Blog 9: Language Acquisition

http://time.com/3453841/secret-learn-foreign-language-adult/
I found this article which is about language acquisition but for an adult who is learning a foreign language. He only studied it for 17 days and he was able to go to France and people thought he had lived there for at least a year! It was his second time learning a new language but still..17 days?!

Its a short article about how he acquired it so fast. Basically, he immersed himself in the language and practiced it whenever he got the chance. I thought this article was interesting because I myself am trying to learn a new language. He stresses how in a conversation with his French friends, he didn't have them slow down so his motto was: "Learn or starve!"
I am definitely going to do some of the things he said to such as reading children's books in Spanish and listening to more music in Spanish. Best of luck to those of you who are trying to acquire a second language!
                                           

Going...Going...Gone.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140606-why-we-must-save-dying-languages
I have already posted an article about dying languages, but this article is different very intriguing to me. I chose the article because it's very interesting. It starts out by talking about a man who speaks Cherokee and his wife who is also Cherokee, who doesn't speak it.It then goes on to talk about the rate at which some languages are dying off and why it is imperative that we try to save them. One thing I found really interesting was that the article stated even languages such as Cherokee, that have thousands of speakers, are in danger of dying off because children are not learning it. Languages are more than just the way we communicate, each language in itself holds knowledge about cultures and the people within that culture. It also informs us about different topics, some such as herbs and medicine, that we may not know as much about. The article does make me want to learn more about dying languages and see what is being done to try and preserve them.

Blog 7: Genderlects

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/288441/DIFFERENCES-IN-GENDERLECTS-CAN-HAVE-A-PROFOUND-EFFECT.html?pg=all
For blog 7, I found an article on genderlects. The article talks about how these genderlects affect men and women in everyday life. I picked this article because we talked about genderlects in class the other day and I found them quite intriguing. The thing that I found most interesting about the article was how it talked about from when we are little kids, girls are taught to be open and have "feeling talk," and boys are quite the opposite, they are taught not to share their feelings and have to try and be the biggest and baddest of the group to show dominance. The article then talks about how this transfers later into life. I thought the article did very well of explaining the topic-now I am more aware of something I had no idea about, and I hear examples of genderlects everyday!

Blog 6: Voiced and Voiceless Sounds

http://emedia.leeward.hawaii.edu/hurley/Ling102web/mod3_speaking/3mod3.5.2_place.htm
This article that I found is about place of articulation. I really liked this article because it shows the different areas that are active when they are produced in the vocal tract. It shows arrows and lines to help illustrate the action. This article is related to language because it deals with being able to produce sounds by the way they are articulated in our mouth. This article made me want to go and learn more about this topic because we know naturally how to say words but I didn't know what was happening in my mouth, it's very interesting.

Blog 5: Maxims of Conversation!

This video relates to the Chapter 4: The Meaning of Language because this videos shows the 4 principles of maxims of conversation. Maxims of conversation are conversational conventions that people appear to obey in verbal interactions. The video shows the maxim of truth, which states to not say what you believe to be false, the maxim of quantity which basically says to not make your contribution more or less informative than is required. The other two principles that it shows are the maxim of relation which states to be relevant and the last one which is the maxim of manner which deals with clarity. 

This video is really funny and relevant to the chapter and it helped me in understanding the different principles dealing with maxims of conversation with entertaining examples.

Just for fun, here's some examples of the maxims of conversations in a couple comics.

Blog 4: R.I.P. Languages

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/world/18cnd-language.html
I picked this article because I think it is crazy how languages are dying off! It's related to language because it talks about how languages are starting to disappear in different parts of the world. The most interesting part for me was where it stated that out of the 7,000 languages spoken today, more than half are in danger and are likely to disappear by the end of the century. I agree with the article because I also think that as the last speakers of the language are dying off, the language is dying. Also, some have no written form so there is no record of them when they disappear. I think it's cool that for some of them they make recordings and basic word lists in an attempt to try and preserve some of the dying languages. I do want to learn more about dying languages, they are so diverse and interesting. My topic affects the world because there are so many different languages that are being spoken and they are important to many people and their culture.

Blog 3: 7 Things You Should Know about Sign Language!

http://mentalfloss.com/article/13107/7-things-you-should-know-about-sign-language
The article that I found is about 7 interesting things you may or may not know about sign language. I picked the article because I thought it has interesting facts, some of which I did not know about. It's related to language because obviously it is a language and within the article, it talks about how it is acquired and what happens when some of the communication ability is lost. For me, the most interesting thing was the part where it talked about how babies acquire sign language. It said that they start "babbling" with their hands and they use easier hand signs, which are "baby pronunciations." This article did make me want to learn more about the topic because I then started researching more about child signing. I think my topic has a huge effect on the world-sign language is very prominent in the United States as well as worldwide and I think having more knowledge about it would benefit those who sign and also those who don't. Here's some signs for the road!