Beijing dialect

The ancient Maya independently developed a number of complex verbal and written languages, that were crucial to their culture. Today, 31 Mayan languages are spoken by modern Maya people. These languages all take their roots from older Mayan languages, which originate from the hypothetical language “Proto-Mayan”, which is theorized to have been born in the highlands of what is now Guatemala around 4000 years ago. Mesoamerican societies are special in that they are one of very few societies…

In the first place, dictionaries with standardized and regulated words will help us maintain “conventions of usage” (Bryson, 1990, p.151). “We must agree to spell cat c-a-t and not e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, and we must agree that by that word we mean a small furry quadruped that goes meow and sits comfortably on one’s lap and not a large lumbering beast that grows tusks and is exceeding difficult to housebreak” (Bryson, 1990, p.150). We seem to have so many names for the same items. Sub sandwich’s can…

Probably the most experience I've had with intercultural communication are language barriers. Currently, I am deployed to the middle east. I recently had the opportunity to explore the area around me. I went sight-seeing with a group of friends to Jerash, also known as the Roman City of Jerasi. Just communicating with our tour guide was hard because although he spoke some English, some words and phrases he just couldn't understand, and same, he didn't know how to tell us details that he couldn't…

Is Text Messaging Diminishing the English Language? Everyone knows at least a little bit of text messaging talk; everyone has heard or seen it somewhere. In our society, phrases like “lol, omg, brb, yolo” are understood because the widely carried influence of the type of slang. There are many, many differences between text talk and proper English, but there are surprisingly comparisons between the two. Many believe that the text talk we all know and love is actually diminishing our proper…

Amy Tan’s discussion of her cultural identity is heightened through the varying levels of intimacy in her tone to ultimately mirror the fluctuating reverence and admiration that she has for her mother. Though unaddressed, it is implied through the absence of “we” that there is a prevalent cultural divide between Tan and her mother. Tan speaks to daughters of immigrant mothers in, Mother Tongue, as she analyzes the limits of being culturally and linguistically authentic in a society where the…

For thousands of years, human-beings have developed their own languages during the time. As well as England, many stories of how the English language has been developed have been told. One of the most significant and influential events was Elizabethan era. During this era, one of the most important people of all time was born; William Shakespeare. To clarify, both Queen Elizabeth I and Shakespeare had inspired many people and both made their own great histories. Queen Elizabeth I supported arts,…

that bad, has my personal experience made me immune to hearing dialectic differences? The answer, I decided, is my hearing is not trained enough to decipher actual changes in pronunciation of words. One exception being the New England--Bostonian dialect with the dropped |r|. Additionally, the thoughts in Steel Town Talk: Is the U.S. becoming increasingly homogeneous? “Among the reasons…

In this conversation, the point of code switching is “which is” in P script. P explains to A that ATA means American Translator Association. However, he does not translate “which is” to Korean, and just speaks like an English speaker. The reason is that part is hard to translate to Korean. Korean is a postposition language, so they put the described words or sentence before the word, but English is a postposition language such as they can use “which is” to describe the word. Therefore, in this…

Languages of the world What if the entire world spoke one language? What would that language be? In John McWhorters writing the Cosmopolitan Tongue he talks about how languages are dying and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. He claims that by 2109 ninety percent of the world’s languages will be dead. That would take us from the current 6000 languages down 600 languages for the entire world to use. Do you think that is a bad thing? Mcwhorter doesn’t, he feels that it is a natural progression…

The English language is continually and slowly being eradicated by the way society tends to manipulate the way they word their statements. People continue to switch their words around to make sure that it seems favorable while the meaning behind it is deceiving. George Orwell is an important writer who believes that our writing is problematic because of our thoughts, which is caused by the slovenliness of the language itself. This is both true and false because sometimes you have to get to the…