My Blog

Here is a short overview or reflection on my blogs!

 Blog #8: A brief history of plural words What is a plural word? A plural word refers to more than one person, thing, place, or idea which are typically made plural through adding a suffix -s or -es at the end such as hat to hats or half to halves. There are also irregular plural words that take up unique forms like woman to women or goose to geese even groups have plural nouns like one team to two teams. [singular] boss [singular possessive] boss’s [plural] bosses [plural possessive] bosses’ Why don't we say Beek instead of Books? English and German were the same hundreds of years ago but overtime became vastly different but this means early English had similarities to German such as giving inanimate objects gender. A fork, gafol was a woman and a spoon, laefel was a man. There were countless of irregular plurals in old English such as a herd of goats is called a Gat but there was also other things at the end other than -s, there was also -ru like breadru,. Vikings were the reason

 Blog #9: A Birth of A Nickname Ned Cullen: Have you ever wondered why someone named Edward is nicknamed Ned? There are multiple names that have this such as Nellie for Ellen which people found odd as you don’t just add an N in a Nickname. John McWhorter says these nicknames can be traced back to a mistake! How did it happen? Nickname in old English was Ekename which meant also or other but when people would say “An Ekename” it sounded like “A Nekename” overtime it stayed as Nekename. Same thing happened with other words in old English such “Cut AN otch into Wood” overtime it became “a Notch” because in old English what was heard typically became how it was said overtime where as in modern English everything has an established form. English used to be more like German so as a result from saying “Meen Ed” and once again over time it became “My Ned”.      I was very surprised by the outcome of this Ted-Ed because frankly my nickname is Hope but my real name is Lizbeth, there really is no

  Blog #7: Black English (AAVE) What is AAVE? African American Vernacular English, otherwise known as Black English by Sociolinguistics or Ebonics outside the academic world, is a language spoken by a large number of African Americans in the United States. AAVE is a variation of standard form of English that was determined by its own set of grammar conventions although there is a negative connotation surrounding AAVE, even the term 'Ebonics' which a blend word of 'Ebony' and 'Phonics' although it was coined by group of black scholars in 1973 later came to grow a negative connotation to the point it was viewed as a slur to some. "Black English is what happened when African Slaves, who are adults, learned English very quickly" Says John McWhorter. McWhorter refers to the aspects of Black English was through simplified forms of Standard English. AAVE is often thought of 'Bad English' but it is not! It is a dialect of English, in the way that Briti

 Blog #6 Sushi What is the Japanese word for sushi? What is word and language? Saying Sushi to an English speaking person would put the image of sushi in their mind but it is a borrowed word from Japanese because it served a purpose. Grouping Japanese and English together although both of them are different and when pictured you see their written in two completely different manners. A word being apart of a language has to serve a purpose when a language doesn't have a word for something typically a word is borrowed from a Language that does and how long a word is used in a language affects how it is viewed and often seen as a native word. Word Soup:     Viewing words like carrots, parsley, and meat in soup, it is our favorite soup, good soup, but people begin to change the soup by adding other things but over time you get used to it and like it. It still our soup but it is different. Words are from all over the place some are new and some are old , some are japanese and some are na

 Blog #5: How Korea crafted a better alphabet Korean (Hangul) vs Chinese: Chinese Logographs and sound-meaning combination units one after another but Korean as elegant complex words with different pieces and endings which makes it difficult to fit chinese grammar into korean grammar.  Hangul was created by the fourth king ‘Sejong the Great’ of the Joseon Dynasty. He had his scholars 'Hall of Worthies' create in 1444  “The Proper sounds for the Education of the People.” King Sejong explained the main need for the new script saying common folk or peasants did not have time to learn how to use Chinese characters Korean Language: Hangul is a featural alphabet where every syllable gets separated into its own block. The syllables consonants and vowels are written side by side within the block and each block would be shaped according to the features. Consonants (DATSORI) are based on shapes of the vocal organs ㄱ(g),ㅋ (k),ㄴ(n),ㅅ(s), ㅇ(ng), ㅁ(m),  ㅍ(p), ㅂ  (b) The final three are examp

 Blog #4: Mysteries of Vernacular Vernacular meaning is Language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people country or region it is not the same as language or vocabulary as it is shaped by word choice, grammar, punctuation, and turns of phrase making it more widely applicable. An example would be how English is the common language in many countries such as USA, UK, New Zealand, and Australia but the way it used varies throughout them and Vernacular can also be specific to cultures. It is an informal way of language used particularly in casual settings and not commonly used in professional settings or legal settings. The modern word ODD has multiple meanings that could be traced to the Indo-European root UZDHO which means pointing upwards influenced by vertical objects which later was modified by Old Norse speakers into a new word ODDI which meant the simplest pointed object something that had two paired angles and a third that stood alone overtime ODDI began to refer to something wasn&

 Blog #3: Intro to Linguistics What is Linguistics? Linguistics is the scientific study of language and its structure. Linguistics looks at all the parts of language from how they're made  processed and decoded. Philology was what the term used before as linguistic was a term used for students who studied it but overtime it became its known name. Linguistics apply scientific method to speech sounds, gestures, grammatical structures, and meaning across the world's thousands of languages through observations, testing and developing theories. Subfields of Linguistics: Phonetics: The study of speech sounds are produced by organs and perceived Phonology: The study of sound patterns and changes Morphology: The study of word structure Syntax: The study of sentence structure Semantics: The study of linguistic meaning Pragmatics : The study of how language is used in context History of Linguistics: Language changes overtime, there many different eras to language through history an exa

 Blog #2: Does speaking language mean peace?   What is Language:      Choosing this podcast, I wanted to get an understanding of what 'Language' was beforehand. Language is universal cognitive or social human phenomenon of a system of human communication using arbitrary signs such voice sounds, hand gestures or written symbols with compromised set of rules to send and receive messages used by a community examples would be English, ASL, French, or Spanish. Listening to  Lingthusiasm:      Conversation if everyone could speak the same language would there be world peace and the flaws in that theory. 'Esperanto' is a conlang that was constructed to be a neutral language but it actually is not very neutral as it takes from a European language and it is not easy to learn if you are not apart of that particular group; Esperanto has a Romance look as it uses consonant vowel sequences but also slavic and germanic words are used as well. An example given was the word for Men 

Blog #1:  Do you speak mexican? Sociolinguistics:        Upon finishing up week one it appears through the “scientific study of language” we look at the usage of words and through the subcategories it provides a system of communication.       The thing that became a curiosity to me was how this transferred through other languages and how culture impacts the way language evolves and wanted to know more over “sociolinguistics”. Understanding varied cultures seems to be a critical aspect about linguistics and its ability to develop open-mindedness in students. Deciding to dive into this topic I looked towards ‘Langfocus’ who spoke about the variety of Spanish spoken in Mexico in comparison to European Spanish.      I was born here in the valley and grew up bilingual therefore before viewing this video I could tell you from experience that there are certain semantics that interchange throughout the Spanish speaking world the most debated aspect is the word “straw” and how you call it chang