Slang according to Julie Coleman

The life of Slang is a book written by Julie Coleman. I discovered it while I was researching for my essay and I found it very interesting. (You can find some online extracts in pdf)

In her book Julie Coleman speaks about the creation of Slang in American and British english. She says something very interesting, that slang language is not necessarily vulgar. And I think this is true, this is just the creation of new words, usually created by young people.

In my opinion this is just the expression of people, creating new words when those that exist are not enough. This can also be the creation of words by a group of people to express a situation or a feeling between them that becomes popular and used by many people.

Slang is in a constant evolution, words appear and disappear of languages, this is just the evolution of minds and people.

But not all slang expressions disappear out of the language after they’ve served their purpose, or as the generation who used them reaches adulthood.

In fact, the expression can become so absorbed into the English language that it’s no longer slang, but a mainstream expression. For example, the phrase “hung out,” or “hang out.” that was at first used as slang and is now a part of english language.

Slang is “street,” as in ordinary, common expression to describe current life and events. It keeps the language alive. It changes frequently, so it is difficult to find an up-to-date slang dictionary, however some exist ! Consulting them is very interesting, you can notice that some « slang words » exist and you didn’t even know it ! It’s incredible how fast a language can evolve.

http://www.mantex.co.uk/2012/03/09/the-life-of-slang/

Cheyenne Bonnet

The dangers of language!

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram – The interview you never knew you had.

With technology having developed to what it is today, young people are growing up differently to how they did 50 years ago. Footballs have been swapped for video games, playgrounds for computers. If you have a complaint/moan/worry, you post it online and within seconds everyone can see it. This has changed the way we speak, write, communicate, buy, sell, play, watch, live, procrastinate…

It is around this time of the year we realise just how much we use our technology and language together. A day spent in the library doesn’t mean a day spent doing revision. It means a day spent texting, tweeting, instagramming with the occasional lecture slide being looked at in between.

http://www.englishtown.com/blog/has-social-media-changed-the-way-we-speak-and-write-english/

This article shows just some of the ways the internet has affected the way we speak, with the creation of new words like blogs, use of acronyms like lol  as well as new meanings given to pre-existing words like troll (someone who creates conflict online by starting arguments or upsetting people).

Apart from the dangers technology poses to our revision. It also poses a problem by the way we speak online. When sitting behind a screen people feel they can say things they never would face to face. They feel empowered, like when you’ve had a few beers and think you’re superman. Trolling is a daily thing with people being humiliated and abused for the most innocent of things. The introduction of the like and retweet has aided this hugely. But is it all fun and games?

Modern technology is shaping what we speak about and how we say it. People can be easily influenced by other people or the media who have said things said online. However you mustn’t fall into the trap and post hateful things online. Why? Because language and what people have said can’t be forgotten online. The old adage ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ no longer applies.  And because our language is never forgotten online, what we say when we’re young can affect us when we are old. Companies often search our Facebook, twitter and instagram accounts before hiring us to check we’re not closet racists, into any weird and disreputable stuff and to see what they have been saying online.

Chris Hall

Psycholinguistics: Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

“Language sets us apart”, other animals communicate but they have nothing on the intricate grammar of human languages, how is it we are able to learn to speak in language so easily? Young children become adept in a new language very quickly, since the dawn of philosophy thinkers have argued whether or not we have innate ideas. Plato for example believed we were born already possessing some instinctive knowledge, whereas empiricists such as John Locke argued the mind begins like a blank slate, which over time absorbs different skills and information.

Chomsky’s Hypothesis

In 1960 Noam Chomsky demonstrated that children learning to speak just don’t have enough information to form complex grammatical manoeuvres that allow them to generate new and unlimited sentences, however they do so with ease, therefore something else must be happening. Chomsky’s theory was that there are inborn structures in our brain, what he called a “Language Acquisition Device” (LAD), which provides us a natural disposition to organise the languages which we hear in various grammatical methods, without which, we would be unable to get started as language learners. If Chomsky’s proposal is correct, language structure is hardwired as a form of universal grammar, our “slates” have already been written on before we are even born. The hypothesis asserts that the brain is like every other system in the biological world, in that it is highly differentiated into sub-systems and structure and one of these has a special design for acquiring language.

Therefore the ability to use spoken language is in our genetic makeup, coded in the DNA, just like it’s in our DNA to have two arms, it’s in our DNA to be innately able to speak. For example we are designed to walk, the idea that we have to be in an environment of walking people to be able to walk is false whereas the idea we are designed to walk is certain, the same applies to the acquisition of language. Chomsky explains, “Nobody’s taught language, you can’t prevent a child from learning it, it has very much the properties of normal physical growth”. Furthermore Chomsky highlights that a child could not acquire a language through imitation only, as the language they are exposed to is often highly irregular and often ungrammatical. Some arguments that support Chomsky’s LAD hypothesis are as follows…

• Children learning to speak don’t make grammatical errors such as getting their subjects, verbs and objects in the wrong order.

• Children often make grammatical mistakes such as “I sawed” instead of “I saw”, which could not have been learnt passively.
• If an adult intentionally said a grammatically incorrect sentence, the child would recognize it.

 

 Siôn Davies

Polyglot Twins

It is well known that learning even one language can be tricky and is a real challenge for us all. Have you ever thought about not just learning two or three languages fluently?… But nine?!
A man called Matthew Youlden from Manchester, England, can speak 9 languages and is known as the ‘language chameleon’. Matthew can also understand a dozen more. His twin brother Michael can speak 12 languages which include English, Irish, French, Spanish, Catalanish, German, Hebrew, Portuguese, Galician, Dutch, Afrikaans, Italian and is currently working on his 13th language, Serbo-Croatian. Matthew and Michael are polyglots. This is when a person can speak six languages or more.
Matthew studied translation and interpretation. He speaks with a ‘native’ accent in each of the languages that he has learnt. He knows how to speak Irish, German, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Hebrew, Italian and French as well as, obviously, English. Currently he is working on learning an extra six, being, Afrikaans, Dutch, Ukrainian, Galician, Serbian and Croatian.
Click on the babble link below to view his video speaking the different languages and giving tips. Read the article on lifestyle.iafrica.com, as this shows how you should approach learning a language.
Here are a few hints that Michael and Matthew have given:
‘ “Dive right in,” advises Matthew. He believes one should approach language with a 360-degree approach, meaning you should try and use it in your everyday life and attempt to understand the culture and thinking behind it.
Finding a partner is also important as it encourages you to learn more and provides you with someone to practise.
“It is important to have a goal,” says Michael. You also need to figure out why you are studying the language in the first place. Are you planning on emigrating or do you simply want to challenge yourself? ‘.

These twins prove that is is definitely possible to learn many languages if you put your mind to it. Matthew says that you need…’persistence, enthusiasm and open-mindedness’. If you have these three attributes then there are no excuses!!!

The sky is your limit !

http://www.babbel.com/magazine/10-tips-from-an-expert
http://lifestyle.iafrica.com/psychology/981200.html

Why the extinction of languages is simply unavoidable

The world currently has roughly 6,000 languages. Some are spoken by the entire populations of multiple countries, whilst others are spoken by just one person. A report by UNESCO predicts that of the world’s 6,000 languages, half of them will be history by the year 2100. The process of language extinction is incredibly simple; when the last speaker of any language dies, the language goes with them.

When researching this topic earlier in the year, it was easy to understand what dictated which languages will survive and which will perish, and how it is almost impossible to stop this from happening. As with many other things in the world, economic success is what decides the popularity of languages. To me, as soon as I thought about it, this made perfect sense. To put it simply, the more economic power a country holds, the stronger the language. As human beings we would much rather do business with those whom we can understand, as we know that mistakes are less likely to be made. After thinking about it, it makes perfect sense, especially when a list of the most economically powerful countries is compared with a list of countries whose languages are most likely spoken.

In turn, this trend threatens a number of smaller, regional languages, like Cornish. This is because not speaking English would cause people living in Cornwall to be at a serious disadvantage. To be unable to speak English would cause them problems when finding a job and radically decrease the number of people that they could communicate. Unfortunately, as human beings, we are lazy and only do what best suits us, so many Cornish speakers simply do not bother to use the language as it has become somewhat obsolete.This means that the language simply isn’t passed on to future generations. Sadly, this is just one example of something which is killing thousands of languages across the globe.

James Dowds

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29037168

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/linguistic-tourism-could-help-save-britains-ancient-languages-9849237.html

Language planning and language survival

When studying Language extinction I found an interesting article by Rob Amery on Language planning and Revival, it had a specific focus on the revival of the Kaurna language (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14664200108668023). I’ve attached the link for people to read. He explores how the near extinct language from the Adelaide plains area of South Australia is being revived, and proposes his own new method; ‘The Formulaic Method’.

He has created his new method for revival due to the majority of current ones being only useful for languages where some speakers still exist. He states; ‘For Languages that are being revived on the basis of written historical materials in the absence of native speakers, an additional set of problems not considered in the language planning literature must be addressed.’

Amery compares with Kaurna with Hebrew which – though it was in the same position as Kaurna in terms of everyday speakers- has a head start, as it was seen as an ‘academic’ language similar to Latin and therefore had more modern terminology already established, and also extensive studies on the language.

He addresses the effect of Racism on language revival, for example the assumption that the language is just a series of grunts with no grammar or that there was on just indigenous language. Amery writes of the governments treatment of aboriginals in relation to their culture and language; ‘For instance, in Adelaide, following a brief ‘honeymoon’ period, Governor Grey forbade the missionaries to preach in the Kaurna language and forcibly relocated the children to the English-only Native School Establishment where they were housed in dormitories cut off from their family and kin. Five years later, these same children were relocated to Poonindie, far away from their ancestral lands. The now infamous ‘stolen generations’ policies removed thousands of Indigenous children from their families, thereby cutting them off from their languages and cultures. Even more insidious was the threat of having children removed. Many parents, grandparents and other kin refused to teach or even speak their languages in the presence of children, because if the children spoke the language, that was a sure sign that they were not assimilating and reason enough to remove them from the ‘negative’ influences of their parents.’

Kaurna has no sound recordings surviving and the majority of written documentation is notes from the Christian missionaries to the area. ‘All in all, between 3000 and 3500 words, a sketch grammar and hundreds of translated Kaurna sentences were recorded. Unfortunately, only a few short texts were ever recorded.’

His formulaic method focuses on the gradual introduction of Kaurna word into their English vocabulary. He writes, ‘Initially, minimal one-word utterances that can stand alone as questions, responses, commands, greetings, leave-takings and the like should predominate in the repertoire taught and used. Words which are short, easy to pronounce, easy to remember and, most importantly, carry a high functional load are introduced first.’ He then goes on to expand on how the use of self-contained words such as commands and swearwords are useful in the overall goal of reintroducing the language.

It’s an interesting method and it will be interesting to see if it is as effective as many others out there. Either way it is an important step in bringing people back in touch with their heritage, and will enable people forcefully removed from their culture to reconnect.

Lauren Greenaway

How Should We Talk To Children?

Should parents use motherese when speaking to their children and is it really necessary? Does it help the development of a language or not?

It’s completely natural for a mother to talk to her child with ‘babytalk’, or ‘motherese’, however many fathers don’t tend to change the way they talk, and will speak in the same tone to a child as they do to a friend or colleague. This is probably because it’s not very ‘manly’ or ‘cool’ to speak in a varied and high pitched voice, so ‘fatherese’ doesn’t really come naturally to them.

From a baby’s point of view, hearing a sing-song voice that varies in pitch and uses simple words is a lot more attractive and fun to listen to than a more serious, monotone voice that is saying longer sentences and using complicated words. So surely both parents should speak motherese to their child?

But maybe dads can be let off from not wanting to talk babytalk. It is now thought that the difference between the way each parent talks to their baby could be good for the child’s language development because whilst the mother talks in a more intimate way that is easier for the child to listen to, the adult-like way the father talks will get the child used to the outside world and get them more familiar with the grown-up way of speaking.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/dads-should-cut-out-the-baby-talk-to-improve-their-childs-language-skills-study-stays-10262127.html

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/54047/20150519/motherese-fatherese-why-dads-don-t-baby-talk.htm

A Linguistic Difference: The North-South Divide.

On starting university we all go through that same struggle, the trivial argument that commences as you first hear someone with a different accent saying ‘Laugh’ or ‘laff’, (as you might transcribe it).

Hours spent, repeating words to the uproar of your housemates as us southerners accidentally slip an erroneous ‘r’ into ‘bath’ or ‘grass’, not surprisingly however we’re not the only ones who’ve been through this ‘battle’ – and have come out the other side of the battle unscathed.

One factor used to determine this linguistic split is the comparison between short and long vowel sounds in words like ‘bath’, this can be called Bath broadening. Typically in the North, we hear the shortened /æ/ sound and in the south, the longer vowel sound /ɑ:/ for example bath would be pronounced like bat in northern speech and bath like art for a Southerner.

However which linguistic criminal is to blame? Certainly not the cheeky Americans who cruelly stole the U from words like honour, favourite and colour, not even after usurping the S from its safe position in realise, organise and criticise. Then who?

University is the perfect example of a mélange of different accents and pronunciations, the most noticeable being the ‘a’ sound, that has so long brought strife to us university students, but who truly speaks the correct English? It might be hard to ever determine, Southerners argue they are speaking the Queen’s English and Northerners claim to be speaking the language we all spoke 300 years ago, yet still the argument has never been settled. Well, some have suggested that it’s just a natural result of the evolution of language which is ever changing and ever growing like the organic system that it is, or maybe just maybe northern speech really is incorrect?

Language has changed continuously not just by accent, even to the extent that new words seem foreign to those in different parts of the country. Most interestingly is the evolution of the word ‘bap’, to those from the south, a ‘roll’ has been interpreted in many different ways as we traverse the country. Not only is it called a ‘barm cake’ by some, however in travelling further north to Newcastle I find myself surrounded by what seems like a new language, where you may come across a ‘Stottie Cake’. A What? You might ask, apparently it’s just a bread roll, never heard of anywhere South of London, yet here it is a ‘Stottie Cake’.

The north-south divide doesn’t refer solely to the difference in socio-economic or political factors, but also it can signify that there are different cultures and linguistic tendencies up and down the country. Like with any ‘dialect’, words arise as the result of communities using a new word, and this then stays within the area as a specific development of the language, evolving over time as the language grows.

With the huge history of Britain suggesting that only 150 years ago people started slipping an extra ‘r’ into conversations here and there, in an attempt to start a new trend and copy the aristocracy at the time, the now so-called PR accent. Perhaps much like the Spanish did as they copied the King’s lisp, we too now included a trend created by royalty. It seems that the language from the North might be the true English. Who’s to say?

Well, who do you think wins the battle of the accents?

If ever caught arguing over accents again, I’d suggest keeping calm and standing your ground even if proved wrong by someone who pronounces laugh as laff.

 

Maddie Anthony

Emoji – the “fastest growing language”

Nowadays we all use emojis when sending messages to each other. Not only do they make a text more interesting to read, there are so many different emojis that you can send a whole message only using emojis. Therefore, technically, emojis are classed as their own language. There are so many of these symbols that you can express any emotion you want. 80% of us regularly use emojis to communicate with each other. Andy Murray tweeted about his wedding day by only using emojis.

The useful thing about emojis is that it is a universal language. Whatever nationality you are, you can  understand what the little symbols mean.  So two people who speak different languages should be able to (just about) have an entire, simple conversation through emojis.

According to a study, emoji is the fastest growing language in the UK, and the majority of young people find it easier to convey emotions through emojis rather than with words. Also, more emojis have recently been created that are more racially diverse, and even more emojis will most probably be developed in the future!

http://home.bt.com/news/uk-news/emoji-fastest-growing-language-11363981955136

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/emojis-a-non-sign-language-that-functions-without-meaning/article24335211/

Emoji is the fastest growing ‘language’ in the UK

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32793732/uks-fastest-growing-language-is-emoji

A workout for your brain

Exercising you body is just as important as exercising your mind! The two done together, and you will turn yourself into a lethal weapon! We all know how to keep physically fit. We go to the gym and play sports to stay fit and healthy, but how can we truly exercise the mind? Learn a language! Learning a language doesn’t just allow you to communicate with other nationalities, but actually allows you to gain useful life skills! Acquiring a new language after infancy stimulates new neural growth and connections among neurons. Learning a second language later on does in fact modify the structure of the brain, specifically the brain’s inferior frontal cortex.
It has been suggested that bilingual speakers are better than monolinguals at switching between two tasks or dealing with situations that require conflict management. This is because distinguishing constantly between two languages strengthen the attention and inhibition processes in the brain. It has also been suggested that bilinguals can focus more easily on two tasks at once and they think more analytically. As bilingual people need to switch between two languages, it enables them to constantly train their brain. This is kind of exercise is not possible for people who only speak one language.

– ‘Parts of their brain devoted to memory, reasoning and planning are larger than those of monolinguals’.

If you are lacking motivation for the gym, then keep up your language learning!!!

https://www.mcgill.ca/channels/news/learning-new-language-alters-brain-development-230131
http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/19-11-2012/122852-foreign_languages-0/