Tag: english
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A quick introduction to Japanese syntax and particles
The Japanese language is considered syntactically a Subject-Object-Verb or SOV language in contrast to English which is considered a subject-Verb-Object or SVO language, as these two example sentences will show. (1) Ken wa (S) tama wo (O) uchimashita (V). (2) Ken (S) hit (V) the ball (O). While it is not possible to move the syntactical elements around in English without a changing…
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20,000 English teachers for Japan by 2019
The Japanese government is planning to increase the number of Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) to 20,000 by 2019. Although the acronym stands for any language by and large English is the only language that is taught in schools in Japan. Outsourcing has been the trend of late but this may mark the return of government-based…
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Five or Seven Sentence Patterns?
While the seven sentence pattern description is the norm in English linguistics today there still persists the use of five sentence description in some non-English speaking countries like Japan which teach English as a foreign language. Essentially the seven sentence pattern is a five sentence pattern with the extra two pattern as extensions of SVA…
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Bisociation and Conceptual Blending Theory
New Yorker magazine cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff, talks about the anatomy of the New Yorker cartoon and what makes them funny. He cites Arthur Koestler’s idea of bisociation as explained in his Act of Creation as a major influence to his thinking in making choices for which cartoons get accepted into the magazine. Koestler’s book…
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Loanwords and the growth and change of a language
We have truly come to understand that language is usage in the last thirty years. So when someone says that they disapprove of loanwords coming into their language they are really not understanding this point. They are coming from the Old School which thinks grammar (and vocabulary) is perscriptive, not descriptive. English is itself a…
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English is Rough
“We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” James Nicoll
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Some thoughts on language and culture
Language is culture. So if you want to learn to speak a language you need to understand the culture in which it is spoken. And it is this that many don’t understand about their first language, that their ability to speak it is from their immersion – being in the midst of the culture –…
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The Origin of English Words
Here is a version of the chart I made of the origin of english words. I am guessing these are type counts and not token counts. It would be interesting to see a token count chart of this and see where the blowout (if any) is.
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Exposure to Language
“Reading is more important than writing.” — Roberto Bolaño Without exposure to a language one will never master it. That exposure can come in many forms but the best form is culture. Culture and language are essentially the same thing. There will be no language if there is no culture the opposite is also true.…
ghoti 