23 jun 2012

politically correct language

We were told to answer this question:
Language changes? All people who speaks English speaks with same words, accent, intonation? Do you have the same 'key words' or 'codes' that a person from the South or North of Chile?

Langage is different everywhere. Actually, one person changes its language (the register) along the day, as he interact with other people.
The register depends a lot on the class. A homeless person won't speak the same way as a president making a campaign.

And the Slang used in every place also varies. In USA, saying "Owned" is a slag that refers to someone that that ridiculizes you. Like if in a 50 meter race, one guy beats the other one for 5 seconds, the other guy was "owned" by the first one. But that slang is not used everywhere, so thats an example.
http://elgusanocojo.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/pwned_ninyo.jpg?w=510&h=345

Reading comprehention.

There are three important things that you can identify in a text. Three things are:


  • Theme; the genereal idea that the text is about. Love, sadness surprise, etc.
  • Topic; particular idea of the text. "Sadness of Tom, for losing his father".
  • Main idea; is the  the message that the author want´s to give to the audience.

Source, audience, purpose, genre, tone, register, etc. Are other types of things you can find.

new zealand exchange





Ten of us, went to scot's college in new zealand (loosing our holidays :( ) to share with a different reality, know new people, and share experiences.
It was a nice experience that i would like to do again.

While I was there, in our school they were having the "british week", having fun and making different activities.

week 9: language in cultural context

http://s3.amazonaws.com/readers/2011/02/10/languages_1.jpg
*the color of the letter changed on its own and I dont know how to revert it. Thats why this post looks so bad, sorry*

This week, we discovered that language is directly connected to a lot of things, in fact, it has a lot of facts that could make it change:

-Changes with time and space

-Language, culture and context determine the ways in which meaning is constructed in texts

-Meaning comes from complex interactions between text (or speech, or image), audience, and purpose


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We also saw a video in in wich we had to answer some questions:

1) How many languages does Alex speak?
2) Does context help in the process of acquiring a new language?
3) Are there any languages that have similar pronunciation?
4) Which of the languages spoken by Alex seem more colloquial?
5) Is class a more important factor in language variation than geography?
6) Do you think, the ability of learning a language is innate or learned?
7) According to you, are some languages more or less difficult  to learn than others? Talk about your own experience.
 
ANSWERS: 

1) He speaks eleven (11) languages.
 
2) Yes it does. If everybody surrounding you speaks that language you'll learn ir way faster.
 
3) Maybe italian will be kind of similar but i don't really think so. Greek has a pretty similar pronunciation tough.

4) I dont really know, i just know english and spanish, but i would say spanish.
 
5) Both are. One (geography) will say "this is the language you will speak", and class sais "this is how you are going to use it".
 
6) Humans need to communicate somehow, and they found that talking is the way, but i dont think we born with the hability.
 
7) I dont know if "difficult" is the correct word, but I will say somes need more practice because they are more complex, in the fact that they have more words. In english you just say "the", in spanish you say "el, la, los, las". You use "some, a" for "unos, unas, un, una".