Proper English A guide for Danes who truly want to improve their English By Wynn Barry Stewart Dear reader: What follows is an accumulation of the knowledge, wisdom, and experience I have amassed from over twenty years of teaching English as a second language. So now you have officially been warned! To my Danish wife, Anne-Grete, and our wonderful children, Sarah, Rebecca, Dana, and James Table of Contents 1) The rule of only one s (X vs. O) 2) A/an and the/the vowels, not vocals 3) To ly, or not to ly 4) To do, or not to do (or is it does?) 5) Infinitive ( to form) or gerund ( ing form)? 6) Other gerunds 7) Ed or t for the past tense? 8) Singular or plural? Countable or uncountable? We see the world differently 9) Reported speech (if it s happened, it s in the past!) 10) Would you like some or any? 11) Alt skal ejes af nogen! 12) Logical plurals 13) Are you interested or interesting in English? 14) A few confusing words and spelling conventions 15) Conditional forms 1
16) Omvendt ordstilling? I think they not can come 17) The present isn t just the present and the past isn t just the past! 18) The future isn t just the future! Shall vs. will 19) Tricky verbs and unusual irregular verbs 20) False comparisons 21) We need the word one 22) I (danskere) er mere bestemte! 23) This/that and these/those 24) Do you remember the time when? 25) Who/whom and that/which 26) Whose is it? Who s making that noise? 27) Some useful expressions 28) I shave me every morning 29)Prepositions matter! 30) We do all that we can to avoid a preposition plus the word that 31) Time and place on/in/at 32) The Julekalender I thought it enough! Danglish when it s best 33) I live on my office and I open my computer every morning (direct translations) 34) You know how it is when you re pregnant 35) More common pitfalls 36) Do weeks have numbers? 37) Pronunciation and spelling: Which witch is which? 38) AM vs. PM 39) Comma placement 40) Contractions 41) Apostrophes 42) Please don t swear! 43) But they understand me! Yes, but we can also curl our toes 44) What s in a name? He s Bent and his wife is Randi. Or is she Bitten? 45) Is there a fart limit? Is she a Danish? 2
46) False friends 47) Zero, Nil, Nought, Oh or Love? 48) Question tags 49) Do versus make 50) American or British English? Foreword: The intent of this book is to be THE DEFINITIVE AND FINAL WORD on improving one s English. This book should in fact be the only book one need read on the subject. It has been written with especially Danes in mind but, to a lesser degree, other Scandinavians should benefit from the content of this guidebook as well. And yes, this book is a type of guidebook. It is not solely a book on English grammar (such books tend to be long and boring). Nor is this book simply a compilation of lists of mistakes or words and phrases Danes are to avoid (although it does contain such lists). No, this book is the result of all the insights I have gained and the tricks I have gleaned from twenty odd years of teaching English as a second language in Denmark. I have, in fact, attempted to make this book as hyggelig as possible. So please, just lean back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Preface: Many Danes (all except for the very young or very old) speak very good, quite understandable English. Yet, once in a while, we do hear about a Dane usually a politician who doesn t speak the world s best English. However, they are undtagelsen der bekræfter reglen. Still, I trust that most Danes will admit that there is always room for improvement! After all, learning to speak a second language, without making mistakes, is nearly impossible (Jeg taler af trist erfaring). Thus, I have deemed that the time has come for an ultimate English resource a reference book that Danes (and other Scandinavians) can turn to in times of doubt. As you probably noticed, I shall use a small amount of Danish in this guidebook (nogen gang midt i en engelsk sætning). Most of the time, I shall merely do so to clarify a point (or because the idea in question may in fact be easier to explain in Danish). 3
Chapter One: A basic, important rule to remember Every year it s the same. I watch the Eurovision Song Contest (or Melodi Grand Prix ), and at least one host from a non-english speaking country appears on the screen to announce that, 12 points goes to Sweden (or Russia - or these days, even Australia!). So what s wrong with saying that 12 points goes to the country in question? The simple answer is, everything! Just as Danes no doubt krummer tæerne when someone from another country such as myself talks about et bog og en bord, instead of the opposite, there is no greater cardinal sin in English than putting the letter s on the wrong word in a sentence. To ease understanding, let s call this idea the rule of only one grammatical s. So what does this mean in practice? Very simply, if you have just said an English word that ends with the letter s, then don t add an s to the next word! For example: The girl likes the boy. That seems easy enough. But what if there are two girls? Then we say and write the following: The girls like the boys. That s right. The GIRL LIKES the boy, but the GIRLS LIKE the boys. So one girl LIKES, but two girls LIKE. Why is this the case? The answer is that an s on the subject (navneordet/grundledet) of the sentence makes the subject plural (flertal), but an s on the verb (verbet/udsagnsledet) of the sentence makes the verb singular (ental). So if there is an s on the kryds (X), then there cannot be an s on the bolle (O). Så håber jeg, at du kan huske begreberne kryds og bolle fra dengang du gik i folkeskole! I korte træk er krydset dét, sætningen handler om. Bollen er til gengæld selve handlingen. Så hvis nogen siger, at Mette spiser sin frokost, så er damen krydset, og hendes frokost er bollen (også selv om hun spiser en sandwich). In English, this means that one dog drinks water, but two dogs drink water. One man drinks beer, but two men drink beer (sandsynligvis et syn de fleste danskere nok kan relatere til). Now wait just one moment! In the second sentence ( Two men drink beer ), there isn t an s at all! How is that possible? Here, the answer is because the word men is an irregular plural (på dansk, en uregelmæssig flertalsform). På dansk er der mange af slagsen. Man har for eksempel et barn, men flere børn. Normalt sætter man et r (eller er, eller nogen gange bare et e ) på slutningen af et ord for at gøre ordet til flertal på dansk. 4
For eksempel taler man om en kvinde, men flere kvinder. En kvinde sidder på en stol, men to kvinder sidder på to stole. Men hvis man taler om flere end en mand, så er der tale om mænd. Please notice that we therefore say - and write - that one child is hungry, but that two children are hungry. På dansk skal tillægsordet rette sig i tal efter hvor mange af noget der er tale om. Man har for eksempel én grøn stol, men flere grønne stole. So don t be surprised that English does something similar! But I suppose that confusion occurs simply because of the fact that Danes change the noun (navneord) and the adjective (tillægsord) in a sentence, whereas we change the noun and the verb (udsagnsord) in a sentence. In Danish, you never change the verb, regardless of the number of people or items involved. Notice the following: En grøn stol står på gulvet. Ti grønne stole står på gulvet. In Danish, you wouldn t dream of saying that en stol stårs on the floor, but that is exactly what we do in English. In other words: The green table is on the floor, but the green chairs are broken. There was no s on the word table (navneordet/krydset/x), so the next word, is (verbet/bollen/o), has to end with an s. Notice these examples: Twelve points go to Denmark (there s always next year ). One point goes to Sweden (they win too much already!). Our two kittens drink milk, but their mother eats fish. Their child plays computer games, but our children don t play computer games. However, our son does watch a lot of television. Så det er enten/eller (for det meste det skal jeg nok vende tilbage til). Enten tilføjer man et s til navneordet (fordi der er flere af det, der nu er tale om), eller også tilføjer man et s til verbet (netop fordi der kun er tale om én ting eller én person). I know that many of you have thought and perhaps have even been taught that an s at the end of a word makes it plural (flertal). This is only true of nouns (det gælder kun navneord)! So when we say that she is, or she has, or she does, we put an s on the verb precisely because we are only talking about one person. Man kan sige, at et s skal tilføjes til et engelsk verbum (kun i nutid, vel at mærke), når man omtaler nogen (eller noget). Jeg havde en elev, der en gang nævnte, at hun betragtede fænomenet som en slags bagtale, fordi det lyder som om vi hvæser af det, vi taler om. Hvis hendes huskeregel kan hjælpe dig, fint! A few more examples: She laughs. He cries. The dog barks. The cat meows. The sun shines. The fish swims. 5
But remember that I laugh, you laugh, we laugh and they laugh. Det er derfor, at du (forhåbentlig) lærte følgende remse I folkeskolen: I am, you are, she/he/it is, we are, they are. I do, you do, we do, they do, but she/he/it does. So are there any exceptions to these rules? Well, just like in Danish, ingen regel uden undtagelser. Notice these exceptions: Children ARE Women ARE The news IS The dress IS Men ARE Notice that there is no s at all! The glass IS Here we have an S on both words! People ARE Police ARE The bus IS Paris IS And then there are words which are (or can be) flertal in Danish, but which are ental in English: Money IS, advice IS, information IS, furniture IS, somebody IS, anyone IS, everything IS. But if you think about it, these last seven words aren t exceptions at all, because there is still only one s in each sentence (in this case, on the bolle ). Hvorfor? Fordi disse ord betragtes som entalsord/begreber på engelsk. Chapter Two: A/an versus the/the Yes, the second two words look alike. That s because they are in fact the same word. However, the pronunciation is different, depending on whether the next word starts with a vowel (vokal) or a consonant (konsonant). Right from the start, there are two important points to remember in this section. Firstly, the word pronunciation ( udtale - på dansk) is pronounced just as it s spelled. In other words, pro none see a shun. If you are saying this word as pro noun see a shun, then you re doing it wrong. Og der er intet værre end at udtale selve ordet udtale forkert! Secondly, we have a word called vocal in English, but it means, among other things, højrøstet. En vokal på engelsk hedder faktisk a vowel. In English, we basically only have five vowel letters (though we have many more vowel sounds). These are A, E, I, O, and U. The letter Y can also be a vowel, as in my first name (Wynn). However, it can also be a consonant (think of the word yellow, for example). We don t, of course, use the letters Æ, Ø, and Å. 6
So when do we put the letter a in front of a word (more technically a noun/ navneord or adjective/ tillægsord ), and when do, we use the word an? The simple answer is that everything depends on the spelling of the next word and its pronunciation! Here are some examples: We say and write an apple, an elephant, an ice cream, an old man, and an umbrella, because the word after an is written with a vowel and has a vowel sound. But notice that we say and write a big apple, a tall elephant, a delicious ice cream, a dirty old man, and a new umbrella. Of course, this is because each of the descriptive words start with a consonant (one of the 20/21 letters which are not vowels in English) So essentially, this rule is a sound rule in English. In fact, spelling isn t always the determining factor, as we say and write a uniform (and not an uniform). Why not? Because the word uniform starts with the same consonant sound as the Danish word juni. Here are a few more examples: A one-way street, a university, a European. Now try saying these sentences aloud, and see if you understand why we use the word we do in each case: It is an honour to meet you. She doesn t want to marry a European man. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience! He wore a uniform during the war. And now try these on for size: She has an MBA. He worked in an R & D department for five years. Så på engelsk er det lyden, der bestemmer. Vi har ikke engang begrebet køn på engelsk (men det betyder ikke, at engelsk ikke er et kønt sprog!) So don t think masculine or feminine. Don t think of das, die, und der. Don t think el or la, or en or et, for that matter. If you know how to pronounce the next word, then you ought to be able to figure out if a native English speaker would say a or an. What about the and the? Again, they re the same word, but if the letters T H E are in front of a word som virker som om, at det begynder med en konsonant (for eksempel, uniform ) then T H E udtales som thuh. On the other hand, if T, H, and E come in front of a word that clearly has a vowel (vokal) sound (such as umbrella), then we say but don t write what sounds like thii (just like the Danish words ris and skib ) 7