Things I've Learned About English

During my time in Vietnam I've learned a lot about the differences between American English (AE) and British English (BE). For example,

• Americans drive down the street and make a right (or left) turn. Brit's make a right (or left) turning.
• You leave your car in "a car park" in England but in "a parking lot" in America.
• AE calls the place where you're supposed to walk across the road "a crosswalk." Because of the wide lines painted parallel to the sidewalk, BE calls it "a zebra crossing."
• A dot at the end of a sentence is called "a period" in AE. In BE, they call it "a full stop."
• BE prefers to say, "I haven't got ". Americans are much more likely to say, "I don't have ." (That topic was my most confusing class ever because it was hard to avoid switching back and forth between the two.)
• You may have noticed in the previous example that BE ends a quote with " and then a full stop. AE places the quotation mark after the period.
• AE hates the passive voice; BE seems to love it.
• "Sneakers" (AE) are "trainers" (BE) and "lorries" (BE) are "trucks" (AE).
• AE's "crazy" is "mad" in BE, but "mad" in AE means "angry."
• Americans do things "on the weekend" and don't like going "to the hospital." Brits do things "at the weekend" and don't like going "to hospital."
• England uses an IPA phonology chart which includes vowel sounds that most Americans never use. This is why some people don't understand me when I talk about my job until I pronounce it like Job (the name of the guy in the Bible.)
• In standard British English, /r/ is only pronounced if it comes before a vowel. My theory is that the colonists stole all the r's and took them to America. Whatever the reason, it accounts for the different pronunciations of words like war and turn.
• Word stress varies between the two types of English. For example, CONtroversy (AE) is pronounced conTROversy in BE.

There are differences in other languages too, like Spanish Spanish and Puerto Rican Spanish, French French and Canadian French, and northern, central and southern Vietnamese. It's part of the challenge of learning and teaching language.

Got any examples that make you crazy/mad?

Learning New Vocabulary

This afternoon we had a great visit with friends in a village just north of Hanoi. On the way back into town, one of my friends asked me how I remember Vietnamese words that are new to me. That's a good question, since I hear so many new words and forget them so easily. Like the English idiom says, they "go in one ear and out the other."

But I have had some success. Usually it comes when I can use the word or phrase a lot for 2-3 days after I learn it. I try to do this when I learn a Vietnamese proverb. Repeating it often and asking if I used it correctly helps me understand and remember.

If you want to try this method, just think up ways to use your new English word whenever you can. For example, if the word is "compromise," make a sentence about two friends who had a small disagreement and had to compromise. If you read news about a policy dispute somewhere, you can say something as simple as, "They need to compromise." If your English-speaking friend wants to take the bus somewhere and you want to go by xe om, say, "Maybe we can compromise and take the bus there and xe om back." Even if there's no one around who can speak English, you can say it to yourself and it will help.

It's an added bonus if you have friends who are native speakers or experts because, after you use the word, you can ask, "Is that the right meaning?" They can help you fine-tune your understanding of the meaning and help you use the correct collocations.

Good luck! Remember, "có công mài sắt, có ngày nên kim." Did I use that correctly?

Vocabulary Plug-in

Do you use the Firefox web browser? Last week I found out about a plug-in that helps you learn vocabulary. It's not perfect every time (words with multiple meanings complicate things), but it helps. It's called ming-a-ling.

After you install it, you can choose a word and ask it to substitute the word in the language you want to learn. For example, I can never remember the correct tone for mưa, so one of the words I've changed is "rain." Now, whenever a web page loads with the word "rain" on it, ming-a-ling changes it to Vietnamese. For example, here's Yahoo's weather forecast for Hanoi tomorrow:

       Tomorrow: Considerable cloudiness with occasional mưa.
       High 64F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of mưa 50%.

It should work the same way with Vietnamese to English and the words you choose will show up in English when you read a Vietnamese web page.

If you're having trouble remembering a word, give ming-a-ling a try.

Reading the News Vocabulary for Unit 02

Reading the News Unit 01 Vocabulary

 Here are some vocabulary words from Unit 01 of Reading the News. You can click through them as many times as you want to learn or review them. Leave a comment if you think this is helpful.

Press the double arrow to advance to the definition.
(Or click here if it doesn't work below.)