Sunday 15 March 2009

I can’t get it \right any more

Where does the nucleus go in these sentences?
It’s no use sitting at home all day. You ought to get out more.
(What’s the trouble, Mary? Why are you crying?) — You don’t love me any more.
These cases of more/any more seem to be by default unaccented. They behave as if they were adverbs of time or place: because when in final position adverbs of time or place are typically unaccented.
It’s no use sitting at \/home all day. | You ought to get \out more.
You don't \love me any more.
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I am proud to tell you that this blog has been chosen as blog of the month by the Dutch language website taalpost.nl.
Weblog van de maand: John Wells's phonetic blog
John Wells is een van de beroemdste fonetici ter wereld en de auteur van onder meer enkele gezaghebbende uitspraakgidsen voor het Engels. Sinds kort onderhoudt hij ook een openbaar weblog over uitspraakverschijnselen, vooral van het Engels. De afgelopen dagen besprak hij bijvoorbeeld de opvallende manier waarop 'Israel' soms in Engelstalige liedjes wordt gezongen, de uitspraak van de Griekse klank ou in woorden die in het Engels zijn overgenomen, en veel meer. Lezers kunnen ook reageren.
[Weblog of the month:
John Wells is one of the most famous phoneticians in the world and the author of, amongst other things, one or two authoritative English pronunciation guides. Recently he has also been keeping up a public weblog on pronunciation phenomena, especially those of English. Over the past few days he has discussed, for example, the striking way in which Israel is sung in English-language singing, the pronunciation of the Greek sound ou in words borrowed into English, and plenty more. Readers can also post comments.]
(Thanks, guys. I hope my translation is correct.)

3 comments:

  1. Except for missing 'soms' (sometimes) in the sentence "'de opvallende manier waarop 'Israel' soms in Engelstalige liedjes wordt gezongen", it's all spot-on.

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  2. "beroemdste" is remarkably transparent for this Dane.

    And not a mention of cows ... (wink goes here)

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  3. I never cease to be amazed at how easy it is for an English speaker (esp. one like me who knows some German) to understand Dutch! I hardly needed to look at your translation. Perhaps we should all be learning Dutch at school rather than French & Spanish!

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