English is simple: life hacks that will help you understand English grammar once and for all - ForumDaily
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English is easy: life hacks that will help you understand English grammar once and for all

You have heard more than once in your life that the English language is extremely difficult. In fact, if you understand it deeper, the learning process will go much easier. We must not give up and try, because in English there are a lot of useful and understandable rules, Ivan Roganov reports in his blog at HABR.

Photo: IStock

Ivan showed the main points that helped him to master the language well. He hopes that understanding these points will help others.

Ivan has been living abroad for 13 years. Now he knows when to use the present perfect and when to say something in the past simple. But it was not always so, as Roganov says.

He didn’t learn English at school, he tried, but he didn’t succeed. “One fine day I decided to take a risk and try to work with a tutor, because I was getting fed up with the constant nagging of my colleagues,” says Ivan.

A year later, as Ivan says, the British stopped recognizing the Russian accent in his English. His letters were no longer answered with exclamations of “I don’t understand anything!” and similar comments. And he began to tediously correct the mistakes of those who wrote to him.

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During his learning process, Ivan discovered several rules that helped him understand those concepts that are considered “difficult” or “non-obvious” in English.

“A good gamer differs from a bad one in that he does not blame the rules of the game, but trains. A bad gamer will say that his keyboard is wrong and his mouse doesn’t work, but a good one will simply repeat and repeat the same level until he plays it perfectly,” the blogger believes. - Treat the language the same way you treat the game. You can say as much as you want that it is difficult, or you can just learn its rules.”

Pronunciation

“May name from Masha, ay em from Russia”: Ivan believes that the most terrible English transcription in the world is transcription in Russian letters, that is, when people write English words in Russian letters.

“It is thanks to this transcription that the English-speaking public gets so much pleasure from listening to English-Russian speech. There is no sound θ in Russian. In English there is no Ш, and in Russian there is no θ,” he explains.

Ivan said that the difference in pronunciation and spelling of English words is connected with book printing in England.

“The English, who did not know how to print books, invited the Dutch, who at that time were guru bookmakers. The Dutch came to England with their machines and sets of letters. This is where the confusion began. The Dutch letter sets did not have enough ligatures to express the full variety of Old English letters. Then the Dutch decided to take what they had and insert it instead of English letters. And now we have the words read /riːd/ and read /rɛd/, which are written the same but pronounced differently,” Ivan clarifies.

In order to learn an English word, he believes, you need to learn two words - its spelling and its pronunciation. He recommends always using various pronunciation checking services.

Learning words and dictionaries

Ivan recommends getting rid of small dictionaries and simple translators as quickly as possible. If your level allows you, use English dictionaries, which explain the meaning of a word in English.

If the level is insufficient, then Ivan recommends New Big English-Russian Dictionary.

“Unfortunately, the definitions in the translators are, to put it mildly, lousy. Most likely they are simply offering you a set of English words to replace Russian, which is actually very bad,” he is convinced.

The blogger gives an example of the translation of the word “intimidating” into English on Google:

  • awesome
  • deterrent
  • redoubtable
  • horrendous
  • redoubted

“None of these words are really suitable to convey all the charm of the phrase “walking through the yard I saw a frightening cat Vasily,” which in fact should be translated as Walking through the yard, I saw a frightening cat Vasily,” Ivan gives an example.

On the other hand, he says, you won't understand some words without fully understanding all their definitions.

“Like any self-respecting programmer, one day you will find yourself sitting in front of one of a couple hundred definitions of the word set or the word run, in which the number of definitions exceeds four hundred,” the blogger admits.

Ivan recommends Random House Dictionary or Oxford New American, but warns that these dictionaries are very difficult to read.

Learning words

Instead of just memorizing words, the blogger recommends learning them. Almost every word in the English language has its own history of appearance. If you find out its history, then the word itself will be remembered much better.

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“If you get your hands on a good etymological dictionary, you'll quickly discover that capricious, for example, comes from the Italian Capriccio, which comes from cappa ("head") and riccio ("hedgehog"). The implication is that the hair on someone's head stands up out of fear. By the way, this is where the Russian word “whim” comes from,” he notes.

One day Ivan saw how the author of one article wrote That's for the birds. It was clear from the context that he was making fun of something (and the phrase literally translates as “it’s for the birds”).

“The Russian translator translated this phrase as “the chickens laugh.” Good, but not great. I opened encyclopedias and started reading. In the 18th century, the main transport was horse-drawn. Horses walked everywhere and liberally fertilized the streets with cute horse poop. The excrement was full of half-digested oat grains, which were hunted by various city birds. Accordingly, these birds happily pecked horse feces. The phrase that's for the birds is a very respectful way of expressing the idea that the issue at hand is just a turd. “The chickens laugh” in this case is an incorrect translation. It would be better to say “smells”,” explains Ivan.

“Well, here’s another example. A child is it, not he or she. The child is it, not he or she. It. It. Why? In ancient times, infant mortality was very high. According to legends, it was believed that Death would not be able to take the child, since she did not know who this child was. Therefore, until the age of three, the child was called it in order to confuse Death. And how he or she survived the first three years, then he or she gets it,” the blogger clarifies.

The myth about carriers

“Living with native speakers will allow you to learn the language” - Ivan heard this phrase many times that if you live with native speakers, you will quickly master it.

He does not agree with this statement. In fact, you will quickly gain a good vocabulary, but you will have problems with grammar, the blogger believes.

“First of all, no one will teach you. After you state “If you will call me tomorrow, I will go with you” (“If you call me tomorrow, I will go with you”), at best they will tell you that the first will should not be in the sentence . But no one will explain why,” warns Ivan.

Secondly, he believes, unfortunately, your interlocutor most likely will not know all these rules himself. His favorite joke on Americans is to ask them what is the difference between the following phrases:

  • I'm driving you tomorrow.
  • I'm going to drive you tomorrow.
  • I will drive you tomorrow.

Ivan says that not a single native speaker has been able to express a clear thought that gives an exact definition.

Here is the translation with all the nuances:

  • As it turns out, I'll take you tomorrow.
  • As we agreed, I'll take you tomorrow.
  • The earth burst under your feet, I'll take you tomorrow.

“The very thoughts that in Russian we are used to expressing with intonation or “bulling” are conveyed in English by the correct form of the verb. Rarely does an American know that if you use the word will, you are trying to say that nothing will stop you at all. And if you used the word shall, then it’s completely fucked up,” says the blogger.

“So don’t slack off. If you constantly speak Runglish with English speakers, they will treat you condescendingly and most likely just get used to it. No one will explain any rules to you. No matter how much you communicate with native speakers, you will have to sit and figure out the grammar,” he assures.

First of all, the articles

The easiest way to tell a Russian from an English speaker is to listen to how they use articles. The opposite is also true, Ivan noted.

“No matter how hard Kenneth Branagh, the delightful British actor of Irish descent, tried to pretend to be a Russian spy in the film Tenet, he only half succeeded. He sounded like Russian, but inexorably placed all the articles where they were supposed to. The attempt was counted, but with your amazing English - a C in the image of a Russian,” says Ivan.

The reason why an American or a British person puts the articles in the right place lies in the language itself. Initially, English was very well honed to clearly define and indicate what you are looking at. There were 11 forms of the article the alone.

“By the way, they once snapped at me because I didn’t know the articles. I said “I want to talk about the computer” and the response I received was “What computer? What computer are you talking about? THE computer? What THE?” I said The computer at the beginning of the conversation. This implied that the computer was obvious, and it just wasn't around,” he admits.

to be, to do and to have

The biggest confusion in his head was, of course, in times. He says the hardest part was figuring out which temporary form to use. The future, present and past tenses were clear. But why and how it was necessary to do perfect and continuous, Ivan did not understand.

This went on until he noticed one feature of the English language, which is not in Russian: English is very well sharpened to express the state of beingness, action and possession.

“All the Continuous times are really just expressing your being something. I'm running. We will be swimming. He was sleeping. The trick is that when using Continuous you can use only one verb - to be. It is he who changes and bends. But the verb that expresses your action ceases to be a verb and becomes a participle, an adverb in Russian. He's already just pretending to be a verb. There is no need to bend or touch it. It simply says that you are in a state of running, sleeping or swimming,” explains Ivan.

“Perfect tenses express the presence of some object or state obtained as a result of an action. The phrase “I have finally gone swimming!” conveys the idea that you finally got to the pool and swam! “I will have slept by 10pm” - means that by ten you will fall asleep! - he remarks. - The tenses of the Simple group simply say that the fact of the action took place or is taking place: I swim - “I swim”; I swam when I was 10″ - “I swam when I was 10. Well, I just swam.”

As the blogger explains, the question is what are you trying to pay attention to.

“If you want to say, look, I have a new MacBook. Or “I bought myself these cool sneakers,” then you will use Perfect. He exists. Here it is, the result is obvious, and you are trying to pay attention to the result. In Russian, this is expressed with exclamations, oohs, aahs and “look,” states Ivan.

“If you say that you feel bad, that you are overcome by melancholy, and that some kind of condition exists, then you use Continuous. “Don't call me tomorrow, I'll swim from three to five” - Don't call me tomorrow. “I will be swimming from 3 till 5,” he gives an example.

“And this is where things start to happen with times. I bought a MacBook! In Russian it will be in the past tense. But according to the rules of English, we must use perfect, and in the present tense. We boast about the newly acquired object, right? The thing is that our object exists now. Therefore, we will use the Present Perfect - I have bought a MacBook! Here it is, I bought it maybe yesterday, maybe last year, but look - we have it now! - says the blogger. - But if you want to say that you bought a laptop before I, for example, flew to Tegucigalpa, then you will say that the presence of the item took place before some time, and then you will already say I had bought a MacBook before you left for Tegucigalpa.”

The blogger draws attention to the fact that all these tenses are used not just “according to the sign,” but depending on what you want to pay attention to. In English, attention is paid to the correct choice of tense.

Therefore, he says, the table of times is your attempt to pay attention to one of three states: your being something or in some state, your possession of something, or your acting.

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At the same time, Ivan notes, verbs exist as verbs only in the Present tense. In Perfect you only have the verb to have, and in Continous you only have the verb to be, and all the so-called verbs become participles or gerunds.

Negotiation difficulties

If we talk about the coordination of tenses, he emphasizes, then in American speech, as a rule, these constructions are avoided. They are mainly used in official documents, good literature and scientific articles.

  • If you win, you get the prize.
  • If you win, you will get the prize.
  • If you won't, you would get the prize.
  • If you had won, you would have gotten a prize.

Ordinary translators will translate these phrases in approximately the same way, but in fact the difference and their meaning is as follows:

  • When you win, they give you a prize (we are talking about a rule that always exists).
  • If you win, you will be given a prize (we are talking about something very likely).
  • If you had won, you would have been given a prize. So go ahead, train, you have a very small chance, but you can still do it (we are talking about what is unlikely, but it can happen).
  • If you had won, you would have been given a prize. The prize has already left for Nigeria, so you slammed it (everything, the train has left, nothing can be changed here).

Four different ideas, stated very succinctly, require context and explanation in Russian. And in English everything goes in one sentence.

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