Shall or will?

When I learned English thirty plus years ago in China, we were taught to say "I shall", "we shall", and "you will", "he/she/it will". That is, "shall" for the first-person verb and "will" for the second- and third-person. But coming to the US, I realize "shall" is rarely said. It is said if the speaker intends to emphasize his (her) point and in that case it's not limited to the first person. I just came across the renowned English language linguist David Crystal's The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language where (on p.224) he says "[m]odern usage does not observe this distinction. Indeed, it may never have existed in the language, but only in the minds of grammarians anxious to impose order on a 'messy' area of usage". Wasn't that enlightening, especially the latter statement! I don't know if the English textbooks in China still recommend that usage. It misled a generation of English learners back then. One coworker of mine who came to the US from southern China in the 1970s still says "I / we shall" today, though this is a fellow that couldn't care less about English, judging by his frequent spelling errors and strong accent in spite of his 40+ years living in the US. Fortunately, no other rules made up by the prescriptive grammarians came into the textbooks we were using, such as the no split infinitive rule (i.e. avoid saying "to fully understand"). Apparently the English educators in China did keep an eye on the actual usage of the language in English-speaking countries.

Phonetic symbols /i/ and /u/ in some dictionaries mislead English learners

Many English dictionaries published in China use /i/ and /u/ symbols to represent the sounds /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ respectively. As a result, some learners mistakenly think the vowel in, for example, bit is just a short version of that in beat.

复旦大学葛传椝主编的《新英汉词典》于1975年首次出版，在随后的拨乱反正、科学的春天和改革开放初期发挥了不可估量的作用。随后多次的修订版增删了许多词汇，并对词汇例句做了很大的改变。但词典在词汇注音上没有变化，它采用的注音方式不经意地对学习者造成了一些负面影响。

《词典》声明“用国际音标注音，采用宽式注音法。音标注在本词后，放在方括号内”。所谓宽（broad）、窄（narrow）式注音并无严格的定义，两者分别相当于说宽泛、严格的注音。[1]但《词典》至少有两个元音的标注是误导的，/i/和/u/。

在《词典》中，/i/是比如bit（“一点”；“比特”）的元音，而/i：/是比如beat（“打”）的元音。[2]从符号看，后者似乎只是前者发音的延长。但实际上，bit中元音的发音部位也与beat的元音不同，正确的音标符号是/ɪ/，口腔中比/i：/的发音部位略低、略靠后、嘴形略大，介于/i/与/e/之间。从维基“次闭前不圆唇元音”网页看，上海话“一”即发此音。（会上海话的网友可帮助验证！）

另外，《词典》标记比如book（“书”）的发音为/buk/，boot为/bu：t/，使学习者以为后者中的元音/u：/与前者元音/u/的唯一区别是音长。但事实上，book的正确发音是/bʊk/，其中/ʊ/比/u/发音部位略低、略靠前、嘴形略大。

如果你读book为/buk/，就会给人留下有外国口音的印象。如果读bit为/bit/，在缺乏上下文的情况下还是会被人以为在说beat。[3]只有借助上下文听者才能听懂你说的是bit，但会感觉你有口音。

用/i/代替/ɪ/、/u/代替/ʊ/注音似乎是许多在中国出版的英语词典的惯例。由于这种惯例可能影响学习者对/ɪ/和/ʊ/发音的掌握，词典编撰者有必要纠正。

注：
[1]注意，所谓宽、窄这种分法并不对应音素、语音转录（phonemic / phonetic transcription）注音的区分，后者有严格的定义。
[2]国际音标中有专门的符号表示长元音，这里用冒号代替以便更好在网页中显示。另外这里用斜杠而不用方括弧，但斜杠在此并不代表音素转录。
[3]在英、美英语中，没有唯一通过音长以区别两个词的例子。但在澳洲英语中存在，如full和fool、pull和pool完全靠元音长短区分，见维基Australian English phonology条。