* موج البحر*
03-13-2006, 09:28 PM
It is important to recognize the difficulties that the foreign students encounter in learning English. One of these difficulties is in expressing themselves not only logically, but also idiomatically. An idiom is a form of expression peculiar to one language, and English is not alone in possessing such individual forms of expression. All languages have their special ways of saying things. Thus the French say il fait froid (it makes cold) whereas in English we say it is cold. The mastery of idioms depends largely on memory. The distinction between My husband isn't up yet and My husband isn't down yet or the quite contradictory use of the word fast in go fast and stand fast seems to the foreigner to be without reasonable justification. It is doubtful whether such idiomatic expressions are so much more common in English than in other languages –for example, French- as those learning English believe, but they undoubtedly loom large in the minds of non-native speakers.
A more serious criticism of English by those attempting to master it is the chaotic character of it's spelling and the frequent lack of correlation between spelling and pronunciation. Writing is merely a mechanical means of recording speech. And the most adequate system of spelling is that with combines simplicity with consistency. In English, the vowel sound in believe, receive, leave, machine, be, see, is in each case represented by different spelling. Conversely the symbol a in father, hate, hat and many other words has nearly a score of values. The situation is even more confusing in our treatment of the consonants. There are a dozen spellings for the sound of sh: shoe, sugar, issue, nation, suspicion, ocean, nauseous, conscious, chaperon, schizophrenic, fuchsia, pshaw. Yet, there are many other only less disturbing, and it serves to show how far we are at times from approaching the ideal of simplicity and consistency.
*The idiomatic expression meant concerns the suitable use of words in the pattern. It differs from other idioms use figurative indication
My Regards
S P I R I T.
A more serious criticism of English by those attempting to master it is the chaotic character of it's spelling and the frequent lack of correlation between spelling and pronunciation. Writing is merely a mechanical means of recording speech. And the most adequate system of spelling is that with combines simplicity with consistency. In English, the vowel sound in believe, receive, leave, machine, be, see, is in each case represented by different spelling. Conversely the symbol a in father, hate, hat and many other words has nearly a score of values. The situation is even more confusing in our treatment of the consonants. There are a dozen spellings for the sound of sh: shoe, sugar, issue, nation, suspicion, ocean, nauseous, conscious, chaperon, schizophrenic, fuchsia, pshaw. Yet, there are many other only less disturbing, and it serves to show how far we are at times from approaching the ideal of simplicity and consistency.
*The idiomatic expression meant concerns the suitable use of words in the pattern. It differs from other idioms use figurative indication
My Regards
S P I R I T.