Acquisition Of English Grammar Essay

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1. a) Difficulties in the acquisition of English MODALITY: 1. Some modals in Hebrew appear in the form of verb + infinitive (אני צריך ללמוד) . Thus, Hebrew speakers tend to overgeneralize English grammar rules of transitive verbs, and apply them to modals: * We must to leave – אנחנו מוכרחים לעזוב * We don 't can leave – אנחנו לא יכולים לעזוב 2. Modals in Hebrew contain lexical meanings, which are slightly different from English modals. The modal יכול is used in various situations. However, in English there is a great difference between the following translations of a sentence like: אני יכול לעזוב? Can I leave? (ability); Could I leave? (hesitation); May I leave? (permission). …show more content…

Nevertheless, knowing it may broaden the uses of the language. Difficulties in the acquisition of English VOCABULARY: 1. The first time I realized that colors were not exactly the same in different languages, happened twenty years ago, when my daughter was four years old. Just before I went on a trip to the U.S.A., she had asked me to buy her a שמלה ורודה. Growing up in a French-speaking home (where ורוד is rose), I entered an American shop asking for a rose dress. The saleswoman said that they didn 't have any. "What do you mean?" – I raised my voice – "There 's a whole rack just behind you!" She looked at where my finger was pointing, and then nodded her head: "Well, dat ain 't rose Ma 'am, dat 's pink." 2. Israelis love to use loanwords that are borrowed from English! Sometimes, we take it too far... For example, many of us use the initials SMS (Short Message Service) as is: אס.אמ.אס, instead of using the official Hebrew מִסְרון. Furthermore, we turn the noun into a verb (backformation): לסמס. Some of my students are very surprised to find out that the following is not a grammatically correct

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