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CHAPTER I. The Pronoun – an indispensable tool

First of all, everybody engaging in learning a foreign language should know some basic grammar notions that will sustain later the new material to be learned. We can see how all manuals for foreign languages present to us declensions and conjugations when it comes to adjectives, nouns verbs and so on. But WHAT are those things and HOW CAN WE RECOGNIZE THEM, either in English or in that language (or languages) we want to study? A big problem when we hear others speaking a language that is new to us is that we cannot even go to our beloved dictionary in order to identify at least 2 or 3 words from a sentence… for the simple reason that we perceive the words so strongly bond and we cannot separate them.

Even a big part of the manuals open their lessons with the noun, I want to propose to you a different approach and start with the personal pronoun; to learn its basic forms. Why? Because they are used a lot in English (I think that in more than 95% of the cases), but there are languages that use it as a must or – as we will see later – almost not at all.

Examples:        a)         YOU speak English.

b)           WE speak English.

While in other languages the pronoun (YOU, WE) is not necessary, because the ending of the verb (speak) shows also which person is involved in the action. This difference, we don’t have it in English that much – except for some 3rd singular person (he/she/it) that gains an –s as a mark once in a while:

c)         He/She/It speaks English.

To make u understand better let’s have a short preview from Romanian, a language that DOESN’T need to use the nouns unless the speakers really want to reinforce something. Otherwise, they will even sound dummies, because that’s how kids are speaking there before they develop a more complex thinking and understanding:

a)      Vorbeşti englezeşte.

b)      Vorbim englezeşte.

c)      Vorbeşte englezeşte.

�    Interesting fact! However, here is a language that although it has those endings – and I mean plenty of different endings – uses the nouns as a „sinequa non” (that will be „without whom is impossible/can’t be”)  condition: French!

a)      TU parles Anglais.

b)      NOUS parlons Anglais.

c)      Il/Elle/On parle Anglais.

So you must know the pronouns, in order to adjust the very first impression – in front of a foreigner – in your advantage. You cannot plan a linguistic trip without knowing them; and the good knews is that they are in limited nomber. You will see how in Spanish and Italian there are more special situations, when the nouns are butted to the verb’s ending. This should not scare you because you’ll see how logic the procedure is and you only have to pay a bit more attention when you do you fisrt writings – because in the spoken language there is no perceptible difference. But… all in their own time.

THE PRONOUN

What is that?

The pronoun is a flexible part of the language (it is present in the majority of languages actually) and it can replace a noun when the participants to a dialog know each other or they know or understand from the context the object or the person that they are talking about (that makes the subject of the dialog/discussion). The pronoun can also add a series of information like the absence or the presence of an object, its identity from other objects… OR, like the other languages presented here do, the respect towards the person we are talking to (in English it will be „you”, but there is no difference comparing it to the familiar „you” used for the 2nd person at singular or plural form).

From all of the pronoun’s forms, first we need to know the personal pronoun forms.

Description:

• 1st Person is the person that speaks/narrates (I – we for the plural)
• 2nd Person is the person that we talk to/with, also called interlocutor (you – you for the plural)
• 3rd Person is the one we are talking about (him, her, it – they for the plural)

Pronouns classify themselves by person, number and gender as in the following table:

NOTCE!!! English doesn’t have a special form or use for the polite form of the pronoun, but is important to make that distinction in other languages, first as being part of their culture – and the last thing anybody will want to do is offend in a way someone recently met and that means something for you. Those languages translate it in English as YOU, but is a huge difference between originals, and the substitute form that they can use in English.

Particularity: in English, the 1st person, singular: I is always written with caps!

English is an analytical language, therefore the pronoun is always used – because it makes  the grammatical bonding through isolated/separate words.

NOTICE!!! We will talk about the gender more when we get to the Noun section.

Question: “Why this book?”

Well, the answer is here:

Many times, because they want to be as professional as they can, out teachers – or the authors of the foreign languages courses books – forget that not everybody is made or interested to assimilate a foreign language to perfection or, that the “audience” of that particular book is not formed only from people that work in the languages field and that among them are also those who really need to rapidly shape a base so that they can manage themselves later (people changing their job or that leave their country and so on). Unfortunately not everybody has the time to “grind” hundreds of pages manuals and perhaps not even the power to understand all the nuances of the presented grammar. This is a key factor and one of the main reasons why many students lose their interest and their patience, meaning two key factors without which no matter what we plan to do, we already failed.

Regarding this, I remember how a French friend of mine came to work in Romania and he was really overjoyed by the fact that all his colleagues were telling him how much Romanian looks like French and that for him is going to be easy to learn the language is he wants (bringing him more friends, making him feel more like home and gaining lot of respect from his team). So the next step was, of course, buying a manual: a thick book he choose… hoping he’s not going to miss a detail. CATASTROPHE! After the first 6 pages he felt deeply discouraged and he abandoned the study because he find it too hard; although he was living now in a 100% Romanian environment and, he even knew some Romanian words. It was then when I heard from him the following expression: “I cannot try to jump from the first step to the highest one because I’ll break my neck for sure; I better abandon!” And after this statement he confessed me that even in French – his 1st language ever! – he always had orthography problems and that was always a great handicap for him.

„A great literate is not always a good teacher” – at least not for those that find themselves at a very low level and so they don’t have the power to understand the complexity of the ideas of a great master. At their turn, masters have no more patience themselves to descend at a low level, instead of dipping more what they’ve study for a lifetime. Like in life, when we first feel that something hurts us, we call our family doctor – our generalist – before going to a surgeon. I wish the same for this book: to be the first consultancy for those who are “crazy about the foreign languages” and will like to know how does the „skeletons” of 6 important languages look like and behave, that want to compare them – one another – making connections that will implant permanent roots for what they’ve learned and that will even grow beautiful springs, enlarging the knowledge.

PS: I’m not perfect. I’m still working hard.

I know I haven’t taken care of this site like I should have, but I took the decision to share with you from my learning languages experience. So all the work and all the waiting was worth. I’m sure that there might be some mistakes I didn’t notice there, but I’m sure you’ll tell me. The main issue is that I’m giving you my tools.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I invite you to join me trough a 6 languages journey.

As always, yours truly,

AndrEEa

I never liked to sleep too much. Until I reached the age of 1 year, I’ve been terrorizing my parents, performing for them nocturnal “concerts”, with great endurance and maximum volume. In the morning, in stead of yawning, I had even more energy and ready to start all over again. And I remain like that since ’82 until now. I always need to do something I like doing, beside the mandatory stuffs. Strangely, I don’t feel I get more tired, all the contrary, I neutralize the cumulated fatigue trough my passions. For those of you who didn’t try it, you should give it a shot and I’d like you to keep me posted with the results. At least I’ll know I’m not the only one in “troubles”.

If you’re cruising here you’ll see I proposed myself to host this site in 4 languages: Romanian (of course), English (because is a handy language for anyone, everywhere), French (because I want you to remember me when you’ll get in Paris) and Spanish (promise not to chat about Spanish soap operas… only on request). And that will be all. For now.

Maybe I won’t have time to translate the articles all the time or maybe sometimes I’ll write them 100% in the Romanian spirit (making them impossible to translate without loosing the essence on the way). Some other times I might talk to the public outside Romania’s borders. FOR THAT I apologize in advance.

To be honest… Not even I don’t know what I’m going to do.

But for the moments when I’m going to be moving a lot and I’m not going to be able to enjoy the comfort of a desk, we’ll be in touch on Pod cast.

I hope I don’t have to tell you that I’m waiting for all your suggestion. And I won’t be displeased if you tell all your friends (Romanians or not) about the site. Is an opportunity for all of us – me included – to cross the borders, to show that Romania has lot to offer and that “to think”, “to work”, “to respect” are not verbs that are excluding this country.

With respect for you, for the time you spent reading this lines, for the time you’ll give in the future – I hope, I wish to you a warm Welcome!

Yours truly,

AndrEEa