reflection...

In this class I learned a lot about other cultures, by searching about them. In the class we are required to search a lot about the source of the languages and the idioms, which makes me know which the roots of the languages are, and how are they related.

If I know what I’m talking about if I’m a businessman in Australia for example, I could have better relationships with my clients, because they will understand me better.

I would like to have more active activities in class, like exploring or searching for videos for examples of the accents of the language or getting out of the classroom.

Comparative commentary between "the soldier" and "colonization in reverse"

The difficulties that the European country went by in the First World War and the colonization of land in America are seen still today, like the lack of male people, because most of them died in the war or economic instability that is seen today.  Both of the poems relate to events that happened in the world, but in really different times.

“The soldier” involves the concern of the British people because of the world war. The poem tells about a soldier who is really patriotic and dedicates his last words to his motherland, England, and says that his actions will be forever remembered by the future generations. It’s important to note that the author died a year after he made this poem, probably because of the war, which makes it more ironic.

 Jamaica gained his independence in 1962, now being a protectorate of the British colonies, supposedly not being under the control of Britain. The poem tries to portrait the situation of the Africans and Jamaicans that immigrated to the British colonies, and how they were trying to strive for better lives in there. The author talks about a “colonization in reverse” which might mean that Jamaicans are now conquering Great Britain. This is just as an aspirational thought, because that never really happened, and will never happen, for example, Mexico have not conquered Texas just because a lot of Mexican immigrants live there.

“The soldier” poem talks with a little but of rhythm accompanied with a rhetorical way of saying the things, for example He says things that relates to loving someone, but he’s talking all about England instead of a woman. He believes so much in England that he thinks that there is an “English heaven”. In the “colonization in reverse” it talks all about rhetorical elements, for example the thoughts of the author that Jamaica would get bigger and more powerful than the British colonies, only just because they achieved their independence. This also talks about ignorance, because she would not probably know the measurement of the situation in what she’s in.

The tone used in “colonization in reverse” is like the one which might me be used locally with friends or neighbors, which is a pretty strange way of talking, more like another language, like the Black English. In “the soldier” the language is clear enough to understand the philosophical elements and know what the author is saying. The Great Britain idioms didn’t seem to vary a lot from the ones used in the United States in that time, but now we can see the difference in words like gentleness, we now use kindness.

The poems talk about weird things that could be interpreted as other things such as salvation in this part of the “colonization in reverse” poem:

 “Jane says de dole is not too bad
Because dey payin she
Two pounds a week fe seek a job
dat suit her dignity.”

In this situation, the author believes that with a work, the people can be saved with all the suffering that they have been going though, and of course working is not all the things needed to succeed.  We also can say that in that time, everyone in Jamaica was still ignorant, as we can see in the writing and the pronunciation of things, also in the grammar it can be noted that.

In the situation in “the solider” it can be interpreted that the author sees himself in the battlefield, because he is involved directly in the war. Here’s an example to show it:

“If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is forever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;”

In conclusion, I say that both of the texts were made on inspirational times, which lead to different opinions and thoughts about their own situation, but they differ enormously in the way that hey interpret and say the things; I one side, the author of “the soldier” believes entirely that the British colonies are the most powerful country in the world, which is a fact, but the author of “colonization in reverse” relies entirely in things that she wants to happen in the future, and she believes that will really happen.

Word count: 715

The History of the English Language by Sammy Stein

The main facts about the article are only about the source of the words and some history of the source of the language, but what it interested me was the facts of the 1066 date and the “f” word source, so I put a little research I made on here.

The author is not a biased one and he makes educated guess about the English language: “What makes English unique is that , of course, over time the words have changed and become distinctly 'English' in their usage and meaning so it is only linguists who give thought to the root of commonly spoken words - garden coming from jardin (French),for example.” He states the point that, English is a mixture of many languages that are speak or were spoken.

The main purpose of the article is to show the roots of the English in deep and the source of some words. It also includes some facts of daily life, that help to understand how much people might speak English and why do they speak it.

This fact caught my attention so I included a little story about it and personal experiences:

“After 1066 French was spoken in parliament and other offices and became widely used (or an Anglicized variant) because the rulers were from the French court.”

It might be odd, but I remember from the TV program “Drake & Josh” when Drake was in an academic competency and Josh was telling him the answers with an auricular, one of the questions was that what important event happened in 1066, so I put on a little research on that year, and I found out that many things happened to the territory of England (The king died, invasions, etc.) That might have influenced in the establishment of the language in England and in the rest of the world.

He talks mostly about the origin of words and the countries who apported them, so I think that this article has very complete information, I would say that he didn’t omitted anything.

I heard stories of where the “f” word came from. It was supposed to come from a permission that you had to ask to the king of England to have sex. The permission had to be pasted outside the room in which you would perform the action and it said in big letters “FORNICATING UNDER CONSENT OF THE KING”. If you take the first letters of each word you can clearly note that the word is formed from there, but in the article says that it’s of Latin origin, so I got interested in that because I like people who think different of the rest of the persons.

In conclusion, this is the article that I liked the most, so I put a lot of effort into it, and decided to the same with the others, but I’m proud of this one, hope you like this last case.

The History of the English Language by Risa

This article has clear data, and facts about what happened with English trough time and most important, examples of it. The creation, growth and change of the English language are all showed in this article with an ordered structure. Also the variation of important words that were used before and that are used now a days, and how they changed trough time and evolution of the language.

“Only dead languages do not change; English has changed, but the original core is still there. The core has acted as an anchor for the language across time and space. You still sing today; we sang in the past as we have sung before.” This shows perfectly the author opinion, but it’s based on facts and not in thoughts of the author. This can help a little bit more to understand what happened to the English language than the first article.

This article goes thought a complete history of the English language in a short, but complete way. It shows how words changed and where used thought the time. The variety also changed, but some words disappeared naturally to give balance to the language.

The author included some specific phrases that cleared a lot of doubts to me: “More difficult to our understanding of the language of the past than the loss of "thou" is the fact that meanings shift, too. When we say "we should go," we mean we have a choice; in Old English "should" meant there was no choice, "we must go." This helped me understand that not only words changed, the meanings of them did too with the past of time. It might not have a lot of importance, but it’s good to know where are you saying and the correct form of doing it.

I think that she focused a lot on this article to be the most complete and shorter as possible, so I don’t have any complain about the structure. The examples that are included of how words changed are also a plus in this article, because it helps to understand better the story of the change of language.

In conclusion, I totally agree with the author to say all the truth about the English language. She’s not biased about the difficulty of it and she includes specific facts about the changes that occurred, so I must say that I couldn’t find any flaws in her article.

The History of the English Language by Lucy Rucker

The article seems to be a little confusing with all the information that is given, so I had to read it 2 times to understand it better. This article is all about the history of English. The article point is to teach how English progressing was thought the time and how it had been changing in different regions. Also it shows its roots in the European continent and how it was adopted as a universal language until today. The author also includes her opinions in the entire article. She thinks that it’s frustrating that in different parts where English is spoken, there are different languages, but the language has to advance and form new words and changes others. She also says that the English language is the most challenging to learn which might be not true, because other languages are wider and use uncommon characters such as Japanese.  The author intentions are to teach how the English language is hard in some situations and what problems might result when the people speak English in different forms. Also it teaches us some story of the English language and how it has been adopted by the European and American countries. The author gives us some hints to understand totally the text like: “Old English itself was a reflection from the Anglo-Norman-French” This says that English is a combination of different languages and have been changing over time.

“But no matter, how Modern English has developed, it is still found rather difficult to learn by others”. English will always be difficult, but it may vary with the region and the learning capacity of the people that want to learn it totally. It also depends of the type of education that the person received in his childhood and in his adulthood.

I think that the author omitted some things in the article like: “Where is more difficult to learn English? In which countries is easier to learn English? Why some people have more capacity to learn English than others?”

The author is a little biased with his article, I disagree with him in the part that English is one of the hardest languages to learn, because they are some more even more complicated than English hand compared to them the English would be nothing.

In conclusion, I think that this article was made only to make a superficial reflection of the English language, and it doesn’t shows how hard is to learn it.

What should we learn, English as a lingua franca or "formal" English?

I think that the people must learn English as a lingua franca, because it would be easier for all of the people that speak english to communicate with other persons, because the speaking wouldn't be so formal and not so difficul to express for the persons who are not native speakers.

English is considered as one of the most easy and basic languages in the world, and if we simplify it even more it would be very helpful for a lot of people like businessman that need to arrange things with persons that speak a totally different language.

The bad thing is that people might only learn the basic of English, and they might skip important aspects of the language that could be helpful to learn.