QUOTATIONS, PROVERBS AND ARCHAISMS

Words can alive overnight, but they take decades to die (David Crystal,). No one can be certain about the death and the birth of a word. People use words in order to express their thoughts and ideas. Many of those expressions or sentences have remained in the memory of people and over time have become quotations.

Anything which someone has said or wrote, can be considered as a quotation, but the term usually refers to those instances which have become ‘famous’ over time.

For example, ‘’To be or not to be’’ and “Let me see one” are extracts from Hamlet, but only the first one is considered as a quotations. It is important to distinguish quotations from catch phrases. Though catch phrases are species of quotations, they tend to be of spoken origin and very short. While quotations alive from written language and tend to be longer. Also catch words can be changed over time, while when an utterance settles down as a quotation there is no capability for change. Also, I’s like to add, that quotations can be used in our lexicon in order to make our speech beautiful and interesting. Here are some interesting quotations.

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

- Benjamin Franklin

Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change.

- Confucius

Knowledge talks, wisdom listens.

- Jimi Hendrix

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger."

- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is."

- Oscar Wilde

I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe."

- Albert Einstein

If you like quotations, you can click here and read a lot of interesting articles.

Proverbs differ from quotations in the terms that the origin of a proverb,

in most cases, is unknown. They convey the notion of a piece of traditional wisdom, handed down by previous generations. The effectiveness of a proverb is that they are short, brief and direct. Here are some examples of proverbs:

Once bitten, twice shy.

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Another day, another dollar.

Never trust a fellow, that wears a suit.

According to David Crystal an ‘’archaism is a feature of an older state of the language, which continues to be used while retaining the aura of its spirit’’. Most often they are used in historical novels, plays, poems and films about such topics, such a king Arthur or Robin Hood. For example,

Afore Before

Agone Ago

Sith Since

somedeal Somewhat

As I love history very much, it was interesting for me to know how British kings and also ordinary people of that time were speaking. I have found an interesting bookmark, where archaic words are listed. If you are interested in it too, you can click here and look at the list yourself. I hope you will find it useful.

Smile and the whole world will smile with you!!!

Today I am going to share a very possitive post about smiling. It's not a great invention that smile makes us happy and many unbearabale situations become quiet bearable when we start smiling.

According to my podcast(http://www.howstuffworks.com/), there are two types of smiles. The first one is the genuine smile, which is also called ''natural smile''. When a person smiles genuinely, his muscles connect to his/her brain and also to his/her sole. This means that a genuine smile comes from the bottom of ones heart. It is accompanied with feelings and emotions. The key feature here is that in a genuine smile eyes are involved, while they are absent when a smile is fake. In a fake smile only mouth is involved and there can be no emotions. A genuin smile is the result of a possitive inner condition.

In 80s a proffessor called Robert Sejean published a study, where he says, that when a person smiles, his facial mimics have the same look as if one says long ''eee'', whereas when a person is frown his face has an expression like he is saying ''ooo''. There was also a study which showed that when a person looks to some pictures of people who are smiling, he or she becomes happier and subconsciously start smiling too.

Smile changes the tempreture of our body, it reduces the pressure in our blood. The cooler the temperature is in our brain, the happier we are.When we are frown our muscles start to activated and the temperature in our blood starts to increase. Another interesting thing is that smiling helps the immune system to work better. When we smile, our immune function starts to improve, possibly because we are more relaxed. Also smile attracts people. According to Charles Gordy, ''A smile is an inexpensive way to change your looks''.

I liked this quotation very much and I can add, that even when an ugly person smiles, it brings some light to his/her face and he or she looks prettier. While frowns, scowls and grimaces all push people away.

Smile makes you feel good. Even if you're feeling a little blue, you can insert happy thoughts into your mind and smile. The smile will trick your mind into feeling better, as endorphins are released to reduce physical or emotional stress. From my own experience I agree with this point definitely. Whenever I am gloomy, I think about happy moments of my life and these enjoyable memories bring happiness to me. In addition, I want to share a very famous song about smile. I hope you will enjoy it!

Taboo and Swear words

My post is based on a chapter from David Crystal Encyclopedia. It is about taboo and swear words in English. Before starting, I would like to apologize, for using some taboo and swearing words in order to make my post more descriptive.
Taboo language comprise a special category of words, which people avoid using in polite society, either they feel them harmful or feel them embarrassing or offensive. According to David Crystal Encyclopedia there are hundreds of taboo words and phrases, but the semantic range of referents that are considered taboo is limited in scope. They represent a specific category of taboo for example we should avoid using taboo words when talking about sexual acts and its consequences, body parts, serious health issues like cancer, death and dying and religion.
The offensiveness of the words depend on the context, as one word in one context can be a taboo but in another case it can be used without displeasing anyone. There are several ways of avoiding a taboo item.

In older writing the taboo words were part-spelled (f__k, bl__). Now, everyday method is to express the taboo topic in a vague or indirect way, which is called euphemism. For example, fall asleep (die), after a long illness (cancer), adult video (pornography), tired and emotional (drunk). Words that are taboo in one locale can be acceptable in another. In the 1830s the words like corset, shirt, leg and woman were taboo, while in Britain they weren't. Woman was considered to be addressed only to lower or less refined classes of female human-kind (An introduction to language, Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams,2007). This shows that taboos change over time. Now woman and other taboo words of that time are acceptable and are used in America.
The language of taboo, the language of abuse (invective), and the language of swearing sometimes may overlap and coincide. For example, to call someone shit is to use a taboo word as a term of abuse, and if it is said with emotional force it may be considered as an act of swearing. But this is not true for all cases. There are certain differences between these three types of language. For example, wimp is a term of abuse which is neither a taboo word nor a swear word.

And Heck is a swear word which is neither a taboo nor a invective. Thus, we may conclude, that swearing is an emotive outburst, which gives relief and relaxation. A lot of swearings do not have any meaning. They are used only to express wide range rather than making sense (e.g. fucking hell). It is important to mention that swearing reduces stress: those who swear suffer less from stress than those who do not (After H.E. Ross, 1960).
After reading this chapter and during writing this post I started to think about my health. I don't use such words, but maybe it's time to start using some. Maybe in future the stress will accumulate in me and cause some health problems? Please, leave feedback, as I am very interested in your opinion.

Motivating students to learn

Today I am going to write about motivation. I consider it as the key role in learning process so I am very interested in it. Moreover, during my writing course I wrote my paper on motivational techniques and methods, so it was interesting also listen to a podcast where some ESL teachers were talking about it.

According to Dornyei(2006) “Motivation is an abstract, hypothetical concept that we use to explain why people think and behave as they do. It is the inner power or energy that pushes toward acting, performing actions and achieving goals”. In the podcast(http://www.eslteachertalk.com/) the teachers say that there are three key points which influence on the motivational level of the students. The first one is self-motivation, which means that teachers should be motivated themselves. I have read about this in Zoltman Dornyie’s book Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom,

where the author points, that if a teacher is thrilled with the subject, this enthusiasm will transfer to the students for sure. One of the teachers in the podcast mentioned a very interesting idea, he said that when teachers enter a classroom they should feel themselves as if in a stage, where they must forget about their personal problems and should wear a happy face in order to make their students do whatever they do with pleasure.
The second key point is that the teachers should encourage their students. All students, more or less, are motivated to learn, but the teachers are the ones who should and can increase even a minute of motivation (McCombs, 1994). In the podcast the teachers say that in a groups of young children teachers can play games, talk about their favorite cartoons, friends. Another thing that motivates students is praising. But this praising should not be meaningless. Feedbacks are also very important. When a student fails, the teacher can attribute the failure to a lack of effort e.g.,the teacher may say, “I don’t think you were really concentrating,” indicating a belief in the student’s ability to succeed (Stipek, 1993).
Finally the third point is the environment. Only in a supportive classroom children can feel themselves at ease and reach a success. By mentioning the environment they mean both physical and psychological. It is important to mention that both teacher-student and student-student relationship can have great influence on motivation. I hope you liked my post and if you are interested you can click here and read a book which gives a lot of information about motivation. I hope you will find it helpful.

Foreign Borrowings

According to David Crystal Encyclopedia when a language takes lexemes from another language, the new items are called loanwords or borrowings. While many languages try to avoid borrowing foreign words, English seems to welcome them, as over 350 languages are recorded as the sources of its vocabulary.
Every historical event influenced English language a lot. Loanwords appeared in English even before the Anglo-Saxons arrival. There were peak periods of word borrowing activities in English.

First loan words were Celtic loans. After the adoption of Christianity Latin became the dominant language to influence English. It included in its vocabularies words like church, bishop, school, priest, etc. Viking invasion brought 2000 Scandinavian words. After the Norman invasion the size of loans were doubled. By the end of the renaissance the growth of the vocabulary, especially by Latin, doubled the lexicon again. In my previews post I was discussing the emergence of the Black English. The importation of the black slaves also brought many new words to the English lexicon like negro, African-American, black etc.
This process continued during the Middle English period in 1950s and after English became world language the borrowings showed a dramatic upturn. It was the result of regular communication with other cultures. I was watching a video clip on youtube about loanwords, where a professor was bringing some examples of such loanwords like dollar, which was a Flemish word called thaler. Alcohol is an arabic word al-kuhul, firstly it was used as medical equipment. Ketchup is an Indonesian word kecap. Here are other examples of loanwords.
Coffee (Ethiopia Ethiopian) coffee beans were first discovered in the town of Kaffa, Ethiopia.
Jaguar (Native Paraguay and Southern Brazil Guarani) a kind of big jungle cat.
Panda (Nepal Nepali) a type of rare black-and-white bear.
Penguin (Wales Welsh) an antarctic sea-bird -originally meaning 'white head'.
Robot (Czechoslovakia Czech) an intelligent machine -originally meaning 'worker'.
Sugar (Ancient India Sanskrit) -originally 'sarkara'.
Tattoo (Tahiti Tahitian) inked design forced into the skin.
Tomato (South America Aztec Nahuatl) a sweet red vegetable -originally 'tomatl'.
Zombie (Congo and Angola Kongo) dead-but-still-alive -originally the name of a snake-god.
The definitions of these words can be found in Webster’s dictiories but if you are interested in loanwords, here you can find a comprehensive list of them.

Black English

Black English emergence was a result of the importation of black people to the Caribbean islands and the American coasts to work in sugar plantations. From the early 17^th century, ships from Europe travelled to the West African coast, where they exchanged cheap goods for black slaves. Then they brought them to America where they were exchanged for such commodities as sugar, rum and molasses.

By the time slavery was abolished in 1865, during the U.S civil war, the number of slaves in America was about 4 million. In order to hinder groups to plot rebellion slave-traders were told to bring slaves with different language background. The result was the growth of different pidgin forms of communication. Later on, it became the native language of the new generation. This creole English was rapidly spread through the southern plantations and many of the coastal islands. Moreover, some of them like the Indian speech moved all out side of the Caribbean and eventually was found in Canada, the USA and Britain. Meanwhile, as a consequence of Britain's political influence, British English was becoming a prestige variety throughout the area

The vernacular varieties of Black English have been in the centre of attention recently. Linguistics say that land-owners have picked a lot of habits and words from their slave, moreover black English began to appear in literary works such as those by Harrier Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain.

In my previous post I discussed Noah Webster, who himself  included many of these new african-american words in his dictionaries. I have found some of those words in Webster's dictionary (I haves discussed his dictionaries in my previous post), like the definition of word black, african-american, negro etc.

In the late 19th century black culture become known throughout the country, especially for its music. The linguist result was that many new words appeared, as whites picked up lively words from those who was singing, dancing and playing. We know that the founders of blues and jazz were black people. Recently I was watching the movie Cadillac Records which explores the musical era from early 1940s to the late 1960. It illustrates how black singers like Muddy Waters, Chuk Berry and Etta James became popular. It helped me to visualise how difficult was for them to break through and become famous. Their music was so distinguished that the members of my generation, like me knows them and still listens to their music. 

The types of reading

This post is based on a podcast of the school of effective teaching about reading. Dr. Brown illustrates the differences between reading for finding information and reading for constructing meaning. According to him reading means to understand, interpret and use the text. Teaching reading means to help students to construct meaning from the text, which is different from finding knowledge. When students read to find knowledge they search for words or phrases to answer a question, whereas in order to find meaning students must evaluate the text and perform some type of mental manipulation.  In order to help students to construct meaning teachers may ask different questions which will make students think about the text. This is the difference between finding knowledge and constructing meaning.

According to Dr. Brown “words are only words but it is us that gives these words meaning and power”. This was interesting for me as I hadn’t read or thought about these differences before. I think that reading is the key feature of academic success. As Mark Twain said “the man who doesn’t read books has no advantage over a man who cannot read them”. One cannot learn anything without reading a lot and this reading should be for finding meaning for sure. But I think that these two types of reading are related to each other. As when students read and find meaning they already get knowledge. I believe, that knowledge that students find should be meaningful for them in order to remain in their memory and become an unseparated part of their erudition.

Then Dr. Brown explains that when student reads, he reads the author’s concept map. While reading, the student tries to break and reconstruct the concept map in order to understand the author’s purpose. At the beginning they may need teacher’s directions, but later on they should do it themselves. He also mentions that reading and writing are connected, one supports the other. To support this idea he brings an example of a student, who used to read constantly, afterwards he was asked to write and his writing was pretty good. This proves that good reading and good writing support each other. I agree with this idea definitely, as my own experience has showed me the importance of reading for improving my writing skills. Particularly, reading helps people who have visual memory. I can say that for those people it is the best way to memorize the spelling and the structure of the words.

American English: New Nation, New Themes

According to The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English Language, during the second half of 18th century American scholars hold a great attention in the certain linguistic issues and developments which had occupied British scholars in the first half of the 18th century. In this post I am going to introduce Noah Webster and his influence on the development of American English.
Noah Webster(1758-1843),

was an American educator, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author.In his English Dissertations on the English language (1789) he proposed the institution of an ‘American Standard’. He considered that ‘as an independent nation’ they should have their own system of language. England was at ‘too great distance’ in order to be a model for them, and in a new continent many new words may have come to the language which were absent in British English. I agree with his opinion without any doubts, because America includes many different nations which for sure, have brought to America a lot of new words. Noah Webster considered the spelling reform as the first step in that direction. In his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806) he writes that no great changes should be made which may cause inconveniences or cross out radicals of the language. But written language must be accommodated to the spoken language. In his dictionary he suggested some spelling directions which was admitted with suspicion(e.g. he suggested to spell labour without u because it was absent in laborious, also omit u in curious, because it is not used in curiosity etc.). After his first dictionary Webster went on elaborating it, he travelled a lot throughout Europe and, finally, in 1828 appeared his second dictionary - An American Dictionary of the English language,

which contained 70.000 words, whereas the first one included only 28.000 words. The work greatly improved the coverage of scientific and technical terms, as well as terms to do with American culture and institutions (such as congress and plantation), also added a great deal encyclopedic information. This dictionary made Webster a ‘household’ name in the USA. It was criticizes by British for its Americanism, especially in matters of spelling. But it was a great work which gave US English an identity.
His work was so outstanding that even here, in Armenia schoolchildren learn about him and I am not an exception. At our school we were taught that Webster was the founder of American English and he is the one who is responsible for the way that Americans now speak and write.