Assignment #4/Early Modern English & Modern English

Long time no post!, as if anyone would care of XD
Well, today I'll explain a bit of modern english, as always, for my english class
Early modern english is a stage of the english language, it`s right after middle english and before modern english, early modern english is not very different from common english, in fact, if you can read an article in english, you should have little problems reading a book in early modern english, the few differences in spelling, writting and grammar, were vanquished with the great vowel shift.
the great vowel shift was a big change in pronounciation iun english language between the year 1200 to 1600.
curiously there are still some places where you can hear people speaking in dialects that came directly fropm early modern english, in some places of yorkshire, they still refer to "thou" as you.
the lack of uniformity in english language was coerrected by an englishman
None country of the world have early modern english as an official language, even thou there are still some towns and countries in which early modern english is spoken, still they are less and less as time passes by, to the point of saying that earlñy modern english is a dead language, but modern english is spoken around the globe in many, many countries, in fact is an official language in 53 countries, without counting the United Nations!
the great vowel shift took place in between 1200 and 1600, even thou, early modern english was used by most of the english speakers around 1650.
modern english is spoken as a first language by 508 million people.
there are a lot of differences between early modern english and modern english, for example in pronouns we have differences like:

The letter had two distinct lowercase forms: as today, and <ſ>.The former was used at the end of a word, and the latter everywhere else, except that double-lowercase-S was variously written <ſſ> or <ſs>.

u and v were not yet considered two distinct letters, but different forms of the same letter. Typographically, was used at the start of a word and elsewhere; hence vnmoued (for modern unmoved) and loue (for love).

i and j were also not yet considered two distinct letters, but different forms of the same letter, hence "ioy" for "joy" and "iust" for "just".

A silent was often appended to words. The last consonant sometimes was doubled when adding this ; hence ſpeake, cowarde, manne (for man), runne (for run). The sound /ʌ/ was often written (as in son); hence ſommer, plombe (for modern summer, plumb).

usually the change in spelling was all about where was the letter that changed.

Early modern english comes from a variety of english families which are Indo-european, Germanic, Anglo-frisian and Anglic.

I think the primary factor of the spread of english language was the fact that Britain had colonies around the globe... I have to run now, but i'll continue soon

as a good old robot said... "I`ll be back"

Assignment #3 Middle Enligsh

Well, welcome to another English Language 2 Asignment!!! now we`re gonna learn what is middle english!

Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the variety forms of English spoken between the 1066 and about 1470, it was developed thanks to a variety of factors along history, such as the introduction of the printing press in England in 1970, the Northumbrian dialect mostly spoken in south scotland and obviously northern England.

Now i have to match the following Old English words with their Anglo-Roman equivalent.

A. Pig
B. Cow
C. Wood
D. Sheep
E. House
F. Worthy
G. Bold

I'm not pretty sure on how I can do this...´

Now we contrast nouns, verbs, and pronouns of Middle English with the English spoken today.

When we talk about nouns we can find a difference in the ending of plural nouns, actually we usually use the "s" at the end of a noun to explain that we're talking about a plural noun, in middle english there's an "n" at the end of the plural noun, there are still some nouns that end with an "n" in our actual english such as "Children" or "Brethen". Note that the "s" sound in our English is a strong sound, but inmiddle english, the "n" sound is a weak one.

when we talk about verbs there is a rule of thumb, the first person singular of the present tense verbs ends in "e" (ich here-"i hear"). the second person ends in "e" + "t" (thou speakest) and in the third person ends with "th" (he cometh - he comes).

And about pronouns:

Actual English form Middle English form

I mi

you thy

he his

she hir

it his

we us

they them

you ye

Now we only have to know how to pronunciate middle english... it's something like this:

All letters are pronounced in middle english, unlike the actual english wich have silent letters for pronunciation shifts. in a strange way the middle english had a more "lytheral pronunciation", however as times goes by languages changes, so the weak "e" that we talked about in the verbs section became silent when the next word started in a vowel.

What is the Chancery Standard, and how did it come into effect?

the Chancery Standard was a form of middle english, usually used in oficial purposes by authorities and bureaucracy at the late 14th century, many linguistics think of it as one of the most influential factors in the development of modern english. the Chancery Standard came into effect because people along England spoke and wrote in a variety of different dialects, and there was an urge to get a "standard dialect" which could comunicate the authorities with regular people.

The Cantenbury tales

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geofrey Chaucer in the 14th century, which are written in middle english (which is our concern).

the stories speak about a group of medieval pilgrims in a journey to pay respects to St. thomas Becket at the Cantenbury cathedral.

the group has very different members, like a monk, a knight, a sailor, a pardoner, a miller and a carpenter among others. when the group stopped at night, they agreed to tell stories along the way of the pilgrimage, the one who tells the best story at the return of the journey would get his way paid by the rest of the pilgrims.

it is believed that these stories were inspired on an Italian book called The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio.

I can't give an apropiate opinion on why this book is important, because I haven't read a complete version (note: the stories were never finished, because Chaucer died writting it and leaving it uncomplete), but I think that the real importance here, is in the way that Chaucer puts social affairs away, making a party composed by religious members, soldiers, adventurers, and poor people (almost like a party of dungeons & dragons XD), at the time that this book was written it would be a shock to read about such a group, so the importance of this book is that Chaucer could look further in time and see that there were no difference between men.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is:

a. A collection of German folk tales, similar to Grimm's Fairy Tales.
b. A collection of Japanese ghost stories, similar to Kwaidan.
c. A detailed explanation of the proper etiquette & behaviour for all knights in Medieval Europe.
D. A medieval romance poem, with Arthurian themes.
e. None of the above.
f. All of the above.

you gotta be kidding!

This is a wonderful Arthurian story about Sir Gawain, one of the loyal, mighty, imponent, honorable, and brave knights of the round table. in the story, Sir Gawain acceptes the challenge of a knight who was completly green(this colour was commonly asociated in this stories with the Devil) The Green knight offers to allow anyone to strike him with his axe if the challenger will take a return blow in a year and a day. Sir Gawain accepted and in one mighty strike he beheaded the green knight. only to see the Green Knight stand up, pick up his head, and remind him to meet at the appointed time.

There are a few similarities with the Irish tale of Cuchulain, such as the dark fate both must face, and some beheading game in the Irish tale, as I think these are two "epic" must -read stories.

The pentagle on Gawain's shield represents his perfection and power over evil (some christian cultures see the pentagle as "the five direction that God can go" representing his power to get to a fifth direction wich is not North nor South neither East or West) also some poeple says that represents the power upon evils, such as the pentagle that King Solomon had in his ring to control evil creatures from "the Evil underground".

The poet highlights number symbolism to add symmetry and meaning to the poem. For example,Gawain is tempted by her on three separate days,but the most important number is the number "5" because of the pentagle wich representsthe five moral virtues of the knight, and the author makes a lot of references such as Gawain's virtues, for he is "faithful five ways and five times each", all five of his senses are without fault; his five fingers never fail him, and he always remembers the five wounds of Christ, as well as the five joys of the Virgin Mary.

Also there is another symbolism in the wound on Gawain's neck. it was believed that a scar was an exterior sign of an interior sin, also it was suposed that the neck was related to the will, wich conects the reasoning part (head) with the brave part (heart), so Gawain's sin was to try to separate courage from reason (when he tried to dodge death in a reasonable but uncourageous way).

This story was adapted to film in movies such as as the sword of the valiant, starring Sean Connery as the Green knight.

Some people reffer to this story as a "medieval epic soup opera",by looking at the internal moral problems of Sir Gawain, the temptations he suffer, and some feminist and homosexual interpretations... i'm afraid to say that there might be some relation though it's very hard to find a soup opera that has any similaritie with this Arthurian story, maybe "Lola" would work... it's about a guy that is the "perfect macho", a mix between Johnny Bravo, and Don Juan Tenorio, he doesn't recognize the importance of monogamy and a shaman (or somethingmore like an evil witch) turns him into a girl so he can learn a lesson, along his way to get back his body he is tempted to stay as a woman forever, and also have a relation with another man, but his moral ethics cannot allow he to stop his work at a desing company, so he disguise as a relative and continues to work there, even with the posibility of being discovered as a kind of transexual. Leaving the gender changes behind there are some similarities... i think...

assignment #2 Anglo-saxon Language

Well, the second part of my biography will be postponed because i`m in a hurry of doing other workshops in my blog...it`s not like i have a lot of fans out there xD in fact, i don`t have any XD anyway, today I`m going to talk about OLD ENGLISH or anglo-saxon english.^^

Old English as an early form of the English language that we speak today, it was spoken in the lands that we know today as England and southern scotland (also known as the lowlands), between the 5th and the 12th century, it has Latin, germanic, celtic and viking influences.

The Anglo-saxon language is the early form of english, even though they have several Phonologycal differences:

The sounds marked in parentheses in the chart above are allophones:

[dʒ] is an allophone of /j/ occurring after /n/ and when geminated
[ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ occurring before /k/ and /g/
[v, ð, z] are allophones of /f, θ, s/ respectively, occurring between vowels or voiced consonants
[ç, x] are allophones of /h/ occurring in coda position after front and back vowels respectively
[ɣ]

As for the simillarities between Old English and The English Language spoken today there are only a fwe pronouns that the centuries left. such as We (wë).

Other similarity is the word order, Subject + verb + object this is a common word order in germanic languages too.

and the last one is the word order in questions, it`s the same that in modern English (are you?), but sometimes, because of the nordic influences this could change to (You are?), this wasn`t a mistake or anything, if you were an Anglo-saxon, you could ask either way and still you're getting a good comunication and understanding^^

The runic Anglo-Saxon alphabet is composed by 34 different runes (futhorcs), which were used as the letters today in the alphabet, in this letters we can find a lot of latin, germanic, viking and celtic influences too, for example the rune Yogh was adopted from Irish and the letter Eth is a form of the latin "D"

Old English is (thanks to God) in the literature, the most known poem is "Beowulf", some people say that Old English is the language in which Shakespiare wrote his works, but it isn`t. that language is a kind of evolution of the Anglo-saxon language.

Now we`re going to talk about this awesome epic poem called Beowulf, wich is written in Old English.

Beowulf is an epic poem from an anonymous author (same in almost all poems of the period), written in between the 8th and the 11th century as the Nowell codex says, and is believed that describes events in what now could be Sweden and Denmark. In the poem there`s a hero of the Geats (a north germanic tribe) who fights three diofferent antagonists; the first one is Grendel and the second is Grendel`s mother as descendants of the Biblical Caine they are feared by all but Beowulf, who wants to slay them, because Grendel was attacking Heorot, Beowulf with a powerfull simte rips off Grendels arm, making him run away to his swamp where he dies. Later Beowulf goes to the swamp in search of Grendel`s mother, after tear her apart, he found Grendel's dead body, and took his head as a trophy. Trophy in hand, Beowulf becomes the King of the nearby lands, and rules over for many years, after those he fights an almighty dragon (the third enemy), in the last battle Beowulf gets mortally wounded and dies after killing the unnamed dragon. later he is buried by his followers.

As one of the most important Anglo-saxon poems, Beowulf has a lot of film adaptions including Grendel Grendel Grendel (1984), Animated Epics: Beowulf (1998), Beowulf (1999), The 13th Warrior (1999), Beowulf & Grendel (2005), Grendel (2007), Beowulf (2007), and Beowulf: Prince of the Geats (2008).

I`m back, fear me poor mortals!!!!! MUAJAJAJAJAJA

YO!, I'm back at posting, even if no one sees my blog XD I guess I'm not an interesting person jajajaja, well, anyway, I have to do a self biography for my english class, so here it goes.

Part #1

Born from an almost Italian Mother and a half spain, german, Chilean father (weird breeding) in Santiago de Chile (de nueva extremadura XD) one March eleventh of nineteen eighty eight at three twenty PM. My life as far as I know, is not like WOW what a interesting life, so try not to get asleep^^.
I'm the youngest of two brothers, my big bro's name is Patricio and is six years older than me, sometimes we fight, but we get along, most of the time, quite well. My mother's name is Angela, and I don't really know how old is she, because, as she said, four years ago she was thirty six, and one year ago she was thirtyfour, maybe she doesn't like the idea of getting old, or she is bad at mathematics, I think its about the fiftys, anyway it doesn't matter, my father is a very kind person as long as you don't piss him off, he's a bit quiet, but when angry he is preety scary XDD.
I was raised in an apartment here in santiago, i didn't had friends at that point, so I spent most of the time alone making cardboard toys XDDD, i used to draw superheroes on paper, after painting it and cutting it, i stick it to the cardboard, and those were most of my toys XDDD, of course i had a couple of toys too, but when i didn't have one, i just drew it, that way i learned to draw at the aeg of two and a half years, and until now, drawing is a passion for me.
when i grew up we moved to a house, it was awesome to have a yard were i could play with mud and ground and get dirty, it also was awesome how mad my mother was about it XD.
as years passed by i made good friends at school and at the "hood", in the neighborhood i made good friends with this weird guy called nicolàs fernandez, he was one important peron to me, because he had been by my side since i was five years old.
time passes fast and when i was about twelve years old, i traveled with my mom to U.S.A., there we stayed with my aunt Marcia, who is a kind of "new age esoterican", I learned a lot with her, and i met my cousins too of course, three cats, yeah, cats! Cachito the oldest, Morris the one in the midle and Jessica the youngest, at this day, the three of them are looking after her in heaven. in that journey I met my uncle's uncles, they were ecuatorian and peruvian, and they were so kind to us, my uncle's uncle had a baseball team, and one random day he saw me running like hell all over the street (at this point i was in the athletic team of school and i was training in the street), and he told me. "hey fella, do you want to be in the baseball team?" and i said that i couln`t that i had to go back to Chile, and he said, "would you like to stay with us?, that way you can be in the team, also we would look after you and your career and all th stuff", i felt that i was dreaming, such oportunities are one in a lifetime....

continues in part #2

Finish of the term

OMG!!! I can`t believe that time goes so fast, there are so many things I wanted to do, but couldn't...
I remember my first class... it was English language, and I was so scared of starting my "new life" as an ELT student, I wasn't worried of the classes or marks... sometimes you just get scared about the change. of course there are good things, and a lot!, you get to know more and different people, know different waysthat teachers have to make class, and all kind of stuff!, but also you learn to be responsible.

Now, that I'm finishing my first term, I realize that as a ELT student, you have to be proactive, and forget about stillness, you got to think fast, and act faster, check the homewrks and tests,check that you have control of your own business, and don`t loose the trail, you`ll have to remember always, why you are there in the first place,that`s the most important thing, even in your normal life, always havepresent why are you doing, this or that, why are you not doing something, cause, if you can't figure that out, you are simply lost.

so, now, I really can't do anything more to get my marks to be better, but now I know`, that even if I`m scared, `'ll be fine in my second term, because I know what I`m doing and why.

thanks a lot to everyone that visited this blog and maybe I'll keep writting later, so see ya! and have a good holiday!!!

podcasts in education

hi, it`s me again, the random guy and his TEFL experience^_^

I`m gonna talk about how podcast can help students in learning English as a foreing language
i had to post thisidea on

but i couln`t. the page was secured, so i`ll post here my idea^^.
as you may know, podcast are digital media files that you can hear on internet, using an Ipod, or a computer directly, but how can it help the English learning and understanding???
simply.
Students are motivated with tecnology, so a podcast is much more interesting for them than a written test, or an oral test, students may use podcast to practice their pronunciation, and comunicative skills, by hearing themselves after they talk, ussually when someone talks, he/she doesn`t pay attention to how they say words, neither they pay attention to how they are using words, and making sentences, so they may record themselves using a podcast and then they hear the recorded conversation, phrase, etc... after that they can hear what mistakes are on it and correct them, so podcast are very useful and fun to use when we`re talking about learning another language.

I`ll post here some podcasts links were you can experience by yourselves how fun and useful podcasts can be, so enjoy these

Jokes





songs



national geographic

Faith in education...

A few years ago, being a teacher was something that people, (or common mortals XD) found to be something admirable. Teachers were considered wise, intelligent, and kind people... Maybe this thing above sounds a bit of another world to you, isn't it?, well, nobody can blame you. Being a teacher in my country is a hard thing, most of the families in my country put their children at school, not because they really want to, but they HAVE by law, to assure education to them, and/or they don't have the time/want to educate them morally...

1) Most social problems come from the education that is imparted to the people of a certain place. This is True.
2)Most families blame teachers for the social problem they are into, because of point number 1
Why do a teacher have to teach a child what his parents are meant to?

As teachers we will have to be aware of our students' situations and stuff like that, but the moral education of a child relies on his/her parents... this is also true.

so, why being a teacher?
everybody will blame you for things that little devil-like students do.
Angry parents will be happy to burn you on a park, if their kids got pregnant or whatever!because you didn't tell them they would be in trouble if they do that...
If parents don't kill you, or neither a heart attack by seeing those little devils burning tires and marching for thing they don't know, you could end up in an asylum or something...nah, just kidding XD

Being a teacher in my country may be a hard, disgraceful, maybe martiric thing to do, but if teachers don't do it...who will?

something has to change about education, parents must (read carefully M-U-S-T-!) have a time with their children, talk to them of THEIR situation, how they feel?, what they expect?,are they really demons? jajaja.
If they were no teachers...there would be no education, and education is the most important part of civilization, so in fact, HAIL TEACHERS!,BOW DOWN TO THE TEACHERS!, that are prepared for doing the parents' work without hestitating, that are prepared for (maybe) eternal blame for social situations, HAIL TEACHERS who want to make a change in education, and finally hail for teachers that even knowing this, and suffering for this, they are still at school or universities working the hell out of themselves, without expecting something to change for them, but simply, creating a new society, were parents and teachers could build together, a new generation of wise, happy,(and please! not as demonic) children.

now, something for laguhing a bit...
and remember kids... turn off your cellphones before class jeje