Blog #7 - The Story of English (Non-Blog)

Summary:
For my portion of "The Story of English" I had Section 3: Muse with Fire. This section explored how are language has evolved from Shakespearean language and Biblical speak as well - specifically from King James and the impact that these influences has had on the development of the English Language as we know it today.

The English Language began over here in America when the first settlers traveled across the seas. The language originally derived from parts of Greek and Latin as well. However, the famous play write and poet, William Shakespeare made an enormous impact on the English Language. Shakespeare is said to have known and used 34,000 words in his vocabulary - mind you that this is double today what the average well-educated person knows and uses today. In addition to his wide vocabulary, Shakespeare also played around with a lot of tones in his plays some tones/speak include: philosophical, love, pigen, and heroic. Back in his time, this was unheard of (and in a way still is today) to have an author be so various in his genres that he writes. He introduced many words to the English Language such as "accommodation", "premeditated", and "obscene". He is also known to have invented more words than anyone who as ever lived; therefore, meaning that he is a huge contributor to our language as we know it today. I know for a fact that I have used all three of these words before and little did I know that Shakespeare invented them. There are many more words that he made up these are just a few examples, but it is just interesting to know that he made up a lot of words that we use on a day-to-day basis.

Anglo-Saxon speak is quite different than what we are used to today. They are rich with their vowel and usually don't pronounce the "r" sound after the vowel (much like a lot of the East Coasters today - like New York, Maine, and Massachusetts). Interestingly enough this type of language is still spoken today in places like Oxford and Stratford - they still hold the original speech patterns that were spoken from the beginning.

The translation of the Bible had a major impact on our language as well. It also added many words to our vocabulary (about 8,000 if I am not mistaken). Since then, the Bible has been translated again to reflect our speech today. For example, a section from King James was written originally much more poetic than the updated translated version. Just because that is not how we talk and interpret things anymore.

In 1584 was when the first boat came overseas and we borrowed a lot of Native American terms such as "bury the hatchet", "tomahawk", and "go on the war path"- meaning that they too contributed to the English Language. As more ships came into the new world they created Jamestown and these people became the official first English speaking Americans, and many people today on the East Coast speak how the Jamestown people spoke.

People who live on the small island called Tanger Island - known as "Tangerines" - purely speak in the old English today. They pronounce "on" as "arn" and "sink" as "zink". These people are the first cousins to the original people of Jamestown and because it is such a tight knit and small community on an island the culture and language here is very sheltered. They have had no outside influence so there language has had no need to change. Their way of life is very old school, it is a huge fishing community and it is expected of the young adults that once they are done with school they are to start working on the boats helping with the fishing. This is a great example of how a community today still holds true to the Shakespearean and Bible language.

East Anglea (sp?) is where Anglo-Saxon is spoken regularly. To me it sounded like a mixture between Irish and English accents. They draw out their vowel - bargain= baaaaagan"- and they drop the "r" after the vowel (much like the East Coast accents as I mentioned before). Another example of their speech is "risban" which translates to what we call "wristband". The people of East Anglea also use a variety of old words - words that we have dropped from out everyday use.

All of these accents have derived heavily from Shakespearean terms and King James and the Biblical terms as well.

My Response:
I really enjoyed this section of "The Story of English". The part that interested me the most was the Shakespeare portion. I had no idea that his vocabulary was so large and what a huge impact he made on our language today. Last semester I took a Shakespeare class and I always thought of it as completely different language, but after watching this it made me realize that it is not all THAT different it just sounds different and they patterns of things are a little different as well. I also did not know that he made up a lot of language - I was really impressed by that because a lot of it is words we use today. Overall, I found it interesting how these things made an impact on our language. I have never really thought about the origin of where the language came from even though I use it everyday. I am interested to see what other people have watched and reported about.

Blog #6

Original Response to Delpit:

I really enjoyed reading Delpit's article. She brought up a lot of great points that as a future teacher I can really take note on. First off, she is primarily talking about the African American culture (or AAE - African American English), but this also applies to other cultures and ethnicities and how they talk as well. It made me realize that just because they are talking in their own jargon doesn't mean that it is wrong - just different. Different from what we are used to hearing in our own language, or standard language I should say. Ebonics to many non-black people just sounds un-educated. That is harsh, I know, but that is the truth about how many people see it. It is important that we are not quick to judge someone purely based on how they talk. if we can remember this it will greatly improve our society and the understanding of each other. Another thing that I liked about Delpit was that she spoke from experience (with her daughter changing schools and all). It made her argument more credible. She made some great observations  of her daughters experiences with her jargon at school.

Edited Response with varying sentence patterns:


I really enjoyed reading Delpit's article. She brought up a lot of great points, and as a future teacher I can really take note on. (compound sentence with coordinating conjunction linking two independent clauses) First off, she is primarily talking about the African American culture (or AAE - African American English), but this also applies to other cultures and ethnicities and how they talk as well. (compound sentence combining two independent clauses with a coordinating conjunction) It made me realize that just because they are talking in their own jargon doesn't mean that it is wrong. Just different. (short sentence) Different from what we are used to hearing in our own language, or standard language I should say. Ebonics to many non-black people just sounds un-educated. That is harsh. I know. (two short sentences back to back) But that is the truth about how many people see it. (purposefully starting a sentence with a conjunction) It is important that we are not quick to judge someone purely based on how they talk and if we can remember this it will greatly improve our society and the understanding of each other. (extra long sentence) Another thing that I liked about Delpit was that she spoke from experience (with her daughter changing schools and all). It made her argument more credible. She made some great observations  of her daughters experiences with her jargon at school.

** I tried to incorporate a few different sentence patterns into my edited response to try them out. I think that the new version is way better because it has a variety of sentence patterns making it more interesting for the reader to read. 

Blog #5

This week I would like to practice with Patterns 1 and 2. I want to try and practice using subordinating conjunctions properly within my writing because I think it will greatly benefit my blogs and other writings I do throughout the semester. I know I use these patterns already, but not necessarily properly and that is something I would like to improve. I think that by having a variety of sentence structures within your papers really shows your talent as a writer because who wants to read a paper that is written with all simple sentences? Or all long complex sentences? Variety is good! Below is an exert from a blog post I did on the theme "Superheroes"for English 323. I tried to incorporate the uses of complex sentences in this blog.

"When we were younger we all grew up watching cartoons of the common superheroes. (complex sentence with a dependent clause followed by an independent). Because Batman, Superman, Spiderman, are cool,it was always a treat to watch.(complex sentence with a dependent clause and a independent clause).  But never did I ever think to myself "hmm, all these superheroes are white". It was just at known fact. People don't think twice about it...until now. When I think of Superman, I think something along the lines of the comic "Superman and the Jumper" , with Superman saving the poor, distressed woman on top of a building ready to take her own life, and clearly the person she needs is Superman to save her. But what if these hunky superheroes were of a different race? Would we think differently of them? Some suggest yes. In the articles, Who Gets to be a Superhero and What if X-Men were black? touch on this subject. They both discuss how people have always imagined and pictured their favorite superheroes as white, wealthy, Christian, and able-bodied men. Although the audience is not to blame, because that is how they are ALWAYS portrayed. (complex sentence with an independent clause followed by a dependent.) After I thought about this fact for a while, I had to agree that Superheroes are typically portrayed all the same. (complex sentence with a dependent clause followed by an independent one)"

I am still a little iffy on if the examples above are used properly. So if you could please read and critique it I would greatly appreciate it!! I get confused on if it counts as a dependent or independent and that is what messes me up! Plus, looking back this probably was not the best exert to use for practicing these patterns, but I tried my best. I really would have liked to experiment with the repetition of phrases or words, but I felt that in a blog post like this it would not be appropriate.

Blog #4

For this blog post I want to experiment with Pattern #1. I chose this one because I always misplace the comma - therefore I have a lot of comma splices within my writing. I put it after the conjunction and not before. So by practicing using this pattern correctly I think it will make a huge difference in my writing. The piece that I want to work with is from my English 325 - we have to write critical responses for the novel we read each week and as I have said before about these they can be really boring! My hope is that if I incorporate some of these sentence patterns in them it will not only make them more grammatically correct, but also make them much more interesting and dynamic.

"Lee is a strong character, and she has a lot on her plate at a very young age. (compound sentence with a coordinating conjunction) She has to do step into the place of her deceased mother. She cooks and cleans the house while her father works all day. Lee has had to become an adult at a young age, and that is not fair to her at all. (compound sentence with a coordinating conjunction) When her father is blamed for the disappearance of Lee’s white, rich friend he is taken away and sent to jail – most likely will get lynched. Instead of sitting back and feeling sorry for herself, Lee takes agency and matters into her own hands. She wants to get to the bottom of this disappearance of her friend and set her dad free. Lee had to make the decision as to whether she wanted to stay at home by herself, or to go and make things right with her father Lily. (compound sentence with a coordinating conjunction"

I think that I correctly used the conjunctions properly in this exert of text. This is a grammar pattern that I have struggled with for a long time and now that I know the proper rule for it I will be more aware of how it is used in my other pieces of writing. 


For my DOL assignment, Corina and I have to teach the class about grammar by, "Discussing a sentence that is technically correct but practically inappropriate (#4)". I think this will be an fun idea to teach because this is the way people talk, and we do not talk grammatically correct 100% of the time. So I think that if will enlighten students to be aware of their speaking dialogue and what is appropriate for academic writing. For example, when answering the phone people do not say, "It is I"....that just sounds weird. However, that is grammatically correct that is just not the way we talk to one another. Another example would be (from a parent's standpoint) the popular phrase, "Because I said so". Written down in a sentence this would obviously be wrong, but when arguing with your kids being grammatically correct probably isn't the first thing you think of. I think it would be fun to have kids look through their text messages and see how they talk to one another. Is it grammatically correct? If not, how would they make it correct? Would it sound weird or out of place in the "text message" context to sound correct? Just to get them thinking of how our dialogue changes from speaking to writing and why there are those changes.