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Linguistic Websites (Blog 4)

Cory Stapleton
Linguistic Links

Charles F. Hockett
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Charles_F._Hockett.html

Hockett’s Design Features of Language
http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/jcoleman/design_features.htm

Phonology
http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsPhonology.htm

Phonetics of the American Language
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset-ad3.html

Semantics
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/533811/semantics

Syntax
http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test1materials/syntax.htm

Transformational Grammar

Transformational Grammar by: Noam Chomsky from Shiela May Claro

Brief Summaries of Noam Chomsky Theories
http://quizlet.com/13442598/language-theory-noam-chomsky-and-psycholinguistic-theorysyntactical-model-flash-cards/

Sociolinguistic Basics
http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/sociolinguistics/sociolinguistics/

Acting in Dialect
http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/travel/blogpost/1838699/

Dialect/Accent
http://dialectblog.com/2011/01/28/dialect-vs-accent/

Dialect Map of the United States
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/dialect-maps_n_3395819.html

Shit White People Say (Vlog)

#vlog #shitpeoplesay

Homework #4 Freakatives

Cory Stapleton
Giovanna Alvarado
Keana Sabin
Michelle Zavestoski
Steve Juarez
Linguistics 101
Homework #4

Summary:
Language is extremely dynamic. It is constantly changing and adapting. The ways in which language changes relates to the environment in which the language is being used. The environment consists of many features, such as time, place, and the people who the language is being communicated with. All these things promote change within a language. Even though languages vary, when brought together they begin to take attributes from one another. Culture is equally important in relation to language. For the culture, the language used dictates what variations occur. If people are in a hurry, they may shorten their speech in order to reflect the speed in which they wish to transmit their message, like when someone says “lol” instead of actually laughing. The people in which the language is spoken to greatly effects the type of language used. If the community is populated by children, the words used would reflect the understanding the children have in order to make communication run smoothly and efficiently. The way in which we speak represents the language we are comfortable using in order to express ourselves, i.e. emic vs etic. Depending on R.A.C.E.S., we can have a general idea of an individual and their language. For example, a higher class individual may speak with more sophistication and in a dialect with more advanced words. A gay individual may speak differently than an individual who is straight, etc. Education plays a big part in this as well. The better the schooling and home environment, the better a language may be acquired and a particular dialect may be formed. Language is an enormous part of culture that brings everyone together and lets people share their ideas and thoughts, either positively or negatively.

Group’s Grouped Answers

pg. 444 #14
Ph/S/P/M/Sm/Ph
Pg. 445 #16
a. some
b. natural
c. some
d. natural
e. NN
f. some
g. natural
h. some
i. natural
j. natural
k. natural
l. NN
m. natural
n. some
o. NN
Pg. 446 #17
(A) Bucket
(A) Bag
(B) Shades
(A) Soda
(A) Fireflies
(B) In line
(D) Clean it up
(A) You guys
(B) A quarter to 5

pg. 479
Some competencies part of communicative competence are politeness, speaker roles, turn-taking roles and greetings.
2. Cultural Competence is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. While linguistic competence is the unconscious knowledge of grammar that allows a speaker to use and understand a language; performance is the ability to produce and comprehend sentences in a language. In certain cultures, it is rude to look at someone in the eye when you speak to them—different cultures have various rules of language, and some of it doesn’t need to be spoken.

3. An adjacency pair is a unit of conversation that contains an exchange of one turn each by two speakers. The turns are functionally related to each other in such a fashion that the first turn requires a certain type or range of types of second turn.

Book definition: Adjacency pairs are pairs of adjacent utterances produced by two different speakers, in which the first utterance provokes or requires the hearer to respond with the second utterance.

Five Adjacency Pairs in American English:
1. How are you today? I’m phenomenal.
2. Are you lost? Nope.
3. Hi! Welcome. Thank you.
4. What have you been up to? Nothing.
5. Can you point me in the direction of “__?” Sure.
480

15. Power relationships are established in conversation when we try to persuade, educate, and convince other individuals or attempt to gain their attention or change their emotions. It refers to one speaker being more dominant or subservient. The power relationship expressed by language is defined by those who use language rather than by any inherent properties of a language. You can tell when someone is acquiescing within a conversation because they’ll just listen to the other –who’s exerting power– without any fight or struggle. These cues are socially determined because we learn how to exert power through interactions with others. Examples of when establishing power happens within a conversation: presenting a project, selling a product, arguing your point, displaying your love towards a person, coaching, work related situations, etc.
482
a) Etic: Students walked rapidly through the long pathway in between buildings, while one raised her hand to about an eye-level, palm out, fingers extended and moved it back and forth at the wrist, capturing the eye-sight of one another, joining in a same facial expression, showing their teeth to each other, followed by a raise of both of their arms, extended to one another and giving each other a slight squeeze.
Emic: Students rushed down the hall while one waved her hand capturing the attention of
another, joining each other with a smile on their faces followed by a hug.
b) What you ate, and did at lunch today.
Etic: The girl ventured in to the west commons market. It appears she took no thought into what to truly eat as she hastily grabbed a peanut butter sandwich, banana and milk to purchase. She rummaged through her purse for her wallet and card to make the purchase. She hurried to her next class.
Emic: Right before her next class, a girl bought a sandwich, banana and milk at the student store. After the purchase she hurried to class
c) how your instructor started class.
Etic: The young professor stood by the podium. Stared at the classroom clock and saw how much time there was before class started. He then took his final sip of coffee. It was time. He positioned himself away from the podium and to front of the whiteboard to gain the attention of his students and start the class.
Emic: The professor drank his coffee and soon enough started teaching his class.
28.
Passive observation: there aren’t any interviews under observation — but typically when the observation is concluded. An example could be that an observer follows a number of consumers in order to see how they use a given product. Subsequently the consumers are interviewed.
Participant observation: the interviewer takes part of the respondent’s doings with regards to a specific area/field and hereby the interviewer gains insight in the views of the respondents. An example could be that a company wishes to gain insight in how the employees use the common facilities. An interviewer is introduced in the company and shows up every morning for a week together with the employees. The interviewer is a part of the working day of the company and continuously interviews chosen employees about their activities/movements.

Book definition: Passive participation: a type of participant observation in which the researcher passively watches everyday life in the community without taking part.
Participant observation: a type of field work that consists of systematically observing within a community in order to understand how and why people do the things they do on a daily basis.
Page 557
10. No written records of Proto-Germanic exist, but the words and grammar of the language have been reconstructed by linguists.
14. Back in the days when Old English was spoken, the “k” in these sorts of words was not silent, so they would be pronounced as k’nife, k’night, and so on. This pronunciation was even common in the time of William Shakespeare! At some point, people decided that this sort of articulation was too cumbersome, so they stopped voicing the beginning consonant! The same thing happened with “gn” words such as gnome and gnarled. However, other Germanic languages such as German, Swedish, and Dutch kept the “k” and still pronounce it to this day.

Page 561
22. Swum-Swim, Drank-Drunk, Eat-Ate. These changes come about due to shifts in the functions of words. These words have been altered for the purpose of tense and time.
Analytic (language)—type of language in which most words consist of one morpheme and sentences are composed sequences of these free morphemes. Grammatical relationships are often indicated by word order. Examples are Chinese and Vietnamese.

Page 562
29) i. Many words are new but derived from old words. New words have been created as a way to explain new ideas and concepts. Old words wouldn’t be able to capture the meaning of these new concepts.
ii. Many old words have be extended to encapsulate the new meanings they are being used towards.

Examples can come from Facebook: tagging, poking, etc. Writing on walls can be put to new use because that can be related to Facebook and talking directly to someone on their Facebook page.

Page 563
33. Poppycock means nonsense, and it comes from the mid 19th century: from Dutch dialect pappekak. cognate words: nonsense, rubbish, claptrap, balderdash, blather, moonshine, garbage.

Page 513
12) It is a threat to other languages that borrow words for their language and it loses the opportunity to be used. Therefore, it runs the risk of losing the language altogether. It is killing off the original language and bringing in outside words that diminish the language and alter the culture.
Page 516
22. We were able to understand most of the piece because it is written in words that are spelled like they sound, not how the appropriate spelling is, for example the first words, “Wans apan a taim” refers to “Once upon a time.” the spelling is off, but the pronunciation is good. It is in story telling form (once upon a time…the end).

23. We were not able to understand this text entirely, some words are regular English words, for example, “get many peoples.” Words are somewhat similar but there are lots of lost or dropped letters. Dees=these udder=under newa=new.

Page 517

29. We believe that it is a worth-while effort because that way the dialects can still be heard among people. By having a variety of languages and dialects, people are able to learn other languages and dialects even though they didn’t grow up with them. This is how culture stays alive. If everything is turned into something of a neutral language, then the uniqueness of the culture will diminish.

Giovanna Alvarado:
language variation:
14.
Phonological
Syntactic
Phonetic
Morphological
Morphological
Phonological
16.
Non-Native
Natural
Some
Natural
Some
Some
Natural
Some
Natural
Natural
Some
Non-Native
Some
Some
Non-Native
17.
(A) Bucket
(A) Bag
(B) Shades
(A) Soda
(A) Fireflies
(B) In line
(D) Clean it up
(A) You guys
(B) A quarter to 5
Page 479
some examples of things one must know to be communicatively competent in a certain language are politeness strategies, speaker roles, and greetings.
Cultural Competence is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations.While linguistic competence is the unconscious knowledge of grammar that allows a speaker to use and understand a language; and performance is The ability to produce and comprehend sentences in a language.
An adjacency pair is a unit of conversation that contains an exchange of one turn each by two speakers. The turns are functionally related to each other in such a fashion that the first turn requires a certain type or range of types of second turn.
Examples:
What’s up? Not much.
How are you? Good.
How is it going? It’s going well.
What time is it? Three o’clock
Can you pass the salt? Of course
Page 480
Power relation refers to one speaker being more dominant or subservient. The power relationship expressed by language are defined by those who use language rather than by any inherent properties of a language. Someone that is acquiescing refers to a person that accepts something reluctantly but without protest. The cues are considered socially determined because people learn how to exert power only if they have interactions with others.
Page 482
28.
Etic: Students walked rapidly through the long pathway in between buildings, while one
raised her hand to about an eye-level, palm out, fingers extended and moved it back and forth at the wrist, capturing the eye-sight of one another, joining in a same facial expression, showing their teeth to each other, followed by a raise of both of their arms, extended to one another and giving each other a slight squeeze.
Emic: Students rushed down the hall while one waved her hand capturing the attention of
another, joining each other with a smile on their faces followed by a hug.
Etic: A young lady hurried to a sandwich instalacion, getting in back of a several other people ready to greet an older woman who soon asked her for her order, giving her the sandwich the young lady reached into her pocket to give the older lady some cash.
Emic: A teenager rushed to Subway, got in line and gave her order to an older lady, giving her the sandwich, the teenager took money from her pocket to pay her.
Etic: Walking rapidly into the big building, where students were already seated and waiting for her, she placed her bag stacked with books and papers on the central table, the professor raised her hand to about an eye-level, palm out, fingers extended and moved it back and forth at the wrist.
Emic: Rushing into the classroom, she pakced her purse filled with school materials on the center desk, the professor then looked towards the students and waved.
29.
Passive observation: there aren’t any interviews under observation — but typically when the observation is concluded. Ex. An example could be that an observer follows a number of consumers in order to see how they use a given product. Subsequently the consumers are interviewed.
Participant observation: the interviewer takes part of the respondent’s doings with regards to a specific area/field and hereby the interviewer gains insight in the views of the respondents. Ex. An example could be that a company wishes to gain insight in how the employees use the common facilities. An interviewer is introduced in the company and shows up every morning for a week together with the employees. The interviewer is a part of the working day of the company and continuously interviews chosen employees about their activities/movements.
Page 557
No written records of Proto-Germanic exist, but the words and grammar of the language have been reconstructed by linguists.
14.Back in the days when Old English was spoken, the “k” in these sorts of words was not silent, so
they would be pronounced as k’nife, k’night, and so on. This pronunciation was even common in the time of William Shakespeare! At some point, people decided that this sort of articulation was too cumbersome, so they stopped voicing the beginning consonant! The same thing happened with “gn” words such as gnome and gnarled. However, other Germanic languages such as German, Swedish, and Dutch kept the “k” and still pronounce it to this day.
Page 563
Poppycock means nonsense, and it comes from the mid 19th century: from Dutch dialect pappekak. cognate words: nonsense, rubbish, claptrap, balderdash, blather, moonshine, garbage
Page 513
I don’t believe so, because by the “borrowing” of words from other languages, the words keep on spreading among other countries and we end up with a bigger and better variety of words to use.
Page 516
I was able to understand the entire thing because it is just written in words that are spelled like they sound, not how the appropriate spelling is, for example the first words, “Wans apan a taim” refers to “Once upon a time.” the spelling is off, but the pronunciation is good.
I wasnt able to understand this text entirely, some words are regular English words, for example, “get many peoples,” the grammar is the only thing that is wrong, but I was able to figure some parts out.
Page 517
I do believe that it is a worth-while effort because that way the dialects can still be heard among people and it is completely awesome to have a variety of languages and dialects, that way people are able to learn other languages and dialects even though they didn’t grow up with them.

Keana Sabin:
pg. 479
Some competencies part of communicative competence are politeness, speaker roles, turn-taking roles and greetings.
Cultural competence differs from linguistic competence and performance because in order to achieve cultural competence an individual must interact with users of or familiar with that specific culture while linguistic competence is knowledge we ‘unconsciously’ gain about a language and the ability to virbually carry out that knowledge is performance.
Five Adjacency Pairs in American English:
1. How are you today? I’m phenomenal.
2. Are you lost? Nope.
3. Hi! Welcome. Thank you.
4. What have you been up to? Nothing.
5. Can you point me in the direction of “__?” Sure.
480
Power relationships are established in conversation when we try to persuade, educate, convince other individuals or attempt to gain their attention or change their emotions.
You can tell when someone is acquiescing within a conversation because they’ll just listen to the other –who’s exerting power– without any fight or struggle. These cues are socially determined because we learn how to exert power through interactions with others.
Examples of when establishing power happens within a conversation: presenting a project, selling a product, arguing your point, displaying your love towards a person, coaching…
482
a) How you and a friend greeted one another today.
Etic: The girl hurried her pace amongst other college students. Others look at her as she yelled in order to try and to gain the attention of her friend. She succeeded and they embraced it each other with a hug.
Emic: On campus, a girl caught the attention of her friend by yelling at her and greeted her with a hug.
b) What you ate, and did at lunch today.
Etic: The girl ventured in to the west commons market. It appears she took no thought into what to truly eat as she hastily grabbed a peanut butter sandwich, banana and milk to purchase. She rummaged through her purse for her wallet and card to make the purchase. She hurried to her next class.
Emic: Right before her next class, a girl bought a sandwich, banana and milk at the student store. After the purchase she hurried to class.
c) how your instructor started class.
Etic: The young professor stood by the podium. Stared at the classroom clock and saw how much time there was before class started. He then took his final sip of coffee. It was time. He positioned himself away from the podium and to front of the whiteboard to gain the attention of his students and start the class.
Emic: The professor drank his coffee and soon enough started teaching his class.
The difference between passive participation and participant observation is that participant observation requires the researcher to take part within a community to better observe and understand the actions of people within that community while passive participation has a similar concept except the researcher doesn’t actively engage themselves within their observation and watched afar.

Cory Stapleton:
14) P, S, Ph, M, Sm, Ph
16) a. non-native b. natural c. non-native d. some e. some f. some g. natural h. some i. non-native j. natural k. some l. non-native m. natural n. some o. some
17) a. bucket b. bag c. blinds/shades/curtains d. soda/soft drink e. fireflies f. in line g. straighten it up/clean it up h. you guys/you all i. a quarter to 5
1) Some aspects that enable a speaker to be competent in communication is sentence structure, understanding jokes and slang.
2) Cultural competence deals with the society you dwell in. Linguistic competence is an understanding of language itself and how to use it. Performance relates to how the speaker uses language and understands the language being used.
3) It is a process of communication in which one speaks and the other responds essentially.
a. Hey. Hey is for horses dumbass.
b. Whats up? The ceiling.
c. How are you? I am fine.
d. Are you alright? I’m totally cool.
15) This cues are socially determined. Some examples are elevated diction versus someone who uses a more colloquial form of language. Also by addressing the other in a negative manner is a form of exerting power.
28) Emic- A persons rushes toward another person with arms wide open.
Etic- The person is running towards their friend to hug them.
Emic- He reached into a big bag that was on his back and pulled out another bag that contained food. He held the food in front of his friend. The friend took the food and ate it.
Etic- The person brought a bagged lunch and offered some to their friend.
Emic- He walked in. Drew things on the wall. Turned and faced other faces and started making sounds.
Etic- He walked in, wrote on the board and greeted the class.
29) Passive observation, just watching. example: A person taking notes on the actions of another person. Participant observation, is where the observer is experiencing rather than merely watching. example: A person works alongside another person in order to gain an understanding of what is being done.
10) We know because linguistics researchers have traced the origins of languages like english to proto-Germanic.
14) Over time, there are shifts in language. Although we do not pronounce the k, languages like German still do.
22) Swum Swim Drank Drunk Eat Ate These changes come about due to shifts in the functions of words. These words have been altered for the purpose of tense and time.
29) i. Many words are new but derived from old words. New words have been created as a way to explain new ideas and concepts. Old words wouldn’t be able to capture the meaning of these new concepts.
ii. Many old words have be extended to encapsulate the new meanings they are being used towards.
Examples can come from Facebook: tagging, poking, etc. Writing on walls can be put to new use because that can be related to Facebook and talking directly to someone on their Facebook page.
pg 513-17
12) It is a threat to other languages that borrow words for their language loses the opportunity to be used and therefore runs the risk of losing it altogether.
22) I barely understand any of it. Ks are dropped words ending is S are now Zs You lost the O The Th is lost
23) Words are somewhat similar but there are lots of lost or dropped letters. Dees=these udder=under newa=new
29) It is important to keep and know our heritage but I believe it is a lost cause to revive a dead language. The language died for a reason. It is no longer as useful as it once was, so to revive a language would most likely be a waste of time.

Michelle Zavestoski:
pg. 444 #14
Ph/S/P/M/Sm/Ph
Pg. 445 #16
some
natural
some
natural
NN
some
natural
some
natural
natural
natural
NN
natural
some
NN
pg. 446 #17
A
A
A
A
A
B
D
A
B
Pg. 479
1. politeness, having understanding among one another with communication
2. in certain cultures, it is rude to look at someone in the eye when you speak to them—different cultures have various rules of language, and some of it doesn’t need to be spoken
3. Adjacency pairs are pairs of adjacent utterances produced by two different speakers, in which the first utterance provokes or requires the hearer to respond with the second utterance.
Ex: thank you—you’re welcome
This is delicious!—thank you!
You’re hot—I know. Lol
Pg. 480
15. power relationships can be established by those taking dominance in the conversation. We can use examples of work related situations, with our bosses talking over us.
Pg. 482
28. a. etic: two people approached each other at the mall and said hello, gave one another a friendly hug, and walked into the coffee shop.
emic: two friends met up, gave each other a hug, and went to get coffee.
b. etic: the sandwich was carefully taken out of the bag as to keep all the contents in place. A phone in one hand, and a sandwich in the other, I texted my mom asking what the evening nourishment would be when I come home from school.
Emic: I took my sandwich out of my bag and texted my mom asking her what we were having for dinner.
c. etic: the professor walked into the classroom and greeted everyone. He picked up the marker and stated writing something on the board. It was the agenda for the workflow of that day.
Emic: The teacher walked into class and said hello. He picked up a marker and wrote the agenda on the board.
29. Passive participation: a type of participant observation in which the researcher passively watches everyday life in the community without taking part.
Participant observation: a type of field work that consists of systematically observing within a community in order to understand how and why people do the things they do on a daily basis.

Steve Juarez
p. 557, #10
Linguists have researched this language and discovered this language was once spoken
#14 The K was initially pronounced long ago, but was dropped.
p. 561, #22—swim, swam/ hung, hanged
Analytic (language)—type of language in which most words consist of one morpheme and sentences are composed sequences of these free morphemes. Grammatical relationships are often indicated by word order. Examples are Chinese and Vietnamese.
p. 562, #29–tagging, fb stalking, poking, why the hell can I only think of facebook, writing on walls…writing on walls can be put to new use because that can be related to facebook and talking to someone on their page.
p. 513, #12 Yes. It is killing off the original language and bringing in murrikan words that diminish the foreign language.
p. 516, #22 story telling, once upon a time…the end…etc.
#23…seems like there is a story line being established
p. 517, #29—yes it is a worthwhile effort. This is how culture stays alive. If everything is turned into something of a neutral language, then the uniqueness of the culture will diminish.

Extra Credit Dialect Quiz

My results were spot on! The first location suggested was the city that I was born and raised in, San Jose, CA! I am not really surprised to be honest, but some of the questions in the quiz were dead gives a ways to places I am not from. I have never heard anyone in California call a soda “pop” except for when I lived with a guy from Mississippi. They other two cities mentioned were Fremont and Fresno. I can understand Fremont because I have family there and it seems fairly similar to San Jose. But Fresno kind of came out of no where. When I think of Fresno, I think of hot dead wastelands because Fresno blows chunks of lameness. It is like where they grow cows or something, totally lame. But overall, I am pleased with my results and incredibly surprised by how accurate they are. This was pretty cool.

#dialect #sanjose #california #baylingo #lignuistics #sj

Pictures: Conveying Meaning Through it Parts

morph images 2

morph images 3

morph images 1

The three photos I decided to use all depict a woman. This woman is the root of all the images, for she is the main focal point of the pieces. It is her that is the source of the image in which the viewer emotional connects to the piece.

In the first image, the woman cries as she thinks about a man. At this moment, it is unclear whether they are romantically involved, until you view the other two images. Once viewing the other two pictures, it becomes apparent that the man is her significant other. But the third image creates further confusion, for the woman may no longer love her partner.

In the first image, the thought of the man is an unbound affix. Although he is unbound, he is derivational. This is because, the thought of the man gives significant insight to the emotion the woman is feeling. She is either saddened over him or misses him. The emotion of sadness is conveyed through the way her mouth forms a frown, while in the second image it appears to be a smile conveying a sense of pleasure.

In the second image, the man is an unbound derivational affix as well. This is because, without the man, the viewer would not be able to understand why the woman is crying and an incorrect assumption would most likely be drawn. For the woman is crying due to overwhelming joy, but if the man wasn’t there holding her, she would merely appear sad.

The tears the woman is shedding may be considered an allomorph but I would argue against it, for in the first image they appear to be tears of sorrow. But in the second image I believe the tears are tears of joy. This is because she is reunited with her lover and she is crying because she is so happy that they are together. In either case, the tears are bound affixes for on their own they wouldn’t convey significant meaning, but attached to the woman, the viewer is able to sympathize and understand how the woman feels.

In the last image though, the woman maintains a blank composure. She has a slightly empathetic look on her face, but I feel that is because she is about to break it off with her boyfriend. She says, “I love you, too… But…” This creates a very ominous feeling in the viewer; as if the woman is about to say something she doesn’t want to say but has too. The speech bubble in the third image is an unbound derivational affix, for without it, the piece’s meaning would be unclear to the viewer.

#roylichtenstein #popart #comicart #morphology #visualdissection

Blog 1!!

Cory Stapleton
Paige Bowden
Carl
Michelle Kuerz
Katrina Chavez
Blog 1
Language is a complex subject. Although it is inherently learned, our actually understanding of language itself is rather limited. This may seem like an overstatement, knowing that we speak and use language in nearly all aspects of our everyday lives, but when given the task of explaining language, one often finds their self struggling. This is especially true when one is attempting to dissect and understand the way in which the sounds and mouth movements we use create the language. Not only is the comprehension of the characteristics of language difficult to grasp initially, spoken language varies from place to place and is also continually evolving. Language is dynamic and therefore when we encounter language, our experiences vary in a wide array of ways.
Learning another language separate from our native tongue can prove to be a challenging task as we grow older with age. It is much easier to teach a child a different language versus an adult for children are able to absorb and gasp concepts much more easily because their minds are still fresh and not indoctrinated like their adult counterparts. Many young adults are required to learn a second language in high school, but the ability to speak the language fluently is either never achieved or disappears once the student is no longer required to use it on a regular basis. Language acquisition is a task that requires rigorous work and is full of trial and error. But with consistent exposure to the language within the context of the environment it is used or in a classroom, one may be able to grasp an understanding for their new mode of speech.
One member of our group, Paige Bowden, is bilingual and grew up learning both English and Spanish in her household. Her father made an effort to use Spanish around her and her sister in order for them to feel connected to that part of their ethnicity and in hopes that they would learn both Spanish and English concurrently. Their father knew that, as residents of Southern California, these two languages are predominantly used and could potentially give them that advantage when applying for jobs. The American Speech-Language Hearing Association suggests that being bilingual can contribute to good listening skills and the ability to learn new words easily. Children have the highest capacity for learning an additional language, so she is thankful to have learned Spanish at an early age rather than attempting to master it now. Being bilingual and growing up around two languages has only aided her and is a beneficial skill that she hopes to pass on to her children as well.
Another member of our group, Carl, grew up with a speech impediment. This speech impediment was similar to stuttering. His speech hinderance proposed many difficulties in his early childhood. His early acquisition of language was greatly hindered and even stunted. For awhile, he was unable to even say articles like “the” and “a” without adding 5 or 10 syllables. This was a serious struggle for him. Sometimes, he would become frustrated and would just give up, forgetting what he intended to say. Due to a lack of identification towards his speech impediment, his ability to speech during his childhood resulted in an unwillingness to communicate. Thus developing a refusal to talk or fear of talking, which greatly interfered with his language development.
Overall, language has proven to be a crucial part of the human experience, but not everyone interacts with it the same way. Nor does everyone acquire it the same way. Sometimes we are unable to grasp the fundamentals of a language due to speech hindrances or a lack of practice and exposure. Other individuals not only comprehend it with exceptional ease, but also learn more languages than just their native tongue. For these reasons, language can be difficult to define. Not only is it difficult subject to explain, the way an individual views and uses their language may be a radically different approach compared to another speaker.