Quirks of the English Language

I found a really interesting video about the English language.  However, it is not your typical video but an 102 year old man who challenges it.  He challenges the absurdity of the spelling of certain words that we use.

He starts with a simple 4 letter word, bomb.  He holds up each of the 4 letters and asks “what rhymes with bomb? Tomb”.  However, we run into a problem because tom which is supposed to rhyme with bomb is not  spelled the same way as you would expect it to be. When he adds a ‘t’ it becomes tomb instead of tom.  He then adds a ‘c’ but unfortunately, that doesn’t rhyme with tomb even, it becomes ‘comb’. He goes on to ask what rhymes with ‘comb’ and he chooses the word ‘home’.  The same problem arises. He goes on like this with some more words that should rhyme but the spelling does not reflect that.

Evolution of the rhyming words he uses:

• Bomb
• Tomb
• Comb
• Home
• Some
• Numb

Afterwards, he says that “English spelling from A-Z is dumb… d-u-m-b, dumb.” I can’t say that I disagree with him.  English is one of the most complex languages in the world.  Spelling does not always reflect the appropriate sounds that they are supposed to.  Different words by themselves have different pronunciations.  For example, the word LEAD can be used to show someone the way or talk about what is used in pencils.

I really liked how he ended the video.  He said that if English was normal, we would spell words exactly the way they sound.  In this case:

• Dumb would be dum
• Numb would be num
• Some would be some
• Hum would be hum (we have one winner)
• Come would be cum

His closing line is really what got to me.  He showed the name ‘tom’ and said “If you ever want every Tom, Dick and Harry to be able to write and read, that’s the only way it will ever be d-u-n.”  Children are able to pick up the language through their early language acquisition.  However, if they do not know the language or if adults try to learn it, it becomes a much bigger struggle.  We have so many sounds that do not match our letters or even better yet, we have letters that represent multiple sounds.  For example, the letter ‘e’ can be used in words like ‘edit’ or ‘tree’.  It is very hard to realize the same letter should be used in two completely different sounds.  English has so many exceptions and rules that make absolutely no sense, yet we are required to learn them.  While, I am a native English speaker, I can imagine how hard it would be for someone who has no background with the English language.

 

Chinook Jargon

I found learning about Chinook Jargon in McConnell’s article, English in British Columbia to be very interesting. I had never heard of this Jargon and knew nothing about it.  While reading, I learned a lot about it and the history behind it. There are so many languages that we cannot possibly know about all of them. However, it is important to keep looking at them and learning more about them.

Chinook Jargon is influenced by a lot of different things.  The first pain influence is the Indian influence.  They talked about fish a lot so a lot of the terms that existed reflected that.  However, many of the terms that compared to the life of the Indians have slowly stopped being used.

This Jargon was spoken along the Pacific coast from Alaska to the Columbia River.  At that point it was a trade language.  There were phrases used and many people knew about them.  Many individuals in older generation of British Columbia can still speak the Jargon or can still remember some of it.  While it is not around now, in the 1870s and 1880s, it was a thriving language.  It was influenced by Hudson’s Bay Company traders, Americans, French traders, Russian traders, Indian agents, Chinese, railroad workers and even missionaries.  Each one of these groups contributed words for the Chinook Jargon.  It is possible that the Jargon could have been around before the traders came.  It could have been spoken throughout the tribes.  At that point, they spoke hundreds of different languages and there were influences from many of them. Another language, Nootka, was a large contributor of basic words. Salish and other coastal tribes, English and French vocabulary were also added.

The Chinook Jargon is very simple.  The grammar is simple on purpose so that it can be learned easily.  There are no inflections, no tenses, few adverbs to understand context and a limited vocabulary.  They are able to change meaning simply by changing word order.  Some words are onomatopoeias.  This means that regular sounds are used as words.  An example of this is ‘tik-tik’. There were some other interesting things in the Chinook Jargon.  To keep it simple, some words were created by putting other words together.  The word ‘moose’ was made up of the individual words for ‘big’ and ‘deer’.  This did not work for all words as some phrases are hard to replace.  Metaphors, abstract nouns and causative verbs were also used in the Jargon.  Gesture and intonation was an important aspect to add to word meaning.

The interesting thing about the Chinook Jargon is that individuals could adapt the sounds of their own language.  This is something that is common among borrowed languages.  One of the reasons for this is because they did not have all of the same sounds as the original words.  So if they had to, they changed the pronunciation so that they could say it.  An example of this is changing ‘fish’ to ‘pish’.  These changes in phonology were not random so the Jargon was still effective and used.  However, the spelling became variable.

Unfortunately, this language was short-lived.  It is disappearing and when the older generation is no longer around, the fate of the Jargon may not be so wonderful.  Père La Jeune, a missionary priest wrote it down to create a written language.  He was responsible for creating phonetic scripts so that it would be easier to learn and read. They have also started preserving certain words in names of places.  As well, words do appear randomly for people.  I don’t think that this is enough.  I think having a written text is very important but if the younger generations do not know the language, it is hard to preserve it.

 

First Nations English Dialects

I was reading the article First Nations English Dialects – Alive and Well by Sharla Peltier. I never really thought about the differences between that dialect and standard Canadian English. I have learned about the residential schools that were around from 1892 to 1996 but now that they are closed, I thought that things were different.

Sharla is part of the Anishinaabe kwe peoples who speak Ojibway.  Her parents were not in residential schools but as a community, they were still affected by the mindset of those around them.  It was believed that being proficient in the English language was important for doing well in school in life.  Their own language was placed on the back burner.  As a result to this, Sharla and her siblings were not taught Ojibway.  This is something that was occurring throughout the community and not only in their family. However, Sharla herself felt like she should have known the language. Growing up, having a link to your community is really important.  Your community plays a huge role in shaping you and she may have felt like she was missing the link to interacting with it.

First Nations communities tend to be isolated. They don’t tend to interact with speakers of Standard English. The First Nations English Dialect came about first as a pidgin.  They used their Aboriginal language but also English without any rules and structure.  Eventually, a creole was formed when rules and a structure started to emerge.

The government did not want Aboriginal peoples to have their language.  They tried to get rid of it which was one of the reasons for residential schools.  People of different Aboriginal communities were brought together and forced to learn Standard English.  Even though there are different varieties, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, discourse and pragmatic rules are very similar.  They can usually tell where a person came from based on their version of First Nations English. If they used their own Aboriginal languages, they were treated harshly. As a result of this, many of the languages are being lost. While people still use their Aboriginal languages, it is on the decline.

One of the biggest problems has been in education.  As a result to First Nations languages being different than Standard English, there is a lot of judgement around them.  Unfortunately because they cannot meet standard guidelines of their language, teachers and speech and language pathologists are misdiagnosing children.  Children may appear to have a language impediment but it may just be how their family speaks.  This is causing an over-identification in special education programs.  This kind of creates a catch-22.  People now realize that students may not be able to use Standard English but can still be developing normally so you shouldn’t jump to diagnosing a student with a learning disability.  However, a student may actually require extra special education support and if you are careful with diagnosing, you may miss it.

Schools are now supporting a bi-dialectal curriculum for this reason and to teach about diversity, code switching, acquisition and Standard English. These programs also are an important link to keep students involved with their community.

I don’t believe that First Nation English dialects are dying; they are just being used in different ways.  People still want to communicate with the older generation so they want to have proper language abilities.  Even if Aboriginals live in these two worlds of their own language and Standard English, they generally are able to code-switch.  This helps everyone around them and makes communicating easier. Even if Aboriginals like Sharla leave their community for educational or professional opportunities, it does not mean they are giving up who they are.  They are still able to go back home and communicate with their relatives using the language that they were exposed to in their homes.

 

 

Except Newfoundland English

 

I found the article Except Newfoundland English. Which is unique. And endangered. Or not. By Gerard Van Herk very interesting. I was not well versed on Newfoundland English before learning about it this year. I know that their dialect is distinct and different than other dialect in Canada.

Gerard mentioned that Newfoundland English looks very different than other Englishes because of the different history that it has.  Settlers came from a small area of southwest part of Europe and the southeast part of Ireland.  This differs a bit from the 4 waves of immigration into the rest of Canada.  Immigration to Ireland also did not go on for a long time. In the rest of the country, immigration was ongoing even if it was not from one group of people.  There was an early “cessation of immigration” into Newfoundland. Another reason it may be different from other parts of Canada is because of its isolation.  Politically, Newfoundland is different and it is geographically separate.  This separation can influence a difference in the way people talk.

The rest of Canadian English compared to American English.  I also believe that it is compared to British English.  However, Newfoundland English is compared to mainlanders. This means that they are compared to everyone who is not from Newfoundland and not just a specific area. I guess when you have language which is so different and distinct, there is not one area to compare it to. This is why I think it is compared to mainlanders and not just America or Britain.

As well, Newfoundland is seen as different than the rest of the country.  The media, outsiders and even Newfoundlanders themselves view Newfoundland as different.  There are a lot of reports that the local Newfoundland language is dying.  There are rumours that the accent is going and their dialect is no longer distinct. However, is this really the case?

I really liked Gerard’s point on how the media covers language.  There is “right, wrong and colourful” language.  Standard English is considered right, language from youth is considered wrong and anything rural or traditional is considered to be colourful.  However, he does say that colourful language is attractive and authentic.

There were also two main discourses discussed in the article.  The first discourse is uniqueness. As a result to Newfoundland being so unique, it brings something special to the country.  The locals know that they have a distinct language but they are not ashamed of it.  It gives them an identity and makes them proud. It may be even viewed as sacred because it is so rare.  The other main discourse is nostalgia.  There are certain features to Newfoundland English which are still around.  Certain features may be occurring less often.  He made a point that “even if there is a decline in features, it doesn’t mean that Newfoundland English is in decline”.  I think that is a really good point because they still do possess unique qualities to them.

There has been a shift in how younger people are using language in Newfoundland.  They change it to fit their individual needs. Now that there is less of a divide between Irish and English Newfoundlanders, the language is changing. The younger generation has readopted the s-marking for stative verbs.  For example, there are used for loves, wants, needs, thinks, hopes, forgets and many others.  Another interesting thing about the younger generation is that they can choose between the Irish and English dialects. Gerard states that they are not “rejecting speech, just creating a new sense of identity”.  This is very important to note because they are growing up in a different environment and they are taking the language they know and adapting it to their everyday lives.

I do not believe that Newfoundland English is endangered or will go extinct.  I think the uniqueness behind it is so profound that people want to hold onto that language.  Even if they may be changing their speech, they still have a part of it with them by living in Newfoundland.

Evolution of the Selfie

Last week when I found out that the word “selfie” was Oxford’s Dictionary Word of the Year, I was a bit surprises. On November 19th, Oxford, UK, released that it was the international word of the year. This word each year is support to be very popular and have a lot of use throughout the world. Oxford released that the frequency of the word had increased 17000% since last year. This number is outrageous. There is an unwritten rule that if you post any picture to any form of social media that is just of yourself; you have to include #selfie. This can be one of the contributors to the increase in the word frequency. Now that everyone has smartphones, they are taking more pictures by themselves which happen to be selfies.

The first time the word selfie was seen used was in an Australian online forum in 2002. However, it wasn’t until 2012 when the word really took off. In the age of social media, people saw a new term and took hold of it.

She wrote “Um, drunk at mates 21st, I tripped ofer and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.”

Social media saw this term and really helped launch its use. It was first seen on Flickr as one of the tags around 2004. There are even controversial spelling variations.  It used to be spelled ending with a –y but now –ie is more common.

Some of the other words that were considered for international word of the year were bedroom tax, binge-watch, bitcoin, olinguito, schmeat, showrooming and twerk.

After hearing and reading all about this, I found a BuzzFeed article called Proof that Adding “Selfie” to the Dictionary Isn’t Really that Weird. I know for myself I don’t think that it is really that weird but I don’t believe it should be the international word of the year. I think it actually should be in the dictionary based on its usage.

This article goes through popular years and shows 1-3 of the most interesting words that made it to the dictionary during that time. These all are in Oxford’s Dictionary. I went through and picked one word per decade/time period.

1950: Ponytail.  While the word may be used very frequently now, it wasn’t until the 1950s when it started to become popular. The word means is supposed to be used to hold one’s hair which may resemble a tail of a pony.

1955: Weirdo. is used to describe someone who may have interesting or quirky habits.

1960: Barf. This word means to throw up. I didn’t realize that this word came around so late.

1963: Mind Game. This word is used when deceiving someone.  If you are deceiving someone, you are playing a game with their minds.

1967:  Doofus. This describes someone who is ignorant of what is going on around them. They may be described as stupid

1970: Labradoodle. A mixture between a Labrador and a Poodle.

1972: Beer Pong. A drinking game in which players try to throw ping pong balls into cups half filled with beer.

1973: Weirded Out.  If something is so strange and a person is taken aback to what is going on.

1976: Download. The act of retrieving a file usually from the internet.

1979: E-mail.  Electronic mail.

1980: High-five. This is the act of two individuals bringing their hands together.  Their hands are usually flat and open and it is usually done around the level of one`s head. It is usually done to celebrate something, as a greeting or for other various reasons.

1981: Chill pill.  People tell others to take a chill pill if they think that they should relax.

1982: Party Animal.  Someone who is always going to parties.

1988: e-book. A book that can be read on the computer or on a tablet.

1991: Riot grrl. A feminist musical movement when a lot of all-female bands came out.

1995: Crunk. To be high and drunk at the same time.

1999: Blog. A web log such as this one. It is a place to post about a certain topic or a variety of different topics.

2002: Nom. This is an expression of eating or the sound that someone is eating.

2005: Manbiguous. If a man is being questioned about his sexual orientation due to his behaviour.

2013: Selfie. The international word of the year. It is taking a picture of oneself and uploading it to social media.
Here are some variations of the selfie!

Odd Things About the English Language

My friend knew I was in Linguistics so she sent me a BuzzFeed article she thought I would enjoy. It’s called 18 Surprising and Odd Things you Never Knew about the English Language. I went through each one of the facts and will go through an overview here. I don’t know where some of these facts came from but they are very interesting.

1) First off, the Oxford English Corpus currently contains over 2 billion words.

Even though I know there are so many words, I did not realize just how many there really are. 2 billion is a very large number and to think that in the English language there are more than that is outrageous.  It’s hard to believe that all of these words are used because it seems so large. However, each person may use a slightly different set of the word inventory.

2) The average person, though, is likely to know only about 50,000 of them.

This fact does not surprise me. There is no way that we can each know over 2 billion words. We learn words based on the environment we are in and our inventory is set based on our interactions. If you constantly interact with someone who uses new words, you will learn new words as well.

3) That might be because the ten most common lemmas (base forms of a word) in English make up 25% of all words used.

The words the, be, to, of, and, a, in, that, have, and I. At least one of these function words are used in every sentence that we make up. Even though these are only ten small words, they can be used so widely that they become so powerful and important. Without them, we wouldn`t be able to compose our thoughts coherently.

4) Words have lifespans that can range from fewer than 1,000 years up to 20,000 years.

If words are really common (such as the function lemmas), they are likely to have a longer lifespan. Those will likely reach up to 20,000 years. However, words that are less common may not sustain over the years and have a lower lifespan.

5) It is estimated that a new word is created every 98 seconds.

New words are constantly being added to the dictionary and are being accepted into our daily speech. This is how words such as twerk, selfie, showrooming become acceptable. It is hard to imagine how these words come into use but it definitely is happening.

6) “You” is the 18^th most common word in English, while “me” only clocks in at number 50

I actually find this very interesting. I thought that “me” would be further up than number 50.  It is really nice to see that “you” is higher up. It gives a more selfless impression of people. I wonder where “I” fits on this list.

7) There are over 50 countries around the world that use English as an official language including Ghana, Pakistan and the Philippines.

English is a predominant language and even in countries you wouldn’t expect, English can still be an official language. Some languages have more than one official language and English may fall into that category. English is used throughout the world so I know people find it very important to learn.

8) The dot above a lowercase “i” or “j” is called a “tittle”.

This is the diacritic used only in these letters. I figured there was a name to it but I never actually knew what it was. The word “tittle” means a “small point or stroke in writing”.  This makes a lot of sense as the word seems to be made up of the words “tiny” and “little”. This directly can relate to a small dot.

9) The longest word in English with all its letters in alphabetical order is “aegilops”.

That is so interesting. I can honestly say that I’ve never thought of that before. It is crazy to see what people find and come up with in regards to the English language. The word means “a genus of plants in the grass family, Poaceae”.

10) According to researchers at Reading University, the oldest known word in English is, “who”, dating back more than 20,000 years.

I’m not that surprised that “who” is the oldest word. “Who” can be used in a variety of different contexts.  It can be used to ask a question, talk about someone… “Two”, “three”, and “I” are the second, third and fourth oldest word.

11) The longest one syllable word is the ten-letter “scraunched”, found in a 1620 translation of Don Quixote. 

This word means to make a crushing noise. Even though this word is not commonly used, it still gets credit for being the only 10 letter word that is one syllable. There are words like “screeched” and “scratched” that are used more commonly. However, these words only have 9 letters.

12. The longest word containing no repeating letters, including every vowel, is “uncopyrightable”, at 15 letters.

The word “dermatoglyphics”, meaning the “study of skin markings” is also a 15 letter long word that doesn’t have any repeat letters. However, that word does not have every vowel.

13) Although most people believe the word “orange” to have no perfect rhyme, it actually does – “sporange”.

This word is a rare “botanical term referring to part of a fern”. I had no idea that this word existed. I still think even if people know this, they will say that the word orange has no rhyme.

14) The only English term ending in –mt is “dreamt”, a spelling of “dreamed” commonly used in British English.

For some reason, I believed that there were more words in English that ended with the prefix “-mt” It is interesting to think that British English does not use that variation of the word. This means that British English has zero words that end this way.

15) There are nine words in English that contain two “u’s” in a row.

These words are “vacuum”, “continuum”, “residuum”, “menstruum”, “triduum”, “duumvir”, “duumvirate”, “muumuu”, and “Weltanschauung”.

16) In 1934, Webster’s released a dictionary accidentally containing a made-up word – “dord” – that wasn’t caught until 1939.

It wasn’t until 1947 that this word was actually removed from the dictionary. The thing is, people wouldn’t really question the word if it’s in the dictionary. Other dictionary’s also have variations of words so just because another didn’t have this word, people wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that it wasn’t a word.

17) Author Ernest Vincent Wright once wrote an entire novel – just over 50,000 words – without using the letter “e” at all.

This is such a crazy thing for me to hear. I understand that not all words have the letter “e”, but it is very difficult to write even one paragraph without the letter. I can’t imagine writing an entire book without it.

18) Lexicographer Paul Dickson entered the Guinness Book of World Records by collecting 2,964 synonyms for the word “drunk”, the most synonyms collected for any one term.

He wrote a 208 page book with all of the synonyms entitled “Drunk: The Definitive Drinker’s Dictionary”.  I can’t believe he found this many variations of the word. It’s also crazy to think that this is the word that had all of these synonyms.

 

 

#Happy Birthday

Last week was my birthday. On this day, one of my coworkers gave me a card and wished me happy birthday. The card was different than anything else I had ever received before because it was written all in hashtags. I have seen hashtags used in a variety of different ways but never to tell a story. That is exactly what my friend and coworker did.

This got me thinking so I started researching the use of the hashtag in daily conversations. I was reading an article about how Hashtags seep into everyday speech.

Lately, talking in hashtags has become very popular and seen among students on a regular basis. The article talks about how these hashtags in everyday speech may be emerging just as acronyms did. In the same ay someone would say LOL for laugh out loud and ASAP for as soon as possible, people are using hashtags out loud. Acronyms started as something just teenagers understood but now, it is common that adults know that BRB means be right back. The same trend is following with adults and the hashtag. While most adults I have been exposed to do not use the hashtag, they definitely understand it!

The article also discusses how hashtags can also be used as a pause in speech.  For example, it can be used to say “I can’t find a wireless connection … [pause] First-world problem.” That pause could essentially have a hashtag there and if it was written, probably would. The hashtag can also be used for air quotes; to either emphasize something or talk about the idea of something.

What I found most surprising is that in a 2009 study, “half of teens let informal language slip into their school writing assignments. Thirty-eight percent admitted using shortcuts learned through instant messaging and e-mail.” That is very frightening because this is not the type of English we want to teach our students.

Hashtags are becoming the norm and can even represent a community. Someone may not feel included if they do not use hashtags while describing a picture or what they are talking about. However, if you do use hashtags, you won’t stand out. It is so interesting that the thing that helps you fit in is an untraditional, unconventional symbol. What is even more interesting is that that symbol used to be solely used as a number sign or the pound sign. Nobody refers to # as that anymore. Instead, even when not used in the traditional hashtag environment, that symbols still pertains the meaning of the hashtag. In this sense even if you are just trying to say number 14 but write #14, most likely someone will read that as hashtag14.

Getting back to the card I received, I was shocked that while reading it, I even said hashtag before what my friend wrote. I do not use twitter or use hashtags but because I have been so exposed to an environment where hashtags are dominating our language, it didn’t even phase me.

The Top 2013 Words

I found a Buzzfeed article called The 10 Most 2013 Words. This list came from the Global Language Monitor and includes words, phrases and names that are representative of the year 2013. These words are based on media; blogs, internet, social media, print and electronic media. These words were found world-wide and had to have both a large depth and breadth. Depth is that it appears in many different forms of media. Breadth is that it must be used all over the world.

In order for the words to be considered for the list, it had to be seen at least 25000 times. Buzzfeed`s article focuses on the top ten words. However, it also mentions the two three phrases and names of the year.

Top 3 Phrases	Toxic PoliticsFederal DeficitAll Time High
Top 3 Names	Pope FrancisKate MiddletonEdward Snowdon

It is really interesting to think what the top 10 words of the year are.

Word	Meaning
Emancipate	To set free, especially from legal, social, or political restrictions
Sequestration	To legally take possession of assets
Deficit	The amount by which something, usually a sum of money, is too small
Drones	Remote-controlled, pilotless aircrafts or missiles
Surveillance	Close observation, especially of a suspected spy or criminal
The Optic	Threatening to overtake ‘the narrative’ as the Narrative overtook rational discourse
@Pontifex	Pop Francis` Twitter
Hashtag	The sign (#) used to identify tweets on a specific topic
Fail	To be unsuccessful
404	An error message displayed by a browser indicating that an internet address cannot be found

Some of these words do not surprise me at all. The one that really did not surprise me was the word ‘hashtag’.  It is becoming the norm and used constantly. Even television shows have been encouraging their audience to tweet in things using #____. At first Twitter was the only form of social media that used a hashtag but that is no longer the case.  I don’t even have Twitter but I still have been readily exposed to the words. Earlier this year, Facebook introduced the hashtag and Instagram has the feature that you can search for particular hashtags. Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake recorded a video that essentially makes fun of hashtags (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57dzaMaouXA) . They use a hastag basically every other word to make their point.

One that I was surprised was on the list is ‘fail’.  I actually thought that this was becoming less common as other words were being used. However, apparently, this is still the norm.  People use the word fail in many different contexts. It is now being used as a slang-like term. If someone is unimpressed or if something goes wrong, they throw in the world fail. I don’t hear it so much anymore but a few years ago, I heard it on a regular basis.

I was not so familiar with the words ‘sequestration’ and ‘the optic’.  Maybe I was just unaware of them but I find it interesting that I do not really know 2 of the 10 words that best represent the year.

Something else interesting about the list on the Global Language Monitor website is that it includes things like the top words of the decades as well as the top 3 words, phrases and names for previous years up to 2000.

Is It Worth It To Be A Grammar Snob?

I was on Facebook when an interesting article came up onto my newsfeed. It’s called Why I Stopped Being a Grammar Snob (And why you probably should, too) by Mary Rolf.

Mary introduces the article by saying that she used to be someone who would become infuriated if people did not use correct grammar. If someone used a comma, the word “whom” or anything else incorrectly, she would end up laughing.

When she took a course similar to this one, she realized that perhaps grammar is more complex than she originally thought. She went into the class thinking it was going to be a dry, boring class that would teach her “the right way to use English”. She thought she knew all she needed to know about English but the class was mandatory.

Mary learned all about language. She learned about slang, pronouns, why words became what they are, profanities in language as well as other topics. What she found the most interesting is that there really is not a standard variety of English. Different people speak English in different ways. For example, I say the word water and iron differently than my friends do.

Even though it is the same language, people have different accents and pronounce things differently. That does not mean that one is correct and the other is not. English can also vary by location. Mary explains that English of the Caribbean is different than English in the southern United States and the English of Oxbridge.  Another factor is related to one’s ethnic or religious groups. These varieties have different words that other may not have ever heard of. Education and socioeconomic status are really important factors of grammar.  Someone may not have learned proper grammar rules because they did not have the resources available to them.

Prescriptivism is the language of the “grammar snobs”.  Descriptivism is “how people use language and how language works”.  The prescriptivist sees one type of English language while descriptivists see many different types of English. Not one variety of English should be seen as better than the other.

There still has to be some grammar rules; our language would not be able to function without it. Every person has been exposed to many varieties of English but there has to be a common set of rules to keep language coherent.

My favourite line from Mary’s article is

“When you judge people for what you consider to be poor grammar, you’re judging them for not being as good as you at something that might be a challenge because they didn’t have the advantages or experience you did. Maybe they haven’t had the luxury of worrying about their grammar. Maybe their use of language is right in line with their community.”

 This is a really good point. If you are correcting someone’s grammar, you might actually be correcting them without knowing. If that is the way they speak what makes what we believe to be English better than what they believe to be English? Grammar is very important. I do not think we could function without it. However, I realize that we have to be respectful of others and their own use of language.

A Little Newfie Talk

I came across an article published earlier this year which discussed Russell Bragg and the book that he wrote. The article is by Heather Killen and is called A Little Newfie Talk.

Russell Bragg was born in Nova Scotia but then moved to Newfoundland. Once he got there, he was told that he talked funny. He did not understands at this point that Newfies had their own way to talk. Russell went on to learn French, Russia and German. He got his degree in Education as well as Linguistics. He went on to become a high school teacher in Newfoundland.

Russell describes Newfoundland English as his “first-second language”.  Traditional Newfy Talk is a dictionary which has 1200 words that Newfies use in everyday speech. Citizens living in Newfoundland get upset when others refer to their language as an accent, or slang. In fact, it is its own variety of English.

He looks into the language’s grammar and etymology. Etymotogy is studying where words come from and how their meanings have changed or evolved. He says that Newfoundland English “is a language in its own merit, with its own words and vocabulary”. In fact, it can be compared to Australian English, American English and British English.

Newfoundland also has many dialects within it. There are regional variations because of immigration. Fisherman came to isolated parts of the province. The language remains intact because the communities continue to stay mostly isolated.

In 1949, Newfoundland underwent a change. Before this time, it was under British rule but once it joined North America, the language changed. The English spoken was more representative of the rest of Canada but still very different.

There are 5 main variations of language in Newfoundland. The first is Centre which ranges from White Bay to Trinity Bay. There is Irish which goes from St. John’s to Argentia. Next there is the South Coast from the Bruin Penninsula to Port Aux Basques. There is the West Coast south of Corner Brook and finally the West Coast north of Corner Brook. Each one of these locations varies in pronunciations and expressions that are used. You can be able to tell where someone is from based on these regions. Newfoundland English represents lowland Scots in vocabulary, grammar, usage and pronunciation.

Each generation of individuals has an effect on the language. Just as language influences the world around us, the world influences how we speak and how we use language. An example of this is how television and the internet are influencing speech. In the article it is called “outmigration”. If common expressions are not used, they can be lost within two generations. That is why it is so important to have a dictionary on Newfoundland English. The English there may be becoming more standardized to the rest of Canada but it is not the same. If we do not maintain and preserve the language, we will begin to lose the identity of people living in Newfoundland.  If the language is lost, then the world view is lost as well.