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Started by Legend, Dec 20, 2016, 06:31 AM

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Xevross

Sometimes it's kind of crazy to think of all the things in language that native speakers don't even really think about.  

Like just think about stress in English. Here's an example that wikipedia had.
I didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took a different one.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took something else.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took it some other day.)


Or take adjective order.  
The beautiful big dragon vs the big beautiful dragon.  They just feel different.  
Yeah I hear that its subtle things like that which make English a baby to learn how to speak. Learning to read/ write it is a lot easier.

The big thing that my step mum complains about is the different pronunciations of the same chains of letters. Like why does adding an s in front of laughter make it sound like slaughter?