Pedro Martínez: さすがね、Pedro Martínez! It's a haiku I've encountered for the first time when I was a sixth grader (it's a reconstruction of the original through Hebrew translation that I found). It means, 'The Snail   Slowly climbs   Mt. Fuji", and said 'makigai wa   yukkuri noboru   fujisan wo'. (The lettres you didn't understand, は and を, are topic and direct subject marks respectively.)

Nirvana: This is what I found:

巻貝 - snail; spiral shell
ゆっくり - slowly
登る - rise; ascend; go up; climb
富士山 - Mt Fuji

comment made to me in a game:

巻貝は　ゆっくり登る　富士山を

pauloaguia:But this is just the opinion of a non-native speaker...

And most appreciated.  Thanks. 

King Reza: I'd say "at the end" is more fisical, means location:

• at the end of the corridor there was a door
  
• I'm at the end of the line to buy tickets
  </ul>
  "in the end" refers to time or objective, not location:
  
  
  
  • In the end there can be only one
    
  • All was fine in the end
    </ul>
    
    But this is just the opinion of a non-native speaker...

Is there any particular difference between "in the end" and "at the end" ?

hexkid: You're welcome. No worries, the translation is correct, maybe just little bookish...:)

Pedro Martínez: Thank you very much.
I hope that smiley isn't an indication you've made a joke with the translation
and this smiley is an indication I don't believe your translation is a joke

hexkid: "Nechť je tato hra alespoň tak dobrá, jako byla ta předchozí." :)

Fencer: Thank you.


How would I reply "May this game be at least as good as the last one.". The game in question is part of a 2-game match.

hexkid: I didn't play such a great game for a long time.

gratuluji, už dlouho jsem si takhle nezahrál.

The first word is, without a doubt, "congratulations"; but what does the rest mean?

Pedro Martínez:
Thank you Pedro Martinez.

yoyudax: "So you speak Czech; I'll at least tell you, if you understand, that I made a move making it possible for you to win and you played it out perfectly. Ok" (=can be either OK or "eyes" )

King Reza:

Not that I can think of.

Can some one please translate this for me.

To umíš česky,tak Ti aspoň napíšu jestli rozumíš,jsem táhla tah na Tvé vítězství a uhrál jsi to bezchybně.Ok

I know that shirts which are striped, are called Striped!  If the stipes are thin, then they are called pin-stiped.
But as far as I have noticed, all these stripes are vertical.  Is there any special name for shirts or pieces of clothes in general, if the stripes are horizental?

Pedro Martínez:I just did.  Very interesting.  Thanks.

King Reza: Read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_accent

Czuch Czuckers:Ok, now I'm confused.  Do people in the States drop 'r' sounds just like  British people?
Do you have intrusive R's too?

Like do you ever say something like "Law r and order?"

King Reza: lmao..... new England is the north east states in the US! Maine new Hampshire Vermont Rhode island massachusetts and Connecticut. Maine is the farthest north and east of them all.

Czuch Czuckers:I thought you were American!  Yes, I'm very familiar with the British accent.  I used to have major problems understanding even what the whole sentence pronounced was about, but I've gotten quite used to it.  In fact, I always use Oxford Advanced Learners and think it gives better pronunciations for words.  Just checked' Been' with it.  It says:

Been: /bi:n/ or AmE: /bin/

Bin: /bin/

So I think I was somehow right.

King Reza: Where I am from,, in new england, and especially in the far north east of new england in Maine, we are famous for not pronouncing our 'Rs'in many words.

For example the word 'car' is often pronounced as 'cah'
There is a good sentence we use.... 'Pahk your cah in havahd yahd' to illistrate this point!

Also the 'er' ending in words is often pronounced more like 'ah', as in mothah or fathah.
Anyway, just one more challenge for the non native speaker ;)

Czuch Czuckers: Very interesting.  I have indeed noticed that some people have their own special accent.  Some pronounce certain vowels shorter than other people do, some pronounce them longer.  Thanks for the examples.

Carl:That's why I was asking!  I as a non-native speak English far better than some of the guys in American movies. 

Thanks for the link.

King Reza: I guess though, you may have heard someone with a 'southern accent' who spoke with what we call a drawl, and they may pronounce the word been to sound like bin....

King Reza: Not really.... think of been like the name Ben, rhymes with den, hen, fen...

bin rhymes with tin sin pin, you get the idea...
anyway, even in fast connected speech, these words are clearly discernible to the native ear.

King Reza: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences Just because it's in the "movies" does'nt make it true.Try this,i hope it clears a few things up.

Hi.  I know that words "been" and "bin" have different pronounciations.  Now, in movies or generally spoken english I fail to notice any difference between them.  Is there still a difference there or am I right in thinking that in fast and connected speech, 'bin' and 'been' are pronounced exactly the same?

I checked the dictionalry twice but missed it...It would have been easier to find if my opponent country was identified. Thanx aagin.

yoyudax: Check the Player's dictionary on the Languages page.

Item 10: Hello. (English) ... Ahoj. (Slovak) ...

yoyudax: Ahoj means Hi/Hello in Czech or Slovak. :)

Can someone please tell me what "ahoj" means and what language it is. Thank you.

King Reza:

When my daughter was six years she was sent home from school one day with a terrible rash on her face and hands that was itchy, hot and inflamed. A short while later I was telling my sister-in-law about this puzzling incident. As I was explaining that her face had been seriously "irritated" my six year interrupted to say don't your mean "facetated".

Pedro Martínez:Yes, after studying English for a year, one can really speak it to a great extent.  I would say that doing so about Farsi can result in a satisfactory progress, but I also agree that it takes much longer time to understand Farsi, especially the written form. 

On the other hand, farsi is a language whose written and spoken form have gone too far from eachother.  You write Hendavaane, but in a normal speaking, you'd say it Hendoone!

So just enjoy yourself with Farsi.  I'm glad I can fully understand and speak and write it and don't have to 'study' it .

King Reza: That's exactly the biggest problem I have with Farsi. I don't know if you agree with me or not, but I think that while you can make yourself well understood in English after, say, 1 year of every-day studying (maybe less), it takes a considerably longer time to do so in Farsi.

Rose:That's true that English is tough to master, but not very difficult to learn to speak and understand to a great extent.  Pedro knows hoe tough Farsi, my language, can really get considering the fact that we do not write down the short vowels!  So in a word, all you see is the consonants and long vowels while depending on how short vowels are changed, many words are produced which are written exactly the same in farsi.

ببر

is a very good example.  It can be read:  Bebar, Bebor, Babr meaning "take, cut, tiger" respectively.  I can imagine how confused a non-native may get when he/she comes acroos this word in a text.

Rose: Well, no language is easy to master but trust me, English is one of the least difficult ones.

I think having one word for a number of different meanings is a good thing for somebody who wants to learn the language. Imagine if you wanted to learn Czech. In your example, the 1 would be "zvyk", "zvyklost" or "obyčej" (depending on circumstances), 2 would be "clo" and 3 "zakázka". Plus there are more meanings of 'custom'. It can be a noun or an adjective. And all these have different words in Czech and in other languages.

To me 'custom' is a very obsurb word. It has a few different meanings in the English language

1. practice followed by people of a particular group or region.
2. Duties or taxes imposed on imported and, less commonly, exported goods.
3.Made to order.

Then if you make the word 'customer'
a person or business that purchases a commodity or service

English is a very difficult language to master I would think.

KotDB:I think if one understands how exactly the native children get to know their new knowledge of the language, one is able to learn the language just as well.

King Reza: Yes, young children often make such mistakes. And it's not always a regular form that is used in place of the correct irregular form. When I was in grade school, some of the other children used to use "brang" rather than "brought" as the past tense of "bring", following the pattern of ring, rang, rung; sing, sang, sung; sink, sank, sunk; etc.

Cinsidering the fact that many verbs in English are irregular and many words are made plural in ways other than adding 's' or 'es' to them, I was wondering if it ever happens that the natives make mistakes too.  For example children.  Has any native ever noticed a child say 'goed' for example, instead of went, etc. ?

ustjay orfay unfay
http://www.snowcrest.net/donnelly/piglatin.html

.- -. --- - .... . .-. / -.-. --- --- .-.. / --- -. .-.. .. -. . / - .-. .- -. ... .-.. .- - --- .-. / -.-. .- -. / -... . / ..-. --- ..- -. -.. / .- -

http://morsecode.scphillips.com/jtranslator.html

WatfordFC:And here it's a word meaning OR.

瀬人様: well "ya" over here is slang for you

"I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but, I'm not so sure you realize that what you heard, is not what I meant."~ Jerry Lewis, American comedian.

:)