Literary analysis

    "A Language without limits" 

p.99

This text, taken from the "Toronto Star", talks us about the English variations that have been created by arabs, chinese, and Indian people, like the HInglish, the Chinglish and the Arabizi and how it is uniting and shaping the english of the future. The text also express that this variations are a good thing and are very normal, because for example in post colonial countries people are  trying to reclaim english in their own way and variations. For this the author use a positive tone, meaning that the author is likely in favour of all this variations of the english language, therefore trying to inform people about this remarkable changes in English as it say here: "It's not a lesser english, it's one type of world english." 




 It should be considered that this variations are cause mainly by inmigrants on countries like Canada, and the author give us example about this, of two persons but the most interesting one is the arabic girl Zina Alobaydi, because she makes us see how language is affected by the cultural context, because for example to talk about dating, she need to speak in english, because it is a tabuu subject  in the Arabic world so she can`t express herself well when talking in Arabic about that subject , although all these variations are being used everyday by more people and it will be an important part of English in the future, as stated here:"Peering into the future, Helms-Park says written english  will remain stable but  we will see a "melting pot of Englishes" in Canada rather than pockets of  HInglish and Chinglish."


The Author makes this non fiction text to inform us about something objective that is actually happening using a mix of formal English and some examples of the slang variations from this cultures and inmigrants, like for example: "Dim ah lei" (How are you?) or " "Ahlain Keefak" (Hi, How are you?). From all these facts we can think that the target audience are English speakers in Canada, specially in Toronto. 


This a really impressive video about HInglish, it is also a very clever idea in my opinion, hope you enjoy:

WEEK 16 SUMMARY

This week was my fiirst week in school after the New Zealand trip and It was a very intense week, although it wasn`t to difficult to get ussed again to the school, at least for me.

In english classes we saw a lot of videos and continue with the subject, we look at many things like black english (ebonics), social media and social network, politically correct language, etc...

Politically correct Language:

Is a term that refers to how language should be use to minimize any tipe of offense to the one that is listening, like  oofending the person talking about sexual gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts, etc... 

I want to share the next video i found about a ver hilarious comedian that talks about some aspect about politically correct language we saw, but on a more hilarious way; hope you enjoy the video:

Ebonics, Black english:


We also take a look at a very interesting english variation, called ebonics. I want to share with you this video about ebonics and a experiment made by a school, hope you enjoy:

Language and communities:

Communities are created by people to produce knowledge, authority, and language. Communities create variations of languages by using slang and colloquialisms. When you are part of a community, you get used to speak in a certain way, like for example as a chilean person, I speak spanish but in a different way than an argentinean person for example, this is what can be call the accent.

Now, we look more at the internet communities, the social media, networks, etc...

Online communities are groups of people with common interests who use the Internet (web sites, email, instant messaging, etc.) to communicate, work together and purse their interests over time.  

Social media is a way to transmit any information you want to share with a broad audience. It create opportunities because it`s easier to  be recognise for good things. Social network is an act of engagement,, groups of people with common interest; also for example in facebook, when you share a video, you are showing  social media. 

NEW ZEALAND TRIP

(Week 13,14 and 15)

Last year I was chosen along with 9 friends to go to the Scots College in New Zealand for three weeks. Last week I returned from my trip and I want to share with you our trip and the beautiful country that New Zealand is.

The flight was pretty long but we still got some good time and rest, we get very early to acukland were we met Ron, our guide in the city and we do a really nice tour around the city as we look to the bay, went up a hill to have a wonderfull view of Auckland and even he show us his house! (seriously), After the city tour we have some fish and chips and we spent the rest of the afternoon in the center near the huge Sky tower. I was really impresed about two things, everyone was doing sports there and also there were not big differences between economical groups in the city.

The next day we flight to Wellington and get picked up by our hosting families. In my case my family was from England. They were really nice to me and they always answer my dudes about everything so everything was very good.The only problem was how far away a live from the school and the city, about an hour! but apart from that everything was ok.

We didn`t have much classes because of the queen birthday and also because we visit a lot of places like Tepapa, that was an interactive museum about New Zealand, really fun, or the parliament of New zealnad, called the ``Bee Hive``. Apart from these visits, we also went for some recreative activities, like a really huge canopy, rock climbing and even paintball. When we have classes they were a little bit boring but still I pass a really good time in the school specially in the Tuck shop and the library computer lab. I have to remark they didn`t want us to have Spanish classes!

After the school we usually went to the center to spent the afternoon and buy some presents, altough it was small so after the 4th time we went there, we didn`t acutally know what to do...

It was a really wonderfull trip specially because we get to know mor about another culture and  practise our English a lot, specially with our families. I would definitely come back to New Zealand, because it was so clean, the public transport actually works and very well, overall all the people where really nice to us and most importantly we had tons of fun there.

 Summary week 12

Personally, this  week was very important for me because on thursday I started my incredible trip to new zealand, although before leaving we still do some job with a text about "Chicano English" where we put in practise all the skills we had been learning. It was a very interesting activity and I find the text very interesting. Finally Ms veronica Cordero and Sr Alfredo Calderon wish us good luck on our trip and my classmates, except for the new zealand ones, start preparing for the english week, from I have been told,  that was a very good and fun activity.

Summary week 11

This week was normal, and we make a lot of progress on the topic, because we looked at the different elements of a text that you should take into consideraton when analysing a text, like:

Theme:  Its an idea that goes thorught the text, like an umbrella, they coomonly ar words that express a feeling. Like: love, allienation, sadness,

Topic: The topic is the subject of the text,  

Main Idea: It is a brief summary of the text in no more than 2 lines

Author's purpose: It is important when doing a text analysis to take into consideration the intentions of the author. Ex: Inform, persuade, entertain.

Genre: Is a category of literary composition characterised by a particular, style, form or content. There are two main groups of genre in literature wich are Fiction and Non Fiction

Source

Target Audience: It is the public at who is aimed the text, and as consequence, it determines who is going to read the text. Ex: child stories, news, reports.

Register: The register is how the language in the text is  being used, it can be formal, informal,frozen, intimate, etc...

Tone: Its the writer's attitude toward the material and/or readers. The tone can be: serious, serene, depressed, ironic, angry, etc...

WEEK 10 SUMMARY

Language and Knowledge

This week we do lot of things, from normal work to a role play and more. During the week we studied some different types of jargon like:

Scientific Language :Are the words that are use by all types of scientist, also medics, engineers, etc... It include some very highly technical words and meaning so if you are not specialized in this area, it will be hard for you tu unsderstand

Legal Language: It is the language used by lawyers imainly. It must be precise and detailed, avoiding ambiguities.

Sports Language: It is composed by different words used in sports, commonly used to explain the training, plays, positions, etc.

Also to explain better this types of jargon we saw a really funny video, that appart from helping us understand, make us have a nice moment, here is a link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0ov89KPtDQ

Another nice activity we do to test if we understand all this types of jargon was a role play. It was a very funny and challenging activity because Ms Cordero gave us our topic and we need to quickly think and improvised our performance. In my case, along with Benjamin Ugarte and Fernando Nuñez, special participation of Martin Machiavello, we need the scientific language jargon because our play was about a dead body that just get to the lab and we need examine it, discover the COD and try to figure out with what weapon was committed the crime. It war very funny and I really enjoy the activity.

WEEK SUMMARY 9

On this week we continue with our assignments and get deeper in to our topic of language, but for me the most remarkable thing was that we saw a really impressive video about a person who could speak 11 languages! yes, 11 languages...

I find that he was really impressive and so I do some research about polyglots to understand better them.

Polyglotism is the ability to speak several languages with a high degree of proficiency.There are several theories as to why some people learn many languages with relative ease, while others struggle learning even one foreign language. One theory is that a spike in testosterone levels while in the uterus can increase brain asymmetry. Recent studies have discover that the part of the brain responsible for language is differently organized in polyglots. 

Also as part of the activities in class we answer some questions about his video wich are as follows:

1. How many languages does Alex speak?

He speaks 11 languages, from English to Hebrew

2. Does context help in the process of acquiring a new language?

Of course. The context gives the culture, and things are really different between each culture as we have already study

3. Are there any languages that have similiar pronunciation?

Yes. I think that Spanish, Italian and French are quite similar as they all come from latin.

4. Which of the languages spoken by Alex seem more colloquial?

 I can't understand the languages he speaks besides Spanish or English, So I can't really appreciate that aspect. Although I think he speak very well english and spanish and in a very correct way, but as I have already say I can`t distinguish colloquial or popular language when he talks.

5. Is class a more important factor in language variation than geography?

No. The geography and the  context of each language is different so they are the most important factors in how is it speaked a certain language.

4. Do you think, the ability of learning a language is innate or learned?

For some people is easier to acquire language than others who really effort to learn just one more, But I think that actually language is partially innate and learned,because we have the ability to speak naturally, but to make this effective and socially correct we need to learn how to speak properly a language

5. According to you, are some languages more or less difficult  to learn than others? Talk about your own experience.

There are some languages more difficult than others, Specially Asian languages as they are completely different to ours. I think that for us the easier languages to learn should be english and maybe italian or french. Personally I will try to learn one of thse two languages in the future.

JARGON, SLANG AND ARGOT

Although it can be confusing to distinguish between jargon, argot and slang actually they are quite different from each other as I will explain now:

Jargon:

Jargon is the  terminology  used by persons from a specific activity, profession, group, or event. like for example the voabulary used by medics or lawyers; also words like RAM or GB wich are abbreviations in this case used by people who works with computers.

Argot:

An Argot  is a secret language used by various groups to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, hobby, job, sport, etc. Basicly Argots are mainly versions of other languages with a part of its vocabulary replaced by words unknown to the larger public.

Slang:

Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. For example a conversation between two friend has slang, but for example it is not well seen when someone use slang in business or work.