Old Words and New Meanings

            One of the suggested topics on our paper was new meanings for old slang. I found some slang words, but also some just ordinary words that we have changed the meaning. As the article related, words are going to continue to change as the generations grow. What one word meant 50 years ago it probably doesn’t mean today. We may change the spelling of the word or we might just change the meaning. It’s along the idea of what was popular long ago is no longer popular today. In time everything will probably become popular again. I have learned some old slang from being around my grandparents. Over spring break I was talking with my grandma about her childhood. She was telling me how she took commercial shorthand, and you could just see on her face how proud she was. I guess commercial was very big back in her day and when I told her we don’t have that anymore, she was sure we did. While we do have typing in computer class, I’m sure it’s not the same because time has evolved. This is the same way with old words that the article mentioned that we don’t use any longer. “Dag-a dirty tuft of sheep’s wool” and “jobler- one who does small jobs” were words that I had never heard of (Neas). For one, we don’t hear much about people spinning wool and making their own clothing, so that’s probably why dag is not used very often and jobler must have just become outdated. These words are similar to my grandma’s shorthand class that just became outdated, so schools started offering more relevant classes to the day’s age.

            Another set of words in the article was new words. Two of the words were friend farming and netiquette. I’m sure we all know about the etiquette of using the Internet because we are growing up in a time where the Internet seems second nature to us. Some of the words didn’t seem new to me because they have been used so frequently in my life. The former word was one that I was not aware of. I thought it had something to do with one of the supposedly wonderful games on Facebook. To my surprise, it was about adding contacts to your site based on using another person’s friend list. I guess I didn’t realize that we had a word for doing that. I’ve done it and I know many other people who have, but I just thought it was to connect with friends that I didn’t know had Facebook. It’s amazing the words we continue to come up with, actually it’s kind have embarrassing.

            The last category was recycled words. These are words that used to have one meaning and now have another. The words were spam, mouse, and stream. I was not surprised with these words. They do not seem as extravagant as the others. They do have multiple meanings and it would be important to let someone know which meaning you were talking about, so they don’t get them confused. 

http://www.brighthub.com/society/cultures-customs/articles/74302.aspx

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Posts 44-47

Perceptual Vigilance

            This article related the perceptual vigilance that infants can acquire at just six months of age. Babies that grew up in a household that spoke Spanish and Catalan had the advantage of telling the difference between English and French on the basis of facial cues. The children had never been introduced to these languages before, but still could differentiate them. I am astounded at this capability. I know they say that children have an easier time learning a language the younger they are. I did not know this would go back to a baby. I wonder how they could tell that the child could see a difference in the language. It’s not like the baby could tell them they see a difference. My guess would be that they watched the brain activity of the babies. If a baby is around two languages, they are going to have to distinguish between those two, which might ultimately allow them to tell a difference between others. I am sure that the babies compare all of the other languages that they are around to their own. It seems that it might be a category thing where all languages unknown to the babies get placed in their own category in their mind. After so many repetitive hearings or showings of something I assume that the babies can see the similarities and differences, thus picking up on the languages. The babies are now able to grow up and distinguish multiple languages and do not have to grow up with just a single language.
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Posts- 42 and 43

The Opposite of Tip of the Tongue

No matter how bad our memories are, there always seems to be a word that we say we have on the tip of out tongue, but still can’t seem to recall it. I didn’t know that it actually had a title and that it was called Tip of the Tongue. After finding that out, it was not a huge surprise to find out that there is something the total opposite of that. The idea of a phonetic representation to a lexical item being repeated so much that it loses its semantic meaning seems to be those words that we continually use over and over, only to step back one day and think what is that. I am a frequent watcher of Grey’s Anatomy and the article I got this from referenced a recent episode where Meredith related that the word spoon had lost its meaning to her. I’m not sure if a word I’m thinking of could be used in the same way or if it’s just an ongoing change of definition that gives this word so many meanings. The word gay to me when I use it or hear it from others doesn’t reference the sexual manner of a person. Instead, I think of it as being dumb or silly. When I say the word I’m not even thinking about a meaning because it has been said so many times. From that, I think it could be placed in the same category of a word being used so often that it loses its own meaning. 

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Posts- 40 and 41

Bible Changes Words

The New American Bible has brought about some changes just in time for this Lent season. If any of you have read the Bible before, then you know it can be quite a challenge. Not only is it hard to comprehend the extravagant things being said sometimes, but it’s also hard to understand the language. We have to remember that this was written thousands and thousands of years ago, so the words might not have the same meaning they do in today’s world. Without having a dictionary inside the Bible it would be easier to use modern words in place of some of the older language. One of the words that were changed was booty. Instead, now they will call it spoils of war.  One change that I’m not so sure I agree with is the virgin becoming the young woman. I think virgin has more of an impact and a different than a young woman. A young woman could or could not be a virgin. Aside for that, I really think this will help out a lot of people. The Old Testament, which I am currently reading, is quite confusing and vague at times. These changes may increase the reading of the Bible. The only disadvantage to it, is I’m afraid all of the changes may eventually take things out of context. Certain passages may end up meaning something else because of our new words. A lot of people know Psalm 23 and I hate to see it be changed after so many people already have it memorized. It’s like taking away tradition, but I guess it is better for more people to know about the word than to know the same reading of it. 

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Posts- 38 and 39

How Does a Cow Moo?

Research in London is pointing to the accent of farmers having an affect on how their cows moo. The research said that the cows pick up the accent of their owners and put it to work in their own cow language. This could be related to how we talk based on who we are around. In class we have learned how language changes over time and how one thing being said wrong can make a totally new word. I don’t think very many people walk around thinking about how a cow moo’s, but it’s not so farfetched as to think that they could differ based on the country where they were raised. Potentially if a farmer draws out his word, perhaps the cow would lengthen the moo sound. This would just be a conditioned response because over time the cow learned what the farmer was saying and what he did after saying that. If you think about it, dogs do this in a way. You can train them, but they don’t react just to what you trained them. They know things by what you say and repeatedly do. They will become conditioned if you repeatedly ask them if they want dinner and go to the can and dish out their food. The way you say dinner rings a bell in their head, and they remember what happened the previous 20 times that you said that. In the same way, cows could react and moo based on the sounds that they hear from their owners. I don’t do a lot of traveling, but if I’m ever in the country in London, I’m going to have to listen for cows and see if there might be a difference.
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Posts-36 and 37

Color Relations to Language

Surprisingly many languages share the same primary color terms. It was interesting to see that the colors in Tahiti and southern Mexico were found to be like English with only one exception. They both did not have blue and green, but put them together to make grue. Is it a coincidence or something beyond that to have three languages with almost the exact same colors? There must be something within a color that points it to certain words. The researchers did have a theory, but it was proved wrong, but they still are looking for more similarities. They did find that universals across languages could have something to do with it. The article also talked about the way that a language builds their color words is restricted; this could show why there are so many replicas. This makes me wonder what they would say about the hues that we have in America. We might only have 11 colors, but if you go to the paint store or get a box of crayons you will see that there are hundreds of thousands of colors. Those new colors don’t seem to follow any pattern for naming. It would be interesting to find an article on the naming of hues in other countries because ours seem a little wacky. Even nail polish has different names; where do they come up with something like “Friar Friar Pants on Fire” and would that be allowed in other countries? While we do see many similarities in color, there are other languages that differ so greatly even though they do have similar colors. At the end, they talked about giving directions is based on your language. I already did a post on that with a previous article, but I did want to say that it really relies on the type of language and how it’s formed to what all things are similar and what varies so greatly.
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Posts- 34 and 35

Grammar Comeback

The Washington Post did an article on how grammar is starting to come back to school classrooms. Their main focus was on a sophomore class, whose teacher is demanding they spend time on grammar every day. The students were not thrilled because for most of their schooling they weren’t taught grammar. The articles related, “Grammar lessons vanished from public schools in the 1970s, supplanted by a more holistic view of English instruction. A generation of teachers and students learned grammar through the act of writing, not in isolated drills and diagrams” (de vise). This is not any wonder to me. I did learn grammar in school, but I don’t think it was enough. I especially do not think Kent State does a good job of this. My major is integrated language arts, so I will be teaching student’s grammar in the future; yet I’m not required to take a grammar course here. I do not understand that at all, especially when a lot of schools are putting new teachers in charge of grammar lessons for freshman and sophomore students. A survey in the articles stated that not even 2/3 of students had ever studied grammar before taking the SAT (de vise). It’s no surprise then that so many students did so poorly on the grammar part. It was a good enactment by the board of the SAT to put together a third portion focused on writing, assembling, and disassembling sentences. I think the more pressure that we put on students to keep them accountable for grammar will make schools put more emphasis on teaching it. We use our language every day and if we don’t know how to use it correctly, then that will affect so much more of our lives than just an English test. Diagramming sentences are by no means fun, but I actually learned and still use the notes from my teacher that taught me how to do it, to figure out certain sentences today. Grammar requires building blocks. After a year, students should have improved and will learn that it won’t just gain them points on the SAT, but also on obtaining a job in the future.

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Posts- 32 and 33