Posts by Kafir

Kafir

15 Oct 2011

UK, Ireland / Feedback needed from Poles confused about English [12]

Hello!

I need some feedback from Polish speakers about those little quirks of the English language that trip up even the most gifted language students when it comes to proper usage of prepositions. I'm about to give a language usage presentation and I've never had a Polish audience before. I'd like to make it relevant to them because the influence of the mother tongue is one of the main causes of confusion, aside from English being pretty damn weird in itself.

So what confuses you the most about English prepositions and which ones do you tend to mix up the most due to influence from Polish? I've heard speakers of romance languages mix up for/since as well as at/in or in/on for instance, but I don't know if the trend is similar for Polish speakers.

Thanks.

Kafir

17 Oct 2011

UK, Ireland / Feedback needed from Poles confused about English [12]

to find out my replies at different threads (again, I was wondering if I could also use 'to' and 'in' along with 'at' here, and which one would be the best)

in different threads. :)

Thank you so much for your help, this is very helpful for my preparations. I try to tell Polish people (especially since most of the ones I meet through work are impressively fluent) that most English speakers will NOT nitpick their usage of grammar, all that matters is to get your point across in most situations. Unlike with other langauges, most native speakers will be super impressed that you bothered to learn another language, regardless of minor slip ups.

This is an exception where I need to nitpick just to help them improve though. Thanks for all your examples! The train one in particular will make some good visual aids.

is there any difference between pronunciation those two phrases? :)

"I want it"
"I wanted"

It might vary with regional accents, but generally:

"I want it" = [aj wɑnt ɪt]
"I wanted it" = [aj wɒntəd ɪt]

This seems to be good tool: upodn.com