Varieties of English

• American English 225M speakers (2010 census)
• Australian English 15.6M speakers (2006 census)
• British English 55.6M native speakers (2012)
• Canadian English 19.4M speakers (2011 census)
• Hiberno-English (Irish English) 4.27M speakers (2012)
• Hong Kong English c. 2.88M speakers (2001)^[3]–3.1M (2011)^[4] (English is co-official language there)
  • 2011 HK census, 238,288 reported English as their "usual" language.^[4]
• Jamaican English 2.6M native speakers^[5]
• New Zealand English 3.82M speakers (2013 census)
• Singapore English 1.1M native (2010)
• South African English 4.89M native speakers (2011 census)
• Manglish (Mangled English) is an English-based creole spoken in Malaysia)
• Italgish (Italian English)
•  
   
   
  Manglish

• Consists of words originating from English, Malay, Hokkien Mandarin, Catonese, Tamil, Malayalam, also elements of American and Australian slang through television series
• Manglish syntax resembles southern varieties of Chinese
• British spelling is generally followed however American English slang has a large influence, particularly among Malaysian youth
• Creole language – mixture of different languages, has its own phonology, lexicon and grammar
• The use of Manglish is discouraged at schools, where only Malaysian Standard English is taught
• The difference between Manglish and Singlish is very subtle and can oftentimes be hard to distinguish even among the locals. However, Manglish is markedly more influenced by the Malay language
• Noun - "kapster" - a nosy or talkative person; can also be used as an adjective, e.g., "I hate them because they are so kapster." Contraction of the Malay verb "cakap", to speak, plus -ster (probably from analogy with English words such as "trickster"). Probably originated from the Hokkien term "Kap siau" meaning - being annoying.
• Adjective- "blur" - confused, out-of-it. Roughly equivalent to "spacey" in American slang

American English

• English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and is the common language used by the federal government
• English has been given official status by 32 of the 50 state governments
• While written American English is (in general) standardized across the country, there are several recognizable variations in the spoken language, both in pronunciation and in vocabulary. Examples:
   
• African American
   
• Chicano
   
• Inland Northern English
   
• Mid-Atlantic English
   
• Midland English
   
• New York City English
   
• In telephone call centers in India and other places, people often learn American English to sound more like their customers who call from America. These people often keep using American English in everyday life.
• There are many words that sound the same in both American English and British English, but are spelled differently. For example:
• Words originally from French that end in "-our" in British English (behaviour, colour, honour, neighbour, etc.) end in "-or" in American English (behavior, color, honor, neighbor).
• Many of these differences are thought to have been introduced by lexicographer Noah Webster, who made the American dictionary following the American War of Independence
• However, English and American English have far more similarities than differences – if you can understand one you can understand the other.

Robert Lowth's Grammar

http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item126709.html


Compiled a grammar book for growing middle class for guidance on how to use 'polite' or 'correct' English
Re-issued around 45 times between 1762 and 1800
Most influential of all grammar books
It included a list of irregular verbs including forms of the past tense and past participle(no longer in use)
Break, brake, or broken, broken
Help, [helped] holpen
Get, gat, or got, gotten ('to get')

Standardisation of the English language

https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/e-magazine/articles/14693






'Sir Thomas Elyot (1538) or Robert Cawdrey (1604) who sought to gather up the 'hard English wordes' :

•  'parentate: to celebrate one's parents' funeral'.
•  'magnitude: greatness'

'Samuel Johnson's dictionary (1755) is often regarded as the first 'authoritative' treatment of the English lexicon'

 

• 'OATS. n.s. (a_en, Saxon) A grain, which in England is given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people. (Scottish people are poor)'
• imposed a lot of his personality into how he defined particular words
• took just over 8 years to complete
• List of over 40,000 words
• 6 helpers

'The story of the first Oxford English Dictionary'

• 'first suggested by the Philological Society in 1857 is a truly paradigmatic one. Five years into a proposed ten-year project the editors had reached 'ant' and the massive twelve-volume dictionary was not finally published until 1928. 'by 1933 another team were hard at work keeping the dictionary 'current'
• Existing dictionaries were incomplete and deficient
• called for a complete re- examination of the language from Anglo-Saxon times 
• 6400 pages including language from the Early Middle English period

 Hyper dictionary

• 'It is likely in our Internet generation you will have encountered many new initialisations and acronyms, such as LOL and LMAO but have you seen ROTFLMAOSTC (Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off Scaring The Cat)? AFAIK (As far as I know) this can happen A3 (Anywhere, anytime, anyplace) but probably not when PRW (parents are watching). There are several online dictionaries trying to keep pace with these changes, such as www.hyperdictionary.com.'

Summary

• Rise of prescriptive attitudes with the creation of dictionaries and grammar books (correct or incorrect)
• Allowed for standardisation
• Rise in the power of people who were prescriptive and had authority over language
• Increase of the need to use 'proper' English - seem more upper class
• Technology has a huge impact upon language e.g. Waterstones - cannot use an apostrophe in a URL

Amelia E-mail essay (in progress)

• How are meanings and representations made (in context)?
• How is Cambodia represented
• How does Amelia represent her state of mind?
• How does she convey her attitude?

Amelia constantly uses language to reassure the audiences that she is fine. On various occasions she will follow up a negative experience with positive one with the use of discourse markers such as 'but' and 'anyway'. For example, 'so we were literally nearly falling off the back of this truck...but because i'm a lady i got to sit at the front' and 'anyway now that we're here its amazing'. We could suggest that  these are used as the recipients, particularly her mum are likely to be worried about Amelia travelling to a foreign country. Amelia is likely to be aware of this so she aims to convince them that despite these negative representations of Cambodia, she is doing okay.

Differing attitudes to a ‘language change’ issue

http://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk/transcript?language=en

• "And so, the way I'm thinking of texting these days is that what we're seeing is a whole new way of writing that young people are developing, which they're using alongside their ordinary writing skills, and that means that they're able to do two things. Increasing evidence is that being bilingual is cognitively beneficial. "
• Mixed opinions but generally positive connotations
• Allowing us to write how we speak

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/4_ways_texting_is_killing_our_communication_skills_13330.aspx

• Negative connotations
• "Txtspk" leads to deficiencies in basic language skills. Shortcuts with spelling, punctuation and emoticons don't help children and teenagers learn the necessary writing and communication skills they need for college and the workforce."

Semantic shift - "Mouse"

"Mouse"

Noun

1. a small rodent that typically has a pointed snout, relatively large ears and eyes, and a long tail

• Originated from the Sanskrit (an ancient Indian language) word for mouse "musuka" where "mus" means "thief" referring to the fact that mice steal food from humans.
• The ancient Romans then used the word "mus" to refer to all rodents - example of borrowing and broadening as the old meaning is kept and new meanings are added
• "Mus Maximus(big mouse)" Rat
• "Mus Minimus(little mouse" Mouse

Noun

2. a small handheld device which is moved across a mat or flat surface to move the cursor on a computer screen.

• The word "mouse" eventually was adopted to refer to a computer device in the 1960s.
• Douglas Englelbart and Bill English had named it  a mouse because they though that the cord that comes out of the mouse resembled a tail - metaphoric change, based on similarity of thing
• They also named the cursor a "bug" but this never caught on

George reading essay: 'Young readers should be corrected whenever they make a mistake' - evaluate.

As expected, children make mistakes whilst initially learning to read, however these mistakes are more appropriately thought of as virtuous errors, as it is obvious why the child has made them. Overgeneralisation, a form of virtuous error, is where a child over applies a grammatical rule usually adding 'ed' to irregular verbs such as saying 'I runned' rather than 'I ran'. Whether these 'virtuous errors' should be corrected or not is a very controversial topic, some caregivers prefer to help children if they get stuck on a word where as others prefer to let the the child to solve their own problems. I will be identifying this argument in relation to various theories and the Text provided.




Children are taught to read in schools, using a method called 'synthetic phonics' which involves teaching letter sound correspondence, and then putting these sounds together to create words. We can see this approach is also used by the child's mother when he struggles to say the word 'sandbags' and she suggests to 'sound it out'. Despite this being initially successful George then pronounces it incorrectly again as 'sanbags'. The elision of the 'd' sound may possibly be explained as a consonant cluster reduction, where children are likely to find the production of a consonant cluster difficult, so they reduce them to smaller units. Noun compounds such as these are also a hard concept to grasp as a young reader. This highlights the idea that children have to be reminded several times before the word is more deeply processed and learnt suggesting that it is a good idea to correct a child every time  they get a word wrong to reinforce it allow them to learn the standard form. However in this instance we cannot see whether after the second correction George has gone on to pronounce the word 'sandbags' correctly.


Jerome Bruner developed the interactionist theory in which he said that language is not acquired simply through teaching, but more importantly through interaction between the child and caregiver and in order to do this the caregiver must use child directed speech or CDS. He identified several different traits of CDS that include: speaking more slowly, using a high degree of repetition and a frequent use interrogatives, all of which can be seen within the utterance 'what's happening (.) what do you think is happening (2.0)'. In this instance George's mother is clearly encouraging him to answer independently rather than just correcting him portrayed by the subjective pronoun 'you'. Arguably this could  be seen as a more effective way of learning to read as George will not become dependent upon his mother and hopefully this will allow him to be able to read in her absence. For this reason, together Vygotsky and Bruner developed 'scaffolding' the collective name for the strategies that caregivers teach children to aid their language development which may be a more suitable way of learning language as the child will then adopt these strategies and then use them when reading on their own. Despite a wide amount of evidence portraying the positive effect on child-caregiver interaction Bruner's theory has been challenged by refuting evidence and theory. Noam Chomsky believes that a child could not possibly learn language through imitation alone as a large proportion of the language spoken in their presence is highly irregular and sometimes incorrect.

George's mother praises George for pronouncing words correctly on various occasions with the use of phrases such as 'well done', 'good boy' and 'that's it' to promote this behaviour. She also uses praise  when he makes virtuous errors in order to encourage him to try again him and not knock his confidence. We can also see examples of positive reinforcement whereby the mother rewards the child with a positive outcome, identified by Skinner. When George makes the word guessing error by reading 'upstairs' rather than 'upset' his mother says 'no (.) it looks like upstairs doesn't it (.) but look at the word'. We may initially see this as negative reinforcement due to use of the negative participle 'no' although she rewards him for understanding that 'upstairs' and 'upset' are visually similar words. This is an notable factor when discussing the idea of correcting a child's language, as it is important to be sensitive as they may become discouraged if they do not feel as if they are making progress within their development of language.


As we can see, there are instances where correcting a child's language is very beneficial and will help them although there are evidently right and wrong ways of doing so. In spite of this I do believe that corrections are not always appropriate in order to make learning to read a more enjoyable and rewarding experience for children.