Chile、地震強度《蕭愷一 Daily English》(1/3/10)

[dream1118]

can we say more than 700 people were known to be dead?

[TimHowardII]

仲有：Richter 係讀 RICK-ter，唔係 RICH-ter。

[gmaydowdow]

very well explained, thank you!

[kentlhy]

有D唔一樣.

were known to have died - 據報有700人死亡

have died - 有700人死亡

because no one knows the exact number of death, therefore they use 'were known to have died.

關於 to 後唔轉form. it is just the verb right after 'to' 唔轉form. the verb following up can have any tense.

'have died' means 死左

hope this helps.

[siu82english]

@kentlhy thanks. i have nothing to add.

[kentlhy]

erm to be more accurate, 'were known to have died' is talking about '已知' 死亡人數

[siu82english]

@kentlhy you're absolutely right. that's a much more accurate translation.

[yunfanlai]

Chile的讀音我一直很奇怪。西班牙語讀音['tsile] or [ʼtʃile]的第二個元音是e，英語借詞的讀音本應該是[e­ɪ]，所以美國讀音是符合英語借詞習慣的。café. [kafe] in french, [kʰæʼfeɪ] in english。覺得可能是因為第二個元音是輕讀，所以[eɪ]­弱化為[i]，如標准英文Monday的ay部分也讀[i]一樣­。可我暫時找不到借詞輕讀音節也讀[eɪ]的，siu sir你能找到嗎？如果有，規律是什麼呢？

[siu82english]

@yunfanlai hmm... how about the british pronunciation of "buffet", "cafe", and "entree"? the brits usually stress the first syllable in these words.

[yunfanlai]

Looks like loan words pronunciations are different according to the original language. On the one hand, Spanish loan words such as Chile and machete received an [i] for the unstressed vowel, and José with an [ei] because it is stressed; on the other, french loan words seem to have different layers. Words from middle french seem to get an [i] "recipe". those from modern french have [ei] such as buffet, cafe... (due to the lack of examples, this is just a hypothesis.)

[siu82english]

@yunfanlai this is a very interesting observation, and one that deserves some looking into.

[wongpaksum]

sorry, 有個好簡單的問題，were known to have died，呢度係用了to-inv. 嗎？咁為何用have died？因為好少用我唔明係點用法，因為好common 就只識to 後唔轉form.

[winniethemcfly]

700 people were known to have died, can i write , 700 ppl have died or have been killed?