• 0 Posts
  • 41 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 13th, 2023

help-circle









  • I’m not saying they’re fancy, just that there are more people on the planet that can’t speak English than people who can.

    Also, most people on the planet speak multiple languages. There are even less people on the world that only speak a single language than there are English speakers. So, if anything, speaking just a single language, even if it’s English, is the abnormal thing.

    Lastly, it’s not about “feeling successful”, as you put it, but about being able to communicate with more people and being able to enjoy more things.







  • The higher pitch for the entire sentence is another option in my Spanish, but indicates outrage.

    The version where you hear it’s supposed to be a question from the word “dijiste” is more of a request for information, like if your mom yelled something and you’re not sure if she said “No me molestes” or “No te sorpreses” or something else that sounds vaguely similar or if she was actually yelling at a fly that was going on her nerves.

    The sentence overall becomes more melodic, with the stressed syllables getting a higher pitch and more defined stress.


  • In spanish questions intonation changes occur only on the last word(s), not the whole sentence. I’m not a linguistic, but I think it’s so you can be sure a sentence is a question from the start.

    That might be the case in the dialect you’re familiar with, but “¿Me dijiste que no te moleste?” has a different intonation to “Me dijiste que no te moleste.” in my Spanish (starting from “dijiste”).

    As for English, questions normally start either with a question word or a (auxiliary) verb, while affirmations normally start with the subject. See “You told me not to bother you.” vs. “Did you tell me not to bother you?”. Using just intonation is possible (“You told me not to bother you?!??”), but when in writing, it’s usually formatted in a way that highlights it because it usually indicates outrage/disbelief.




  • For those who want to know, that makes Xitter sound like halfway between Sitter and Shitter.

    As an English speaker you can try to make that sound by saying the Y in YEET and paying close attention to how exactly your tongue is positioned and where in your mouth the air is being constricted. Then try to position your tongue as if you want to say “yeet” or “yes” again, but make an S sound at exactly the same constriction point where you made the Y sound before. If you’re successful, it should sound like a hybrid between S and SH to your English ears.

    That’s how I make it anyway, actual Mandarin speakers might find issue with my explanation.