Wednesday

Morphology

Blog#8

Like many of the topics we study in class morphology is new to me. Morphology is exciting, I take it as a puzzle. I think so far it is my favorite topic. It is a little bit challenging at first. You have to be able to focus and make good observations. I tend to always start with the smallest translation first. Then I eliminate the other words as I figure them out. It is a great exercise for your brain. Morphology can be approach in various ways, but only has one answer. For example, I might like to start with the smallest translation, but my friend will start with a different one. Whatever the case is, morphology is like solving a puzzle!

Opps! It Can Happen To You

Blog #7
The other day I was watching The View, and they were talking about celebrities caught using improper English. Of course Paris Hilton, Brittany, and that sort of celebrities were at the top of the list. The ladies from The View were criticizing them for the use of fragments, slag words, and mispronunciation. One of them said that these girls just always give cameras something to talk about. There was others as well, but the most surprising one was that they also made a small comment on President Obama. I was definitely surprised, if not astonished because he tends to be a great speaker. He seems to always used proper English very well. Through this language observation, I came to the conclusion that anyone can make a small pronunciation mistake, sometimes it is unpreventable.
Blog #7

Observing Language

Blog #6
This class has definitely changed my perspective about communication and language. All of the things we learn are new to me. I feel more aware of the sounds around me now, then before. I used to never really pay attention to word pronunciation, unless it was really noticeable. Now I am more aware of different sounds people choose to deliver the same word. When people talk to me I specially pay attention to the pronunciation of the words they are speaking. One of the language observations that I have made is with one of my professors. He happens to say something like, "die-rection" for direction. He always says it like that. Another example is with my little cousin, when I ask her where she is going she tells me,"I'm going to my "balet (ballet) practice. She needs to pronounce the T. I have corrected her a couple of times, but I think it is a habit now. It's interesting how the same word is pronounce differently by person to person, and we live in the same region. I am anticipating different pronunciation from my future students. Although, they probably grew up in the same region they will not pronounce all the words the same way.

Political Correct Society

Blog #5
I really appreciated the story from the newspaper that you shared with us during class. It was about the incident during the Academic Decathlon. When I heard the motives the superintendent was apologizing for, my mouth dropped! I couldn't believe it! He felt forced to apologize ahead of time, just Incas someone called in that felt offended with the idea of taking a siesta. It just doesn't make sense that he had to do that, when the theme was Latin America with an emphasis in Mexico. I'm positive that he was upset when he was writing his apologies. What are we to blame? Of course, the idea of having a political correct society. We don't offend others, and therefore don't say things that might be in question. I see nothing wrong with that, I actually think it was kind of cool, that the competition was closed in that manner. Although, we are living in this era, where we don't have as much freedom to exchange language as before. It is unfortunate that this kind of stuff happens in our society today.

Sound Animator

Blog #4
I wanted to blog about the sound animator that was posted in Blackboard, I think it is a great tool. I specially liked it because not only was I able to hear the sound of a letter, but also it showed me where it was located. I used the sound animator quite a bit at the beginning of the semester. It definitely helped me with my homework. Using the sound animator reminded me of a year ago. Last spring, I was doing community service at Lane Elementary. I was fortunate enough to work with a special child who needed help in various academic areas. He was eight years old and had a major speech and memory problem. Everyday we worked on saying the alphabet, that wasn't working, so his teacher suggested that we try something new. I began showing him a DVD that had pictures for each letter of the alphabet, and it showed how to pronounce the word. For example, the first was a picture of an apple, then it would say the sound "a," this is "a." The student would repeat after the DVD. He seemed to learned the alphabet much faster like that. I'm not sure if this is consider phonetics, but it was definitely focus in the pronunciation of the alphabet. The sound animator was similar, I was able to repeat after the voice.

Different Pronunciations

Blog #3
Phonetics is more difficult than I could ever imagine. Not only is it difficult because you have to memorize new symbols that just seem to be out of this world, but also the sound of each. It gets even more complicated once you memorize everything. I can speak for second language learners. Some words I may slightly pronounced different, and this makes it hard to hear the sound that I suppose to hear. In class I found myself telling, "You never pronounce it like that." At times is was frustrating because I wanted to hear and say what everyone else was saying. I guess wrong pronunciation can happen to anyone, not just second language learners. In our phonetics homework we had the word,"alphabet." I pronounce it like it is spell, it was interesting to hear a friend say "elphabet." I had never hear that, specially from an only English speaker. As a future teacher, I will be able to relate to different pronunciation for the same word by my students. Second language learners say words differently because, we weren't necessarily thought to eliminate certain sounds, and if we see it in writing, then we want to pronounce it.

Talking From Hand To Mouth

Blog # 2
Sign language has always been interesting to me. My second grade teacher used it a lot. She taught us the alphabet and simple phrases in sign language. Unfortunately that was about the only education in sign language that I got. I think it is very interesting how the same word used as a different part of language, (subject, verb, adjective.) has its own symbol. In regular English a word means and it is spell the same almost always, no matter what part of language it is. I really liked the example that the reading gave about a deaf child using different gestures to communicate a simple idea about a mouse. We would think that a mouse, would be the same gesture no matter if it was used as a verb or a subject, but it is not like that. A deaf child uses different gestures to communicate, "the mouse goes in the hole," than in "the mouse ate the cheese." The only difference is that in one, the mouse is a subject and in the other a transitive verb, yet the child gives different gestures. Nonverbal communication is very interesting.

Tuesday

Animal sounds in other languages

Blog #1
I have never thought about how closely related language really is. I always thought that it was difficult to learn any language. Growing up I always saw language as totally different one from another. I'm an English learner and yes, I saw some similarities with Spanish, but never even thought about possible similarities that can exist with other languages. After reading, "Animal sounds in other languages," my view on language is wider. I seemed to understand that different cultures are united through communication. For example, what one word means in one language can often mean the same or sound the same in another language. It seems to me that words are shared among languages. For example, in English a cow lowing is moo. In other languages it is exactly the same or similar pronunciation. We are all connected through language.