In the comments section of this post, report back something interesting that you have learned (or several interesting things!). Be sure to mention the part of the website where you found the information so that others may go there if they are intrigued.
The thing i found interesting was in the part of of the website called under "What speech do we like best?" under Correct American. This was very interest in the fact that they said no language is better or worst than any other language it all depends on what context it is taken for example if it was writing something down. Also dictionaries can be used for saying a word in a wider communication with a large group who say something different you or I would.
ReplyDeleteI found the Beastly Mispronunciations page interesting. The page has the correct pronunciation for 100 commonly mispronounced words. I ended up going through the list, seeing which words I pronounced correctly. The link is located under the “Special Features!” Section of the home page.
ReplyDelete"Words That Shouldn't Be?" Wow! I would have to disagree that language changes subtly. I believe that as America broadens its ability to communicate with more countries globally in economic and humanitarian ways, our language evolves as different languages merge with ours. With each new generation in America,a major way to revolt against the status quo of the previous generation is to have a words or phrases that are unique to themselves or reflective of the individual. "Groovy" or "Far-out Dude," are phrases virtually unheard of in the fifties, yet, can almost be found literally in the 60's.
ReplyDeleteI was a little disappointed that the article focused more on whch class leads the way for language changing. I believe they should have looked at the changes established by the different age groups. BUT, that is just my opinion. I found this on the link "Words That Shouldn't Be?", from the main page.
I checked out the regional quiz in the "Special Features" section. I did not do well at all. I had never heard of any of the answers that were listed. There was also a health quiz and a food quiz. I gave up on both and decided to move on to something else.
ReplyDeleteI decided to check out the Power of Mass Media and came across an article about the "vanishing verb". It told about how news and other media commentators are compacting their stories in such a way that the verb is hardly ever used. I am going to pay more attention to the nightly news, to see if this is true.
I followed the links from "Power of Mass" Media to the "Vanishing Verb". There was also a short video that gave some examples of this compacting by news reporters as they gave the news.
I did a test over testing my "vowel powers" by listening to a woman speak several different words. I was able to get one of the answers right, but the rest just sounded like sudden noises. It's really hard to tell without some context, but it was definitely nothing I was accustomed to hearing.
ReplyDeleteI checked out the website on "Sez Who" which had to do with creating new words and expressions, and "Born in the USA" which was very interesting because it pointed out how we use slang which has become a global code and young people use it to connect to American pop culture, slang signals: belonging. Another website was "Tract that word" which has a database that discovers the orign and evolution of words and expressions. It listed several Presidents and the words they either invented or promoted; very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI loved the Beastly Mispronunciations page. I'm known as the 'Grammar Nazi' in my family, constantly correcting people, and this page spoke to my inner Nazi.
ReplyDeleteThere is an article on language prejudice, click on “what speech do we like best”, then on language prejudices. The article is about how we judge people by the way they talk. There is a really good example in the article about how someone might react to a doctor that has really strong accent and different dialect that most people would not associate with a person in his line of work.
ReplyDeleteI think collectively the narrarator represented the nation well. I also liked the 'grammer nazi' page.
ReplyDeleteat http://www.pbs.org/speak/ahead/technology/voiceinterface/ I was following the conversation about computer voices. I found the results to their experiments about male and female voices interesting. Particular the following excerpt:
ReplyDeleteConsistent with the stereotype that praise from males is taken more seriously than praise from females, experimental participants rated the tutor computer as significantly more competent and more friendly (regardless of tutor voice) when it was praised by a “male” computer rather than a “female” computer, even though the computers always said the same thing. Furthermore, the female-voiced tutor computer was perceived as more informative about love and relationship and less informative about engineering, again, when the computers said the exact same things!