THE WORLD OF ENGLISH

Well I have talked before the most important, for us Non-Native English Speakers is communicating, that's because there are a great diversity of accents, but there is a Standard to follow up. How different people, from different countries, accents and dialects communicating themselves, understand and being understood? Check it out and telling about your experience, have you been lived abroad in an English Speaking Country? Telling for us your experience abroad.




SOURCE: SPEAK UP
Speaker: Ben White
Standard: British Accent

THE WORLD OF ENGLISH

20 Years Later

You may be well under 20, or maybe you have a grandchild older than that. But whatever your age, you’re sure to agree that 20 years is a considerable amount of time. This year your favorite magazine is turning 20 –that’s something, for sure! To celebrate this Historic event, Speak Up offers some excerpts that show how the magazine looked (and sounded) way back when. For starters, he’s part of an article that was published in our inaugural issue. It was the first installment of a series called “The World of English” –and you’ll notice that our musical style was a lot different two decade ago…

(Original speaker introduces the pilot audio cassette) No Transcript audio

The World of English – part I One of an introduction and survey of the English Language and its native speakers, in which you will hear example of practical English in action as the international language of the modern world, plus the history and development of the language, from Old English to Modern English, with examples of its evolution drawn from its greatest literature through the ages, performed by leading professional actors of the English speaking theatre, television and films. No here is Richard Gale to introduce you to the World of English:

English contains many variations of accent and even dialect, but unlike Italian or German, the dialects are rarely different enough to make comprehension impossible. True, a London Cockney would have a very difficult time in a conversation with a steel worker in Glasgow, and a Carolina cotton picker might find difficult to understand and be understood by a sheep farmer from Australia, but a businessman from, say, Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A. would have few problems dealing with a businessman form Dublin, Ireland or Sydney, Australia, Auckland, New Zealand, Liverpool in England, Johannesburg, South Africa or Kingston, Jamaica. A reasonably educated Standard English allows comprehension and communication all over the English-Speaking world. Can you guess where these native English speakers come from?

Voice number one

…”and often breakfast cereals like porridge and cornflakes” was an English-speaking South African.

Voice number two

…”often even the boss is Mike or John and not Mr. So-and-so” was from the Republic of Ireland.

Voice number thee

…”I grew up only speaking English” was a West Indian from Dominica.

Voice number four

…”at least it’s certainly true where I come from” was an American from the East Coast of the United States.

Voice number five

…”these are foreign concepts, so we have to use the foreign words” was from Australia.

But the geographical spread of the English-Speaking world cannot entirely account for English beings the “lingua franca” of the modern world. The industrial and technological achievements, mainly of Britain and the United States, has made English the international language of many different fields, like:

International air traffic control:

Lufthansa pilot: Bahrain Tower…this is Lufthansa 146 cleared to descend to 1,500 feet.

Bahrain tower: This is Bahrain Tower. Roger

Lufthansa pilot: Turning into final approach, runway three zero.

Bahrain tower: Wind three two zero degrees. One five knots. You are cleared to land – runway three zero.

Sea navigation (Morse code between ships)

The complex jargon of computers and space technology:

Armstrong: Houston, this is Tranquillity. We’re standing by for a go for cabin depress, over.

Mission Control: Tranquillity Base, this is Houston. You are go for cabin depressurization.

Armstrong: O.K., the hatch is coming open…

O.L. Houston, I’m on the porch.

Mission Control: Roger, Neil. O.K. Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.

Armstrong: I’m at the foot of the ladder. I’m going to stepoff the L.M. now…that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. 


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LANGUAGE, QTALK

Source: www.speakup.com.br

Language level: Upper intermediate

Speaker:Rachel Roberts

Standard accent: British

QTALK 

Maurice Hazan is the son of a German mother and an Egyptian father, but he grew up in France. This probably explains his love of languages. 20 years ago he began teaching French in the United States, but he has since opened the Tribeca Language School in New York, where pupils, can also learn Spanish, Italian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese and even Hindi. The minimum age for enrolling on a course at the school is just two years old.

Key to the teaching is a method which Hazan invented called “QTalk”. This revolves around the use of cue cards in the classroom. These are cards with drawings or words which are used to prompt pupils to talk. Hazan maintains that students can become “somewhat functional in a new language after just one hour. When Speak Up went to see Maurice Hazan, we asked him whether it was true that children had a natural advantage over adults when it came to learning a foreign language.

Maurice Hazan

(French accent):

When you are a child, you have the ability to develop what is called “phonetic synapsis.” Phonetic synapsis is a function of your brain to create connections between neurons. In short, you can develop an authentic accent, which becomes more difficult as you get closer to your teen years. Also, children can integrate grammar, or what is known as “semantic memory,” without formal instruction. In other words, they can be exposed to a second language with no particular order, and if they are exposed to this situation, say, in an immersion context, then they have the unique ability to fragment this information, make sense of it and produce sentences that they’ve never heard before. Noam Chomsky, who is the leading psychologist here right now in the States, is the first psychologist to have identified this and he calls this “the language module.” If children are exposed to a second language an hour a week, then they can get some exposure to this language, but they will not become genuinely fluent that way.

There is a big myth that adults are not able to learn a second language: adults who decide to learn a second language are therefore very motivated and they can exceed children’s performance in a one-hour-to-two-lesson-a-week situation.

DUBBING? A DISASTER!

We then asked Maurice Hazan whether some adults were more gifted than others when it came to languages:

Maurice Hazan:

Yes, it’s true. Some people are more gifted than others. Some people have a propensity to lean a second language and others don’t. It’s all about your level of filtering, or your filter resistance to the outside world. The filter resistance is how you are able to embrace or reject the other world. Let’s imagine, if you can come from a family where there is clearly no interest in the world overseas, then your chances of becoming bilingual are limited. Also, you interpret the world outside of yours as inferior, as do most Americans, then you will not be inclined to learn another culture, and the main component of a culture is its language. Dutch people, for instance, are remarkably inclined to learn many languages. It is due to many factors, but one of them, for instance, is the fact that television programmes are never Dubbed, but they’re simply subtitled. This cause the population to be exposed to other sounds very early (on). The programmes are not dubbed and simply sub-titled, not because they are (too) lazy to do that, but because they feel that changing the audio on movies, or documentaries produces a very inauthentic version of these programmes, just as if you were to have somebody sing in Dutch over a song of the Beatles: it would make no sense!

CONFESSIONS OF A LATIN TEACHER Part 1

Source: Speak Up

Standard: British accent

Language level:  Upper intermediate

CONFESSIONS OF A LATIN TEACHER Part 1

I have a confession to make. As well as being a writer, I am a teacher of Latin (and Ancient Greek).

Do the British study Latin? 50 years ago, a large percentage of school children did. Now it is mainly taught in private schools. Many teachers retire schools. Many teachers retire every years; only two universities train new teachers. Many students classical works only in translation. Surely this means the end of Latin – and, some will say, good riddance.

PROPHETS OF DOOM

Journalists and other prophets of doom constantly predict the end of Latin. To me it seems comical to predict the death of an extinct language.

When I admit I am a Latin teacher, people look at me as if I were a dodo. They often send me news paper articles about:

      How useless Latin is.

      How important Latin is.

      How Latin is making a comeback.

      Why do people get so worked up about it? Somehow  Latin provides a focus for all our fears about education: vocational against no-vocational, privileged against under- privileged.

      WHO AND WHY?

Why do we study Latin? It’s not the basis of our language, as it is for Italian, Spanish and Portuguese speakers. Yet, despite the Germanic structure of English perhaps 45 per cent of our vocabulary is Romance-derived. Significantly, intellectual vocabulary is often Latinate the language of science, art and technology.

Who learns Latin today? One definition of the typical English gentleman is: “Someone who once knew the classics but has forgotten them: “We think of aristocratic Oxbridge comics showing off on clever TV shows: actor/writer Stephen Fry: John Cleese and his Monty Python gang: Boris Johson, mayor of London.

This elitism elicits anger as well as admiration. The Campaign for Plain English has fought a war against unnecessary Latin layers no longer use Latin phrases where there are English alternative. Yet we love the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the centurion correct Brian’s graffiti. To get the joke properly, you need to know Latin. “Romanes eunt domus” is nonsense; he means “Romani, ite domum” (Romans, go home).

EVERYDAY LANGUAGE

Everyday English is full of Latin words. Many are borrowed directly; many more are derivations.

Science (from Latin) and technology (Greek) have filled English with classical vocabulary: galaxy, protons, electric, democracy and telephone (Greek): universe, circuit, election and Prime Minister (Latin): Bones are Latin, from patella to clavicle. Organs and diseases are often Greek: stomach, leukemia. Botanists and zoologists give plants and animals classical names. Other school subjects have Greek names: geography, history, maths, psychology, philosophy.

WHERE NEXT?

It’s all Greek to me is a phrase from Shakespeare used to dismiss anything we can’t understand. Yet we still admire those who have Latin on their curriculum vitae: George Bush Senior’s notoriously ignorant vice president, Dan Quayle, regretted not studying Latin harder in school when he visited Latin America!

People pay me to translate club mottos, degree certificates and tattoos. They buy furniture, stationery and T-shirts with Latin on them. David Beckham has Latin tattoos (and the Roman numeral VII). Why? Because it seems important. Latin has dignity, grandeour, gravitas, so, even if you think it is useless, remember: quod latine, dictum est altum vdetur, or What ever you say in Latin seems deep.

PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING

English speakers pronouncing Latin are confused. When a word is normal English, it is unashamedly anglicised: alias, alibi, audio, doctor, exit, flux, memorandum, status. Quasi in English has long and I sound. The second c in cancer is soft, the g in agenda is also soft, and there is a j in de jure.

When the English adopt a whole phrase, their pronunciation is a little more Latinate: sine qua non, me culpa, modus vivendi, quid pro quo. When the English sing Latin in church, they use Latinale style. But in school they follow stand and European Erasmus pronunciation –and is amusing when the English  read phrases like arma virumque cano…”

When British English adopts Greek words like encyclopaedia, it keeps the ae after the “p”. Whereas the American use a simple “e,” as in encyclopedia. This causes confusion with names. Aeschylus usually can either be written with an oe, or a simple e at the beginning, while Oedipus can either be written with an oe, or a simple e at the beginning: Edipus. And Daedalus can either be written with an ae – Daedalus – or with an e –Dedalus. And we love Latin abbreviations, even if we rarely know what they stand for, but here are some example.

AD Anno Domini

Am ant meridiem

Exempli gratia – by way of example

Ie id est: that is, to explain

Viz videlicet: namely

QED quod erat demonstrandium.

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Technologies and English, part I

Good morning dear readers,

Today I decided to write about English tips, and how much it can be used for English learners and people interested to keep in touch with the Language. Speak English is not difficult; it depends on your willpower and dedication. This days I talked about how much the technologies could be useful approach each other and make friends around the world is easier due this technology.

As matter as fact, this technology have been used and continues used in order to improve and practice a language, in particular English. Thanks to this language communication became easily after the Babel Tower Fell down a long time ago. You cannot figure out, if we don’t have English for communicate how much difficult would be?

Anyways, change a bit of subject I’m so glad when I receive comments thankful for sharing my tips, articles, videos and websites and blogs’s tips. Teach by yourself known as Self-taught today is not difficult. You can use MP3, iPods, Notebooks using podcasts in order to improve your English, as well as access websites and blogs in English.

This blog receive a lot of visitors from Asia, mostly are friends, bloggers and teachers, of course students worldwide. I always encourage them to continue practice English overcome his/her difficult.

Finally, I have no words to describe how much happy is when you come, share, comment or suggest me, thank you so much Insya Allah (For God willing) we’re meeting tomorrow and the day after tomorrow until the day I dying. Next topic I’m going to talk about and share why did I decide to practice English and how I did that, what methodology I used for. See you tomorrow.