Tuesday, 5 January 2010

Words Right Order The In Put The...

Word order is VERY important in English!! VERY, VERY important!!!

A sentence is made of words and we have to know how the words fit together to understand the meaning. We need to know what the subject is and the object; what the verb is, etc.

In some languages the words have different endings which show us what is what. Latin for example:

Canis mordet hominem - the dog bites the man

The word order is not important because we know from the ending that canis is the subject and hominem is the object. So:

Hominem mordet canis also means the dog bites the man and so does:

Canis hominem mordet or mordet hominem canis etc etc...

In English WE CAN'T DO THAT!!!!

All those different Latin sentences up there can ONLY be translated as:

The dog bites the man

If we change the order the sentence is either wrong or has a different meaning:

Bites the dog the man - is wrong and;

The man bites the dog - is the opposite meaning!

In English the subject comes first; "the dog"

then the verb; "bites"

then the object; "the man"

To help remember the order in English we often say SVOPT.

This means: subject S, verb V, objetc O, place P and time T.

The dog (S) bites (V) the man (O) in the street (P) at 10 o'clock (T).

or

I (S) read (V) English is Easy (O) on my PC (P) every day (T).

How does your language show the differences between subjects, verbs and objects?

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