Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue. Pages 1- 44

In the first part of the book Our Magnificent bastard tongue by John McWhorter starts describing how we use the verb form –ing and the “meaningless do” in order ourselves clear when we talk and these terms came to the English language by themselves. The book also talks about how English is different from other languages, although some of them use the “do and –ing” but not all of them use them in the same form as English. McWhorter explains in four assumptions that language had change.

 I found very significant the part where McWhorter talks about the mix of languages which gives them new words and grammar cheeks. According to him, many of these mix languages still exist like the Patois language or “hybrid” which was adapted by Jamaicans, is a mix of English and the language of origin they spoke in times of slavery. The mix of these languages reminds me when we talked about word formation (borrowing) which as we know is taking over words from other languages, in this case is English.

Although the book has a lot of information and it gives good examples of everything, it seems like I can’t understand that much about it specially the par that talks about Celts (11). I only understood all when talked about the “meaningless do and the –ing” I have a clear view of what he is talking about there. I wonder how well I will understand the second part of the book. 

Mindrys' homework chapter 18,19,20

 Chapters # 18, 19 and 20

Summary of the Film "The Linguists"

A Film to Speak.

There are 7,000 and more languages in the world and more than half of those languages are in danger or they already died. In the film linguistics produced and Directed by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller and Jeremy S. Newberger is based on the travesty of two prime on linguistics who decided to go around the world and look for some of the languages that will be dead in a few years from now. This learning film trip shows how the selected unknown languages are being in danger and how they are being discriminated by the decedents who once spoke them. Many languages are disappearing and the fact that these people took the responsibility to go around the world and find those dialect before they are gone makes me think that we as spoken people should do something about it so these languages won’t disappear. According to the film some of these languages are in danger to disappear because there is nobody who would teach the following generation of people but it is a fact that if the young generation learns it they will just choose not to use or speak it. Every two weeks a language dies and we will soon have left nothing to learn from and all those old languages will past to history.

What I liked about the movie is that these guys not just went to explore languages but also cultures, they participated in parties and even rituals in order to get more information about a language and which helped them to understand better the real meaning of these cultures and dialects. They show people that there is no need to me ashamed by their native language and that there are more people like them that would like to explore more about lost languages like the Chulym which is from a part of Russia and Sora which is in India.  A language defines culture and a culture is defined by its native language that should not be lost. 

Article's Summary

            As manufacturing and faith, a language can be lost too. In our lives we see many changes in the language we speak, we see how others try to change or trying to imitate and some even want to make a new language out of it. The language we speak, speak for ourselves, if we talk in a slang way we would be tagged as slang people, if we talk with manners we are educated and if we try to talk blending a language that is not ours with our own could result a bad translation or even an insult for ourselves.

Many people try to combine their language of origin with a new one to make others understand them or make their selves more attractive to others. But not all people think that blending their language with other and make a “new” one is the best idea and it should be stopped. An example of all this is explained in the article “from English to chinglish: the globalization of language” that shows us how the chinglish had been taken out from China just because an important celebration is coming to town. Most people who speak this “language” use it to make other people from other places understand them but seems like superior people think that Chinglish is just a laugh to China and its people.

                                                                                                        

This article also talks about how English had become the one and only most popular language among other cultures and dialect, is characterized as neutral for some group of people to avoid an overthrow between themselves whether which language from a country or  culture should be the official one or not. But the fact that English had made a huge change to the cultures rights doesn’t mean that it will be good in all the senses. Many languages will be lost because of this, many people will speak chinglish or other linguistics combinations with the English like Hinglish and Franglais (French – English) and the original language will disappear.

A good illustration of this situation is stated in the article “How English is evolving into a language we may not even understand” by Michael Erard. Where it give us an example of how the use of a blending of languages could end up on one that not the English native speaker would understand and many new languages blended with English would lost its grammatical meaning. For example, in the chinglish new “language” is not just combining English with Chinese; the grammatical situation we all have could end forever and we won’t have to deal with noun or even articles. Sentences would sound like Chinese but with English words and the chinglish will take life of its own and would grow more until there is nothing else but just a language that just the native chinglish people would understand.

As the English is getting bigger, its power is becoming the mold of futures languages which is and will make English be the lingua franca of this generation and others. But the developing of the lingua franca will bring the creating of new languages and the diminishing of others.  As the “From English to chinglish…” article says: “The widespread use of English brings us the concern as to how globalization is shaping the future of languages”. 

Chongalicious def, chongalicious def, chongalicious def..def..def…!!!

According to Wikipedia… yes wiki... “Chonga” is the Spanish term used especially to indicate "a low-class, slutty, tough, and crass young woman oh I bet you didn’t know ahhh. And “licious” (delicious). This “term” started with a song call “chongalicious” a Spanish version of the singer fergie song “fergalicious” (fergalicious def, fergalicious def, fergalicious def..def.def!!). chonga is used among people to address the way some girls act or dress, they put make up like is there was no ending, these girls use sharpie as a lip-gloss!!! and glue instead of cream to keep their hair “perfect”. Their personality is crazy and they like to show up their “beauty”.  BELIEVE OR NOT “chongalicious” is actually a word.. “she is chonging at me” meaning she’s acting like a chonga on someone, or “I use a lot of lipstick to chong myself”, “I like to be a chonga”, I like to choong all the time”, “that girl is CHONGALICIOUS!!”. Probably you guys are thinking why do I know so mucho about this word, well I was curious about it and I started to look more information up and I actually “chong” myself once (don’t worry I didn’t use sharpie or glue in my hair lol) it was fun but kind of weird.

 It was hard to find a word that had multiple word formation and I think that this one could work perfectly, is not just a slang word but a word that represent somebody on his/her why of act or dress, it would be estrange to use this term but hey!.Chongalicious definition make them boys go loco!!. 

 IF YOU WATCH THE CHONGALICIOUS VIDEO CLICK HERE!

Mindrys' homework assignments

Chapter #17 study questions

1.      What are cognates?

R: is word in other language that has a similar form and is or was used with a similar meaning.

2.      Languages groups reated from a historical point of view:

R: Bengali–Urdu, Breton–welsh, English–Swedish, French–Portuguese, Kurdish–Pashto, Ukrainian–Czech.

3.      On the basis of the following data, what are the most likely proto-forms?

Language

1                             2                3

Cosa              chose           cosa      _ (“thing”)

Capo              chef             cabo     _ (“head”)

Capra            chevre         cabra   _ (“goat”)

Number 1 is most likely to be proto-forms.

4.      The following words are likely to be from Old English and which from French: Venison, ox, veal and calf.

5.      What types sounds changes are illustrated by the following pairs:

(a)   Thridda – third =    metathesis           

(b)    scriber – escribir = prothesis       

(c)     glimsian – glimps = epenthesis

(d)    hring – ring =   epenthesis             

(e)     slummer – slumber = metathesis   

(f)     beorht – bright = metathesis

6.      The Old English verb steorfan (“to die, from any cause”) is the source of the modern English verb starve (“to die, from lack food”).  What is the ethnical term used to describe this type of meaning change?

R: Is the most obvious way I which Modern English differs from old English is in the number of borrowed words that have cone into the language since the Old English period.

  

Study questions chapter #7

1.      Identify all the parts of speech used in this sentence:

The woman kept a large snake in a cage, but it escaped recently

R: The     woman   kept     a         large         snake         in             a      cage,

   Article    noun    verb   article   adjective    object    preposition   article 

but                   it           escaped   recently

Conjunction    pronoun       verb            adverb

2.      What is the difference between grammatical gender and natural gender?

R: the difference between these two is that the natural gender is derived from a biological distinction between male and female and grammatical gender is based on the type o noun (masculine and feminine) and is not tied to sex.

3.      What descriptive of the “proper” use of English are not obeyed in the following sentence and how would they be “corrected”

(i)                 The old theory consistently failed to fully explain all the data.

R: The old theory consistently failed fully to explain all the data.

(ii)               I can’t remember the name of the person I gave the book to.

R: I can’t remember the name of the person to whom I gave the book.

4.      What was wrong with the older Latin-influence definition of English pronouns?

R: In the older definition, pronouns were described as “words used in place of nouns.”

5.      Given these other Gaelic words, translate the following sentences into English.

Mor (“big”)       bead (“small”)      bhuail (“hit”)      duine (“man”)

(i)                 Bhuail an gille beag an cu dubh. = the small boy hit the black dog

(ii)               Chunnaic an cuduine mor. = the dog saw the big man

Study Questions Chapter #5

1.      What is the difference between etymology and entomology?

R: The difference between these two is that etymology is the study of the origin and story of a word while entomology is the study of the insects.

2.      The following pairs contain an example of calque:

a)      Footbooru (Japanese) – Football (English)

b)     Luna de miel (Spanish “moon of honey”) – honey moon (English)

c)      Jardin d’enfants (French “garden of children”) – kindergarten (German “children garden”)

3.      Can u identify the different word-formation processes involved in producing each sound of the underlined word in these sentences:

a)      Don’t you ever worry that you might get AIDS? = Acronym

b)      Do you have a xerox machine? = Coinage

c)      That’s really fundamntastic! = Blending

d)     Shiel still parties every Saturday night. = Convercion

e)      These new skateboards from Zee Designs are kickass. = Compounds

f)       When I’m ill, I want to see a doc, not a vet. = Clipping

g)      The house next door was burgled when I was babysitting the smiths’ children = Backformation

h)      I like this old sofa = Borrowing – it’s nice and comfy = Clipping

4.      Identify the prefixes and suffixes used in these words:

a)      Misfortune, carelessness, disagreement, ineffective, unfaithful, prepackaged, biodegradable, reincarnation, decentralization.

5.      Processes involved in each sentence:

a)      Are u still using that old car-phone? = Compounding, Blending.

b)      Can you FedEx the book to me today?  = Conversion, Coinage

c)      Police have reported an increase in carjacking in recent months. = blending ,Compounding,

d)     Welcome, everyone, to karaokenight at Cathy’s bar and grill! = Borrowing, Blending.

e)      Jeeves, could you tell the main to be sure to hoover the bedroom carpet? = Conversion, coinage.

f)       Would you prefer a decaf? = Clipping

Study Questions chapter #6

1.      Functional morphemes in the following sentence:

R: When he arrived in the morning the old man had an umbrella and a large plastic bag full of books.

2.      a) Bound morphemes: fearlessly, misleads, previewer, shortened, unhappier.

b)      Bound stem: construct, deceive, introduce, repeat.

c)      Allomorph of the morpheme “past tense”: are = did, have = had, must, sitting =sat, waits= waited.

3.      Inflectional morphemes in these expressions:

a)      Have u eaten yet?

b)      Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?

c)      She’s younger than me and always dresses in the latest style.

d)     We look through my grandmother’s old photo albums.

4.      Allomorphs of the morpheme “plural” in this set of English words: criteria, dogs, oxen, deer, judges, stimuli.

5.      What is reduplication?

R: reduplication is repeating all or part of form.

6.      Provide the equivalent forms, in the language listed, for the English translation shown on the right below:

a)      Ganda           omulongo     (“twin”)      –  (“twins”)          =      abalongo

b)      Ilocano        tawtawa       (“windows”) –  (“windows”)    =     tawa

c)      Kanuri         nemkeji        (sweetness”) –  (“sweet”)         =     keji

d)     Tagalog       bili              (“buy”)        –  (“will buy”)     =     bibili

e)      Tagalog       kain             (“eat”)         –  (“eat!”)           =      kumain

maɪ neɪm

Hi everybody! My name is Mindrys! 

  1) My name has two syllables min and drys.

* “min” has the onset of   a front,  voiced, bilabial nasal and has a central vowel.

*the second syllable is “drys” which onset is a voiced alveolar stop.

And the IPA for of my name is: [mIndris]

2)   Saying my name could me a little hard but if you do this steps you could say it without any problem:

*Start by making a nasal sound like mmmm, then open our lips and let an “eh” sound come out and then a “nnnn” sound. Then followed by a “druu” and then a quick “ssss” sound.

 It should sound like: “mehdrus”

I LOOKED MY NAME UP ON GOOGLE AND THIS IS WHAT IT CAME OUT. WOW!!   

                                   

     Is an old photo when I was in high school in Colombian and those are two of my ex classmates, I miss them so much !