Actually, it’s a JPEG, but still…I could teach a whole year just on this:
Posts Tagged ‘English’
Great Grammar Goof GIF
Posted in Education, Language and Literature, tagged English, grammar, teaching, writing on June 14, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Basically the Same Trick in Chinese and English
Posted in Humor, Language and Literature, tagged Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo, Chinese, English, homonyms, homophones, Mandarin, shi on March 15, 2012 |
I recently saw this posting online. Even though the Mandarin Chinese word “shi” is used below with four different tones of pronunciation, the same tone can still have multiple meanings. Obviously, then, very common syllables in Chinese, like “shi,” can have tons of homonyms. Thus, this. I regret to say that the only words I clearly recognize here are the ones for “ten” and the “to be” verbs.
This reminds me of a similar trick in English: the “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” trope. Actually a perfectly valid sentence, it can be phrased as “THE buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloED BY buffalo FROM Buffalo, buffalo (verb) OTHER buffalo FROM Buffalo.” The linked Wikipedia article also includes some other wacky semantic shenanigans.
Scrutiny in Teaching Writing
Posted in Education, Language and Literature, tagged English, National Review, teaching, writing, writing process on November 5, 2011 | 3 Comments »
A post at National Review, and some great follow up comments from readers, offers some great ideas about teaching writing:
The only way to address writing is to give line-by-line feedback. We cannot assume that students know what good writing looks like. Every time students pass a written assignment at any level with subpar writing, such poor performance is reinforced as acceptable and the poor writing ability become the next professor’s problem.
One of many astute reader comments notes:
Absolutely crucial, if we want students to improve, is that they be required to draft and revise. If they only receive comments — no matter how comprehensive and excellent — on already graded work, they simply won’t attend to them. Why bother if it isn’t going to make any difference on that essay? And they don’t always have the understanding to apply comments on one essay to the next; but if they revise *this* essay by the comments given, then it sparks some realization of how to apply those comments to other work.
Agreed.
This is the single most important thing that students need to learn about writing: every word counts. (more…)
Defending Internal Book of Mormon Evidence: The Lesson of Proto-Indo-European
Posted in Language and Literature, Religion, tagged apologetics, Book of Mormon, English, evidence, linguistics, old English, Proto-Indo-European on July 30, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Critics of the Book of Mormon often deride it for its apparent lack of archaeological corroboration. Indeed, most of the evidence that bears on the authenticity of the Book of Mormon is “internal,” meaning evidence derived from the text of the book itself. Those given to rejecting an ancient origin for the Book of Mormon often denigrate the value of internal evidence, perhaps considering anything not in the purview of Indiana Jones to not be “real” evidence. For some, it seems, physical remains are all that counts.
As someone whose interests are primarily linguistic, and as someone who loves and believes in the Book of Mormon, I find this intellectually and spiritually disingenuous. Frankly, ignoring the importance of linguistic evidence in a study is unscientific.
Consider the study of the Indo-European language family, and its prehistoric origins among groups of people who spoke a language that we call Proto-Indo-European.
G-H-O-T-I Spells Fish
Posted in Language and Literature, tagged English, grammar, Michael Drout, The Modern Scholar on June 30, 2011 |
It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to an entire series of recorded lectures, but last week I picked up Michael Drout’s A Way With Words III: Understanding Grammar at the library, and I was immediately enraptured. I haven’t listened to anything else since, burning straight through the seven discs during my drive times this week, absorbing the whole eight hour extravaganza.
Drout is one of the most personable speakers I’ve ever heard lecture; his humor, pop references, voices, and casual approach were always perfect: he could have been sitting right next to me. The lectures were substantive, too. Not only does he review the basics, with some twists, but he clearly explained some things that I’ve seen other teachers clumsily belabor.
For example, when the sticky issue of the pronoun of indeterminate gender came up (using “he” or “she” when you don’t know if the subject being referenced is actually male or female, as in, “Any student who wants to get a good education should read his little heart out”), instead of resigning himself to the lame stand by of using an inappropriate “their” (it’s singular, not plural), and decisively rejecting such politically correct constructs as “s/he,” he announces a policy so catchy and utilitarian that I’ve wanted to shout it as a battle cry ever since: Pluralize the antecedent! (Which would make my example from before into, “Any students who want to get a good education should read their little hearts out.”)
On Teaching Writing Vs. Teaching Literature
Posted in Education, tagged composition, editing, English, reading, revision, teaching, writing, writing process on May 31, 2011 | 1 Comment »
A couple of notable essays have appeared recently about focusing on teaching writing, as opposed to literature. Here are a few money quotes, starting with the original piece in Salon:
It’s hard to blame anyone for not wanting to teach writing, which, while it might not involve manual labor or public floggings, is hard, grueling work. Often it demands maximum effort for minimum payoff, headache-inducing attention to detail, wheelbarrows full of grading, revision after revision, conferences with teary-eyed students. Who wouldn’t prefer to talk about books or stories or poems? Problem is, the hard, grueling work to be done doesn’t go away. Ask any college composition teacher.
A reaction from another teacher, quoted at Instapundit:
Teenagers, already a cauldron of emotions, rather enjoy boiling over onto paper, as long as authenticity trumps accuracy or analysis. They “reflect” all the time, mostly on their cell phones in indecipherable shorthand. Building, supporting, and defending a thesis – that’s much less fun. Teaching them to how do it, and grading the results, is much harder work as well.
Others have chimed in, but you get the idea: teaching literature is fun and easy, whereas teaching writing is painful.
It’s absolutely true. (more…)
Is Mario A Male Maria?
Posted in Language and Literature, Religion, tagged Bible, English, gender, language, names on February 9, 2011 | 3 Comments »
One aspect of my interest in language is names. Tonight, as I drove home from work, I saw a restaurant sign that included the name Mario, and it hit me for the first time: this name seems to do the opposite of what I usually notice names do.
Many female names are clearly adapted from older male names:
- Stephanie is a female Stephen
- Paulette is a female Paul
- Andrea is a female Andrew
- Roberta is a female Robert
- Michaela is a female Michael
- Patricia is a female Patrick
- Joan is a female John
- Christina is a female Christopher
Notice that most of these examples are from men in the Bible. This is important. As those names are very old and very influential in Western cultures, it’s natural that female versions would evolve.
Mario, however, seems to have gone the other way: if Mari-o and Mari-a are related, the older name is Maria, which in English is Mary. It makes sense that if names get adapted across genders because of age and cultural influence, especially Biblical names, then the name of the ultimate woman in the Bible would naturally produce a male version.
This is all just speculation, though–I’m not a linguist. But I’d like to look into this to see if I’m right.
“I Defiantly Agree!”
Posted in Humor, Language and Literature, tagged English, language, writing on January 21, 2011 | 2 Comments »
As often as students commit the typical errors of writing—the fragments, the missing punctuation, the misspellings—there is one very specific mistake that I see dozens of times every year that nobody else seems to have mentioned: it’s using the word “defiantly” in the wrong place.
Over the years, I’ve had endless students write down and turn in papers with sentences like these:
“I defiantly think that I will go to college.”
“I would defiantly not ever want to read something like this again.”
“Will I read another book like this one? Defiantly!”
The last example makes it sound as if not only will this young person be reading more books in the future, but will be doing so with a stoic, stubborn rebelliousness, directly in the face of antagonistic opposition. “You dare to chain me down and hold back my reading habits? I will rise up and overthrow your anti-literate regime!” You go, girl!
Obviously, what these students meant to write is “definitely.” But how did the one word become the other? And how the heck are dozens—hundreds—of kids making the same weird mistake?
I mean, it’s not like this is a simple typo; no single slip of a finger could do this. The words differ in multiple places, and the pronunciations are hardly similar at all.
My theory is that there must be some common misspelling of “definitely” that Microsoft Word changes to “defiantly.” I tried typing all the incorrect versions of “definitely” that I could think of, but Microsoft didn’t want me to turn any of them into “defiantly,” so maybe I’m wrong.
For their part, most of the students don’t seem to understand the mistake, much less are they able to explain it, but it sure makes for some funny reading for me!
The Use and Abuse of Parts of Speech, or, Why Basics Are Important
Posted in Education, Humor, Language and Literature, tagged English, parts of speech, teaching, vocabulary, writing on October 28, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Finished reading example sentences my classes made up for a current unit of vocabulary words today. As usual, many of these sentences are complete nonsense.
Don’t get me wrong: I’d say that more than 80% of them were just fine, and even though each class had done plenty of exercises with these words and researched published examples, I still have come to realize that awkward sentences like these are a natural part of the learning process. They’ll be revised next week, with guided practice.
By far the biggest thing that strikes me about these, though, is the consistency of the most common error, and what a fundamental error it is: students don’t know how to use parts of speech. We have nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and the rest drilled into us from elementary school, and here are high school students who, when shown that a word is a noun, will still try to use it as a verb in their own efforts: “He impetussed at me.” Actually, the most frequent mistake–one that seems to come automatically when trying out an unfamilar word–is to make it an adjective: “He was a really impetus guy.”
So even in honors classes, I spend more time than I ever thought I would reviewing the difference between parts of speech and how to use them.
I jotted down the “best” examples I saw of mistaken usages in this week’s papers. Though some concern verb tense, confusing a word with a similar word, or attaching the wrong meaning to a word, the vast majority of these are matters of switched parts of spech.
The vocabulary words are in italics.
**********
Our army is nostalgia.
Apple juice has a great quintessence.
This wind is impetus.
I was impetus and willing to talk again.
Lawyers tend to be duplicity people.
The Worst Word in the English Language
Posted in Language and Literature, Politics and Society, tagged English, N-word, profanity on September 22, 2010 |
The words that we consider vulgar and obscene in English mostly deal with products or functions of the human body. Some others focus on certain undesirable aspects of the human condition, or blasphemous uses of sacred terms. However, there is one word which eclipses all of these, in that it does not refer to a bodily function or waste, nor is it irreverent, nor is it an insult focused on a single aspect of a person.
That word is the N-word. But isn’t that an example of what I just said, an insult focused on a single aspect–skin color? Not at all. Rather than to merely label a person by something the speaker judges wrong, this word carries with it a connotation of not merely being impure or second class, but actually less than human. Especially when we consider the historical context of the word, its use clearly is meant to imply that someone is little more than an animal.
That’s why it’s the worst word in the English language. Nothing else carries such a damning indictment–a clear conviction that a person is not just flawed but entirely worthless. Nothing could be more offensive, and the seriousness of that definition should give us all pause that in recent years this word has made such a strong comeback in our culture.
How To Use a Colon
Posted in Education, Language and Literature, tagged colon, English, punctuation, writing on September 17, 2010 | 1 Comment »
The punctuation mark, that is, not the part of human anatomy. A post on that would be all kinds of gross.
Specifically, here’s how I teach the use of the colon: I made up a formula that defines its function.
Did you see that? I demonstrated it in that last sentence. What exactly does the colon do? It points to the rest of the sentence; it says, “And now, here’s the exciting conclusion to the situation set up in the first half of the sentence!”
The formula that I present to students is below.
: = →
Colon equals arrow. Bonus: it looks like an emoticon. That dude has warped nostrils, but at least he seems happy.
Consider this: The answer is this four. How would you punctuate that? By putting a colon after the word “this,” of course. The answer is this: four.
How can you know that’s right? Picture the colon’s equal in its place: The answer is this → four. Makes perfect sense.
Shakespeare Is Not “Old English”
Posted in Language and Literature, tagged Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Chaucer, English, language, middle English, modern English, old English, Shakespeare on September 9, 2010 | 8 Comments »
A pet peeve: people constantly complain–students and adults alike–that they can’t understand Shakespeare because he wrote in “old English.”
No, he didn’t. Shakespeare wrote in exactly the same modern English we still speak and write today. He used a much larger vocabulary, tons of poetic phrasings and figures of speech, a lot of specialized references, and often simply waxed eloquent in his singularly elegant style, but his language was no different from ours.
I realize that when people call it “old English,” they mean precisely the aspects of Shakespeare’s language which I just mentioned, but still, the inaccuracy bugs me. A little effort, time, and homework makes Shakespeare comprehensible and enjoyable, but actual old English is, practically, a foreign language.
Really. Quick English lesson summary: The defining work of modern English is that of one of its earliest practitioners: Shakespeare. Middle English (which could be dated very roughly from about 1000 AD to 1500 AD) is best exemplified by Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Old English is illustrated best by the epic poem Beowulf.
Shakespeare, as I said, can be read with a little effort. In fact, most of us could understand most of his work right now with practically no assistance.
Chaucer, however, is usually “translated” into modern English when printed, as his vocabulary and spelling are so different from what we use today that much of it is very difficult to read. A sample of the middle English text is below, with a modern equivalent to help.
Sentence Diagramming: Huston For The Defense
Posted in Language and Literature, tagged English, grammar, language, sentence diagramming on April 22, 2010 | 9 Comments »
Yesterday, a reader named Vicki posted the following comment under an old post of mine called, “On The Joy Of Sentence Diagramming:”
“I’m still not convinced that sentence diagramming is profitable. If the goal it communication, why does the student have to know that what he is saying is a noun or verb, etc… If a student can properly write a sentence, why does he have to know all of the parts of that sentence?? I just don’t get it. I think Grammar is old school, and is taught because it always has been taught. We need to think outside the box, and open our mind to teaching important things in schools, not just busy work. He says it makes him a better reader and writer? How?? How can knowing sentence structure in that depth do that? I am an engineer and a teacher. I just have never understood it all.”
My reply ran to several paragraphs, so I’m giving it its own space here. I had more fun writing this than anything in quite a while, and I truly hope Vicki finds it to be useful:
Vicki, thank you so much for the honest, important questions; you bring up four thoughtful and valuable, but very different, issues here, so I’ll try to touch just briefly on each of them.
“why does the student have to know that what he is saying is a noun or verb, etc… If a student can properly write a sentence, why does he have to know all of the parts of that sentence??” The best answer here has to do with learning things in depth, not just to the shallow “good enough” level that we can get away with it. The drastic simplification of all communication over the last century, even formal writing, should concern us. If we don’t even have the capacity to comprehend the deeper nuts and bolts of language, we’ll be short-changing our children and ourselves by a deprivation of the true power and beauty of one of humanity’s most fundamental and crucial skills. By your logic above, a grunt or belch is good enough if it gets a point across. This complaint is slightly related to the frequent question English teachers get about excessive “detail” in literature, which I recently discussed here.
“I think Grammar is old school, and is taught because it always has been taught.” Why would you assume that? And why would that be a bad thing? Isn’t transmitting tradition a legitimate function of education? Hasn’t our heritage been good to us? Might it be a mistake to just chuck out anything that we no longer find easy to enjoy?
“We need to think outside the box, and open our mind to teaching important things in schools, not just busy work.” Aren’t these just clichés? (more…)
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