ktravula – a travelogue!

Break Time/Tone

I will not blog much this week because I feel a little overwelmed. On the bright side, I have Steve Jobs’ authorized biography to get through to take some of the stress off, along with a few other materials in my thesis development.

On that last bit, a question for language students: does anyone have a guess as to why (American) English speakers have problem with tone in language? Yes, they are not used to tone languages because English is intonational. But they never have such problem with music which also works with tone levels, so what’s going on? Here’s more, when researchers who have looked at the matter say that one of the reasons for poor tonal acquisition by American/English learners is the limited “pitch range” of such learners, what exactly do they mean? English speakers are humans too and pitch is physiological and not something tied to race or skin colour. I have looked everywhere online for information about this and I haven’t come up with much.

I can do with some brainstorming session here.

Poor Linguists

Bantering with a linguist friend in UK about the possibility of me coming over to the country for a visit, I told her that it would only work if I won a lottery or a major prize. “You have to buy tickets, dear,” she gently advised. “There is no Nobel Prize for Linguistics.”

Zing!

Ramblings on Tone

What can be observable in the process of acquisition of tones by L1 speakers of English? Chinese (and a host of other languages in South East Asia) already gives us an enormous database of observable patterns. African languages (in this case Yoruba) occupy another level of the problematic realm for those merely accustomed to a language based on intonation, stress and inflections. Why is it funny when my friends call me in a way that rhymes my name with Cola or “caller” rather than with the uptalk mode of pronouncing the “sugar” in “sugar daddy” or the “brother” in “brotherly love”. Tone is music, rising and falling as needed. What makes it imperative that speakers of English relate to it only in one direction, viz (usually) as a high-low in a two syllable word? Why will “Bolaji” sound like “allergy” rather than the “beautiful” in “beautiful girl”?

What other nuggets are observable? How much proficiency can an L1 English speaker really acquire in a tonal language like Yoruba? With the many years of study by people like Karin Barber and (perhaps) Susanne Wenger, could they/did they pass the native-like proficiency test? What is the bar for native-like proficiency anyway?; and besides the general list of impediments across second language learning processes, what are the specifics in L2 tonal language learning that presents the greatest obstacles? And how does it happen? It is after all equally easy, equally difficult to learn any language either at L1 or L2 level given an equal and sustained level of interest and low affective filter. Jargons, jargons.

A linguist might know, or at least be neck deep in the long process of finding out.

How to Become a Language Snob

Inspired by Clarissa’s list of “20 Ways to Become Known as a Male Chauvinist“, I am compiling my own top ten list of How to be Known As a Language Snob, along with extra points.

___________________________

1. Whenever you meet someone from a different country tell them “I like your accent. You don’t speak like other _____________ (fill in country name) that I have met.”

2. After meeting someone for the first time, let your idea of a compliment to them be “Oh you speak good English.” For extra points, ask them where they learnt to speak it so well.

3. Whenever someone says to you “I like your accent too”, look insulted and ask in a high voice, “I have an accent? What do you mean I have an accent?” For extra points, be actually insulted by that.

4. Be disgusted by people speaking their local language around you. For extra point, go to them (whether you know them or not) and ask them to speak English instead. After all, they are in America.

5. If you come from a multilingual society, pretend that English is the only language worthy of learning by your children. Punish them if they speak the mother tongue. Don’t speak it to them. For extra points, justify this by saying that “In today’s world, English is the only language worth learning.”

6. Wonder aloud many times why anyone speaks any other language at all no matter where they live. Ask “Why can’t they all learn English?”

7. Fail students who write “spelled” as spelt, learned as learnt, “labor” as labour and “neighbor” as “neighbour”. For extra points, tell them that they have spent enough time in the USA to know how those words should be spelt.

8. When someone tells you that their course of study is linguistics, ask them what the importance of that course of study is. When they tell you, ask them why they didn’t study business instead.

9. When someone tells you that their course of study is Teaching English as a Second Language, tell them without prompting that it is a good idea because they would finally be able to return to their home countries to teach the people there how to speak English.

10. Complain that the reason you did poorly in a class was because the accent of the teacher was too thick for you to understand/process. For extra points, wonder why the university didn’t employ a full-blooded American for the position instead of foreigners.

Polysemy in Politics

Perhaps we all spoke too fast. Certainly not. The man who ran his mouth for several weeks demanding proof when there seemed to have been many available everywhere that a half-black man was born in the US finally got a certain “respite” when the document was released. After all, he played a role in it. And then, a few days later, he got some good bashing from the man he had spent the previous weeks maligning. Like a few other commentators (including Baratunde who made a personal video on youtube decrying the humiliation the “white privileged businessman” brought on the “first black president” by being forced to comply), I also thought it was racist. His further demanding the president’s college transcripts rather than asking more sensible questions about the economy or the direction of the country made it even worse. The whole “birther” escapade reeked of something more than just partisan politics.

A few days ago, former President Bush declined an invitation to go with President Obama to the site of the World Trade Centres where terrorists had knocked down two prominent buildings killing thousands of people. He was, according to reports, keeping up with his desire to stay out of the spotlight. He had lived up to this promise many times by refusing to comment on current topical/political issues in order to keep the focus on the president rather than on himself – obviously aware of the star power of his ex-presidency. Some other reports however saw it as a snub. The current president had refused to give enough credit to the former one for investigation procedures that led to this victory, and thus, he could as well go it all alone.

Last week,, I turned in a final semester paper in my Discourse Analysis class titled “Polysemy in All-Male and All-Female Speech” using evidence from elicited conversations to make judgements about how humans use ambiguous statements and expressions to achieve desired goals, and particularly how innocent and sometimes unintended speech acts are sometimes construed to very specific purposes by hearers and listeners. I guess it is only fitting that all of this news events are happening at this moment when the paper is sufficiently turned in. Yet it left an excess of active brain cells making perhaps needless connections to current affairs in the name of discourse analysis. Sometimes, a speech – or an act – is just what it is, without any underlying intentions.

Photo from http://bit.ly/kR4lyE

« Older Entries Newer Entries »

...or browse articles by tags