Research Project ELL

Topic: Monophthongization of Cities across America

 Summary: Will explain the individualization of cities across the country and how they identify themselves with a personal modification to the common language. Geographical, social/cultural and development issues to be analyzed. Common cities will include, NYC, San Francisco, Cleveland, Atlanta dialects and rivalry between any of these cities political or socially.

Sources, more to be added or excluded.

Durfee, Harold A. "The Death Of Man." Philosophy Today 47.2 (2003): 191-204. Academic Search Complete.

B. Flexner; Stuart B. Flexner is editor in chief of the Random House, Dictionaries, ''I Hear America Talking'' author of The Dictionary of American Slang, and America.'' ''Listening to. "One Language, Highly Divisible." New York Times Book Review (1985): 1. Academic Search Complete.

KREBS MICHELLE, Auto Makers Practice a New York Accent. New York Times. March 30, 1997

Johnstone, Barbara, and Scott F. Kiesling. "Indexicality And Experience: Exploring The Meanings Of /Aw/-Monophthongization In Pittsburgh." Journal Of Sociolinguistics 12.1 (2008): 5-33. Academic Search Complete.

Extra Credit BP

Blog Post #5

Exaggerated  
Exag                       ger                         ated
Stem                     bound                   bound                  
Free                       lexical                    inflectional

1530s, "to pile up, accumulate," from L. exaggeratus, pp. of exaggerare "heighten, amplify, magnify," lit. "to heap, pile, load, fill," from ex- "thoroughly" (see ex-) + aggerare "heap up," from agger (gen. aggeris) "heap," from aggerere "bring together, carry toward," from ad- "to, toward" + gerere "carry." Sense of "overstate" first recorded in English 1560s. Related: Exaggerated; exaggerating.

Telephoned
Tele                       phoned
Stem                     stem/bound
Free                       inflectional

1835, "apparatus for signaling by musical notes" (devised by Sudré in 1828), from Fr. téléphone (c.1830), from télé- "far" (see tele-) + phone "sound" (see fame). Also used of other apparatus early 19c., including "instrument similar to a foghorn for signaling from ship to ship" (1844). The electrical communication tool was first described in modern form by P.Reis (1861); developed by Bell, and so called by him from 1876. The verb is attested from 1878.

Brooklyn
Brook                    lyn
stem                      stem
free                       bound

New York City borough, named for village founded there 1646, named for Dutch township of Breukelen near Utrecht; from O.H.G. bruoh "moor, marshland;" spelling of U.S. place name influenced by brook (n.).

 College
 Col                         lege
stem                      partical stem
free/bound        bound

 "body of scholars and students within a university," late 14c., from O.Fr. college "collegiate body" (14c.), from L. collegium "community, society, guild," lit. "association of collegae" (see colleague). At first meaning any corporate group, the sense of "academic institution" attested from 1560s became the principal sense in 19c. via use at Oxford and Cambridge.

Linguist
Ling                        uist
lexical                    derivational
ree                       free

1580s, "a master of language, one who uses his tongue freely," from L. lingua "language, tongue" (see lingual). Meaning "a student of language" first attested 1640s.

Blog Post #4

How do you think the rise of social networking affects language use? (Give some examples)

From experience, the way social networking affects language use is that someone may not even know how to properly pronounce a word but will be able to spell it correctly or mostly incorrectly. On social networking sites, there’s a trend of shortening of words used to communicate such as “r” instead of “are” or abbreviation of words such as “tmrw” instead of “tomorrow.” The prescriptive rules of English grammar do not tend to apply when it comes to typing. Grammatical errors, misspellings and punctuation are all ignored on social networking sites. For the younger crowd especially those in secondary education, it tends to be an escape from the professional and academia world. The most shocking of all is that the professional/academia world has adapted to this trend of language use and formerly improper words are now proper and can be found in the latest dictionaries.

Does the spread of the Internet and other technologies create a larger need for English knowledge around the world, or reduce its necessity?

The increase in the need of the English has spread throughout the years dramatically, what first started out to be westernized is now globalized and most importantly universal. From a distinct geographical area of the Americas and Western Europe, its factually stated that English has become the common language of a few nations but the universal secondary language of many nations. Both of the videos give statistics that use and innovation of technology has revolutionized the world as it is. What took days, months to mail, now can be reached in matter of seconds with the creation of email. The use of social networking was used during the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. The English language can be spoken in nations that once used one tribal language, you may go to nearly any nation in the world and speak or even read English, it has become the universal language of the globe and continues its path through technology. All corporate websites visited from around the world, English will be the default language. The smaller or non-profit website will have an English option for you to view. The language has become the capital language of business, society and life.

Blog #3

1. Imbalance      incompatible     incomplete        indecent             inglorious     ingratitude     illegal        illiterate     immature     imperfect       impossible          irrational           irresponsible    insane           intolerant       invariable

2. The phoneme that comes before the word is a prefix, which changes the entire meaning of the work. The “in”, “im” and “ir” actually takes the original word and reverse it into the opposite. Where as in an allophone the phoneme just changes the pronunciation of the word but not the meaning.

3. The comparison of the “s”, “z” and “ez” is a perfect example of an allophone because the pronunciation of the word has changed a bit the original meaning still stayed the same, the only minor change may be when it’s in the sense of plurals.

Blog #2

1. Ali

/ae l i:/

2. The first syllable of “Ali” starts with a front short glottal stop on the “ae,” pronunciation followed by a glide on the alveolar ridge on the front vowel of “i:”

3. The first syllable of my name starts with a pronunciation from the back of the throat of “uh” sound. The second syllable follows the first by the pronunciation of “Lee” in the front of the throat by pressing firmly on the alveolar ridge and the back of the teeth.

My Autobiography on Language

My name is Ali and I’m Brooklyn, born and raised there actually. A little background of myself my parents immigrated from Yemen in the 70s. Yemen is a Middle Eastern country located right to the south of Saudi Arabia. Their national language is Arabic. Growing up was a bit difficult because my parents are very fluent in Arabic while I was just learning. However, growing up I was surrounded much more by English speaking individuals, whether it was school, or my social life. It just stuck with me. My parents sort off tried that only speak Arabic bit at home so I can learn the language but me and my siblings all stuck to English and spoke amongst ourselves in the English and to our parents in Arabic. We even had our own dialect of speaking, by mixing both English and Arabic to converse with each other. Nowadays we mostly speak English at my household but however keep the Arabic conversations with guests, family and friends sometimes. Arabic is a really difficult language to learn, there’s so many dialects and pronunciations that makes it difficult. It’s still very exotic and beautiful and there are words that most languages cannot define making it really unique.

I strongly believe that language is something that is socially-constructed in a person’s life. Individuals that are surrounded by an environment of a certain language and use it for basic survivals are more likely to adapt and evolve to this social need. If your workplace, school and home are all using just one universal language then you will mostly likely learn the language that surrounds you.  You are less likely to learn a language fluently if you only speak it in small sectors of your life. Such as taking a French class in middle school and never speak French again. That actually sounds like me, well it is exactly me. I took French in the 7^th grade and aced it with flying colors. But I have never spoken it after and completed forgot the language. It’s really upsetting actually because I would have been able to add a third language to my list. But my second isn’t even that great I can only speak Arabic, can’t read it or write it. Plus I can only understand the Yemeni dialect as well as its surroundings neighbor’s dialect.  Nations in north-western Africa and northern mid-east I have a difficult time understanding.  

I truly believe that language is a social need in society because humans are social animals as Locke would put it. Language is what makes the world go around, people understanding and acknowledging one another in their own unique national language. Social Universality is needed for beings to connect to one another and to survive in life.