Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: But at the begin of a sentence

Ho appena visto un sito nel quale si dice che in inglese non si inizia una
frase con "but" ma si può con "and" ed "or".
Che ne dite?

 Che ne dite?
I think doing this can give much more of an impact than many of the
alternatives. But I would.
Some grammar rules were set arbitrarily, due to personal preference, and
even based on Latin. Fitting Latin grammar to the English language is a
funny one. Often there is no other logical reasoning, and sometimes it just
doesn't make sense.
There is a lot of rubbish on the Net.
:)

Yume wrote:

A parte che si dice "at the beginning", oppure "to begin a sentence", ti
consiglierei di vedere "Finding Forrester", c'è una parte in cui parlano
proprio di queste pseudo-regole che ho trovato molto divertente.
-- 
Giovanni Bajo

 Yume

Finding Forrester is an inspiring film. I don't remember this bit clearly,
what did they conclude? I imagine it was in favour of a liberal common sense
and thumbs down to restrictive, nonsensical rules...
Zz



But, but, but... I thought it was all true! <wailing> . My faith in
the internet is all but destroyed but.
The Aussies go one better. I well remember lacing my sentences with a
terminal but. 
:-))
-- 
              O      __
      ___   /\     / / O  
     /__ \   | \   /  |
    O  /  \ /   \./   |       Loki
        |________ |
 

 :-))
I remember Alan has written about that. "But" being pronounced /bu:/
("boo"), but.
Bye, FB



Huh? I remember the 't' as well, must be my age. <Boo> couldn't be
right, It'd be   <ba'> to italian ears.


 right, It'd be   <ba'> to italian ears.
Indeed. It's the short "u" sound, as in grunt.  *Not* a schwa. Very
common in Glasgow and the west of Scotland. And no "t" sound, just a
very plosive glottal stop.
Usually, not always, the thing even carries some meaning.
-- 
"The past resembles the future as water resembles water"  Ibn Khaldun
My .
mac.com
 address is a spam sink.
If you wish to email me, try alan dot lothian at blueyonder dot co dot uk

 Che ne dite?
Non si tratta della grammatica ma invece dello stile. Una regola piu'
intelligente sarebbe: "But you shouldn't begin *too many sentences*
with 'But'. Or "and"."
Bello esempio, anche se lo dico io. 
More seriously, "Or" at the beginning of a sentence should be used
*very* sparingly. 
"But the situation was more difficult than it seemed. And we didn't
have the resources to deal with it. Or if we had, no one had told me
about them."
This kind of writing can be very punchy, but soon becomes *very*
tiresome. 
As an aside:
l'usanza tedesca di "oder" [or, o] come frase interrogativa.
"Tutti a casa mia! Facciamo una bella spaghettata. O?"
This usage crept into English in certain quarters some years ago. It
has now been exterminated. Faccina sorridente.


 "The past resembles the future as water resembles water"  Ibn Khaldun
He must have been on something. ;-)


 He must have been on something. ;-)
Well, I think he was certainly on *to* something :)
-- 
"The past resembles the future as water resembles water"  Ibn Khaldun
My .
mac.com
 address is a spam sink.


soon becomes *very* tiresome.
And, or & but are logical connectives, so they should be used inside 
sentences to connect ideas, but they can be used rhetorically at the 
beginning of a sentence, the best example being "But for the grace of 
God, there go I".
Cheers
-- 
John G Davies

 God, there go I".
I always thought it was "There but for the grace of God go I".
-- 
Mary

 writes

Won't squabble over it, only to say that my version indicates a 
legitimate use of an initial "but".


 consonants.
Apologies, Alan, but you terminology (and concepts) are rather mixed up
here.
An "unstressed vowel" is simply a vowel which does not carry the "stress"
(aka "accent"). Italian has plenty unstressed vowel: in any Italian words
made of two or more syllables, all vowels but one are "unstressed".
"Schwa" (aka "neutral vowel") is simply the name of one particular vowel
sound. The German term originally referred to "shevโด", a vowel sign in the
Hebrew script which may have a schwa sound in some words (e.g., the first
vowel in the word "shevโด" itself is written as a shevโด and pronounced as a
schwa).
English schwas are normaly unstressed (they may be stressed when part of a
diphthong), but this is not the case in other languages.
I don't think schwa could be defined "a sort of breath between consonants",
unless this is your general definition for "vowel".
Schwa does not exist in Italian (either "posh" or not, whatever that might
mean), but it is common in some Italian dialetti, namely in Neapolitan and
Bolognese.
Sorry for this hair-splitting session. (BTW, "hair" is one of those English
words containing a stressed schwa as part of a diphthong.)
Ciao.
Marco
--------------------------------
Inviato via 
http://arianna.libero.it/usenet/

 diphthong), but this is not the case in other languages.
I think the schwa may be stressed especially in American English, and the
symbol for schwa and /E/ (epsilon) is the same.
Bye, FB

 symbol for schwa and /E/ (epsilon) is the same.
I don't know these non-IPA representations, but I'd say that "er" and the
schwa are quite different.
Always a chance I've missed the point of course!
A stressed scwha is not a schwa at all.
(It's a SCHWAT DO YOU WANT?!)

I think the schwa may be stressed especially in American English,
Impossible. Any vowel can become a schwa if not stressed.
If you have a stressed schwa, then you don't have a schwa.
Take "cut it out". If you say that fast, "it" is pronounced as a mere
schwa, and no /t/. /'cAt@'aut/. If you stress it, you have "it" back,
/'cAt 'it 'aut/
Think about the article "the". If the symbol of the pronunciation of
the segment "th" is D, then the pronunciation of "the" is /Di:/, when
it is in a strong form, and /D@/ when it is in the weak one.
English pronunciation is based on the strong/weak rule, and its
rhythm is feet-based, and not syllabe-based as ours. 
Sebastiano
-- 
No wonder people say "gesundheit" when you say "Tchaikovsky".

 words containing a stressed schwa as part of a diphthong.)
Hmm. Not in my pronunciation (but then, I'm a Scot); you're certainly
right in RP, but dipthong-splitting may be worse than hair-splitting.
Faccina sorridente, of course.


 feet-based,
??

 I'd say that "er" and the schwa are quite different.
They are. My point was that sometimes in American English the /E/ sound is
pronounced as a schwa (as though the /E/ sound weren't stressed):
"Terrorism" ==> /'tErr&riz&m/ is the right pronunciation, but I think I have
heard it pronounced /'t&rr&riz&m/ (& ==> schwa)
I have to say I find it more difficult to tell out /E/ (as in "birth",
/bE:th/) from schwa in American, when it is followed by an "r", e.g.:
"her" pronounced by an American often sounds /h&r/, not /hEr/, to me.
Bye, FB

??
The correct term is "foot-timed". English is foot-timed, Italian is
syllable-timed. Since the concept of foot is linked to the one of
stress, English rhythm is also called stress-timed.
The lenght of an uttered syllable is not constant. The lenght of a
foot is somewhat the same, even though there's a different number of
syllables inside different feet.
What's a foot? The unit of rhythm. Understanding what a foot is in
poetry is kinda easy, because it's part of the meter. One foot,
monometer, two feet, dimeter.
check this out:
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/meter.html
But feet are rhythm units of everyday speech too.
What's a foot, then? It's the part of the "sentence" from a clause
stress to another. I don't have my book here, with a better
definition. I'll pick it up later in order to explain the concept,
with some examples.
Just consider the foot as a bigger unit than the syllable. A foot is
composed by the stressed syllable + (eventually) one or more
unstressed syllables. If the lenght of a one-syllable foot is 1, the
one of a two-syllable foot is 1.2 and a three-syllable foot lasts 1.4.
Those numbers could be wrong - I'm not sure about the three-syllable
foot lenght, it could be 1.6 - but the point is that syllables are not
rhythm units in English. Syllables got squeezed in order to maintain
the feet-timing. In Italian we don't squeeze syllable lenght. They are
our rhythm unit.


 Faccina sorridente, of course.
:-)


 "her" pronounced by an American often sounds /h&r/, not /hEr/, to me.
Anche in Inghilterra. Il dizionario "Cambridge English Pronouncing
Dictionary" ne parla.
Vedi 
http://www.geocities.com/xakero/EPD_her_2.gif
-- 
Xakero

schwa is always unstressed.
In English you may have a "stressed" schwa if you have a diphthong.
The stress is not on the schwa, but on the diphthong. I guess that
this is the closed thing to a stressed schwa in the English language.
AFAIK you can't have a single stressed schwa in English. 


 AFAIK you can't have a single stressed schwa in English.
Sě, era quello che intendevo.
Comunque, dei due elementi di un dittongo, ce n'č normalmente uno che ha una
forza maggiore dell'altro: nel caso di "coke" (in RP britannica), questo č
lo schwa.


 Vedi 
http://www.geocities.com/xakero/EPD_her_2.gif
Mi riferivo, però, anche alle forme forti (es. "terrorism", che non ha forma
debole, ovviamente). Mi sbaglierò, ma mi pare che in americano /'t&rr&ris&m/
non sia impensabile. Insomma, mi pare che in americano non ci sia la stessa,
netta, differenza /&/ vs. /E/, che c'è nell'RP.
Ciao, FB

lo schwa.
Sì. Infatti, quasi tutti i dittonghi inglesi con la schwa sono del
tipo x@, dove x è la vocale, e @ la schwa, e i trittonghi, tutti con
schwa, sono del tipo xx@. Tranne uno per tipo, il dittongo /@u/ di
parole come coke, e il trittongo /@u@/ di parole come slower.
Ovviamente British English, in American English molti di questi
dittonghi/trittonghi non esistono.
Esempi:
/i@/ real
/e@/ chair
/u@/ sure
/o@/ door
 
e i trittonghi
/ai@/ buyer
/au@/ power
/ei@/ player
/oi@/ loyal
Poi abbiamo il dittongo /@u/ e il trittongo /@u@/ (lower)
In questi due il "centro" è effettivamente la schwa.
Anche in lower /'l@u@*/ il trittongo è stressed, e il centro la schwa.
Si può considerare un caso di "stressed schwa"? Non ne ho idea.
Il solo concetto di "stressed schwa", in inglese, è fuori dal mio
immaginario. Quando una parola è nella sua forma debole - weak - viene
ridotta ai minimi termini. Il minimo, in inglese, è la schwa. Meno non
si può. Quando, ad esempio, il termine "the" è nella sua forma forte -
strong - si pronuncia /Di:/ - se mi concedi D come simbolo del th ^_^
-, quando è nella sua forma debole /D@/. "Her" diventa, al minimo,
minimo, minimo, semplicemente /@/. Questo, ovviamente, non significa
che /her/ possa esser pronunciato /@/, ma che in un discorso orale il
termine "her" quando è nella forma debole può esser minimizzato, per
il principio del "minimo sforzo", ad una semplice schwa. Se trovo
qualche trascrizione la posto.


 our rhythm unit.
Sure. But I tend to swallow ALL non-stressed syllables leaving a more or
less constant spacing between stressed syllables whether or not there is
one, two, three, four, five or no unstressed syllables in between. Unless I
start to get excited!
This is one of many reasons why it is so easy to spot a foreign speaker of
English: a sort of bitonal (hurdy gurdy) syllable-timed manner. It might
also be one of the reasons why my Italian accent comes across so broadly as
English! To be fair, hurdy gurdy is usually levelled at Scandanavian
speakers! (The term is probably politically incorrect, but the effect is the
same...)
Zz

English: a sort of bitonal (hurdy gurdy) syllable-timed manner. 
Yes, if the foreign speaker's native language is foot-timed. That's
the key in order to have a good pronunciation. Non native English
speakers can have a marvellous English (RP, GenAm, it doesn't matter)
pronunciation, but if they use a syllable-kinda-hurdy-gurdy-timing,
they would be recognized immediately.


 they would be recognized immediately.
Cue the comedians.

meaning.
100% correct.


 100% correct.
:)
Can I move up to the intermediate classes now?
Zz

 Can I move up to the intermediate classes now?
Hmmh... Not before taking a test. 
So, here are some very useful Roman-Inglisc idioms and... ehr--
"greetings" :)  
Try this  ;->>
"I tell you  popely popely"
"I am tired dead"
"You are out like a balcony"
"But of what?"
"Today it's not air!"
"But make me the pleasure!"
"The soul of your best dead relatives!"
http://pil.phys.uniroma1.it/~zapperi/inglisc.txt
;-)
-- 
http://wiki.news.nic.it/DizionariItCulturaLinguisticaInglese

 "You are out like a balcony"
But what do you stay to say :-) this one is Milanese-Inglisc!


 But what do you stay to say :-) this one is Milanese-Inglisc!
<<Maghesdaiaffa'>> è milanese?
Ciao, FB