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Rep. Steve King and ProEnglish

By Ascolto on February 22, 2010 11:00 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

If you don't know who Rep. Steve King (R) is you might want to look him up, then again you might not want to look up a man with such a ferocious character and views that seems to point to xenophobia and hatred of linguistic diversity.

Recently, I came across the website ProEnglish amidst some research I was doing on Bilingual education. I was surprised to see some very objectionable content on this website especially about Puerto Rico, and at one point an article on the site even claimed that Puerto Ricans "lacked linguistic ability" I'm afraid I don't understand how any people can lack linguistic ability, simply because they can't speak English doesn't mean they lack any linguistic ability, at least no more than Rep. Steve King does, so let's be honest in that respect.

Subsequently, I came across a horrid video on the website where Rep. Steve King claims that English embodies freedom, and that because of this horrendously racist and ignorant claim that this should make English the official language in all of the USA. These claims are horrible. Terrible. Deplorable! Who would make such a claim! He speaks of the wonderful "free" nature of English, as if it somehow embodies freedom. Well, unfortunately for Steve it's how one uses the language that makes it embody good things, not the language itself. As is typical for a politician Rep. King is using the free nature of English to promote something quite less than freedom, and is promoting a world of hegemonic domination by the Western English speaking world, and one that would destroy many of the beautiful languages of the world for no other reason than ignorance and fear of languages other than English. It seems that my comments were also censored by the video owner on youtube, because someone couldn't take my comments. Apparently the person hosting the videos on their youtube account doesn't believe in freedom of speech, and doesn't believe in the power of language to create community, to interact, and to create dialogue. I find the censorship of my comments abhorrent and unacceptable. If Steve King or anyone that is affiliated with him happens to be hosting the videos, then they ought to be ashamed for something so undemocratic. Although as luck would have it the videos have very few views, which I think is only becoming of something that preaches such intolerance and ignorance.

I would also like to take the time to remind Rep. King that English is not autochthnous to the Americas, and that as a result we should have respect for that fact. Everyone should learn Navajo, Cherokee, or just allow people to speak whatever language they like. Linguistic diversity presents its certain problems, but it has a richness of culture and thought that should never be forgotten. I suppose Rep. King has also forgotten the roots of English in French and the numerous loan words from Arabic that are part of the English language. All languages are official, and no language should dominate any other in the USA, because no language has the right to oppress any other.

I will include the first part of the video below for clarification purpose, and in the case that I have misquoted any of Steve's words the video below will clarify:

As it spins

By Ascolto on January 15, 2010 9:30 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Blogging is always second on the list of things. I collect lots of interesting things and think, my, wouldn't that be an interesting topic to make a post about, but I never seem to get around to writing an entry for it.

I can't say I've not wanted to write, but in some senses it appears nearly fruitless, but I shouldn't give up this endeavor anyway, because it holds something, or may come to hold something.

Anyhow I will put a few entries in the queue, perhaps it will liven things up on this old blog.

Language Programs Pimsleur and Michel Thomas

By Ascolto on July 13, 2009 8:30 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Recently, I've discovered that there is interest between the differing programs out there to study language. While there are uncounted resources to learn a language some of the most well known and popular programs are Pimsleur and Michel Thomas. These programs have been used over and over, and their price shows that they may have something to offer as well, being that these programs are generally quite expensive.

I'll start off by saying that because these two programs are the most popular it doesn't mean they are the best option for all learners, nor does it mean that they don't have very formidable competitors. Often it depends on what language you want to learn, and why exactly you are learning the language. Linguaphone alltalk is language learning system that has books as well as tapes, which are very useful, since in many cases the learning follows a paradigm of a story, which means you are consistently being prepared for real life situations in which you then learn the necessary vocabulary to survive in these situations. I think Linguaphone is one of the better competitors to the most popular programs, but there are still more out there, which come in handy to different sorts of learners.

The Pimsleur and Michel Thomas programs both offer programs that are designed to give the learner a conversational proficiency. The programs can vary widely in what areas they give conversational proficiency, but generally deal with introductions, ordering food, getting from A to B, human emotion, and perhaps even introducing yourself. Neither of the programs really focus on writing ability or reading ability, although some Pimsleur programs do contain short reading sections, but are not integral to the course, since they can be completed at any time within the course. This also means that both the programs will not help with key reading skills that would be necessary abroad, which for me means that these programs are survival courses meant to keep the learner and traveler abroad agile enough to make their way through most situations without being left in the dust. Both of these courses also make excellent companions to traditional courses in the language, and will augment vocabulary and fluency, which is a definite plus and why I would recommend using one of these programs in addition to traditional courses.

There are some key differences between the programs though. The Pimsleur program was developed by researcher Paul Pimsleur, and through his research found that most learners need to repeat a word an average of 80 times before they can actively use and recall vocabulary. The research also found that learners retained more information in lessons of 30 minutes, and any longer was too much, which means Pimsleur has short and to the point lessons packed with content (information via introduction to Pimsleur programs). Thus, the Pimsleur program stresses memorization, but in such a way that words are repeated in context over a long period of time, which means the learner is forced to actively try to remember, but the memorization isn't a rote process that is painful. The process is actually quite pleasant and not very dull at all. The program follows natural dialogue between natives and between foreigners and natives. The conversational variety progresses slowly as the program moves on, but will review old vocabulary on each step of the journey, so once you finish you have a strong foundation of vocabulary that can be remembered with very little effort. The downside to this method is that conversational variety and ability to speak without a scripted pre-formed sentence is not really a skill that is allowed to develop here. Another reason why it makes a better companion to traditional study. However, I wouldn't say that this program is at all bad for independent study in other circumstances, because in the right context with an avid and active learner this program is really quite useful.

The Michel Thomas program was developed by a linguist of the same name who learned several European languages, and subsequently developed courses using the method aptly named the, "Michel Thomas Method," which focuses on conversational variety and immediate fluency in a language based on recognition of cognates in the language similar to the learner's own tongue. The method seems to be exclusive to English, whereas Pimsleur has programs for say Spanish speakers trying to learn English and more, which makes it more usable for learners who do not prefer to learn from English to their target language. In some respects Michel Thomas focuses more on the vocabulary the user already knows and can easily remember, meaning that the method of communication is much simpler, vocabulary acquisition is much faster, and communication is therefore more intimate in some instances than it would be with Pimsleur. This method is particularly useful when the learner wants to express emotion rather than stress survival skills, although the course does not forget key survival areas such as food and travel accommodations. The strength of Michel Thomas is that is provides the learner with very immediate results and with most European languages an active vocabulary of several thousand words, which are learned with little to no effort, since they are cognates. The program also stresses that the learner is not to actively memorize or try to think of the words, but rather let them flow naturally. This is perhaps a blessing and a curse of the program. While stress and anxiety are poor motivators they are also to an extent necessary in small amounts to get the learner to have a quick memory while speaking.

While I like both of the courses each of them have their own individual drawbacks. The Michel Thomas Method has been developed into many other languages since Michel's death, including languages such as Russian and Arabic, however the efficacy of these courses in languages that don't match the method so easily is quite debatable. Furthermore, the Michel Thomas Method preys on the fact that English is an international language, which makes it difficult for foreigners to use if they aren't familiar with English. While Pimsleur is much less faulted because serious research has given applicable methods that work across languages but the same vocabulary is not as readily applicable with this program as with Michel Thomas. The programs are essentially equal in the applicability and usefulness to the learner. While I can see results more quickly with Michel Thomas, I am much more confident and fluent after have spent time with Pimsleur. I also find the Pimsleur program to be much more mentally stimulating and fun than I do the Michel Thomas program. The Michel Thomas program also has a more sociable aspect to it, which means that during the audio lessons there is regular conversation about the history and development of the language, as well as the stress of the learners that learn with you during the course. Although with Michel Thomas it is much more challenging to hear the perpetual mistakes of the learners through the program, than to just make it past your own mistakes, and not pickup on the mistakes of the learners. This makes Pimsleur much more personal and accessible, because you are not sharing the experience with others, but rather trying it yourself, instead of with the learners. I find Pimsleur more challenging, yet more accessible than Michel Thomas, because it focuses on retention rather than quick fluency tricks. In summation, I would say the proper program depends on the learner, and the amount of fluency he or she wants to develop. I would definitely recommend Pimsleur for serious learners and Michel Thomas for casual learners that want to wet their feet and gain some fast fluency.

Linguistics Cold Hard Facts

By Ascolto on December 31, 2008 9:22 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

After being immersed in a linguistics course I can say at least with some sense that I now understand why people rever Linguists to be heartless and cold hard boring individuals. Linguistics unlike most other studies lacks a view of human nature, human culture, and more importantly what's so cool about human language.

You can break the study of linguistics down into small parts each one serving to explain a certain part of a language, and to simplify is syntax analyze the semantics and understand just what exactly is being said, or so we think. There is nothing inherently wrong with this process, it makes sense, it is natural and necessary for understandings to exist. However, what the study of linguistics lacks is a commitment to human language.

Linguists of today transcribe many of the languages that are on the verge of death, attempting to save them, preserve their sounds perfectly and may convey cultural remnants of the dying language. A simple taste of the people. This is all well and good. However, there is a divide between the person who studies in depth a language, and a person who studies all language in general. The transcription process does not so much as empathize in the process of preserving the language, it simply catalogs it, and preserves it in another database where it is essentially forgotten.

Let's face it, how many endangered languages have you been exposed to from online catalogs? Why is it so difficult to access these languages that have been so hopelessly "saved"? The answer is a mix not for lack of trying, but the nature of the linguist that deliberately it seems catalogs the data at hand, then stores it away without any artful presentation of the data. UNESCO has of course pledged to make the clips available and viewable to the entire public, sadly the clips are disorganized, the languages are presented in clips, and no cultural overview is presented, no translation. I can scarecely imagine how language can be valued without the culture that was promised. Perhaps the online sample is unfair to judge from, but how else should the public obtain these records? Why has such a poor attempt at real preservation been made? I think linguists look at the cold hard facts, see data, sounds, semantics, and coldly ignore the rest.

I think the not very old and the new very well heard adage that has accused linguists of being boring individuals is not altogether incorrect. What are linguists preserving? We worry about the languages we are losing, but what of the cultures, the people? Unfortunately, language is mistakenly said to convey the entirety of culture, but a language is nothing without its people. I wonder if the preservationists are really doing enough to save these languages or only saving the parts that happen to serve their study.

Russian

By Ascolto on November 29, 2008 10:00 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I'm planning on learning Russian during the winter break, and then continuing during the summer through formal classes. I really don't know why, but I'm going to anyway. I also hope to continue with my Portuguese. I've learned quite a lot. Still so much to learn, but the university setting has really been very slow. Although I've been under a lot of stress lately despite it all. Nevertheless, there is still so much to learn, and especially for a language like Russian formal instruction is something I will benefit from.

Russian has a lot of interesting features. Of course, because the language still includes declension makes it quite a challenge, but one I'm ready for.

Victor Huliganov explains about Prepositional Stranding

His videos are a great look at the language. He is also quite knowledgeable and a comic to some extent as well. A memorable quote within the video relation to Churchill as he reportedly said, "This is the sort of thing up with which I will not put." It makes a great deal of sense to the fact that English is a language of stranded prepositions, as much as I would not like it admit it. However, for what it lacks in beauty of grammar it makes up for in vocabulary variety.

See some variations on the Churchill quote, here.Just a small tidbit that I enjoyed today. So I hope that you to can enjoy it, wherever you're at ;)

The Mayan Calendar. And my lack of inspriation.

By Ascolto on November 3, 2008 6:00 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I've been so lost recently in my school work. I've learned quite a bit this semester, and gained an untold amount of information about a lot of things that interest me.

I've been battling stress and sickness within my stomach quite literally. I've had a lot of stomach pain, which I have not been able to completely solve, but the use of bacteria cultures has helped.

I've learned more and more about linguistics in my online linguistics course. However, the professor seems to be involved in his own work and research, without concern for what his students should be learning, but perhaps I am wrong. If that is that case he certainly could learn to listen to his students, and be more attentive to the fact that there are lots of things missing from the text, because it lacks a concise nature to it, besides being a sort of novel text that I don't enjoy reading.

In my political science course I have been focusing a great deal of time on reading many many pages worth of material about International Relations theory, and it is really fascinating, but I can tell that as much as it fascinates me it is not something that I would want to study all the time. My Spanish course is going well, and I'm satisfied with the small amount I've learned in the course, although I generally tend to refer to it as the "Gran repaso" (big review).

On another note, the reason for which I am writing this blog is to write about some interesting things I learned in my Mesoamerican Archaeology class. The professor is quite good at sharing the stories that are known etc. etc. I really like stories and anything that sheds light on peoples that lived not so long ago, but seem so foreign and mystical to me. I've always been so enamored with these cultures that are so radically differet, yet so adept in some ways to things that our modern world cannot comprehend.

The view of time is one of the essentially different characteristics between the Mesoamerican view and the view of today. It is understandable that each culture has an essentially different paradigm into how time is percieved and happens to pass. For the mesoamerican cultures the Mayans and Aztecs it worked with the nromal 360 days calendar minus a few days, and then a ritual calendar with 260 calendar days. The 260 day calendar was the centerpiece of religion, and it was tied to nature with animal symbols. The day a child was born was pivotal in the traits the child would have later in life, it was so telling that even when the child was born, they would delay the birth day ceremonies until a better day passed, meaning that the official birth date would be on the most auspicious day.

These customs extended also to fear that the world would end. According to belief the world had been created and destroyed 4 times. The destruction was all encompassing. Disaster struck with giant jaguars eating everyone up, floods, and other miscellanous tortures abruptly ending the last era. In the current world the 5th world it was foretold that it would ending with earthquakes and then creatures from the sky that would devour anything that lived after the giant quakes. The image above depicts this. At the center you can see the 5th and present era represented with the 4 previous eras depicted upper and lower to the center era, and symbols representing how these eras ended.

But for the Mexica people, also know as the Aztecs, the end of the world was not certain. People could influence it through their actions, mostly to the gods, and mostly through sacrifice and sacrificial blood letting. Every 52 years when the two calendars aligned all the fires within the city/village were extinguished. On this day world's end was within sight. They chose a man to sacrifice, and led him to a cave. The man was of course sacrified his internal organs removed and opened his chest cavity. If the people could start a fire within the empty cavity, then the world would not end, but if they could not then the end of the world was certain.

Well, I've finally written something so I hope you enjoyed it. I'll be back to writing once again when things slow down. Probably around December. If there are enough interesting things out there, then I will try to write a few blogs in advance to prevent deficiency in the Spring semester.

The Anthropology of Youtube

By Ascolto on October 25, 2008 6:00 AM | No Comments

I've been very interested in the culture phenomena of the internet, particularly the community aspects that have been created through the web, and the implications it has for the world and people in general. Why it allows us to be have a degree of freedom unseen before in social expression, but also to remove social constraints of appearance, color, manner of speech, and even language and geographical barriers. It is the subject of so much development linking everyone with a computer to the digital revolution that has given us so much to look forward to.

I present a very interesting lecture from an anthropology professor and the work he has done. I was impressed with the video that he created before addressing digital text etc., and I'm quite happy to see that he had a whole lot more to say on the subject. It's such a fascinating subject. Do I see a video blog in my future? Probably not...

Cognates incognito

By Ascolto on August 25, 2008 7:00 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I remember some of the first moments of exposure I had to a foreign language. For the most part learning a foreign language is expectedly different, hence the foreign element, but there are certain elements to a foreign language that aren't so foreign. I'm referring to cognates. Cognates are a wonderfully useful tool when learning a foreign language, and greatly reduce the amount of memorization necessary when acquiring a foreign language. Cognates usually exist within languages and languages related to each other, such as an vulgar Latin language(French, Spanish, Italian) all of which include a vocabulary with many easily distinguishable words for English speakers. They do however provide a slight bit of confusion for the initial who may mistake cognates as a mimic of the words they want to learn.

A prime example of a one-on-one conversation with someone who may not be well versed in the fact that cognates exist would consist perhaps of an English person asking how they might say "car" or "garage" in Spanish, both of the words are strikingly similar to their English counterparts "carro" and "garaje" might be mistaken for a poor mimic and add to some initial confusion for the learner.

Just some short thoughts on cognates. An important feature of related languages to be aware of.

2008 Olympics

By Ascolto on August 8, 2008 4:00 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

The Olympics are here or are they gone. I really am never sure how the Olympics work. The more than boisterous rigmarole over the Olympics in China is perhaps the biggest ever, at least in recent memory. China is accused of human rights abuses and politely refraining from letting itself get carried away with promises made for the Olympics. I will admit that China's human rights abuses should not be let alone for this event, but really put aside so China can share in this honor, and perhaps look back it its mistakes.

My friend from China has been competing in an English competition, which will decide on a role model for those people in China learning English. As a bit of a figure for the Chinese people to look up to. My friend came in third place in his district, with some help from me, and his excellent performance means he will go on to compete in Beijing (Non-Olympic event) to see if he will win the competition. Whether or not he wins he is without a doubt one of the best English speakers I know with their native language as Mandarin Chinese. He invited me to Beijing, but of course I couldn't manage to get there even if I wanted to do so.

Nevertheless, my point is that the Chinese are making a tremendous effort to be good hosts. They are of course less experienced in letting the world in according to a different set of rules. Although we should not reduce or refrain from putting pressure on their political regime for their abuses, but rather realize the summation of Chinese history and where they happen to be at this point in time, and then judge China accordingly by what is actually plausible. Rather than berate the Chinese people for not acting in line with the wishes that the world would like to see them aspire to.

Abjads

By Ascolto on August 1, 2008 8:00 AM

Writing systems are interesting, really. The topic of Abjads(Surprise! A writing system!) is of particular interest to me, so I decided to dedicate a blog entry explaining this system.

The Abjad was created several thousand years ago. According to a linguistics professor Michael Drout it was probably only invented once, and then spread to various cultures and was adapted to fit the needs of people. An Abjad is simply a character representing a single consonant, the Abjad may or may not contain vowels to accompany the consonant. Abjads are a radically cool idea, just think of it, instead of memorizing symbols for each idea or even worse memorizing Japanese Kanjii for syllables you can now say a great deal of things with a small character set, which means less memorization, and greater ease of communication.

Simply put an Abjad is an alphabet, and it's a really amazing invention that people use every day. The fact is that most writing systems are extremely troublesome to invent. The Latin system may be one of the best, the Cryllic alphabet too, and Arabic variants.

Native Americans were dumbfounded by this invention, as they had no strong writing systems as they were being killed off and removed from their homelands. The Cherokee people described letters sent to them by messengers as magic leaves, because these letters proclaimed their fate, yet were so simply and generic, but perhaps the pen is mightier than a sword, since it brought about such radical ideas. A Cherokee citizen known as Sequoyah saw the significance of the Abjad and spent years creating his own Abjad for the Cherokee language the task took him almost 70 years, and was a difficult and labored process with an extremely turbulent set of circumstances surrounding its creation. Sequoyah labored continuously writing on bark attempting to establish a working alphabet, and at some turns his work was destroyed. Still more, Sequoyah faced the judgment of his tribe/nation when he attempted to present his Cherokee alphabet of 86 characters. He was subject to rigorous disbelief as his tribe doubted him, but in the long run the new alphabet survived and was adopted. Thus ensuring the continuance of Cherokee customs and cultures, as people could now record in their own language the happenings around them, and although the nation was still greatly abused by the United States government the invention allowed more leeway than would have otherwise been possible without a written system.

You can read more about abjads and different types of Abjads at omniglot and you can find out a bit more about Sequoyah at Wikipedia. Picture from Wikipedia of Sequoyah display his alphabet.

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