BP#3

1. Prefixes : im-, in-, il-, ir-, mean “not.”

We use “il-“ before words starting with letter “l”

legal – illegal                              literate – illiterate

We use “ir-“ before words starting with letter “r”

rational – irrational                     responsible - irresponsible

We use “im-“ before words starting with “m”, “p” and “b”

balance – imbalance                   mature – immature                        perfect – imperfect                    

possible - impossible

We use “in-“ before all other letters.

compatible – incompatible          complete – incomplete                 decent – indecent                      

glorious – inglorious                   gratitude – ingratitude                   sane - insane

tolerant – intolerant                    variable – invariable

2. The use of the plural -s has three different ways of pronunciation. 

a.  The plural sounds like /s/ for words like bat, book, cough, and ship.

bat         /t/ -  voiceless, alveolar, stop

book     /k/ - voiceless, velar, stop

cough    /f/ - voiceless, labiodental, fricative

ship       /p/ - voiceless, bilabial, stop

All of those words finish with a voiceless phoneme, so we pronounce plural sounds of those words with /s/ which is also voiceless. That makes the pronunciation easier.

b.  However, it sounds like /z/ for words like cab, cave, lad, rag, and thing.

cab       /b/ - voiced, bilabial, stop

 cave     /v/ - voiced, labiodental, fricative

lad        /d/ - voiced, alveolar, stop

rag        /g/ - voiced, velar, stop

thing      /ŋ/ - voiced, velar, nasal

All of those words finish with a voiced phoneme, so we pronounce plural sounds of those words with /z/ which is also voiced. That makes the pronunciation easier.

c.  And the plural sounds like /ez/ for words like bus, bush, church, judge, and maze.

bus       /s/ - voiceless, alveolar, fricative

bush     / ʃ/ - voiceless, palatal, fricative

church  /t ʃ/ - voiceless, palatal, affricate

judge    /d ʒ/ - voiced, palatal, affricate

maze    /z/ - voiced, alveolar, fricative

All those sounds are impossible to pronounce if we add to them /s/ at the end to make them plural. That is why we add a short vowel, the schwa /ə/, in order to make it easier to pronounce. That causes that we pronounce their plural form ending  as /əz/.

BP#2

Anita

/anita/

The first letter of my name is a low central vowel “a“. The next syllable has a voiced alveolar nasal sound with stressed high front vowel “ni”. The last syllable has a voiceless alveolar stop sound with unstressed low central vowel “ta”.

To say my name you have to first open your mouth and let your tongue stay low in it, like you would do when your doctor ask you to “say aaaa.” Next you need to rise your tongue to the alveolar ridge, bony ridge behind and above your upper teeth, let the air go through your nose and use your vocal cords to make the sound “nnnn,” then lower slightly your tongue and make “iii” sound. Next you need to raise again your tongue to the alveolar ridge and stop the air stream for a brief moment then let it go abruptly without using your vocal cords and say “t” and finally make the same sound as at the beginning by opening your mouth.

And you get: “A-ni-ta”

BP#1

My first words were supposedly “mama,” but looking at my nice that has been making her first sounds reminding language, I don’t think that I realized what this word means. First words are just simple sounds that a child tries to repeat after everybody around, and they don’t mean anything to the child. With time words acquire specific meaning and help the child to communicate with the environment . It’s fascinating that although people speak the same language there is so many misunderstandings among them.

My mother tongue is Polish. This is the language that I know best, but I realize that I don’t speak it perfectly and there is so many words that I don’t know. For my excuse I could say that Polish is one of the most difficult languages in the world, at least it’s what I’ve heard. Speaking wasn’t that hard to learn since I was surrounded by people speaking Polish. The problem was writing. The right spelling of words is very difficult and is very important for educated person to spell correctly all words; people have a tendency to judge others base on their spelling. Having that experience I was shocked when my English teacher in the US didn’t know how to spell some words and asked students to check the right spelling. That would be unimaginable in Poland!

My first contact with a foreign language was when I was about ten years old. I started to learn French at school. It was completely different experience than learning the first language because teacher put pressure mostly on grammar - something that you don’t think about much while speaking your mother tongue. My involvement with this language finished with the end of my college in Poland. I could speak it quite good; I was visiting France couple times and I could communicate without any problems. I think though that I still needed some more practice speaking that language. Unfortunately, I haven’t been using French for about six years and I have forgotten a lot. I can still understand some but I cannot speak it as well as before.

Five years ago I came to the US and I started learning English. I went to school to study English as a second language and I finished all levels. I realize that I still have a lot to learn, especially when it comes to grammar but I’m quite proud of my progress. In contrast to my study of French, I’ve been learning English more naturally, similarly to my mother tongue – by listening to people talking, watching American TV and so on.

I also had some experience with German and Spanish. I even took couple lessons of Japanese. It’s fascinating to see how languages from the same “family” are similar, and how much easier was to learn Spanish knowing some French. I’ve noticed that it is much easier to learn third and next languages if you already “know” two.

Living in the US I speak English only outside my house. At home I speak only Polish, but from time to time I throw in some English words; some of English words feel like they can better express my thoughts or simply they come first to my mind. Many Polish people living in the US has been even changing some English words so they sound a little bit like Polish words.

Is also fascinating experience to teach a foreigner your mother tongue. The average native speaker is not able to explain why you supposed to use a specific tense or expression because for natives it’s obvious and they never think about it.

I think that you can never say that you know everything about any language that you can speak. There are always words that you don’t know and new words are created every day. Language is simply fascinating.

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