ly)  (S = possible,  if  any, if  the situation arises ) fabric (S = factor y )"																		
"first (S can mean not until, as in Danish Han kom f0rst kl. 10 = He didn't arrive until 10.)"																		
genial (S = brilliant ) gift (S = poison ) history (S = story ) lame (S = paral ysed ) luck ( S = happiness ) luck y ( S = happ y )																		
"mean (S = think, be of  the opinion ) meaning (S = opinion )"																		
motion (S = physical  exercise) novel (S = short story )																		
"of fer (S = sacrifice, of fering ) overtak e (S = take over)"																		
"place  (S = room, space, square, job )"																		
"public  (S = audience, spectators ) rent (S = (rate of )  interest)"																		
see (S = look )																		
"spare (S = save ) sympathetic (S = likeable ) tak e place (S = sit down) will, will have (S = want)"																		
Some problems involving grammatical  words																		
"1. As and like, in many of their uses, have one Scandinavian equivalent."																		
"This may create problems with the distinction between, for instance, Like a cabinet minister . . . and As a cabinet minister . . ., as well as mistakes such as ''·J speak as my mother and problems of style as in He did lik e he had chosen to do."																		
"2. Scandinavians have one word covering very, much  and  (in affirm­ ative sentences) a great deal I a lot. This may tend to produce some overuse of much as the most 'similar' word."																		
"3. The word ogsaJocksa covers the area of English also, too, as well in their main uses, as well as some uses of so. Apart from problems of choice this leads to considerable difficulties of word order, for example:"																		
''·J teach also/too evening classes.																		
"4. The demonstrative adverb there corresponds to a Danish and Swedish word which can also be used as a relative. This occasionally leads to the use of there in place of a relative. Danes use it in substantival function, as in ''·The man there was present (for . . . who was present ); Swedes use it in adverbial function, as in ''·The place there I was born"																		
". . ., reflecting the usage in their respective languages."																		
"5. The word om functions both as a conjunction (= if, whether ) and a preposition (= about, on).  Following verbs  where both types  of word are possible, mistakes like ''·Do you know about he has come? can be found."																		
A sample of written Danish with a word-for-word																		
translation																		
"Der     holdt         mindst hundrede taxaer med d0rene      pa klem,"																		
"There stood still least   hundred taxis  with the doors ajar,"																		
og   han havde aldrig set   sa mange biler pa en  gang. Havde det																		
and he  had   never seen so many  cars at one time. Had   it																		
"staet  til  ham,                                                   var han styrtet"																		
"stood to him [= if it had been left to him], was he rushed"																		
"fra      den ene vogn til den anden, indtil han havde fundet en"																		
"from the one car  to the other,  until he  had    found a"																		
"chauff0r med et ansigt, han kunne lide.                            Men hans"																		
"driver    with a face,   he   could suffer [ = he liked]. But his"																		
"far      l0ftede blot en finger, en mand med kasket pa hovedet sa"																		
"father lifted  just a  finger, a  man  with cap    on the head saw"																		
"det, st0dte 0jeblikkelig    i   en fl0jte     og  straks   blev der"																		
"it,  blew  immediately in a  whistle and at once was there"																		
bevcegelse  i   den yderste      bilrcekke.																		
movement in the outermost car-row.																		
(From 'Johnny' by Bent William Rasmussen in Jeanne M oreau iM iddelfart )																		
Acknowledgements																		
"The authors' thanks are due to Stig Johansson, Moira Linnarud, Tom"																		
"Lundskrer-Nielsen,   Thor   Sigurd   Nilsen,   Stig   0rjan    Ohlsson,   Nils R0ttingen and Brit Ulseth for advice."																		
German speakers																		
Michael  Swan																		
Distribution																		
"GERMANY,      AUSTRIA,      SWITZERLAND,       LIECHTENSTEIN,"																		
"LUXEMBOURG,   France,  Italy,  Denmark,  Belgium,  Holland,  Poland, Czech Repu blic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, United States."																		
Introduction																		
"German  is  an  Inda-European  language,  closely  related  to  Dutch,"																		
"English and the Scandinavian languages. It exists in a wide variety of dialects, some so different from each other as to be more or less mutually unintelligible. The standard language of Germany (Hoch­ deutsch, or 'High German') is used for written communication through­ out the German-speaking area, with a few small regional differences. It is spoken by most Germans, Austrians and German-Swiss either as their first language or as a second dialect (often with strong regional colouring)."																		
"Because of the close family relationship between English and German, there are many similarities between the two languages as regards phonology, vocabulary and syntax. German speakers therefore find English easy to learn initially, and tend to make relatively rapid progress."																		
Phonology																		
General																		
"The German and English phonological systems are broadly similar, and"																		
German speakers do not have serious difficulty in perceiving or pro­ nouncing most English sounds. Among the features of German which can give rise to a 'German accent' in English are:																		
"- More energetic articulation than English, often with tenser vowels, more explosive stop consonants (Ip/, /ti, /k/); and more lip-rounding and spreading."																		
- Different intonation patterns.																		
"- Frequent use of glottal stops before initial vowels, giving a staccato effect."																		
- Tendency of some speakers to use a generally lower or higher pitch than most British people.																		
Vowels																		
1!	I		e		re			e1	a1		JI							
a:	D		J!		u			au	gu		1g							
u:	A		3!		g			eg	ug		"a1;:i
au;:i"							
"Shaded phonemes have equivalents or near equivalents in German, and"																		
"should therefore be perceived and articulated without great difficulty, although some confusions may still arise. Unshaded phonemes may cause problems. For detailed comments, see below."																		
1. /e/ and /re/ are often confused: set and sat.																		
2. h:/  and /;m/  are often  confused:  caught  and  coat. Both  may  be pronounced as a close pure vowel /o:/.																		
3.  !Al may be pronounced like /a/.																		
4.  /e1/ is sometimes pronounced as a close monophthong /e:/.																		
"5.  Stressed   vowels  may   be  pronounced   over-long   before   unvoiced consonants (as in shape, hot, like )."																		
6. Swiss speakers may nasalise certain vowels.																		
Consonants																		
p	b		f		v			e	6		t		d					
s	z		J		3			t f	d3		k		g					
m	n		IJ		1			r	J		w		h					
"Shaded phonemes have equivalents or near equivalents in German, and"																		
"should therefore be perceived and articulated without great difficulty,"																		
although some confusions may still arise. Unshaded  phonemes  may																		
"cause problems. For detailed comments, see below."																		
1. /3/ and /d3/ are rare in German. German speakers often realise them as If/  and /tf / in English: 'mesher' for measure; chain for Jane.																		
"2. The voiced sounds /3/, /d3/, /z/, /v/, lb!, / di and /g/ do not occur at the ends of words in German. Students tend to confuse them with or replace them by their unvoiced equivalents in this position: 'beish' for 'beige'; etch for edge; rice for rise; leaf for leave; pu p for pub; set for said; dock for dog."																		
3.  /8/ and /o/ do not occur in German; students may replace them by I sl																		
and /z/: useful  for youth ful; wizard for withered .																		
4. There is only one German phoneme in the area of /v/ and /w/: vine																		
for wine or (less often) wine for vine.																		
"5. Ir/ may be pronou nced with the back of the tongue (as in French) or as a flap (like English /r/, but more energetic, depending on the variety of German)."																		
"6.  'Dark' /1/  (as in fill, full )  does not exist in standard German. Students"																		
may replace it by 'clear' /1/ (as in light).																		
Stress																		
Patterns  of  word  and  sentence  stress  are quite  similar  in  English  and																		
"German, so there are few problems in this area. Note, however:"																		
1. German compound expressions are generally stressed on the first element; those English compounds which are not may be mis­ pronounced (e.g. ''·'front door; ''·'chocolate cake ).																		
"2. German has few 'weak forms', so German speakers may overstress words like and, but, than, as, have, were, giving them their strong (written) pronunciations in all contexts. Beginners may have diffi­ culty in perceiving weak forms."																		
Intonation																		
This  varies  widely  over  the  German-speaking  area.  North  German																		
intonation is quite like English.  South German  and Austrian  intonation often has long rising glides in mid-sentence:																		
"W}JJn I arrj;/ed at the he I f d that M_9Y was o'Ut,."																		
Swiss speakers may end sentences with a rise followed by a slight fall																		
(Idon't kyfW J : this sounds odd in English.																		
Certain  features  of  German  intonation  transferred  to English  (to­																		
"gether with the more energetic articulation which is common) can make speakers sound peremptory. It is worth giving special practice in wh-questions (which German speakers may produce with a rising intonation which can sound hectoring to the English ear), and in requests."																		
Juncture																		
A German  word  or syllable beginning  with  a vowel is often separated																		
"from what comes before by a glottal stop (instead of being linked, as is usual in English). This can create a very  foreign-sounding  staccato effect:"																		
7in 7and 7out (German 7aus 7und 7ein).																		
Orthography and punctuation																		
Spelling																		
German speakers do not have more trou ble than other learners with																		
"English spelling. Beginners may tend to represent English sounds by the appropriate German  letters,  making  mistakes  like  ''·raund  abaut, ''·schop ping, ''·wery much. Note that German nouns  are  written  with initial capital letters, leading to mistakes like ''·J bought my Car from a Friend."																		
Punctuation																		
Punctuation conventions are roughly the same in German and English.																		
"The  main  difference  is  that  commas  are  used  before  all  subordinate clauses, as well as infinitive complements of verbs, nouns and adjectives."																		
"''·J think, that there has been a mistake. ''.She knew exactly, what he meant."																		
"''·J hope, to see you soon."																		
"''·He felt  the need, to explain everything."																		
"''.She was very anxious, to get there as early as possible."																		
Semi-colons are used less than in English.  Quotation marks are written differently:																		
""""",,How can I help you? "" she asked."																		
Grammar																		
The German and English grammatical systems are very similar in most																		
"ways. There are the same 'part of speech' categories, and German has, for instance, singular and plural forms, definite and indefinite articles, regular and irregular verbs, auxiliary and modal verbs, and active and passive verbal structures. Time relations are signalled by the verb phrase much as in English, though the form which resembles the English present perfect is not used in the same way; there are no progressive forms."																		
"German is a highly inflected language, in which words change their form (especially their endings) according to their grammatical function"																		
"- articles,  adjectives  and  nouns,  for  example,  have  different  forms ( 'cases') according to whether the noun phrase is subject, direct object, indirect object or possessor. This means that word order is somewhat freer than in English, where  the grammatical function of a word is principally indicated by its position. German has grammatical gender: nouns and pronouns are masculine, feminine or neuter. (There is little relationship between gender and meaning.) The lack of any systematic inflectional system in English often leads German-speaking students to feel that English has 'no grammar'."																		
Questions and negatives; auxiliaries																		
1. The auxiliary do has no equivalent  in German; interrogatives  are																		
"made by simple inversion, and one-word verbs are made negative by putting nicht ( = not) after the verb:"																		
"''"" When started you to pla y the piano? ''"" Thank you, I smoke not."																		
"2. Perfect tenses are generally formed  with haben ( = have) + past participle, as in English. However, some verbs (mostly  common intransitive verbs referring to change of state) form their perfects with sein ( = be):"																		
"''"" She is gone out."																		
"3. Because of the similarity of form, English had is often misused as an equivalent of German hat ( = has ) or hatte (which can mean would have - see below):"																		
"''"" Do you know if Andrew had telephoned yet?"																		
4. German has  nothing  corresponding  to  the  complicated  English system of question tags: agreement is normally solicited by a single invariable word or phrase such as nicht wahr? ( = not true?). Learners may use English no? or yes? as an equivalent:																		
"''"" It's getting late, no?"																		
"Time, tense and aspect"																		
A. Past time																		
"1. German has forms similar to the English simple past, simple present perfect and simple past perfect, but there are no progressive forms:"																		
"''"" I realised that somebod y came slowly up the stairs. ''Tm sorry I'm late. Have you waited long?"																		
2. The German form which resembles the present perfect is not used in exactly the same way: it often functions just as a conversational past tense:																		
"''"" I have seen M ary yesterda y."																		
"3. Conversely, the German past may be used where we would  use  a present perfect:"																		
"''"" The German prison system improved a lot in recent years."																		
"4. In indirect speech, German tends to use a present subjunctive where English uses a past tense after past reporting verbs:"																		
"''"" I didn't know if she is at home."																		
B. Present time																		
1. The German lack of a present progressive causes mistakes:																		
"''"" What do you look at?"																		
"2.  To say how long a present state of affairs has been going on, German often uses a present tense where English uses a present perfect:"																		
"''"" H ow long are you  in Germany? (meaning How  long have you been . . .?)"																		
"''"" I know her since we were children."																		
C. Future time																		
German has no equivalent of the going to future. There is a future tense formed with an auxiliary (roughly equivalent to the shall/will future). The present tense is used extensively to refer to the future:																		
"''"" I promise I bring it back tomorrow."																		
Conditionals																		
"In  spoken  German  conditional  sentences,  the  auxiliary  wOrde  (which"																		
"corresponds  roughly  to would )  may  be used  in both  clauses: ''"" If he would ask me, I wouldn't tell him anything. (Wenn er mich fragen wOrde, wOrde ich ihm nichts sagen.)"																		
"The opposite can also happen. With certain common verbs, German"																		
may  use the past  subjunctive  (a one-word form) instead  of  the condi­																		
"tional (compare older English It were better if . . .). Since German subjunctives often resemble the related English past tenses (e.g. kame/ came, ware/were, hatte!had ), confusion is especially likely:"																		
"''"" If she had more time, she came more often. ''"" If I had known, I had told you."																		
"''"" Tuesday were better for the meeting."																		
Conditional meanings are expressed by inversion more freely in German than in English:																		
"''"" Were I in charge, I had changed the times."																		
And German so is often used before the main clause:																		
"''"" If he would come at six, so could we eat earlier."																		
Modal verbs																		
"The English modals can, must, may, etc. have rough German equiva­"																		
lents.  Inevitably  there  are  differences  of  use  which  lead  to  mistakes. Some examples of common problems:																		
1. lch kann (= can) can be used with the name of a language to mean I can speak :																		
"''"" I can Russian."																		
2.  English must looks like the German past tense musste ( = had  to):																		
"''"" Yesterday I must go to London."																		
"M ust be may be used instead of must have been: ''"" Did you? That must be interesting."																		
"3.  Muss nicht = don't have to or needn't; it is not the same as must not: ''"" I mustn't show my pass port as my identity card is enough."																		
"4.   German will means want( s), not will: ''"" She doesn't know what she will."																		
This can lead to confusion  between would  and wanted  (German																		
wollte):																		
"''"" I told her I would a cof fee."																		
"5. German  soil (= is supposed to, is to, should ) is sometimes mistrans­ lated as shall, and sollte ( = was supposed  to, was to) as should:"																		
"''"" He shall be a brilliant musician. (for He is supposed to be . . .)"																		
"''"" I took my first  look at the building which should  be my school for seven years."																		
6. German modals form questions and negatives in the same way as other verbs. This can lead to English modals being treated in the same way:																		
"''"" Do you can swim?"																		
"''"" You didn't must say that."																		
Passivisation																		
German  often  uses  an  active  sentence  with  the  subject  man  (=  one)																		
where English prefers a passive.																		
"'"" One speak s English here."																		
"'"" One has never beaten his record ."																		
There is . . .																		
A common German equivalent of there is is es ist (literally it is):																		
"'"" It is a man in the garden."																		
German  can  also  use  es  before  plural  verbs  in  this  case;  and  the structure is common with verbs other than sein (= be):																		
"'"" It were some problems with the financing. '"" There happened something very strange."																		
German  also uses  es gibt  (literally  it gives )   as an equivalent  of  there is/are.																		
"'""It gives a swimming pool  behind the town hall."																		
Non-finite forms																		
German has no equivalent of the English noun-like use of the -ing form																		
"('gerund'). Lachen, for instance, can correspond to English to laugh, laughing or in some cases to the bare infinitive laugh, according to the context and structure. These are all therefore often confused."																		
"'""Instead of fight I to fight, they decided on talking I to talk . '""I want start I starting work at once."																		
"'""I came here with the hope to find a job. '""I really must stop to smoke."																		
"Like most other  learners, German  speakers have difficulty with the English 'object + infinitive' construction:"																		
"'""I wanted, that she came to my house."																		
Word order																		
1. Infinitives and past participles tend to come at the ends of clauses in																		
"German. The English word order is quickly learnt, but beginners sometimes make mistakes:"																		
"'""I must at once my sister telephone. '""He was in a road accident killed ."																		
2. Main  verbs  generally  come  at  the  ends  of  German  subordinate																		
"clauses, leading beginners to make mistakes:"																		
"''"" Did I tell you, that my mother English speak s?"																		
"3. German has a basic 'verb second' word order. If the subject  of a main clause is preceded by anything other than a conjunction, the subject and verb are inverted:"																		
"''"" On Tuesday have we a holiday."																		
4. A sentence may begin with the direct object or complement:																		
"''"" This car have I very cheap bought. ''"" Fantastic is that!"																		
5. Adverbs may separate a verb from its object or complement; this is unusual in English:																		
"''"" You speak very well German. ''"" He became finall y President."																		
6. Adverb particles tend to come at the ends of clauses:																		
"''"" He walk ed quick ly in."																		
"7. German does not, however, strand prepositions at the ends of clauses, so students have trou ble with structures like That's the woman I was talking about or Who did you buy that for?"																		
"8. In German, an article may be separated from its noun by quite a complex participle phrase:"																		
"''"" The in Britain with unusual excitement awaited budget . . ."																		
9. Vor ( = ago) precedes an expression of time. Entlang ( = along ) follows its noun:																		
"''"" I bought it ago three years."																		
"''"" I met her for/be fore six months. ''"" She was walking the road along."																		
Articles																		
"1. In German, the definite article often accompanies nouns which are"																		
used in a general sense:																		
"''"" The human beings are strange animals. ''"" We all have to live in the society."																		
2.  The indefinite article is not used when defining people's professions:																		
"''"" M y sister is doctor."																		
"3. The indefinite article is often omitted after the equivalents of with, without and as:"																		
"''"" You can't get there without car."																		
"''"" I am telling you this as friend, not as boss."																		
Gender																		
"Nouns  are masculine, feminine  or neuter. Nouns with a 'diminutive'"																		
ending are neuter. Pronouns are used accordingly:																		
"''"" M y watch is broken. Can you mend her?"																		
"''"" The girl (das Madchen - diminutive) was lost. It didn't know where it was."																		
Number and countability																		
1. German nouns form their plurals in various ways. Common plural																		
endings  are -en and  -er; beginners  sometimes  drop the  -s from  the plurals of English nouns that end in these letters:																		
"''"" I have three brother."																		
2. Some English uncountable nouns have countable German equivalents																		
"-for instance news, hair, furniture, damage, advice, English, weather. ''"" All the news are terrible today."																		
"''"" He speak s a wonderful English. ''"" Can you give me an advice?"																		
"3. Some English plural nouns have singular German equivalents: for example trousers, scissors, the M iddle Ages, the police."																		
"''"" Can you lend me a scissor?"																		
"''"" The police is looking for him."																		
Possessive 's																		
"German has an equivalent of the English possessive 's structure, but it is"																		
mostly used with names. In other cases von ( = of) is generally used:																		
"''"" I went skiing with the husband of my sister."																		
Adjectives and adverbs																		
1. A German adverb of manner is usually identical in form with the																		
"uninflected  adjective.  For  example,  gut  = good/well;  schrecklich  ="																		
terrible/terribly:																		
"''"" She can drive very good."																		
"''"" He is very good-educated. ''"" I was terrible impressed ."																		
2.  A noun may sometimes be dropped if it can be 'understood' after an adjective:																		
"''"" The most important is, to tell everybod y at once."																		
Relative pronouns																		
"1. German  was  corresponds  not  only  to  what, but  also  to  that  (in"																		
certain cases) and to which when the antecedent is a clause. This leads to misuse of what:																		
"''"" The only thing what he could do . . ."																		
"''"" All what we want . . ."																		
"''"" His of fer was rejected, what took him by surprise."																		
2. German does not distinguish relative who and which:																		
"''"" I know the peo pl e which came to see you this morning ."																		
"3. Since there is no grammatical distinction in German between re­ strictive and non-restrictive relative clauses, beginners may not understand why structures like ''·Her mother, that lives in Paris or ''·M y uncle, you met yesterda y are ungrammatical."																		
"4. German cannot drop object relative pronouns, so students tend to overuse structures like:"																		
the girl whom I am going to marry																		
Conjunctions																		
1. German has the same word for as and like (referring to similarity):																		
",,.You look as your sister."																		
2. The German word falls (literally in case ) is used to mean if in certain contexts. This can lead to uses of in case which are not correct in British English:																		
''.Phone me in case you can't come.																		
Prepositions																		
Most German prepositions have rough English equivalents. Problems																		
arise in cases (too many to list) where a fixed English expression or collocation is not constructed with the 'same' preposition as is used in German. Typical mistakes in this area:																		
",,.dressed with a dark suit"																		
''·You remind me at/on your father. ''.That's typical for him.																		
''full with water																		
Other problems (easier to predict)  occur when a German preposition has more than one regular English equivalent. Some common diffi­ culties:																		
"1. Nach ( = after ) can also mean according to: ''.After  my teacher, this is correct."																		
2. Seit can mean since or for:																		
"'""I've known her since three years."																		
3. Von = of or from;  also by when talking about authorship:																		
"'"" Can I have a piece from that cake? '""a photo from my mother"																		
"'""a symphony from Beethoven"																		
4. Zu = to or at:																		
"'"" to Easter    ''·He was a student to Heidelberg."																		
5. An = at or on:																		
''·at M onday   ''·on a part y																		
6. Vor = before  or in front  of; also ago: ''.The bus stop is before our house. ''·J arrived before/ for ten minutes.																		
''·J married for  ten years. (Meaning Igot married ten years ago.)																		
7.  Mit ( = with) is used with ages:																		
",,.With 16 you  can ride a motorbike."																		
8.  Wahrend = during or while:																		
''.She phoned  during you were out.																		
"9. Bei corresponds  to a large number  of prepositions  m English, depending on the context - but rarely to by:"																		
''·J spent  the  evening  by  John  and  Alice.  (for  . . . at John  and Alice's )																		
''·By this weather no planes can fly.																		
Vocabulary																		
Very many German and English words are derived from the same roots																		
"(e.g. Haus = house; Schuh = shoe; jung - young; singen = to sing ). This facilitates learning on the whole, though there are a certain number of 'false friends' (see below). German-speaking Swiss generally know some French, which helps them with that part of English vocabulary which is of French or Latin origin (though it may also  lead them to make typically French mistakes of spelling or vocabulary use)."																		
False friends																		
A  large  number  of  German  words  have  meanings  or  uses  which  are																		
slightly  or  completely  different  from  those  of  their  English  cognates. Students may misuse the following words (among others):																		
come																		
go																		
(German kommen = come or go according to context)																		
(German gehen = go or walk according to context)																		
bring																		
mean actual(ly) eventual (ly) sympathetic thank you when become control while																		
cook lucky rentable																		
(German bringen = bring or take according to context)																		
(German meinen usually = think or say )																		
"(German aktuell = present, current, topical, at present ) (German eventuell = possible/ possibl y/ perha ps ) (German sympathisch = nice)"																		
"(German danke can mean No, thank you )"																		
"(German wenn = if or whenever ) (German bekommen = obtain, get ) (German kontrollieren = check ) (German weil = because)"																		
(German kochen = boil or cook ) (German glucklich = happ y or lucky ) (German rentabel = pro fitable )																		
Note also that who (German wer) and where (German wo) are easily																		
confused by beginners.																		
Other confusions																		
"Apart  from  difficulties  caused  by  misleading  cognates,  problems  arise"																		
"more generally where one German word has more than one English equivalent, or where a pair of contrasting words are not distributed in quite the same way as their apparent English equivalents. A few examples:"																		
say and tell so and such																		
"yet, still and again this and that"																		
as and how as and than as and when to and too miss and lose leave and let																		
leave and forget																		
Phonetically motivated confusions:																		
man and men prize and price save and safe																		
"The German word for please (bitte) is used when offering something, and also as a formulaic reply to thanks (rather like not at all, but used much more widely). This leads students to misuse Please in English."																		
Swiss speakers sometimes  use  Why  not? inappropriately  where  a																		
polite response to an invitation is required:																		
"'Would you  like to join  us for  a week  touring the M editerranean on Lord  Canterville's yacht?'   ""'Why not?'"																		
Word formation																		
Complex nouns  are common  in German  (Dorfschullehrer  = village school																		
"teacher), and students may try to make similar one-word compounds in English."																		
A sample of written German with a word-for-word																		
translation																		
Eines Abends                   saB ich im      Dorfwirtshaus																		
One  evening [genitive] sat I    in the village pu b																		
"vor              (genauer          gesagt, hinter)    einem Glas"																		
"in front of (more exactly said,    behind) a         glass"																		
"Bier, als      ein Mann gewohnlichen Aussehens"																		
"beer, when a   man [of ] ordinary  appearance [genitive]"																		
sich      neben mich setzte  und mich mit   vertraulicher																		
himself beside me   placed and me    with confidential																		
"Stimme fragte, ob ich eine Lokomotive kaufen wolle. voice asked, whether I a locomotive to buy want [present subju nctive]."																		
"Nun  ist es zwar     ziemlich leicht,  mir    etwas          zu verkaufen,"																		
"Now is it  indeed rather  easy,  to me something to sell,"																		
"denn ich kann schlecht nein sagen,                                             aber bei    einer"																		
"for    I    can  badly     no   say [I find it difficult to say no],but  with a"																		
groBeren Anschaffung dieser  Art    schien   mir      doch																		
bigger    purchase      of this kind seemed to me however																		
Vorsicht am      Platze.																		
caution at the place [caution seemed to me to be indicated].																		
"Obgleich   ich wenig von Lokomotiven verstehe,        erkundigte"																		
"Although I   little  of  locomotives understand, informed"																		
"ich mich                        nach Typ  und Bauart,                     um         bei"																		
"I   myself [I enquired] after type and construction kind, in order in"																		
"dem Mann den Anschein     zu erwecken, als       habe er es hier"																		
"the  man  the impression to awake,    as [if ] have he it here"																		
"mit   einem Experten zu tun, der nicht gewillt  sei, die Katz'"																		
"with an     expert    to do, who not willing be, the cat"																		
"im       Sack zu kaufen, wie man so schon             sagt."																		
"in the sack to buy,      as  one so beautiful(ly) says."																		
('Eine groRere Anschaff ung' by Wolfgang Hildesheimer from Lieblose Legenden )																		
French speakers																		
Catherine Walter																		
Distribution																		
"FRANCE (including French West Indies), BELGIUM, SWITZERLAND,"																		
"CANADA, HAITI; some parts of northwestern Italy and Luxembourg; official or widespread second language in many former  French and Belgian colonies in north, west and central Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and South America."																		
Introduction																		
"French belongs to the Romance group of Inda-European languages, and"																		
"is closely related to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and other Romance tongues. There are some differences between standard Belgian or Canadian French, for example, and the standard French of France, but the differences are not greater than those between British and American English; the different standard French dialects are certainly mutually comprehensible."																		
"Because French is an Inda-European language, and because the Norman contribution to English was so great, there are some similar­ ities between French and English, both in syntax and vocabulary. The phonological systems exhibit some important differences, however, and this usually presents French speakers with problems in understanding and producing spoken English, and in making links between spelling and pronunciation."																		
Phonology																		
General																		
French shares many phonological characteristics with English. French																		
"speakers do not have great difficulty in perceiving or pronouncing most English consonants, but some of the vowel sounds present problems. Perhaps most importantly, the French and English  systems of word stress  and  rhythm  are  very  different,  and  this  can  lead  to  serious"																		
difficulties  both  in understanding  and in producing  spoken English.																		
Among the features of French which lead to a 'French accent' in English are:																		
"- All French words of two syllables or more are stressed in a regular way (see below), unlike the English system where the stress pattern for each word or word-type must be learnt. This can lead to problems of comprehension and comprehensibility."																		
"- Unstressing a syllable in French does not involve reducing the time given to its pronunciation, as it does in English. In addition, there is little of the vowel reduction that occurs in unstressed English syllables. These two factors make it seem to French speakers that English speakers 'swallow' their words, and can make the English spoken by French speakers sound monotonous or staccato."																		
"- French uses tenser, more rounded lips and more frequent jaw opening; the tip of the tongue is not used, and there is more use of the blade (the part behind the tip) of the tongue, giving 'softer' sounds to some consonants."																		
Vowels																		
1!	I	e			re			e1	a1		JI							
a:	D	J!			u			au	gu		1g							
u:	A	3!			g			eg	ug		"al;}
au;}"							
"Shaded phonemes have equivalents or near equivalents in French, and"																		
"should therefore be perceived and articulated without serious difficulty, although some confusions may still arise. Unshaded phonemes may cause problems. For detailed comments, see below."																		
"1. French  has only one sound in the  area  of Ii:/  and /I/, leading to confusions between pairs like leave and live."																		
"2. !Al is sometimes pronounced  almost like /;}/, so that much becomes"																		
'mirch' .																		
"3. French has only one sound in the area of /u/ and /u:/, leading to confusion between pairs like pull and pool ."																		
"4. lo/ is often unrounded, so that, for instance, not is realised something like nut."																		
"5. Both h:/ and /;}u/  are moved  towards the French  lo/ , leading to confusion between pairs like naught and note."																		
6. /re/ often creates difficulty. Depending on how it is perceived  by the																		
"French speaker, it may be realised:"																		
"- very like an English !Al, so that words like bank and bunk are confused;"																		
"- rather like /a:/, so that, for instance, hand sounds like 'hahnd';"																		
"- as /e/, causing confusion between pairs like pat and pet."																		
"7. /e1/ sometimes becomes /e/, so that, for example, pa per sounds like pep per. Since /re/ can also be realised as /e/, this can lead to confusion in pairs like mad and made."																		
"8. Other diphthongs are not usually too problematic, but they may be pronounced with equal force and length on the two elements: I see now becomes 'Ahee see nah-oo'."																		
Consonants																		
p	b		f		v			e	6		t		d					
s	z		J		3			tf	d3		k		g					
m	n		1J		1			r	J		w		h					
"Shaded phonemes have equivalents or near equivalents in French, and"																		
"should therefore be perceived and articulated without serious difficulty, although some confusions may still arise. Unshaded phonemes  may cause problems. For detailed comments, see below."																		
"1. /8/ and lo/ do not exist in French, and the fact that spoken French does not require the tip of the tongue makes these sounds difficult to learn. Isl, lzl, /fl, /v/, /ti and /di are common realisations of these phonemes. Think may be realised as sink , fink or 'tink'; and that as 'zat', vat or  'dat'."																		
2.  ltf l is often realised as If / and /d3/ as /3/. So church becomes  'shursh'																		
and joke becomes 'zhoke'.																		
3. !hi (which does not exist in French) is often dropped: 'I 'aven't seen 'enry today'.																		
"4. Ir/ is pronounced with the back of the tongue in French, and so is likely to be pronounced the same way in English."																		
"5. 'Dark' /1/, as in will, does not occur in French, and students may replace it by 'clear' /1/, as in lay."																		
"6. English lengthens vowels in stressed syllables before final voiced consonants.  In  fact, the  main  way  an English  speaker  hears  the"																		
difference  between  words  like sat and sad  is by hearing the longer																		
"vowel before the d of the second word (the voiced/devoiced contrast between d and t is much less important for perception). French speakers do not typically lengthen these vowels, leading to confusion between pairs of words like sat and sad , pick  and pig, and so on."																		
Consonant clusters																		
"1. In words  ending  in  consonant  + le, the  French  speaker  may  re­"																		
"interpret the 'dark' /1/ as /;JI/ . Combined with the tendency to stress multisyllabic words on the last  syllable,  this  gives  pronunciations like 'terri'bull' 'lit'tull'."																		
"2. At the end of words like realism, French speakers may pronounce Isl"																		
plus devoiced /ml. An English speaker may hear 'realiss'.																		
"3. One does not normally find a consonant followed by /z/ at the end of a French word. So in pronouncing English plurals, French speakers tend to drop the -s after voiced consonants, making mistakes like ''·two tin."																		
Stress																		
"1. In French words of more than one syllable, the word stress (which"																		
"is somewhat weaker than in English) is on the last pronounced syllable. With the exception of /;;J/, which is sometimes elided, vowels which are not stressed retain their pronunciation, rather than being shortened, or weakened to /;;J/ or /I/ as in English. So French speakers have great difficulty in perceiving shortened or weakened syllables when English speakers pronounce them."																		
"This shortening and weakening also produces problems for French speakers trying to produce spoken English, as does moving from the very regular French system of word stress to English, where the stress pattern of each word or word-type must be learnt as part of its pronunciation."																		
"2. Where English uses stress to mark contrast, French often  uses a grammatical construction. Compare French and English answers to 'Didn't you go to the grocer's?' :"																		
"English: No, I went to the bakers."																		
"French:  Non, c'est a la boulangerie que je suis allee."																		
"(= N o, it's to the baker's that I went.)"																		
Intonation																		
The French and English intonation systems are similar in many respects.																		
"But movements in French tend to be steplike  and avoid glides, which can in some situations give an impression of vehemence where none is intended."																		
Influence of spelling on pronunciation																		
"Although  French  spelling is complex, a French speaker can tell how to"																		
"pronounce a word (with very rare exceptions) from the way it is spelt. French learners may therefore expect to be able to do the same in English. Additionally, mistakes  may  be made, especially  by  beginners, in cases where a letter or combination of letters has a different value in English and in French. Note particularly:"																		
"1. In  syllables  ending with  the letter r, this letter  is pronounced  in"																		
"French; interference here may cause problems for students of British English with words like hard, early, garden. In words like sister, French speakers may pronounce the final e as /e/: 'sistair' ."																		
"2. ou  may  be  pronounced  /u:/,  and  au  may  be  pronounced  /o/:"																		
"'pronoonce', 'otomatic'."																		
"3. In regular past endings, students may pronounce final /Id/ or /ed/ after all consonants, or after all unvoiced consonants: warned , jumped ."																		
"4. Final written consonants in French (e.g. plural -s) are often not pronounced. This tends to be carried over into English and lead to mistakes like ''.dif feren, ''·She stay, ''four ap ple."																		
5. There are a large number of cognates in English and French. It is																		
very common for French students to transfer French stress patterns to these words.																		
Orthography and punctuation																		
French  speakers  do not have more trou ble than  other learners  with																		
"English spelling. Note that days of the week, months, languages and national adjectives are not capitalised in French and may lead  to mistakes like ''·J will begin german classes on the first tuesday of januar y."																		
"Punctuation conventions are roughly the same in French and English. Commas can be used in French in some cases where they would not be used in English, and may lead to mistakes like ''·Consonants that are doubled in writing, are usually pronounced like single consonants."																		
Quotation  marks  are  written  slightly  differently  in  French:  «•  •  • »																		
"rather than '. . .' or "". . .''."																		
Grammar																		
General																		
The French  and English grammatical  systems are very  similar in most																		
"ways: there are the same 'part of speech' categories; word order is broadly similar; French has singular and plural verb forms, definite and indefinite articles, regular and irregular verbs, auxiliary verbs, active and passive forms, and past, present and future tenses. There are perfect verb forms (though the tense  which is constructed like the  English present perfect is not used in the same way)."																		
"There are some important differences, though. French verbs are inflected, so that the ending of a verb indicates both its tense and the person and number of the subject of the clause (though some of the inflections have disappeared from speech). French has no equivalent of the English progressive forms.  The  verbs in French which express modality are inflected and form questions and negatives in the same way as other verbs. There is nothing corresponding to phrasal/preposi­ tional verbs in French. There are no inflected question tags. French has grammatical gender: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, articles and some determiners are masculine or feminine (though only a few nouns show a relationship between gender and meaning); the same words also inflect for plurality (at least in writing). 'Heads' of phrases typically come before their modifiers in French: so, for example, nouns typically come before attributive adjectives and verbs before adverbs."																		
Verbs																		
French  speakers  tend  to have  trou ble  learning  to pronounce  the  -s																		
"endings on third person singular present tense verbs. There are many reasons for this. English is perceived as a non-inflected language compared to French, so the one sign of inflection tends to be forgotten. Final written -s in any French word is virtually never pronounced. And although there are differences in the spellings of first, second and third person singular present tense endings of regular  verbs  in  French,  all three forms are pronounced  the same."																		
Questions and negatives; auxiliaries																		
1. The auxiliary do has no equivalent in French. French speakers can																		
run into problems in English trying to form interrogatives as they do in French:																		
- Simply by adding a question mark or by using question intonation:																		
"''"" You are coming this evening?"																		
- By inversion:																		
"''"" When think you to leave England?"																		
"2. Negatives in French are formed by putting ne . . . pas around a one­ word verb, or around the auxiliary of a longer verb. This can lead to omission of do/did and/or incorrect placement of not:"																		
"''"" She lives not in Paris."																		
"The ne also precedes the verb when another negative follows it, so:"																		
"''"" I have not said nothing."																		
"3. French has tenses which are formed like the English perfect tenses, generally with the verb avoir (= have). However, some verbs (in­ cluding many common verbs of  movement) form these tenses with etre (= be):"																		
"''"" Claude is come yesterda y."																		
"4. Conjugated question tags do not exist in French; whereas in English the question tag agrees with the main verb, French uses n'est-ce pas? (= isn't it? or isn't that?), or more casually non?, after all verbs:"																		
"''"" You're American, isn't it? ''"" Emma is with Simon, no?"																		
"Time, tense and aspect"																		
A. Past time																		
"1. There is a French tense that is formed much like the English present perfect, but it functions as a simple past in speech and informal writing:"																		
"''"" I have been to Japan last month."																		
2. In French the present tense is used to talk about actions or states that began in the past and are continuing in the present:																		
"''"" I work in Paris since August I for six months."																		
"''"" She is going out with M arc since they were sixteen."																		
"3. In writing, and sometimes in speech (especially when reporting conversations), the present tense may be used to talk about the past. In French this gives an effect of fast-moving action to a narrative:"																		
"''"" On 24 July  1769, General  O'Reilly  arrives and  takes official possession of Louisiana for Spain."																		
"''"" I phoned  Eric last night. When I ask him 'Are you  coming?', he"																		
says he can't.																		
"4. French has a tense which is used in the same way as the English past progressive, to talk about an action in progress at a given point  in the past. But this same French tense is also used to talk about habits or repeated actions in the past, so French speakers may use the past progressive in place of a simple past tense, used to, or would . . . (in the sense of was/were in the habit of):"																		
"''"" We were often going to the seaside when I was a child."																		
"''"" I was eating here every day when I was working for IBM ."																		
"''"" Every   Christmas  my  father   was  pretending   to  be  Father Christmas, and we were pretending  to believe him."																		
This tense  is also used  in cases where  the past  perfect  progressive would be used in English with for and since:																		
"''"" When I arrived, they were waiting for  half an hour."																		
"Note that all verbs including 'state' verbs, can be put into this tense in French:"																		
"''"" I was knowing him when he got his first big part."																		
"5. There is a tense in French which is formed like the English past perfect, and its usage corresponds generally to the English tense. But it can also be used when the action spoken about is separated from the present by facts that are common knowledge to the speakers - even though they may not be mentioned:"																		
'Here we are. Room 232.' ''·'But I had  asked  for  a room with a view!'																		
B. Present time																		
1. French has no present progressive form:																		
''}ulie can't come to the phone now. She has/takes a bath.																		
2. French uses the present tense after expressions like This is the first time . . .:																		
",,.This is the first  time I come to London."																		
C. Future time																		
"French has the same three ways of expressing future time as English: a present tense, a going to structure, and a future tense. In general, French and English usage of these is similar, but there are some differences."																		
"1. Since French has no present progressive tense, the simple present may be incorrectly used for the future:"																		
",,.I eat with Christine this evening."																		
"2.  In  French,  the  present  tense  is  used  to  express  a  decision  at  the moment it is taken:"																		
(the doorbell rings)  ''·J answer it!																		
The present is also used to express a promise:																		
''Tm doing/I do it this evening.																		
3. French uses the future tense for future time after the equivalents of																		
when and as soon as:																		
"''""I'll phone you when she will arrive."																		
",,.Will you tell me as soon as he will have finished?"																		
Modal verbs																		
"The English modals can, must, should , etc. have French equivalents. But"																		
"these verbs in French do not form a separate class: unlike their English counterparts, they do not behave differently from other inflected verbs, and have no special rules about questions, negatives or following infinitives. This leads to mistakes, especially for beginners, like ''·He cans . . . and ''·Do you must . . . ."																		
There  are  other  differences  of  use  which  lead  to  mistakes.  Some common  problems:																		
"1. Since French speakers are taught that their infinitive form  corres­ ponds to the English to-infinitive, it is common for them to use the to-infinitive with English modals:"																		
",,.I can to swim."																		
",,.You must to enter your password first."																		
",,.You should to try this new shampoo."																		
2. French uses forms of the single verb devoir to cover the notions of obligation and deduction expressed in English by  must  and should. This can lead to students saying must when they mean should and vICe versa:																		
''·You must (to) ask Eleanor if she has any ideas. ''·You should (to) have a permit to work in America.																		
"3. There is no structure in French corresponding to the English use of shall for making and asking for suggestions. Instead, other structures are used: the present tense, or the 'imperfect' with if:"																		
''·J set the table?																		
",,.Where do we go?"																		
''.If I lent you part of the money?																		
"4. French present and past conditional tenses are used in the same way as their English equivalents. However, conditionals are also used (for example, in newspaper articles or news broadcasts) to indicate that the information given is not absolutely certain:"																		
''.The  hijackers   would   be  members   of   the  extremist  group.																		
(instead of The hijack ers are thought to be I are allegedly . . .)																		
"''"" According  to Opposition  leaders, the decision would have been"																		
taken. (instead of . . . the decision was taken.)																		
"5.  The French equivalents of modal perfects are constructed  differently: the equivalent of I ought to have gone, for example, is j'aurais du aller"																		
- literally  'I would  have oughted  to go'. This can lead French speakers to use an English infinitive instead of a past participle:																		
"''"" I ought to have go."																		
Imperatives																		
"1. In  spoken  French,  the  future  is  often  used  for  instructions  and"																		
"directions, leading to mistakes in English:"																		
"''"" You will go straight until the lights, and then you will turn left . . ."																		
"2. In written French, the infinitive is often used as an imperative form:"																		
"''"" To wipe your feet, please."																		
"''"" To break the eggs into a bowl and to beat lightly."																		
Clause structure and complementation																		
1. French often prefers a relative clause where English uses an -ing form																		
adjectivally:																		
"''"" I love the feel of soft warm rain that falls on my face."																		
"2. French uses an infinitive, and not a gerund, when a  verb  form  is needed to fill the place of a noun:"																		
"''"" To drive the children to school is a nightmare. ''"" David is thinking to change his job."																		
''Tm tired to tell her the same thing every day.																		
"''"" I want to talk to Susan about to change my job."																		
"''"" He can't start the day without to have a cup of tea."																		
"3. In cases where English uses an infinitive after a verb to express purpose, French uses the equivalent of for. So sentences like these occur:"																		
"''"" He is going to London for buy some books."																		
"''"" . . . for buying some books."																		
"''"" . . . for to buy some books."																		
"4. While English has both  'bare' and  'to-'  infinitives,  French  has  only one sort. This leads to mistakes like:"																		
"''"" I want go. ''·J hope go."																		
5. Spoken French allows an 'extraposed' subject or object in a sentence:																		
",,.Your sister she came."																		
",,.The telephone they repaired it?"																		
"'""She is there, your mother?"																		
"6. Relative pronouns are never omitted in French, so French speakers can have trou ble understanding, and may avoid producing, sentences like:"																		
That's the man my sister interviewed .																		
Complementation with certain verbs																		
French  verbs  that  have  close  equivalents   in  English   often  have   a																		
different complementation pattern. Some of the more common cases:																		
"1. French uses a (subjunctive) clause, rather than an infinitive structure, after the equivalents of want and would lik e:"																		
"'""She wants that you come right away."																		
2.  The equivalent of k now in French can be followed by an infinitive:																		
"'""I know to make pancakes."																		
"3. With expressions of locomotion ( walk, run,  dance,  etc.),  French tends to specify the type of movement by a participle phrase, not by the choice of main verb as happens in English:"																		
"'""She left the room running. (for She ran out of the room.)"																		
''·They went down the street dancing. (for They danced down the street. )																		
"4. In both English and French, certain verbs can be immediately followed by indirect objects which say who is affected by the verb's action, but the list is not quite the same in the two languages:"																		
''·I explained  her the situation.																		
''·He suggested me another solution.																		
It andthere																		
The French expression corresponding to there is is an idiomatic phrase																		
beginning with the equivalent of it. This can lead to mistakes:																		
''.It's a problem with the steering.																		
The French equivalent of there is (. . . that) can also be used with a time expression to mean ago or It's . . . since:																		
''·I met here there are five years.																		
''.There are six week s that she hasn't written.																		
Passivisation																		
1. French uses either a reflexive pronoun or the equivalent of one in																		
many cases where English uses the passive:																		
"''"" That does not do itself   (for That is not done.)"																		
''·One speak s English here.																		
"2. In French, the beneficiary of a transitive verb (indirect object in an active construction) cannot be the subject of a passive sentence. For:"																		
We were given two days to finish the work .																		
a French speaker will tend to say:																		
''·One gave us two days (for) to finish the work .																		
"3. Like  other  learners,  French  speakers have  trou ble  with  complex passives:"																		
''.The house is building. (for . . . being built.) ''·A lot of books have written on this subject.																		
Word order: influence of French																		
"In French, heads of phrases typically come before modifiers. This is the"																		
opposite of what happens in English and has repercussions in more than one area.																		
1. Most attributive adjectives in French are placed after the noun. Some																		
problems in English may arise from this:																		
",,.a dress red"																		
''·a lecture rather long																		
''·a request quite reasonable																		
''.She is the woman the most beautiful  that I know.																		
"2. Noun-noun compounds in French are less frequent than in English; when they do occur, the main noun is first and the modifying noun follows:"																		
''·an article of newspaper																		
",,.a shop shoe"																		
"3. There is no structure corresponding to the 's genitive structure in French. This, and French head-first word order, can lead to mistakes like:"																		
",,.the car of my brother"																		
''·her blouse's friend																		
"4. In French, an adverb often comes between the verb and the direct object:"																		
''·J forget always the way to his house.																		
",,.I like very much your dress. ''·Solange speak s very well English. ''·He of fers never to help."																		
There are  several  other  common  sorts of  mistake  which  reproduce French word order.																		
1. French can use inversion in an object clause or relative clause if the																		
subject of the clause is a noun:																		
"''"" I told her what wanted the directors."																		
"''""Do you k now how is coming John?"																		
"''"" The song that was singing my mother when she was putting us to bed . . ."																		
"''"" The house where lived my grand parents . . ."																		
"2. If the subject of the subordinate clause is a pronoun, normal sentence order is used in French, as in English; but overgeneralisation from English question forms may still lead to mistakes in reported speech:"																		
"''"" They asked us where were we going."																		
"''"" I wonder which department does she work for."																		
"3.  French uses inversion after see, hear, let, and perha ps: ''"" I saw go out a short plump man."																		
"''"" I heard open the living room door."																		
"''"" M s Hadley let pla y the children a bit longer than usual. ''"" Perhaps will they be late."																		
"The (active) infinitive in the equivalent French structure can have an active or passive meaning, leading to English sentences like ''·J have never seen kill an animal."																		
"4. In French, expressions of quantity used as direct objects come before the past participle of a two-part verb:"																		
",,.I have too much eaten."																		
"''.She has everything read, but she hasn't found  the answer."																		
",,.I have them all counted."																		
''·He's a lot done for  both the children.																		
"5. Many expressions with infinitives in French are preceded by de or a,"																		
which French speakers sometimes translate as to. This has an effect on their realisation of negative infinitives:																		
''·J asked him to not tell his sister.																		
6. Exclamations with the French equivalent of how + adjective/adverb do not use inversion:																		
''·H ow he runs fast!																		
7. Other typical mistakes arising from French word order are:																		
''·a such charming woman ''·ago ten minutes																		
",,.Is your cof fee enough sweet?"																		
",,.three days, about"																		
''.the four last days (for the last four days ) ''.the three next months																		
",,.Has been your sister to France?"																		
Word order: particles and prepositions																		
There is no verb category corresponding to phrasal/prepositional verbs																		
in French. French speakers have difficulty learning how to use these verbs in English; word order with pronou n objects is a particular problem.																		
"''""John phoned. Can you call back him?"																		
"French cannot 'strand' a preposition at the end of a clause. When the question word is the object of a preposition in French, the preposition always comes before the question word. This can sound odd in spoken English:"																		
"''"" From where are you?"																		
Note too that this leads to the unidiomatic usage:																		
"( ,,.;At what time . . .?"																		
"Learners also avoid, and may have difficulty understanding, relative and passive structures like:"																		
There's the girl I was talking to you about. He's just  been operated  on.																		
Articles																		
"1. In French, the definite article accompanies nouns which are used in a"																		
general sense:																		
",,.I like the Baroque music."																		
''.The whisk y is a stronger drink than the sherry.																		
2. French uses no article before the names of professions in complement position:																		
''·Sarah is teacher.																		
3. French uses a definite article before possessive pronouns and some determiners:																		
",,.This is the mine and that is the hers."																		
''.The most peo ple think the euro is a good thing.																		
"4. In French, the indefinite article can sometimes be omitted after the equivalents of as and without:"																		
''·J used my spoon as shovel. ''.Did Tom go out without hat?																		
5. Other typical mistakes arising from French use of articles are:																		
''.the M ike's book																		
",,.What time do you have the dinner?"																		
",,.The English is a difficult language. ''·He's coming the next week ."																		
",,.the Cambridge University"																		
",,.the Princess Caroline"																		
''Tm not in the of fice the Thursday.																		
"'"" What prett y jacket!"																		
Gender																		
1. Nouns are masculine or feminine. Pronouns are used accordingly:																		
"'""I can't find my book - he was on the table a minute ago. '"" This cooker doesn't work as well as she used to."																		
2. The possessive determiners corresponding to his and her are ident­ ical; they agree in gender with the noun they modify:																		
"'""I had dinner with John and her sister last night. '""Janet lent me his k nife to open the parcel."																		
Number																		
1. A number of nouns are countable in French and uncountable (mass)																		
nouns in English. Common mistakes:																		
"'""my hairs   ''·your luggages"																		
",,.informations  ''·advices ''.The news are good ."																		
2. Some things that are designated by plural nouns in English are designated by singular nouns in French. Possible mistakes:																		
''·a jean   ''·a trouser   ''·a short   ''·a p yjama ''.the middle age (for the M iddle Ages )																		
''.the custom (for customs ) ''.The police is on the phone.																		
"3. Quantities of money and measures of liquids, solids, and distances typically take a plural verb and are followed by plural pronouns in French:"																		
"''·J need another five pence, but I haven't got them. ''.Fifteen litres are more than I can carry."																		
''.Six miles aren't far to walk if you're fit.																		
"4. When several people possess the same sort of thing, French often puts the noun referring to the thing in the singular:"																		
",,.We all put  our coat on and went out."																		
"5. English noun-noun compounds may lead to problems, where one of the nouns has a plural meaning and a singular form:"																		
''·a teethbrush    ''·a shoes shop    ''·a books publisher																		
Adjectives and adverbs																		
(See also the section on 'Word order'.)																		
"1. In a series of two or more adjectives, French usually puts et (= and ) before the last one. This can lead to mistakes with English attributive adjectives:"																		
"''""a short and red dress"																		
2. There are a number of adjectives that can be used as singular nouns in French:																		
"''"" The poor!  (meaning The poor man/woman!) ''"" The essential is to get the timing right."																		
and any adjective can be used anaphorically without the equivalent of English proform one:																		
'Which one is your brother?'     ''·'The tall.'																		
3.  Present  and past  participles  used  as adjectives  (like interesting  and																		
"interested , boring and bored )  are often confused:"																		
",,.I am very boring in the lesson."																		
4. Comparatives and superlatives are always formed with the equival­ ents of more and most:																		
",,.I thought she was much more old."																		
",,.I am the most short person  of  the class. I the person  the most short of the class."																		
"5. With comparative adjectives  and adverbs in French, the word que,"																		
(whose most common English equivalent is that) is used:																		
''·J am taller that two of my brothers. ''.She doesn't drive as fast  that you.																		
Reflexive pronouns																		
French does not express a distinction in the first and second persons																		
between reflexive pronouns  and ordinary object pronouns. Nor  does French have a distinction between the ideas 'oneself ' and 'each other':																		
",,.I hurt me with the hammer."																		
",,.We just sat there looking at us."																		
Relative pronouns																		
"1. In  French  there  is  one  subject  relative  pronou n  (qui, which  as  an"																		
"interrogative pronoun means who); and one object relative pronoun (que, which as an interrogative pronoun means what). This can lead to problems in English:"																		
"'"" The book who made the biggest impression on me . . ."																		
"'"" The man what I saw yesterda y . . ."																		
2. The article is not omitted after the French pronoun that corresponds to whose:																		
"'"" The man whose the car was parked in front of mine . . ."																		
3. French uses the word corresponding to where as a relative after some time expressions:																		
"'"" There was a terrific storm the day where he was born."																		
Conjunctions																		
1. French  has the  same word  (comme)  for as and like  (referring to																		
similarity):																		
"'"" We're from  the same famil y and went to the same school, but he isn't at all as me."																		
2.  French often does not use ellipsis after and and or: Have you got a k nife and a fork?																		
In Germany or in Austria . . .																		
Prepositions																		
Most  French  prepositions  have  rough  English  equivalents.  Problems																		
arise in cases (too many to list) where an English expression is not constructed with the 'same' preposition as is used in French; or where one of the languages uses a preposition and the other does not. Typical mistakes in this area:																		
"'""responsible of the whole pro ject '""made in plastic"																		
"'""married with my sister '"" listen a record"																		
"'""discuss of a solution"																		
Other problems (easier to predict) occur when a French preposition has more than one regular English equivalent. Some common difficulties:																		
1. Depuis can mean since or for:																		
"'""I have lived here since ten years."																		
"2. De can mean of or from, and is also used when talking about authorship:"																		
"'""He is of Cannes. '""a novel of Zola"																		
3. English place prepositions depend on whether one is speaking of movement or position (e.g. at/in/to ). French place prepositions depend  to  some  extent  on  the  word  class  of  the  object  of  the																		
"preposition. A city, for example, will be preceded by a, whether this"																		
"means at, in or to in English:"																		
"''"" She went at London last year."																		
"''"" There are hundreds of cinemas at Paris. ''"" I went in Germany last year."																		
"4. French uses articles, not prepositions, in common adverbials of time referring to days or parts of days:"																		
"''"" It's very quiet here the night."																		
"''"" I  usually  work  in the of fice  the morning  and  make visits  the afternoon."																		
"''"" I usually see Nick the Tuesday."																		
Vocabulary																		
Very many French and English words  are derived from the same roots.																		
"The more intellectual or technical a word is, the more this is likely to occur. This facilitates learning on the whole, especially at the inter­ mediate stage and beyond. However, it often means that French learners are inclined to use a less common,  more erudite-sounding, cognate Romance item instead of a more common Germanic one, which may sound odd to native speakers: liberate instead of set free, extinguish rather than put out, enter rather than go in. The overuse of Romance items is sometimes a conscious  avoidance strategy to get round the difficulty of using phrasal/prepositional verbs."																		
"In addition, there are a number of 'false friends', which have different meanings in the two languages; and - perhaps worse - 'unreliable friends': words that mean almost the same in the two languages, or mean the same in one context and not in another."																		
'Bleached verbs'																		
Groups of multi-purpose 'bleached verbs' exist both in English and in																		
"French, but these groups are structured differently in each language:"																		
1. Many of the concepts expressed in English with the verb to be are expressed in French with the verb corresponding to to have. This can lead to mistakes like:																		
"''"" I have hunger. ''"" She has heat."																		
"''"" You have reason. (for You are right.)"																		
"Conversely, French uses the equivalent of be in Je suis d'accord (= I agree, literally I am of agreement ), leading to the common mistake ''·J am agree."																		
2. French  uses the equivalent  of  take in expressions where  English																		
"speakers would  use have, leading to mistakes  like  ''·Let's take a drink ."																		
3.  Many  everyday  actions  that  are  expressed  with  the  verb  get  in English are expressed with reflexive verbs in French:																		
''·J woke me and dressed me early in case she arrived .																		
False and unreliable friends																		
An immense number of French words have meanings which are slightly																		
or completely different in use from their English cognates. Here is a very small sample of the words that French speakers may misuse in English:																		
"actual, actually  (French actuel  = current, present;  actuellement  ="																		
now)																		
advice (French avis = opinion )																		
chance (French chance = [bit of] luck )																		
"command (French commander  = order [food,  merchandise, etc.] )"																		
corpse (French corps = body ) cry (French crier = shout )																		
demand (French demander = ask ) education (French education = upbringing ) engaged (French engage = committed ) essence (French essence = petrol )																		
"eventual (French eventuel = potential, possible ) evident (French evident = obvious )"																		
experience  (French experience = experience or experiment ) fault (French faute = mistake )																		
"gentle (French gentil = kind, nice ) ignore (French ignorer = not to know)"																		
"important (French important = important  or big, extensive) interesting  (French  interessant  = interesting  or  lucrative,  pro fit-"																		
"able, financiall y advantageous ) large (French large = wide)"																		
library (French librairie = bookshop )																		
"occasion (French occasion = op portunit y, bargain)"																		
"pass  (an exam) (French passer un examen = take, sit an exam) politics (French politique = politics or polic y )"																		
pro fessor (French professeur = teacher) savage (French sauvage = wild ) sensible (French sensible = sensitive )																		
"sympathetic (French sympathique = nice, easy to get on with)"																		
A sample of written French with a word-for-word																		
translation																		
"Le printemps etait venu.   Un    dimanche, apres avoir      nettoye"																		
"The spring    was come. One Sunday,    after to-have cleaned"																		
"sa boutique a grande eau,      Lecouvreur, sentant les chaleurs"																		
"his shop     at big      water, Lecouvreur, feeling the heats"																		
"proches, decide  de sortir      la   terrasse            : quatre"																		
"near,     decides to take out the pavement cafe : four"																		
"tables rondes et    huit   chaises de jardin,   qu'on     aligne    sur"																		
"tables round and eight chairs  of garden, that one lines-up on"																		
"le   trottoir,      sous un grand store     ou      on   lit      en lettres"																		
"the pavement, under a big    awning where one reads in letters"																		
rouges: HOTEL-  VINS-     LIQUEURS.																		
red:      HOTEL-WINES-SPIRITS.																		
"Lecouvreur   aime musarder dans le   quartier,                 la   cigarette"																		
"Lecouvreur likes to-stroll  in    the neighbourhood, the cigarette"																		
au     coin    des    levres . . . Toujours la meme																		
at-the corner of-the lips . . .  Always the same																		
"promenade, tranquille, apaisante. II     longe"																		
"walk,         quiet,     calming.  He walks-along-the-side-of"																		
"l'h6pital         Saint-Louis,   puis  ii   regagne le   quai"																		
"the hospital Saint-Louis, then he regains the embankment"																		
de Jemmapes. Des    pecheurs   sont installes   sur le   bord  du																		
of Jemmapes. Some fishermen are installed on the bank of-the																		
"canal, au       bon   endroit. [. . .] Lecouvreur  s'arrete.           II"																		
"canal, at-the good place. [. . .] Lecouvreur himself stops. It"																		
fait     beau . . .																		
makes fine . . .																		
"Partout          les marronniers                  fleurissent,"																		
"Everywhere the horse-chestnut-trees blossom,"																		
de                                 grands arbres qui  semblent plantes la																		
[indefinite number of ] big       trees   that seem       planted there																		
pour saluer     les  peniches. Des                                  bateliers																		
for   to-greet the barges.     [Indefinite number of ] boatmen																		
"se                demenent . . .                        Un peu plus   haut,"																		
"[themselves] work with frantic energy . . . A little more high,"																		
"des                               montagnes de sable ou de pierre,"																		
"[indefinite nu mber of ] mountains of sand or of stone,"																		
"des                               tas    de charbon, des"																		
"[indefinite nu mber of ] piles of coal,      [indefinite number of ]"																		
"sacs de ciment,  encombrent le quai."																		
"bags of cement, encumber  the embankment."																		
Des                              voitures traversent le   pont    tournant.																		
[indefinite number of ] cars       cross        the bridge turning. [= the swing bridge].																		
"(From Hotel du Nord by Eugene Da bit, © Editions Denoel)"																		
Italian speakers																		
Alison Duguid																		
Distribution																		
"ITALY, REPUBLIC  OF SAN MARINO,  VATICAN,  SWITZERLAND,"																		
"Malta, Somalia."																		
Introduction																		
"Italian is an Inda-European  language, directly descended from Latin"																		
"and closely related to Spanish, Portuguese and French. There is a wide variety of regional dialects, many of which are mutually unintelligible, and some of which have a literary tradition of their own."																		
"Most Italians are very conscious of their regional origins, and are quick to point out that they are Neapolitan, or Tuscan, or Sardinian, as well as Italian. Especially in the industrialised north, most educated Italians use the standard language, which evolved from a variety of Tuscan; but many can adopt the local dialect, and do so when speaking to dialect users, or in particular situations. In rural areas and in the south, dialect may be the first language for many."																		
"Italian language is a compulsory subject throughout primary and secondary school, and this is likely to have an effect on the way English will be learned. Italian speakers have  some assistance  in  learning English through their awareness of the Latin origins  of much  English lexis and syntax. The Anglo-Saxon elements in English, however, can cause difficulties, and basic and colloquial English usage often causes more trou ble than more formal or academic registers."																		
"Italian learners are often very worried about grammatical accuracy; this may reflect the insistence on 'correct Italian' that is common in mother-tongue teaching. They usually have a high level of grammatical awareness, which can be exploited in foreign language learning situations."																		
Phonology																		
General																		
Although  there  are  differences  between  English  and  Italian  in  the																		
"inventory and distribution of individual sounds, the main difficulties for Italian learners lie in the areas of stress and rhythm, and it is here that learners have most problems in understanding and in making  them­ selves understood. In addition, the relatively regular match between spelling and pronunciation in Italian and the strict rules for word stress sometimes cause learners to become quite indignant about the incon­ sistency of English."																		
Vowels																		
1!	I		e		re			e1	a1		JI							
a:	D		J!		u			au	gu		1g							
u:	A		3!		g			eg	ug		"a1;i
,....
au;i"							
"Shaded phonemes have equivalents or near equivalents in Italian, and"																		
"should therefore be perceived and articulated without great difficulty, although some confusions may still arise. Unshaded phonemes may cause problems. For detailed comments see below."																		
1. /I/ is frequently realised or perceived as /i:/: leave for live.																		
2. /re/ is frequently realised or perceived as /e/: met for mat.																		
3. !Al is also sometimes pronounced /re/: bat for but.																		
4. Some loan words from English have adopted an Italian pro­ nunciation: flesh for flash; 'creek' for crack .																		
"5. There are no diphthongs in Italian, though the combinations of vowels which make up many English diphthongs appear together in Italian as separate contiguous vowels. If diphthongs are pronou nced, students may give equal weight to the two elements, as in Italian, rather than stressing the first element."																		
"6. Some English diphthongs may not be accurately perceived.  Con­ fusion is common between /;m/ and h:/ or lo/ , all three vowels being realised as the Italian /o/; this leads to difficulty  in  distinguishing words  like  coat,  caught   and  cot.  A  similar  confusion   may   arise"																		
"between  /e/  and /e1/  as in get  and gate,  both  being  realised  as the"																		
Italian /e/.																		
"7. The pronunciation of an Italian vowel is not affected by stress or its position in a word. So neutral vowels resulting from English stress­ timing cause problems, particularly in the comprehension and pro­ duction of normal colloquial speech. Unstressed vowels are often pronounced as they are written rather than being weakened or reduced (e.g. /'fotogrrefer/ instead of /fat ' ogr;)fa/ for photogra pher ) and weak forms of familiar words such as can, have, are, must may not be recognised."																		
Consonants																		
p	b	f			v			e	6		t		d					
s	z	J			3			t f	d3		k		g					
m	n	1J			1			r	J		w		h					
"Shaded phonemes have equivalents or near equivalents in Italian, and"																		
"should therefore be perceived and articulated without great difficulty, although some confusions  may still arise. Unshaded phonemes may cause problems. For detailed comments, see below."																		
"1. Italian /t/, /di, In/ are pronounced with the tongue against the teeth rather than the gum-ridge."																		
"2. /8/ and /o/ are often pronounced as /t/ and /di: tin for thin, and udder for other, etc. Over-emphasising these sounds can lead to excessive effort on the learner's part, which can be more problematic than the original error."																		
"3. There are various problems related to voicing, particularly with the contrast between Isl and /z/, which are positional variants in Italian. This gives rise to errors such as 'zmok e' for smok e; and the devoicing of plural and third-person -s, in cases where English requires voicing. Students sometimes have difficulty in accurately perceiving initial voiced consonants (in words like big, dog) as voiced, because of the"																		
late onset of voicing in English.																		
"4. There is no equivalent in Italian for the phoneme /3/, and words like pleasure or occasion tend to be pronounced with /zj/ under the influence of the spelling."																		
5. /fJ/ in Italian is a variant  of  In/ . English  ng  (as in singer )  is often																		
pronounced /fJ g/ by learners: /sofjg/ for /sofj/.																		
"6. There is no equivalent of /h/ in Italian, and students will either fail to pronounce it or over-compensate: 'Hi 'ope 'e is'."																		
"7. In Italian final  consonants are rare, and are usually found only in foreign loan words, e.g. bar, sport, etc. So final consonants in English may be given a following vowel, usually schwa: I went;J to schoofo on;J the bus;J."																		
8. Learners from some regions may voice final unvoiced consonants: /a1																		
wend om on d;) brez/ for I went home on the bus.																		
9. Initial w can cause problems: for example would may be perceived or pronounced as /u:d/ or /hu:d/.																		
Consonant clusters																		
Although  Italian  has  many  of  the  permissible  consonant  clusters  of																		
"English (and some more besides), the language is less consonant-heavy than English. Words with more than one cluster (like understandable ) prove particularly difficult. Final  clusters often cause problems, especially those containing /8/ or lo/, e.g. sixths, clothes."																		
Influence of spelling on pronunciation																		
"Learners may give Italian values to each letter and, because of the close"																		
"relationship between spelling and pronunciation in Italian, expect each letter to be pronounced (e.g. /kni:/ for knee). Note particularly:"																		
"1. The letter r is always pronounced in Italian, and this is carried over into English, leading to mistakes in words like farmer."																		
"2. Dou ble consonants are pronounced as such in Italian; this can affect learners' pronunciation of words such as summer, accurate, sitting, op posite."																		
3. The letters c and g vary as to their pronunciation in Italian according																		
"to what follows: c is pronounced ltf I before i or e, but as /k/ before other vowels; g is pronounced /d3/ before i or e, but as /g/ elsewhere; sc is pronounced I f / before e or i, but as /sk/ elsewhere. Typical errors resulting from this are:"																		
'achent' for accent 'sinjer' for singer 'sheen' for scene																		
"Italian ch is pronounced /kl, leading to occasional errors like 'kip' for"																		
chip.																		
4.  A  w   in  loan  words   from  English   or   other   languages   is  often																		
pronounced as /v/: vat for watt. Students tend to carry this over to all																		
English words with a w.																		
"5. Learners sometimes pronounce initial silent letters, as in pneumonia"																		
"and ps ycholog y, where such initial letters are pronounced in Italian."																		
Rhythm and stress																		
Italian learners often claim that English people 'eat their words'. The																		
"stress-timed patterns of English cause great difficulty to Italian learners, particularly in terms of perception and comprehension. The character­ istics of stress-timing need to be pointed out. Special attention needs to be paid to the presentation and production of weak forms, since learners will expect full value to be given to all syllables."																		
"Some factors of assimilation and the change of meaning with word stress have equivalents in Italian, e.g. un poco (pron. /umpoko/); and the pairs an'cora (still, yet) and 'ancora (anchor); or capi'tano (captain) and 'capitano (they happen). The same is true of stress changes between parts of speech, which parallel English, e.g. politics, political, etc. However, few students are aware of what happens in their own language, and most consider such phenomena in English to be bizarre."																		
"Finally it should be noted that the word for stress in Italian is accento,"																		
and this may be confused with accent.																		
Intonation																		
Some learners may be rather resistant to adopting English intonation																		
"patterns, hearing them as strange or even affected. Students may also have difficulty in recognising intonation patterns: differences in British English between yes/no questions (rising intonation) and wh-questions (falling intonation) cause particular problems. Contrasts in Italian are usually signalled by reordering the components of the sentence, so that the element under focus comes at the end, which coincides with the primary stress:"																		
II treno arriva alle nove. ( The train arrives at nine.)																		
Alie nove ii treno arriva. ( The train arrives at nine.)																		
"In English, of course, different emphases can be indicated by changes in the primary stress and the intonation pattern, without necessarily changing the order of the various elements. Italian learners need these distinctions to be pointed out."																		
Students also have problems in recognising the role of intonation in signalling affective meaning; speakers from some regions may sound arrogant or aggressive when making requests and asking questions.																		
Orthography and punctuation																		
Apart from errors resulting from the relationship between spelling and																		
"pronunciation, where learners' expectations often lead  to  phonetic spelling, other problems of accuracy come from the Italian spelling of cognates like psichiatra, psicologia, etc., giving rise to spelling errors such as ''""psicolog y."																		
"Italian conventions in the use of upper and lower case differ slightly from English. Small letters are used initially in the names of the days and months, and in adjectives of nationality and the names of languages."																		
Style																		
Extended prose causes problems because of different conventions in the																		
"use of linguistic resources, and different ideas about what constitutes 'good style'. Students may use long, complex sentences,  with more subordination than English would normally prefer, and elaborate periphrasis to avoid repeating the same word. Participle constructions may be overused, and abstract nouns may be used where a  verbal construction would be more normal in English."																		
Grammar																		
General																		
The  main  difficulties  for  Italians  learning  English  lie  in  the  fact  that																		
"English relies to a great extent on word order and phrase structure to indicate grammatical function, whereas Italian, although it has de­ veloped a long way from the free ordering of words of its Latin origins, relies nevertheless much more on morphological inflections. The variety of syntactic devices in English, and the relative lack of morphological signals, will often cause students to complain that English has no rules, has little grammar and is unpredictable."																		
"Statements, questions and negatives; auxiliaries"																		
The auxiliary do has no equivalent in Italian  and causes conceptual																		
difficulties. Interrogatives are formed by putting a heavy functional load on intonation:																		
"''"" Where he work ?"																		
"''"" What you want?"																		
Negatives are formed by the use of the negative particle non.																		
"''"" I not smok e."																		
"''"" I no speak  English."																		
"There are also a set of negative particles, which are used with non to express nothing, never, no-one, etc. giving rise to the use of double negatives in English:"																		
"''"" I  don't understand  nothing."																		
Confusion occurs with the negative of infinitives:																		
"''"" It is useless to don't speak ."																		
"Time, tense and aspect: forms"																		
"1. Italian has five tenses, in the sense that there are inflected forms for"																		
"present, future, conditional, simple past and imperfect. Other tenses are formed by the use of auxiliaries."																		
"2. The third person singular ending on the present tense is frequently omitted by Italian learners. (Italian words rarely end in -s, so students fail to pronounce the ending, and subvocalisation causes it to be left out in writing as well.) This error is particularly difficult to cure, although it rarely impedes communication."																		
"''"" he go   ''·she say"																		
"3. Italian has a form similar to the English present perfect (constructed with the auxiliary verb have and past participles, which may be regular or irregular). But a group of verbs, mostly common intrans­ itive verbs of motion and change of state, form this tense with to be (essere), and this gives rise to errors:"																		
",,.He is gone."																		
Italian reflexives also form the perfect with essere:																		
",,.I am cut myself."																		
"4. 'Conditional', for Italians, indicates a morphologically signalled verb form rather than a sentence structure, so that references to 'first', 'second' and 'third' conditionals, and to 'conditional sentences' cause a certain amount of perplexity. Italians use the subjunctive in the if-clauses of what we would call second and third type con­ ditionals, and may use would . . . as an equivalent in English:"																		
",,.If  you  would  win a prize,  you  could share it with me."																		
",,.If  I would have known . . ."																		
"Time, tense and aspect: use"																		
"1. Progressive verbs exist in Italian, but their use is more limited than in"																		
English:																		
"''"" What do you read? (for What are you reading? )"																		
"2. Italians use their present perfect as a reference to actions in the recent past. There is no firm line drawn to mark the limits of when an action may be considered to be sufficiently in the past to warrant the use of the simple or 'historic' past. Matters are further complicated by the fact that there are differences in usage between north and south Italy, and between spoken and written Italian. The distinction made in English of how the action is viewed with respect to the present has no real meaning for Italian speakers and is often difficult for them to grasp. Use of the present perfect for the simple past is frequent:"																		
"''"" I have seen her last week ."																		
"3. To talk about how long a state of affairs has been going on, Italians use the simple present tense (often misusing since for for, or using an It is . . . construction by analogy with Italian):"																		
"''"" I live there since ten years. ''"" I am a teacher since 1983."																		
"''"" It is three years that I learn English."																		
"4. A future tense can be used in the Italian equivalent of if clauses, and in other subordinate clauses where a present tense would be used in English:"																		
"''"" When the holidays will be over, I will . . ."																		
"5. In standard Italian there is no equivalent to the going to future, or to the use of the  present progressive with future meaning; but the simple present does function with future time reference in Italian:"																		
"''"" What  do  you  do  this  night?  (for  What are  you   doing  this evening?)"																		
"''"" I go soon to home."																		
"To be, to have and to do"																		
The equivalent of have is used in Italian to talk about common physical																		
states:																		
"''"" I have cold."																		
"''"" Have you hunger/hungry?"																		
Auxiliary and full-verb forms of have are often confused:																		
"''"" I hadn't break fast this morning."																		
And the equivalent of make/do or take often corresponds to English full-verb have:																		
"''"" I want to make/do a shower."																		
"''"" We did a part y."																		
"''"" I did/took a cof fee."																		
"The Italian equivalent of to agree is a structure with be: ''"" I am not agree at all."																		
Auxiliaries and modals																		
"Do, once learnt, tends to be overused by elementary learners:"																		
"''"" I usually do go out on Sunday."																		
"There are five modal auxiliaries in Italian, which have all the morpho­ logical and syntactic properties of other verbs, unlike their English equivalents. The special characteristics of English modals therefore cause problems:"																		
"''"" I can to go."																		
"''"" I would to go."																		
"''"" She musts come soon."																		
"''"" Do you can help me?"																		
"I would is often treated as a translation of vorrei (= I would like to): ''"" I would very much go."																		
"The varied shades of meaning in the area of possibility, certainty, obligation, etc., expressed by the English modals, are difficult for Italian students to  'feel'. They tend, for instance, to overuse must, since in Italian different tense forms of dovere are used to shade meaning, rather than different modals:"																		
"''"" You must to know. (for You should/ought  to know.)"																		
"Other distinctions which may cause difficulty are those between could and was able to; must and have to; mustn't, needn't and don't have to; didn't need to and needn't have."																		
"''"" You don't have to drive on the left  in Ital y. ''"" Children under five mustn't pa y."																		
Comprehension problems may be caused by the fact that the weak spoken forms of modals like can and must may not be perceived by learners.																		
Non-finite forms																		
"Although there is a 'gerund' in Italian, the form is not used in the same"																		
"way or as frequently as in English. The infinitive tends to be used by learners after verbs instead of the gerund, and after adjectives instead of preposition + gerund:"																		
"'"" When he had finished  to eat . . ."																		
"'""I am thinking to move to London. '""It's not worth to buy that book ."																		
"'""I am tired to listen to your criticisms."																		
Many learners fail to realise that a gerund is needed after a preposition:																		
"'""Before to go home, he . . ."																		
"'""I am looking forward  to see you."																		
To may be dropped before an infinitive where there is no corresponding word in Italian:																		
"'""I want go home."																		
"'""I hope see you soon."																		
"The 'object + infinitive' structure causes problems, since Italian tends to use a clause:"																		
"'""Does he want that I come, too?"																		
The Italian infinitive of purpose structure uses per (= for ):																		
"'"" She went out for to buy . . . I for buy . . . I for buying . . ."																		
Clause structure: subjects and objects																		
Italian commonly expresses the idea of 'liking' with the equivalent of 'to																		
"please' (piacere). This means that the Italian subject corresponds to the English object, and vice versa, which can cause mistakes:"																		
"'"" Your new car likes me."																		
A similar problem arises with the verb to miss: the Italian for I miss you is Tu mi manchi - literally You are lacking to me. This can cause Italians to use the English verb the wrong way round:																		
"'""M y home misses me."																		
"In Italian, use of the subject pronoun is not obligatory m normal colloquial speech:"																		
"'"" When a man finds a friend, finds also a treasure. '""Is dif ficult to say."																		
"The order of subject and predicate is freer than in English, and can be used to make distinctions of emphasis, style, etc.:"																		
"'"" (It) would be necessary more time. '""Is arriving Giovanni tomorrow."																		
Intrusive subject pronouns are common:																		
"'""M y famil y and I we have visited . . ."																		
Object pronouns may be omitted:																		
"'"" Yes, I like."																		
"The equivalents of explain, suggest and say can have two objects in Italian:"																		
"'""Please explain me your problem."																		
"'"" Can you suggest us a good restaurant? '""Say me the truth."																		
Reported speech																		
Difficulty  in  grasping  the  English  'one-step'  tense  shift  rules  after																		
"introductory verbs in past or conditional tenses can often give rise to mistakes, especially since Italian can use conditionals in past reported speech clauses:"																		
"''"" He said that he would have arrived at six o'clock . (for . . . that he would arrive . . . or . . . that he had arrived )"																		
Word order in reporting wh-questions can be a problem:																		
"''"" Do you know where is my village?"																		
"Italian has one word only to cover the functions of say and tell: ''"" He said me that he wanted . . ."																		
Relatives																		
Students may have difficulty in understanding and producing clauses																		
with zero relative pronouns like That's the car I want.																		
Redundant pronouns may be added:																		
"''"" That's the house that I told you about it."																		
The passive voice																		
"Italian uses the passive voice much less than English, and students may"																		
"have difficulty in forming English passives, particularly perfect and progressive forms."																		
"''"" Not enough houses have built in the last ten years. ''"" Our new house is building now."																		
Some students seem to have been taught the passive m a rather mechanical way:																		
"( ,,.;M y bicycle has been stolen by somebod y."																		
"Italian cannot make an indirect object the subject of a passive verb, so clauses like George was given a  camera  for his birthday can seem peculiar to learners. And structures like He was thought to be hiding or They are alleged to have demanded do not come easily to Italian students."																		
Reflexive verbs																		
Reflexive  verbs  are  more  common  in  Italian  than  in  English.  The																		
"equivalents  of  get  up,  wash, shave,  dress, get  read y,  sit  down, for example, are all reflexive in Italian."																		
"( ,,.J I get myself up at 6.00 every morning."																		
Italian  reflexive  pronouns  are  not  different  in  form  from  personal pronouns:																		
''·Take care of you.																		
"Italian reflexive pronouns can also be used  as indirect objects, in cases where English would use possessives:"																		
''·J broke myself the arm.																		
And they can express the idea of 'each other'.																		
",,.We will meet us after dinner."																		
There is also an Italian impersonal reflexive construction; failure to find the correct English passive equivalent leads to errors such as:																		
''·Jn this region you/he/it produces many shoes.																		
Articles																		
"Although misuse of articles rarely impedes communication, it is none"																		
"the less one of the greatest problems for Italian learners. Italian has both definite and indefinite articles, which inflect for number and gender, but their use is different from English. The contrast between specific and generic causes problems, since in Italian nouns used in a generic sense take the definite article:"																		
''.The dogs are useful pets.																		
''·J think the money is very important.																		
Italians do not use the indefinite article when identifying people's professions  or status:																		
''·J am teacher.																		
",,.When I was child . . ."																		
"Indefinite articles are often dropped after the equivalents of as, with and"																		
without:																		
''·J am speaking to you as friend.																		
",,.You can eat it with spoon."																		
''·J studied English without teacher.																		
They are also not used in some common express10ns referring to location:																		
''.She lives in mountains I in country.																		
"However, articles can be used in Italian in a number of cases where they are dropped in English - for instance, when referring to countries, colours and eating meals:"																		
''·J was travelling through the Ital y. ''·My favourite colour is the red .																		
"''.After  the break fast, we went to school."																		
Other difficulties include:																		
few I little vs a few I a little																		
in future vs in the future																		
"last I next week vs the last I the next week (the) church, school, prison, hospital, etc."																		
Quantifiers																		
Italians  do  not  usually  realise  that  much  and  many  are  rare  m																		
affirmative clauses:																		
"''"" She has much money."																		
M ost is often wrongly used with an article:																		
"''"" The most of my friends  live in London."																		
The use and position of both and all can cause problems:																		
"''"" We all are going to the cinema."																		
"Instead of one . . . another, Italians may use a . . . another:"																		
"''"" He spent the morning running from a shop to another."																		
"Neither, either and none can all be nessuno in Italian:"																		
"''"" None of the twins is at home."																		
Possessive structures																		
Structures with possessive 's may be put the wrong way round:																		
"''"" my car's father"																		
And possessive 's may be used inappropriately:																		
"''"" the table's leg"																		
"Italian possessive determiners inflect for number and gender. In the third person, there is no three-way distinction between his, her, and its: the choice of word in Italian depends on the gender (masculine or feminine) of what is possessed, not of the possessor:"																		
"''"" Look - there's M aria and his boyfriend! ''"" He bought some flowers for her wife."																		
"Other common errors include the use of your for her; and mistakes like ''·the my book , since Italian possessives frequently co-occur with articles."																		
"Confusion of possessive determiners and pronouns also occurs fre­ quently, as they have the same form in Italian:"																		
",,.mine parents"																		
"Forms like a friend  of mine are difficult, and are avoided."																		
Number and countability																		
The countable/uncountable distinction is less clear-cut in Italian than in																		
"English, and some uncountable English words have countable equi­ valents in Italian. Examples are: news, furniture, information, luggage, advice, weather, spaghetti (and other pasta dishes), bread."																		
"''"" It's a terrible weather! ''"" I need two breads."																		
Certain Italian phrases use a plural where English does not:																		
"''""A second-hand car in good conditions."																		
The Italian word for peo ple (gente) is singular:																		
"''"" People is strange."																		
Italian family names cannot be given a plural inflection:																		
"''"" the Smith (for the Smiths)"																		
Pronouns																		
Who may be used without an antecedent in the sense of 'anyone who':																		
"''"" Who finds  a  purse  in the  street  should  take  it to  the police station."																		
"Italian use of the preposition di (= of) after the equivalents of some­ thing, anything, etc. gives rise to:"																		
"''"" something of interesting ''"" nothing of important"																		
"He or she are occasionally used instead of it, reflecting the gender of the equivalent Italian nou n:"																		
"''"" We started up the mountain, but she was too difficult  to climb."																		
Adjectives and adverbs																		
"Adjectives  in  Italian  usually  follow  the  noun  and  inflect  for  number,"																		
which may lead beginners to make mistakes:																		
"''""an idea stupid"																		
"''"" the dears children"																		
"More advanced learners may make mistakes with expressions like the poor, the blind, etc.:"																		
"''"" We should give money to the poors."																		
Italian does not have comparative or superlative inflections:																		
"''"" She is much more old than me."																		
Some expressions in Italian use an adjective where English would use an adverb:																		
"''"" speak slow ''"" walk quick"																		
In Italian an adverb may separate a verb from its object or complement:																		
"''"" I like very much English. ''"" I live always in Rome."																		
Prepositions																		
The  precise  meaning  of  some  preposltlons  is  a  little  elusive  in  both																		
"languages, and English often strikes Italian students as arbitrary. Typical errors caused by Italian transfer include:"																		
"''"" to discuss about"																		
"''"" to read on the newspa per ''"" to go in England"																		
"''"" to listen something"																		
The Italian  words for before and after are also commonly used as adverbs:																		
"''"" We went to the National  Gallery; after,  we went to the British M useum."																		
"Students have difficulty with 'preposition-stranding' in questions, rel­ atives and passives. Some learners would find the following sentences hard to understand or produce:"																		
Who did you buy it for?																		
That's the woman I told you about. She's being operated on tomorrow.																		
Vocabulary																		
Previous learning experience often leads students to rely on word for																		
"word translation,  and there  are the  usual problems  of  false friends. Some of the more frequently encountered of these are:"																		
in fact  used to mean indeed																		
"actually used to mean now, at present sympathetic used to mean pleasant, friendl y according to me used to mean in my opinion"																		
to know used to mean to meet (for the first time) library used to mean bookshop																		
editor used to mean publisher lecture used to mean reading conference  used to mean lecture morbid used to mean soft sensible used to mean sensitive eventual used to mean possible																		
comprehensive  used to mean understanding																		
assist used to mean attend																		
control used to mean check																		
"Other common areas of confusion, resulting from different or over­ lapping coverage in the two languages include:"																		
"still, yet, again"																		
"as, how, like (all rendered in Italian by come)"																		
"which, what, who, that (all rendered in Italian by che)"																		
"too, too much, too many (all rendered in Italian by troppo) very, a lot, many, much (all rendered in Italian by molto) why, because ( both rendered in Italian by perche)"																		
"come, go bring, take"																		
"dead, died (both rendered in Italian by morto) also, even (both rendered in Italian by anche) worse, worst"																		
Words may be borrowed from French:																		
"'"" stage for 'course', 'work experience'"																		
"'""depliant for 'brochure'"																		
Suffixes are often wrongly constructed by analogy with other English or French words:																		
"'"" satisfated     ''·abandonated    ''·interpretated     ''·changement"																		
"And English loan-words may be re-exported with changed meanings, as in the use of gadget to mean 'freebie', 'promotional item'."																		
A sample of written Italian with a word-for-word																		
translation																		
L'    altra  notte  ho         fatto   un incubo       tremendo.      Mi																		
The other night [I] have made a  nightmare tremendous. Me																		
trovavo    nella   stazione di una cittadina a  me sconosciuta.																		
[I] found in the station  of a    town     to me unknown.																		
"Ero      appena scesa       dal         treno, quando fui"																		
"[I] was barely descended from the train, when [I] was"																		
avvicinata      da due  poliziotti     che  mi  chiesero i     documenti																		
approached by two policemen that me asked   the documents																		
"con  aria  intimidatoria.   Presa  alla      sprovvista,     cominc1a1"																		
"with air  intimidating. Taken at-the unprepared, [I] began"																		
"a  cercarli         prima nella  borsa, poi   nelle   tasche   ed"																		
"to search them first   in the bag,    then in the pockets and"																		
"infine   nella  valigia,    da    cui           estraevo   ogni"																		
"finally in the suitcase, from which [I] extracted each"																		
"indumento ed  ogni  oggetto, uno per uno, prima con  calma,"																		
"garment   and each object,  one by  one, first   with calm,"																		
poi   affanosamente anche perche  mi      stavo   rendendo																		
then breathlessly     also    because to me [I] was rendering																		
conto                        che quella non era  mia valigia.    Cominciai																		
account [=realising] that that not was my suitcase. [I] began																		
"allora a  farmi       prendere dal      panico, a guardare in giro"																		
"then  to make me to take  by the panic,  to look     in rou nd"																		
a  destra e    a  sinistra per cercare    una via   di scampo ma																		
to right  and to left      for to search a    way of escape  but																		
la   stazione era  circondata   da un filo    spinato ed   a  poco																		
the station  was surrounded by a  wire barbed and at little																		
a  poco                            mi             apparve   non piu    come una																		
at little [= little by little] to me [it] appeared not more as     a																		
stazione ma come un campo di concentramento. Ed   io non ero																		
station  but as      a  camp  of concentration.   And I not was																		
piu    una viaggiatrice        qualsiasi               ma una deportata																		
more a    traveller [fem.] of whatever kind but a   deported [fem.]																		
e    quelli non erano poliziotti     ma soldati.   Presa dall'																		
and those not were  policemen but soldiers. Taken by the																		
angoscia e     dal      panico mi      sveglai di soprassalto																		
anxiety   and by the panic  me [I] awoke of start [= with a start]																		
e     ii    cuore mi      batteva         cosi forte   che  ci																		
and the heart to me was beating so   strong that there																		
vollero   alcuni minuti    prima che mi          rendessi																		
wanted some minutes before      to me [I] render [subjunctive]																		
conto                                                                         che																		
account [= it took a few minutes until I realised] that																		
era        tutto un sogno.																		
[it] was all    a dream.																		
(by Anna Ortolani)																		
Speakers of Spanish and Catalan																		
Norman  Coe1																		
Distribution																		
"Spanish:   SPAIN,   including   the   Canaries;   the   whole   of   SOUTH"																		
AMERICA except Brazil and the Guianas; CENTRAL AMERICA; MEXICO;  CUBA;  PUERTO  RICO  and  THE  DOMINICAN  RE­																		
PUBLIC; Western Sahara; some urban centres in north Morocco; Equatorial Guinea; some parts of the USA.																		
"Catalan:  CATALONIA,  ANDORRA,  the BALEARIC  ISLANDS,  parts"																		
"of Valencia and Alicante,  France  (eastern  Pyrenees).  Nowadays  there are very few people who speak Catalan exclusively; most Catalan speakers also speak Spanish or French (depending on where they live)."																		
Introduction																		
"Spanish and Catalan are Romance languages, closely related to Italian"																		
"and Portuguese; they belong to the Indo-European family. Variations in Spanish are noticeable within Spain itself, and also between metro­ politan Spain and the varieties spoken in the Americas. However, these differences are largely confined to pronunciation and vocabulary, morphology and syntax being fairly standard everywhere. With a little experience, all varieties are mutually intelligible."																		
"Despite its limited geographical spread, Catalan varies appreciably from one area to another, though the variations are  largely within pronunciation and vocabulary. There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility, though the variety spoken in the Balearics is significantly different from mainland Catalan."																		
Phonology																		
General																		
While the Spanish and English consonant systems show many similar­																		
"ities, the vowel systems and sentence stress are very different, and these"																		
1 Additional information on Latin American usage supplied by John Shepherd and Richard Rossner.																		
can  cause  great  difficulty  for  Spanish-speaking  learners  of  English.																		
"European Spanish speakers, in particular, find English pronunciation harder than speakers of most other European languages. Speakers of Catalan, with its broader range of vowels and a stress system more similar to that of English, in general have less difficulty."																		
Some common features of the pronunciation typical of Spanish and Catalan speakers of English are:																		
- Difficulty in recognising and using English vowels.																		
- Strong devoicing of final voiced consonants.																		
"- Even sentence rhythm, without the typical prominences of English, making understanding difficult for English listeners."																		
"- Narrower range of pitch (in European speakers), producing a bored effect."																		
Vowels																		
Spanish has five pure vowels and five diphthongs; Catalan has eight																		
"pure vowels and eight 'falling' diphthongs. In neither language is length a distinctive feature. Consequently, learners find difficulty in differ­ entiating between English vowels, especially where length is a part of the difference. Typically, at least two English vowels share the 'phonetic space' occupied by one Spanish/Catalan vowel, so one-to-one corres­ pondences are practically impossible."																		
"1. /i:/ and /I/ correspond to Spanish/Catalan /i/, so seat and sit, sheep"																		
"and ship, etc. are confused."																		
"2. /a:/, /re/ and !Al correspond to Spanish/Catalan /a/, so words such as cart, cat and cut are confused in perception, though cart as produced by a Spanish/Catalan speaker usually has an intruded flapped /r/, i.e."																		
/kart/.  (See also the  section  'Influence of  spelling  on pronunciation' below.)																		
"3. h:/ and /o/ correspond to Spanish/Catalan lo/ , so caught and cot, etc. are confused."																		
"4. /u:/ and /u/ correspond to Spanish/Catalan /u/, so pairs like pool and"																		
pull  are confused.																		
"5. English /3:/ and /;J/ have no similarity to Spanish vowels. / ;J/ is normally replaced by the strong pronunciation of the written vowel, so Jabaut/ for about, etc. /3:/ is replaced by /i/ or /e/ plus flapped /r/, so /birt/ for bird; /bert/ for Bert, etc. Catalan, on  the  other  hand, does have a neutral vowel, which appears in unstressed syllables containing the letters a or e; English /;J/ is therefore not such a problem  for Catalan  speakers."																		
"6. As for diphthongs,  there  are four that  are similar in English and"																		
Spanish  (except  that  the  second  element  in  Spanish  tends  to  be																		
"stronger than in English): /au/, /e1/, /a1/ and h1/. These diphthongs are not difficult for Spanish-speaking learners. English /:m/, however, is often not distinguished from h:/,  so coat  and  caught  (as well  as cot) are confused, for example."																		
"Catalan has a wider range of diphthong sounds than English; thus, though the exact values do not coincide, Catalan learners have little difficulty in producing acceptable variants."																		
Consonants																		
p	b		f		v			e	6		t		d					
s	z		J		3			t f	d3		k		g					
m	n		IJ		1			r	J		w		h					
Shaded phonemes have equivalents or near equivalents in Spanish and																		
"Catalan, and are perceived and articulated without serious difficulty, though even here there are some complications. Unshaded phonemes cause problems."																		
"1. Initial voiceless plosives (Ip/, /ti, /k/) are not aspirated as in English, so they often sound like /b/, Id!, /g/ to English ears."																		
"2. Word-final voiced plosives are rare in Spanish and Catalan; learners tend to use /ti for final /d/, /kl for final /g/ and /p/ for final lb/ ."																		
"Other voiced word-final consonants also tend to be strongly devoiced, so 'rish' or rich for ridge; /bei8/ for bathe, etc."																		
"3. Spanish and Catalan have the same three nasal phonemes as English, i.e. /ml, In/ and /fJ/, but their assimilation to the sur­ rounding  phonetic  context  differs from English,  so for example"																		
/aifjgOifJ/ is common for I'm going.																		
"In Spanish, In! or /fJ/ tends to replace /m/ in final position, so for example 'drean' or 'dreang' for dream. Final /n/ in Spanish is not always very distinct, and may be absorbed into a nasalised vowel and/or pronounced more like /fJ/."																		
"In Spanish and Catalan, /kl does not follow /fJ/ at the end of a word, so sing is pronounced for both sing and sink , etc."																		
"4. Spanish/Catalan speakers tend to give  b, d and g their mother­ tongue values, which vary according to context. These are quite similar to English initially, but between vowels they are softer continuous sounds, not stops: lb/ is more like /v/, /di like /o/, and /g/"																		
not  exactly  like  any  English  sound.  This  can  make  learners'																		
"pronunciation  of words like robin, habit, ladder, reading, bigger or"																		
again somewhat difficult for a native speaker to understand.																		
"5. In Spanish, /z/ does not exist; learners use Isl for /z/, so pence for both pence and pens, lacy for both lacy and lazy, etc. Moreover, the European Spanish pronunciation of Isl often approaches If!, causing confusion between pairs like see and she."																		
"Catalan, on the other hand, has a /z/-/s/ distinction similar to that of English, so there is no general problem. However, Catalan"																		
"/z/ does not appear word-finally,  so Catalans will say face  for both"																		
"face and phase, etc."																		
"6. Spanish, and most varieties of Catalan, only have one sound in the area of lb/ and /v/ (pronounced intervocalically as  a   bilabial fricative or continuant); hence confusion between pairs like bowels and  vowels."																		
"7. Of the English phonemes I f!,  ltfl,  /3/  and /d3/,  European  Spanish only has /t f/ , with obvious consequences for learners. Confusion is common between words such as sheep,  cheap  and jee p;  pleasure may be pronounced as 'pletcher', 'plesher' or 'plesser', and so on. In Southern Latin America, /3/ or /d3/ occur in words written with ll,"																		
e.g. Hamar /d3amar/.																		
"Catalan, on the other hand, has four phonemes similar to the English ones, though the voiced ones, /3/ and /d3/, do not appear finally, causing problems with words like bridge, beige."																		
8. Spanish/Catalan /r/ is flapped and is normally pronounced in all positions; this carries over into English. (See also the section 'Influence of spelling on pronunciation' below.)																		
9. The nearest Spanish sound to English /hi is a velar fricative like the ch in Scottish loch or German Bach (but written j or g). This often replaces English /h/. The sound is somewhat less harsh in American Spanish.																		
10. Spanish speakers often pronounce  English /j/ (as in yes )  rather like																		
"/d3/, leading, with devoicing, to confusion between you, chew, Jew"																		
"and year, cheer, jeer, etc."																		
11. Spanish and Catalan  speakers may pronounce  /w/ rather like lb/																		
"between  vowels,  e.g. /arialker/ for Harry Walker.  Before  a vowel,"																		
/w/ may be pronounced as /gw/ or /g/: /gwud/ or /gud/ for would .																		
Consonant clusters																		
Consonant clusters are in general less frequent in Spanish and Catalan																		
"than in English, so that learners have difficulty perceiving and producing English clusters. Typical simplifications:"																		
'espres' for express																		
'istan' for instant 'brefas' for break fast 'tes' for test and text win for win and wind																		
when for both when and went can for both can and can't																		
"cars for cars, carts and card s, etc."																		
kick for kicked; grab for grabbed																		
"Some learners reduce final consonants still further producing, e.g., 'fre fru sala' for fresh fruit salad ."																		
"Note that /s/ plus another consonant, as in Spain, sceptic, stop, never occurs at the beginning of a word in Spanish or Catalan, so 'Espain', 'esceptic', 'estop', etc."																		
Influence of spelling on pronunciation																		
1. Spelling and pronunciation are very closely - and simply - related in																		
"Spanish, so beginning learners tend to pronounce English words letter by letter. In Catalan, the relationship between pronunciation and spelling is about as complicated as it is in English, so that English orthography seems less of a problem. However, with unknown words Catalan speakers also tend to pronounce letter by letter. Some examples are:"																		
asked pronou nced 'asket'																		
break : e and a pronounced separately																		
answer: w and r pronounced																		
friend:  i and e pronounced separately ( but d dropped)																		
chocolate: second o and final e pronounced																		
"2. Flapped /r/ is generally pronounced where written, so  it  intrudes before consonants (as in learn, farm ) and for Spanish speakers also at the ends of words (as in four, bar)."																		
"Furthermore, in Spanish and Catalan double r is rolled  (and in Catalan initial r as well), and this habit carries over."																		
"3. fa/ does not exist in Spanish, so unstressed syllables are pronounced with the written vowel:"																		
teacher /titf er/                  interested /interest et/																		
photogra ph /fotograf/        photogra ph y /fotografi/																		
"4. In European Spanish and Catalan double l is generally pronounced rather like the -lli- in 'million'; Latin American pronunciations include /j/, /3/ and /d3/. Beginners may carry these pronunciations over into English."																		
5. In Spanish the letter j corresponds to a voiceless velar fricative. This																		
"sometimes leads speakers to pronounce, e.g. jam in a way that sounds"																		
more like ham to English ears.																		
Rhythm and stress																		
"Spanish is a syllable-timed language. In general, all syllables take about"																		
"the same length of time to pronounce (though extra length may be used for emphasis); to an English ear, there is therefore not a great difference in prominence between stressed and unstressed syllables. In English, on the other hand, stressed syllables tend to carry pitch change and to be pronounced more distinctly, while unstressed syllables are reduced and often pronounced with a neutral vowel fa/ or /I/. Since content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) are stressed in English, they are therefore relatively prominent as compared with the unstressed gram­ matical words (articles, pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary verbs). So the stress and rhythm of an English sentence give a lot of acoustic clues to structure and meaning. When Spanish speakers pronounce an English sentence with even stress and rhythm,  these clues are missing, and English listeners find it difficult to understand because they cannot so easily decode the structure. (For example, in Ann is older than Joe, is and than may be as prominent as old.)"																		
"Catalan shows a more marked difference between stressed and unstressed syllables, including a neutral vowel like /;J/ in unstressed positions. Catalan is also more stress-timed (with similar time-intervals elapsing between stress and stress, as in English, rather than between syllable and syllable), but these features are still not as marked as in English. Thus, while Catalan learners typically approximate more closely to English sentence rhythm, there is still a remaining margin of difference to be overcome."																		
"Spanish and Catalan learners find variable stress intractable (see also the section 'Intonation' below),  and they cannot usually either recognise or produce the difference in English expressions like:"																		
the black bird        the black bird the green house     the greenhouse																		
"Contrastive stress is also a problem. It is a problem for recognition, and in production one gets:"																		
"''"" With sugar or without sugar?"																		
"''"" M ary didn't come but John, yes."																		
i.e. the last word is more heavily stressed than the contrasting word.																		
Intonation																		
European Spanish and Catalan tend to use a narrower pitch range than																		
"English, and emphatic stress is expressed in extra length rather than in extra pitch variation. Thus some speakers may sound unenthusiastic or bored to English ears."																		
"In English the intonation nucleus can fall on any stressed syllable in the sentence, depending on what is being emphasised . By contrast, in Spanish (and to a large extent in Catalan too) the nucleus falls on the last stressed syllable in the sentence. (If an element is to be stressed, the freer word order allows it to move to the end.) Thus learners can approximate to John painted the walls (as an answer to the question What did John do?). However, they find great difficulty in producing (and even recognising) the pattern john painted the walls (as an answer to the question Who paint ed the walls?) ."																		
Orthography and punctuation																		
Spelling																		
"Spanish  has  high  sound-spelling  correspondence,  so  obviously  the"																		
"spelling of English does not come easily; in Catalan the correspondence is much more complicated, making the spelling of English less  of  a shock. For  both groups it is common to reduce  double letters to single ones:"																		
"''""apear    ''.dif erent   ''·necesary   ''forgoten"																		
"The problem of spelling is exacerbated because learners do not dis­ tinguish English phoneme contrasts, and so they cannot exploit those sound-spelling regularities that do exist. For example:"																		
hoping is confused with hopping this is confused with these																		
Related to  this is the difficulty in grasping basic regularities like the English tendency to write either two vowels plus  one consonant or one vowel plus two consonants:																		
",,.breack    ,,.crak    ''·shoutting"																		
Contractions																		
"Spanish and Catalan do not have contracted verb forms, and learners"																		
"find them  a problem . In listening to English, they find difficulty in picking up, for example, will or would in:"																		
I'll come tomorrow.																		
They'd help us																		
"and construe them as I come, They help, etc."																		
"In speaking, early learners are reluctant to use contractions, prefer-"																		
nng:																		
"I will not come to I won't come, etc."																		
"Subsequently,  when they have grasped the idea, there is a tendency  to overuse them, e.g.:"																		
"Are you Spanish? Yes, ''Tm."																		
Punctuation																		
"Spanish and Catalan punctuation conventions are similar to English, so"																		
"there are relatively few problems. Commas are often used where English would prefer semi-colons, and semi-colons where English would prefer full stops. Beginners may carry over the Spanish use of an inverted question or exclamation mark at the beginning of a sentence:"																		
"''"" 2 When are you coming to see us? ''"" iit was fantastic!"																		
"Spanish and Catalan do not use inverted commas in reporting speech, but sometimes use -, thus:"																		
"- c'.,C6mo te llamas? (What's your name? )"																		
- Me llamo Sara. (My name's Sara.)																		
But sometimes there is no punctuation to indicate direct speech (see Spanish extract on page 111).																		
Spanish and Catalan both use a comma to separate decimals and a stop to separate thousands:																		
3.000 (three thousand)																		
"3,25 (three  point  two  five;  typically  pronounced,  following  the Spanish pattern, as ''"" three point twenty-five )"																		
Capital letters																		
"Spanish and Catalan do not use capital first letters for days of the week,"																		
"months or national adjectives, so: ''"" monday, ''"" jul y, ''"" spanish, etc."																		
Grammar																		
General																		
"Grammatical similarities between Spanish, Catalan and English include:"																		
singular  and  plural  forms  of  nouns;  definite  and  indefinite  articles;