Blog 17 - To Answer Some Questions...

I was reading through the comments on some of previous posts, and saw that they addressed some really interesting issues. So, I decided to blatantly steal the format used by others and try to address some of them, starting with the most recent ones.

Blog 15:
Janessa: You bring up a good point. We always say that English is influencing other languages, and we tend to view this influence as being almost malicious. But, as you point out, many languages clearly have influenced English significantly over time. I think there is a difference, however. When other languages influence English, they either only slightly alter our words, we use their words very infrequently. With Welsh, my impression from reading that article was that people are using English words almost very sentence. There’s more to it though than just the degree of foreign languages being used. I guess here I’m specifically about American English, but because the United States is such a melting pot of ethnicities, American English is influenced by a broad spectrum of languages. However, Wales has far less diverse demographics ethnically, and so Welsh is influenced by far fewer languages. In fact, I think it’s influenced pretty exclusively by English. So I think that’s the main difference between English’s influence on Welsh and Welsh’s influence on English.


Blog 14:
Travis: I think that there’s no doubt that we definitely make subconscious distinctions which aren’t related to appearances, status, or culture when we choose how we speak. For instance, situations shift the sort of language that we use all the time. In a formal situation, we’re much more likely not to use colloquialisms or slip into our local accents. But this doesn’t always happen consciously. In fact, I’d claim that it rarely happens consciously. I’m sure there are many, many other reasons why we subconsciously change the way that we speak. I think the problem is that a lot of the time, some people aren’t good at distinguishing when some kinds of language are more appropriate than others and the introduction of all of the colloquialisms of net-lingo are making this distinction even harder.

Steve: This I a good point. I would assume the Chinese net-lingo is different from English net-lingo. Most English net-lingo is based upon English acronyms, and I don’t see much reason why Chinese speakers would use these acronyms. As to the issue of this leading to confusion in Internet profiles, I think it would cause the same amount of confusion that is caused by the fact that Americans and Chinese people already speak two different languages. I don’t think it should cause any more confusion.

Autumn: That really is a good ad :)


Blog 13:
Travis: To be entirely honest, I’m not sure what defines language. I think there are many different conflicting possibilities. So, I think that’d make a great paper topic. If you want to, then go for it!

Steve: That’s definitely a great point. I actually hadn’t thought about that at all. As for testing the hypothesis, until we get a better understanding of DNA and the innate language mechanism. Until then, I’m afraid that we’d probably need a time machine and maybe even an island or two.