tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/english-langauge-17992/articles
English langauge – The Conversation
2023-07-17T15:06:46Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/209422
2023-07-17T15:06:46Z
2023-07-17T15:06:46Z
What does it mean to be ‘educated’? In Uganda it’s not just schooling that counts
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537064/original/file-20230712-25-lfnlkb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The experience of schooling matters as much as the practices it teaches.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Juilliart/Shutterstock (Editorial use only)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How do you gauge whether someone is educated or not? In many parts of the world, the answer relates to the level of formal qualifications they achieve when they are young – do they have a university degree? In what subject and from what institution?</p>
<p>This appeals to the sense that education is something earned and to the belief that schools and universities have the authority to say who is (and who is not) educated. It’s also how economists and social scientists define someone’s education level and link that to what their health and social outcomes might be later in life.</p>
<p>However, as journalist Vanessa Friedman <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/style/george-santos-style.html">has written</a> in the New York Times, educational status can change because of the clothes you wear. She uses two examples – a jacket worn by the fictional protagonist of the 1999 film <a href="https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/talented-mr-ripley-menswear-review/">The Talented Mr Ripley</a> and the outfits worn by <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/george-santos-news-arrested-indicted-mug-shot-clothes.html">disgraced US politician George Santos</a>, a look she calls the “uniform of preppy private-school boys everywhere”. He worked hard, she argues, to appear more credentialed than he was.</p>
<p>These characters, one fictional and one real, are con artists. But they make an important point about the way being educated is not a settled status. It is something that can be worked on in various ways, including through the clothes one wears.</p>
<p>We are researchers involved in <a href="https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/projects/youth-futures-challenging-categories-educated-unemployed-institutional-innovators-rural-uganda/">a project</a> exploring young people’s futures in rural Uganda. As part of this, Ben – an anthropologist – conducted <a href="https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/amet.13151?casa_token=CA3eZvGKf_AAAAAA:42WXwWMZJ24jJf3Avpa8P1royeN9TFTpYVl2wmUR-PnpUMHH5_asQdKpc6guxNycCt2hO7-GbfdCz2P-">a study</a> to understand what young men and women do with their education in the absence of white collar jobs.</p>
<p>We found many women and men, of different ages, continuing to work on their claims to an educated identity throughout their lives. They do this by wearing the right clothes, but also by joining committees, being active in church, speaking what is considered the right sort of English, and presenting their arguments in the “logical” way that those with a good education have been trained in. </p>
<p>These people are not Tom Ripleys or George Santoses. They are doing what they do because being seen as educated has benefits. In this part of Uganda, educated people tend to prevail in disputes and fare better with various authorities; they are also more likely to benefit from government and NGO schemes.</p>
<p>This shows that people can work on their educational status throughout life, and that much of the work of being educated is only indirectly tied to the schooling experience. Policymakers miss this point. They assume that formal qualifications are the best measure of educational status. But “being educated” is not only about the credentials you have: it is also about how others credential you.</p>
<h2>Ivan and Florence</h2>
<p>Oledai is a rural sub-parish of about 180 households near the trading centre of Ngora, in eastern Uganda. Though English is the language of instruction from the late stages of primary school, Ateso is the most spoken language. Residents engage in a mix of farm work and petty trading; some run businesses to make a living. A small number have salaried employment, typically as school teachers.<br>
There is a difference in how young and older people work on their educational status that reflects the fact that very few older people had the opportunity to go to secondary school.</p>
<p>If you ask a resident in the village to take you to the home of an educated person, you might we be directed to Ivan Onai’s grass thatched house. Ivan is in his late 20s; a born-again Christian who is fluent in English. He listens to the BBC World Service to cultivate his vocabulary. </p>
<p>Always well turned out, Ivan serves as a youth counsellor at the sub-county and runs a youth group in the village. Though Ivan dropped out of school after his A-levels, he has cultivated the identity of a university graduate through his manners, political career and committee work. Many feel he is more educated than some of his better-credentialed peers.</p>
<p>Florence Akol, meanwhile, is in her early 40s and went to school at a time when educating daughters was less of a priority in Uganda than <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09540253.2010.499854?casa_token=JBrBgmtddDEAAAAA%3Aut9qBetr1Dn0hKmIWTtdqwNT4QpPGx-NQHc0iYYXW0lEttNmZvFmgpDfHNPx2ky5knn-85mc-As9ig">it is today</a>. She completed only two years of primary education, but went on to raise two daughters who both attended university. Through them she has learned English. She is also treasurer of the village council and treasurer of her clan.</p>
<p>These stories illustrate how schools and universities throughout Uganda are important not only as places where certificates are handed out but also as referents against which ideas of “being educated” circulate more widely in society. </p>
<p>The experience of schooling matters as much as the practices it teaches – committee skills, competence in English, the carrying of books and pens. Committee work requires an understanding of procedure, an ability to do bookwork and, often, a degree of confidence in spoken English. </p>
<h2>The benefit of perceptions</h2>
<p>The wider community often discussed what made someone educated. One older woman, part of a group trying to raise money for school fees, told us that education “trims your manners and helps you think differently” and that “being educated” helped in managing disputes and getting a favourable outcome in the village court. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of 7 women, two children and a man sit on a mat, talking with someone out of the frame" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537065/original/file-20230712-25-bkba5u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537065/original/file-20230712-25-bkba5u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537065/original/file-20230712-25-bkba5u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537065/original/file-20230712-25-bkba5u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537065/original/file-20230712-25-bkba5u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537065/original/file-20230712-25-bkba5u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537065/original/file-20230712-25-bkba5u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women in Oledai reflect on what it means to be ‘educated’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben Jones</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This could be observed as the community mobilised around the “parish fund”, a new government initiative meant to help its citizens, or the president’s <a href="https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/how-emyooga-scheme-works-3415992">Emyooga scheme</a> targeting youth. Those appointed to positions of influence were more educated than the average, and those in committee positions had the capacity to monopolise how the funds would be allocated.</p>
<h2>Policy implications</h2>
<p>We believe that understanding these dynamics is key for policymakers and researchers, who (in Uganda and many other parts of the continent) define educational status through the formal qualifications a person has. They focus on the health or social benefits that come from “human capital”. </p>
<p>We would encourage policymakers to rethink how education is understood so that it comes to be defined as an accredited status – how people evaluate you – as well as a credentialed one – the papers you carry in your pocket. </p>
<p>Investing in areas that shape accreditation would be a way of helping more people access opportunities. In Oledai this might mean offering evening classes to help adults improve their skills in spoken English, or giving people access to training in the sort of bookwork that committees value.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fieldwork was funded by a Mid-Career Fellowship from the British Academy (MD170053) and a further grant also from the British Academy (YF190162). I would like to thank Stella Aguti, Joseph Ochana, Sarah Amongin, and Joel Ekaun Hannington for their support in collecting data and debating the research findings.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Njogu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In this area, much of the work of being educated is only indirectly tied to the schooling experience.
Ben Jones, Senior Lecturer, University of East Anglia
Lucy Njogu, PhD student, University of East Anglia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205793
2023-06-06T12:27:40Z
2023-06-06T12:27:40Z
Language isn’t ‘alive’ – why this metaphor can be misleading
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528347/original/file-20230525-15-pbms2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=245%2C0%2C4618%2C2934&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/people-communicate-diverse-character-group-chatting-1938475144">Tartila/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/12/the-guardian-view-on-the-welsh-language-words-that-matter">Living</a>”, “evolving” and “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/02/scots-gaelic-could-die-out-within-a-decade-study-finds">dead</a>”: we often talk about languages as if they were living organisms. </p>
<p>The reason for this use of a metaphor to talk about language lies in the deep complexity of language as a concept. But treating language in this way can have drawbacks: it can lead us to misunderstand the relationship between language and society.</p>
<p>The fundamental mechanism of metaphor is that it treats something as if it were something else. This typically happens with concepts that are complex or abstract, in order to pin them down to something we can understand more easily. We use metaphors to treat these concepts as if they were something more concrete, more tangible and that we are more familiar with. </p>
<p>For example, if we talk about “wasting” or “saving” time, we treat time as if it were a commodity. Or, if we say that we’re “going through” a difficult period, we’re treating time as if it were space through which we move. </p>
<p>Like time, language is one of these really complex concepts, and that’s the reason why we often talk about it as if it were a living organism. In <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/english-friend-or-frenemy-1.6849083">a recent radio interview</a>, I myself said that languages are “alive”. But there lurks a potential problem here.</p>
<p>Metaphors are so much part of our every day discourse that we don’t even notice them. For this reason, metaphors can be incredibly powerful. </p>
<p>They are so entrenched that they actually determine our understanding of the concepts they refer to. The risk then is that metaphors may lead to understanding certain concepts in a fundamentally distorted way. </p>
<h2>Testing the metaphor</h2>
<p>I’m going to put the “language is alive” metaphor to the test by considering two fundamental elements of life: birth and evolution. </p>
<p>Birth is easily dealt with. Simply, languages don’t have a point of departure, a beginning, that can be compared to the birth of a living being. </p>
<p>Scholars often talk about the “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/History-of-English/Culpeper/p/book/9781138891753#">birth</a>”, the “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/history-of-the-english-language/B4B008D01707BD1BFEBBC6D6DF8CA8EC">roots</a>”, or the “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/History-of-English-A-Resource-Book-for-Students/McIntyre/p/book/9781138500723">origins</a>” of a language, but these are not starting points. </p>
<p>Rather they are historical periods during which a particular society acquires an identity for itself, and therefore a name, and that name begins to be used for the language they speak, too. </p>
<p>One of the earliest records of the name English – Englisc – referring to both the people of England and their language dates back to the ninth century, in a text by <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/alfred-the-great">King Alfred</a>. But obviously this is not the moment when people began to speak this language – nor is there one.</p>
<p>This is what <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/king-alfred-translation-of-the-pastoral-care">the language</a> that King Alfred called “English” looked like:</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Manuscript text in Old English" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529943/original/file-20230604-15-iar9ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529943/original/file-20230604-15-iar9ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=194&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529943/original/file-20230604-15-iar9ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=194&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529943/original/file-20230604-15-iar9ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=194&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529943/original/file-20230604-15-iar9ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529943/original/file-20230604-15-iar9ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529943/original/file-20230604-15-iar9ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alfred’s letter to Wærferth. Bodleian Library MS. Hatton 20, fol. 1r.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2c391baa-ecff-4411-aad9-2567dbe44b85/surfaces/00e083a7-67f2-422e-96c2-178737186fbf/">© Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<blockquote>
<p>Ða ic ða gemunde hu sio lar Lædengeðiodes ær ðissum afeallen wæs giond Angelcynn, & ðeah monige cuðon Englisc gewrit arædan, ða ongan ic ongemang oðrum mislicum & manigfealdum bisgum ðisses kynerices ða boc wendan on Englisc ðe is genemned on Læden Pastoralis, & on Englisc Hierdeboc.</p>
<p>(When I realised how the knowledge of Latin had decayed throughout England, and yet many could read English writing, I began, among other various and manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translate into English the book which is called in Latin Pastoralis, and in English Shepherd’s Book.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>English speakers today find it impossible to understand the meaning of this passage without specific knowledge of the language in which it is written. </p>
<p>So, if this does not represent the “birth” of English, could it be taken as evidence of how the language has “evolved” through the centuries? </p>
<p>We could, but the problem is that it leads us to objectify languages. In other words, it leads us to think of King Alfred’s language as if it was the same object as the language we speak now – just a very archaic form of it. </p>
<p>Ultimately, it considers the English language (or any other language) as an autonomous entity, an independent being that simply exists in its own right. </p>
<h2>People, not language</h2>
<p>In reality, languages are integral to what we do as social animals. Societies change through migratory flows, invasions, technological advancement. </p>
<p>And, as they do so, they also alter the ways in which they use language. Agency rests in the speakers of a language, not in the language itself.</p>
<p>King Alfred’s English did not become King Charles III’s English as a consequence of language’s own natural propensity to evolve. Language has no such propensity. </p>
<p>Language does nothing. It isn’t born, it doesn’t grow, it doesn’t evolve, it doesn’t adapt to the changing environment. It is people who do all these things. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two sides of a silver coin, one with a profile image of a man's head with the inscription 'ALFREDE'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529394/original/file-20230531-29-qkxuay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529394/original/file-20230531-29-qkxuay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529394/original/file-20230531-29-qkxuay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529394/original/file-20230531-29-qkxuay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529394/original/file-20230531-29-qkxuay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529394/original/file-20230531-29-qkxuay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529394/original/file-20230531-29-qkxuay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A silver penny of Alfred the Great.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_1915-0507-798">© The Trustees of the British Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>While the living organism metaphor can be a convenient cognitive shortcut, the misconception that it may cause is that the roles of people and languages are inverted. And this becomes a problem, for example, when we discuss language in relation to social justice and inequality.</p>
<p>If we say that “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/27/english-language-global-dominance">English is taking over the planet</a>”, we may be placing emphasis on the wrong aspect of the issue. It is not the language itself that is too powerful. The problem lies in the extreme imbalance of power and wealth in the world, a direct legacy of four centuries of colonialism. </p>
<p>If we describe the history of languages like the growth of plants, we miss the point that the history of languages is inextricable from the history of societies and the often unequal relationships between them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205793/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mario Saraceni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Languages don’t have a beginning that can be compared to the birth of a living being.
Mario Saraceni, Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics, University of Portsmouth
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205695
2023-05-22T17:13:36Z
2023-05-22T17:13:36Z
Curious Kids: who was the first person to speak English?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527535/original/file-20230522-25-475xbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C270%2C2696%2C1932&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anglo-Saxon village re-enactment event in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, 2008.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wirksworth-derbyshire-uk-07262008-anglo-saxon-1127082854">Simon Annable/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>Who was the first person to speak English? – Grace, aged eight, Belfast, Northern Ireland</strong></p>
<p>The first speaker of English did not sound like you or me. That’s because language changes all the time. You have probably noticed that the language of your grandparents differs from yours. You can imagine then how very different English was when it was first spoken in Britain many centuries ago. </p>
<p>The earliest speakers of English spoke Old English. I am using the word “speakers” because there must have been more than one speaker: after all, we use language to talk to others. </p>
<p>Old English developed in a turbulent period of British history. This was just after the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zqtf34j/articles/z2dr4wx">Romans had left Britain</a>, around 1,600 years ago. The Romans had colonised Britain but they abandoned the country in the fifth century because the Roman empire was collapsing all around them. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282267/original/file-20190702-126345-1np1y7m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282267/original/file-20190702-126345-1np1y7m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282267/original/file-20190702-126345-1np1y7m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282267/original/file-20190702-126345-1np1y7m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282267/original/file-20190702-126345-1np1y7m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282267/original/file-20190702-126345-1np1y7m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282267/original/file-20190702-126345-1np1y7m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/curious-kids-36782">Curious Kids</a> is a series by <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk">The Conversation</a> that gives children the chance to have their questions about the world answered by experts. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskids@theconversation.com">curiouskids@theconversation.com</a> and make sure you include the asker’s first name, age and town or city. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our very best.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The Romans who ruled Britain spoke their language, Latin. But most of the people who lived in Britain when the Romans were there – and before that too – spoke <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/history/sites/themes/society/language_romans.shtml">a Celtic language</a>. This Celtic language was rather like Welsh, but again much older than the present-day Welsh language. </p>
<p>After the Romans left Britain, Germanic tribes who were on the move throughout Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries invaded. These tribes were the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/anglo-saxons/articles/who-were-the-anglo-saxons">Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes</a>. The language they spoke is known as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/413007">North Sea Germanic</a>. </p>
<h2>The first English speakers</h2>
<p>Once they settled in Britain it became <a href="https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/old-english">Old English</a>, which is also sometimes called “Anglo-Saxon”. From the Angles comes the word “English” and from the Angles and Saxons together comes the word “Anglo-Saxon”. I teach Old English to students of English at university. </p>
<p>So Old English or Anglo-Saxon is the oldest form of the English language that was spoken and written in England in the early Middle Ages, the period from roughly 450 to 1050. Very few Celtic words were taken over into Old English. The word “brock” (meaning “badger”) is one of the rare exceptions. </p>
<p>Do we know the names of the first speakers of Old English? Two names are mentioned in ancient legends that tell the story of how the Angles and the Saxons arrived in Britain. </p>
<p>According to these legends, the British (when they were still Celtic speakers) asked two Germanic leaders, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zxsbcdm/articles/z23br82">Hengest and Horsa</a>, to come to Britain to help protect the country after the Romans had left. </p>
<p>Hengest and Horsa arrived in Britain with lots of other people from their tribe and conquered the land. We have no way of knowing if these legends are true, but if they are we have here the names of the two chieftains who brought their language to Britain. </p>
<h2>An Old English poet</h2>
<p>There is one other name that deserves to be mentioned, and <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-story-of-caedmons-hymn">that is Caedmon</a>. He is the first poet in English whose name is known. The story of his life is told by the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/bede">monk and historian Bede</a>, who lived in the north of England from around 673 to 735.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527532/original/file-20230522-21-q2jmje.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Manuscript in Latin and Old English" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527532/original/file-20230522-21-q2jmje.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527532/original/file-20230522-21-q2jmje.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527532/original/file-20230522-21-q2jmje.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527532/original/file-20230522-21-q2jmje.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527532/original/file-20230522-21-q2jmje.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527532/original/file-20230522-21-q2jmje.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527532/original/file-20230522-21-q2jmje.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A section of folio 129r of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 43: a page from Book IV, chapter 24 of Bede’s Latin Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, with an Old English text of Cædmon’s Hymn added in the lower margin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/7850a308-0dd6-4d9a-b5b5-cbd6085b18dd/">© Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bede not only tells the story of Hengest and Horsa, but he also tells us <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/whitby-abbey/history-and-stories/caedmon-poetry/">about Caedmon</a>, who was a cowherd. Bede wrote that Caedmon could not read or write and received the ability to compose beautiful poetry as a gift from God. The first poem that Caedmon was inspired to create is a poem in praise of God. The first two lines of this poem will give you a taste of Old English:</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> Nu sculon herian heofonrices Weard,
Metodes mihte and his modgeþanc
</code></pre>
<p>In modern English, this means: “Now we must praise the guardian of the heavenly kingdom, the Ruler’s might and his plan”. </p>
<p>You might think this is not really English at all. But we still use some of the words used in Old English – “and” and “his” are both in these two lines of poetry. Other words have survived too, though we often spell and pronounce them differently. See if you can spot the Old English words for “might” and “now” in these lines from Caedmon’s poem.</p>
<p>Caedmon looked after the cattle in a monastery in Whitby in Yorkshire. One of my university students studying Old English comes from Whitby and she told me that her school is named after our first named English poet: Caedmon College. His legend lives on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205695/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ad Putter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Hundreds of years ago, people spoke Old English – but it is very different to English today.
Ad Putter, Professor of Medieval English Literature, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184289
2022-06-09T18:31:09Z
2022-06-09T18:31:09Z
Blaming ‘evil’ for mass violence isn’t as simple as it seems – a philosopher unpacks the paradox in using the word
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467836/original/file-20220608-23-ce0o76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C0%2C3826%2C2560&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A visitor pays respects at a memorial created outside Robb Elementary School to honor the victims killed in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TexasSchoolShooting/8cd761ddf20a4f8e9bfb95c202c9ff96/photo?Query=uvalde&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1049&currentItemNo=244">AP Photo/Eric Gay</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The word “evil” circulates widely in the wake of terrible public violence. The May 24, 2022, massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, is a case in point.</p>
<p>Texas state safety official Christopher Olivarez spoke of “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-44a7cfb990feaa6ffe482483df6e4683">the complete evil of the shooter</a>.” Others expressed their resolve with the same word. “Evil will not win,” the Rev. Tony Grubin <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/26/evil-will-not-win-sorrow-and-disbelief-as-uvalde-mourns-its-children">told the crowd</a> at a vigil.</p>
<p>Days later, at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Texas, CEO Wayne LaPierre acknowledged the Uvalde victims before <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nra-convention-kicks-off-texas-days-elementary-school/story?id=84996347">arguing against gun control legislation</a>. His reasoning pivoted on the concept of evil: “If we as a nation were capable of legislating evil out of the hearts and minds of criminals who commit these heinous acts, we would have done it long ago.” </p>
<p>Evil is one of the most complex and paradoxical words in the English language. It can galvanize collective action but also lead to collective paralysis, as if the presence of evil can’t be helped. As <a href="https://espringer.wescreates.wesleyan.edu/">a philosopher studying moral concepts</a> and their role in communication, I find it essential to scrutinize this word. </p>
<h2>The evolution of ‘evil’</h2>
<p>Evil wasn’t always paradoxical. In <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/evil">Old English</a> it was simply the common word for bad – for any kind of misfortune, illness, incompetence or unhappy result. This meaning lingers in phrases such as “choosing the lesser of two evils.” </p>
<p>Starting around 1300, <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/bad">the word bad</a> gradually emerged as the familiar opposite of good. Yet even while bad was becoming common, people continued to encounter the word evil in older written works, and speech influenced by these works. Translations of the Bible and <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328-h/16328-h.htm">Anglo-Saxon classic literature</a> surely shaped how the concept of evil came to seem larger than life, and spiritually loaded. Some things seem too bad for the word bad. But what, exactly, does evil mean?</p>
<p>Many people would answer that they <a href="http://cbldf.org/about-us/case-files/obscenity-case-files/obscenity-case-files-jacobellis-v-ohio-i-know-it-when-i-see-it/">know evil when they see it</a> – or when they feel it. If there’s any good occasion for using the word, surely a planned massacre of vulnerable children seems an uncontroversial case. Still, this commonsense approach doesn’t shed much light on how the idea of evil influences public attitudes.</p>
<p>One philosophical approach – <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/pragmati/#:%7E:text=Pragmatism%20is%20a%20philosophical%20movement,ideas%20are%20to%20be%20rejected.">pragmatism</a> – may be helpful here, since it focuses on how words do things, rather than on how they should be defined. People who use the word evil are doing something: sending a clear signal about their own attitude. They are not interested in excuses, justifications or coming to some kind of shared understanding. In this pragmatic sense, the word evil has something in common with guns: It’s an extreme tool, and users require utter confidence in their own judgment. When the word evil is summoned to the scene, curiosity and complexity go quiet. It’s the high noon of a moral standoff.</p>
<p>As with reaching for guns, however, resorting to the word evil can backfire. This is because there are two deep tensions embedded in the concept. </p>
<h2>Inner or outer?</h2>
<p>First, there’s still some confusion about whether to locate evil out in the world, or within the human heart. In its archaic sense, evil could include entirely natural causes of great suffering. The Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of 1755 is an infamous example. Tens of thousands of people died agonizing deaths, and thinkers throughout Europe <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-god-good-in-the-shadow-of-mass-disaster-great-minds-have-argued-the-toss-137078">debated how a good God could allow such terrible things</a>. The French philosopher Voltaire concluded, “<a href="http://courses.washington.edu/hsteu302/Voltaire%20Lisbon%20Earthquake.html">evil stalks the land</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white illustration shows a tsunami wave crashing over an oceanside city." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467837/original/file-20220608-10364-9yz87j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467837/original/file-20220608-10364-9yz87j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467837/original/file-20220608-10364-9yz87j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467837/original/file-20220608-10364-9yz87j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467837/original/file-20220608-10364-9yz87j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467837/original/file-20220608-10364-9yz87j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467837/original/file-20220608-10364-9yz87j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 18th-century engraving depicts the destruction of Lisbon, Portugal, by an earthquake and tidal wave in 1755.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/engraving-depicting-the-destruction-of-lisbon-by-an-news-photo/915219764?adppopup=true">Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the opposite extreme, many Christian thinkers – and some classical Greek and Roman ones – treat evil as entirely distinct from worldly events. The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, defines evil as an inner moral failure, which might lurk behind even the most acceptable-looking acts. Given his faith that innocent victims would go to heaven, Kant did not focus moral concern on the fact that their lives were made shorter. Rather, <a href="https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300128154">he argued</a> murder was terrible because it was the expression of a morally forbidden choice.</p>
<p>Most people today would reject both of these simple views and focus instead on the connection of inner and outer, where human choices result in real-world atrocities.</p>
<p>Yet the purely inner view casts new light on LaPierre’s argument, that legislation is powerless to prevent evil. If evil were strictly an interior, spiritual problem, then it could be effectively tackled only at its source. Preventing that evil from erupting into public view would be like masking the symptoms of a disease rather than treating its cause.</p>
<h2>The paradox of blame</h2>
<p>There is a second major tension embedded in how the word evil works: evil both does and does not call for blame.</p>
<p>On one hand, evil seems inherently and profoundly blameworthy; evildoers are assumed to be responsible for their evil. It’s constructive to blame people, however, when <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/communicating-moral-concern">blame helps to hold them responsible</a>. Unfortunately, that important role is undermined when the target of blame is “evil.”</p>
<p>Philosopher <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/phil/faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1023035">Gary Watson</a> helps illuminate this paradox in his essay “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272273.001.0001">Responsibility and the Limits of Evil</a>.” Blame involves attempting to hold people responsible as members of a shared “moral community” – a network of social relations in which people share basic norms and push one another to repair moral expectations after they are violated. Taking responsibility, in Watson’s view, involves a kind of competence, an ability to work with others in community.</p>
<p>Evil, however, implies being beyond redemption, “beyond the pale” of this community. Calling someone evil signals a total lack of hope that they could take up the responsibility being assigned to them. And some people do seem to lack the social bonds, skills and attitudes required for responsibility. Examining the life story of a notorious school shooter, Watson reveals how his potential for belonging to a moral community had been brutally dismantled by chaotic abuse throughout his formative years. </p>
<p>If evil implies such a complete absence of the skills and attitudes required for moral responsibility, then calling people evil – while still holding them morally responsible – is paradoxical. </p>
<p>Compare this with <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/332273/zero-by-charles-seife/">the paradoxical power of the number zero</a> – a quantity that is the absence of quantity. Zero is a powerful concept, but it requires a warning label: “Steer clear of dividing by this number; if you do, your equations are ruined!”</p>
<p>The English word evil is powerful, no doubt. Yet the power of the concept turns out to be driven by turbulence below the surface. Laying blame on evil can bring this turbulence to the surface in surprising ways.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184289/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elise Springer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The word ‘evil’ sends a clear message – or does it? There are deep tensions in what the word means, and what it can accomplish.
Elise Springer, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Wesleyan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/138900
2020-05-21T12:20:03Z
2020-05-21T12:20:03Z
The Scripps spelling bee is off this year, but the controversy over including foreign words is still on
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336091/original/file-20200519-152298-ty7qju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=145%2C50%2C4041%2C2686&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Co-champions celebrate at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland, on May 31, 2019. The winning spellers made history with eight co-champions, most ever in spelling event's history.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/co-champions-sohum-sukhatankar-of-dallas-texas-saketh-news-photo/1152757579?adppopup=true">Alex Wong/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a normal year, millions of Americans would be following closely this week as preteens showcase their knowledge of words most of us have never heard of. </p>
<p>The contestants and their families may be devastated by the cancellation of the <a href="http://spellingbee.com/">Scripps National Spelling Bee</a>. As a <a href="http://huc.edu/directory/sarah-bunin-benor">linguist</a> who studies <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/263681">languages</a> that <a href="https://becomingfrum.weebly.com/">draw</a> from multiple <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/mandel/projects/hebrewatcamp.html">sources</a>, I’m disappointed our country is missing its annual lesson in English linguistics.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/shalini-shankar/beeline/9780465094523/">social and professional benefits</a> of spelling bees are hard to ignore. The participants, including many from immigrant families, develop skills of grit and performance, and they and their parents form new social networks. An entire industry has emerged surrounding the preparation of elite contestants.</p>
<p>But it’s also worth recognizing spelling bees’ contributions to the public’s awareness of world languages. Even if the acceptable spellings of many international words are debatable, their presence highlights the multicultural past and present of the English tongue.</p>
<p>In a millennium of global expeditions and conquests, English has cast its net in diverse linguistic habitats. It has captured words from many languages, often for concepts not previously expressed in English. Linguists call these words “<a href="https://www.ruf.rice.edu/%7Ekemmer/Words/loanwords.html">loanwords</a>,” which does not mean English eventually returns them.</p>
<h2>English loanwords</h2>
<p>Many loanwords have been part of English for centuries and are not considered foreign at all. Unless they’ve studied linguistics, most people would be surprised to learn that “skirt” entered English from Old Norse, “beef” from French and “expensive” from Latin.</p>
<p>With more recent loanwords, English speakers sense their language of origin but still see them as part of English. This is especially common in the domains of <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Language-of-Food/">cuisine</a>, as with “jambalaya” (from Louisiana French, originally Provençal), natural phenomena like “tsunami” (Japanese) and specialized terminology such as “fortissimo” (Italian) in music. </p>
<p>Although there is no English language academy that makes official rulings, the spellings of such loanwords are standardized, as they are frequently used in English and have been for many years. Nobody would question their inclusion in the spelling bee.</p>
<p>Most English loanwords borrow from languages that, like English, use the <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/borrowed-words/">Latin alphabet</a>. These words usually maintain their original spellings, such as “schadenfreude” (German: pleasure derived from another’s misfortune) and “coup d’état” (French: violent overthrow of a government). </p>
<p>Other examples, which showed up in the <a href="https://spellingbee.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Multiple%20Champs%20declared%20for%202019%20Scripps%20National%20Spelling%20Bee%205-31-19.pdf">2019 national spelling bee</a>, include “tjaele” (Swedish: frozen ground), “imbirussú” (Portuguese: a South American tree) and “geeldikkop” (Afrikaans: a disease among southern African sheep). Some viewers might wonder if words like these should be included in the bee, but nobody would question their spellings.</p>
<p>However, English – and therefore spelling bees – also includes many words from <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-do-spelling-bee-words-come-from/">languages</a> not historically written in Latin characters. Sometimes the English spellings of these words adhere to conventionalized phonetic transliteration. </p>
<p>Examples include “makimono” (Japanese: a horizontal ornamental scroll), “namaz” (Persian: Islamic prayer) and “teledu” (Malay: a Javanese skunk-like animal). In other cases, many possible transliterations are used within English, even if the dictionary provides only one spelling. Is it “falafel” or “felafel”? “Pad thai” or “phad thai”?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlHPxDsLQxg">Last year’s competition</a> featured several such ambiguous loanwords, including “chaebol,” which could be “jaebeol” (Korean: a family-controlled industrial conglomerate) and “kooletah,” which could be “kuleta” (Greenlandic Aleut: a caribou-skin coat). In fact, four of the five most <a href="https://twitter.com/FiveThirtyEight/status/1133783192861847553/photo/1">difficult</a> languages of origin in spelling bees are written in non-Latin letters.</p>
<h2>Wrangling over loanwords</h2>
<p>Of course, difficulty should not disqualify a word from being included in spelling bees. But such loanwords have generated <a href="https://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/05/knaidel-v-kneydl-debating-the-winning-spelling-bee-word/">controversy</a> in recent years, especially from <a href="https://thewordmavens.wordpress.com/2018/09/25/spelling-bee-mishegoss-yiddish-for-craziness/">word mavens</a> in the Jewish community upset about the spellings of the bee’s many <a href="https://forward.com/news/national/425240/yiddishkeit-scipps-spelling-bee-yiddish-jewish-words/">words from Hebrew and Yiddish</a>. </p>
<p>Some Hebrew and Yiddish sounds have multiple possible transliterations, and Jews of different backgrounds have different spelling preferences. To represent this diversity, when I moderate Hebrew and Yiddish entries in the crowdsourced <a href="https://jel.jewish-languages.org/">Jewish English Lexicon</a>, I list several spellings – sometimes more than a dozen.</p>
<p>A Hebrew example is “keriah” (Jewish ceremonial garment rending), spelled “correctly” by 13-year-old Rishik Gandhasri, one of the eight champions in 2019. This word has <a href="https://jel.jewish-languages.org/words/1473">many attested spellings</a>, including “kria,” “kriyah” and “qeri’ah.” “Kriah,” according to Google, is the most common spelling in English. But the E.W. Scripps Company, which has run the bee since 1941, allows only “keriah.” Why? Because that’s the spelling espoused by Merriam-Webster, <a href="http://spellingbee.com/sites/default/files/inline-files/Contest_Rules_of_the_2018_Scripps_National_Spelling_Bee.pdf">Scripps’ authoritative dictionary</a>. </p>
<p>Gandhasri advanced to another round in the bee with the Yiddish-origin word “yiddishkeit” (Jewishness). In a <a href="http://www.yiddishwit.com/transliteration.html">standard system</a> for transliterating Yiddish words, it’s spelled “yidishkayt.” However, a Yiddish culture organization in Los Angeles spells it “Yiddishkayt.” These spellings represent different ideologies regarding Yiddish and its relationship to German. And many who use them believe wholeheartedly that only their spelling is correct.</p>
<p>In the 2013 bee, the winning word was also from Yiddish: “knaidel” (Passover dumpling). I <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/culture/229899/linguists-take-knaidel-kneydl-controversy/">wrote</a> then that, if I had been a contestant: “I would have given 10 possible spellings, explained what various spellings indicate about the people who write them and then protested the English spelling bee’s use of loanwords from a language that does not use Latin script. Clearly, I would have lost.” </p>
<h2>Benefits of a growing lexicon</h2>
<p>Since then, I have recognized the benefits of including such loanwords. First, while contestants must learn the spelling and transliteration conventions of dozens of languages, the major skill tested is who can memorize more of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/us/spellpundit-scripps-spelling-bee.html">472,000 words</a> in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. The competition emphasizes this skill by including loanwords without standardized English spellings.</p>
<p>Second, the ubiquity of loanwords expands Americans’ awareness of new cultural domains. The broad media coverage of recent spelling bees has introduced Americans to a Brazilian drum, “atabaque” (from Portuguese, influenced by Arabic), a Norse merman, “marmennill” (from Icelandic) and a Polynesian chief or noble, “alii” (from Hawaiian).</p>
<p>Even when the dictionary’s one accepted spelling is debatable, members of immigrant, indigenous and religious groups <a href="https://www.kveller.com/this-yiddish-word-kicked-off-the-scripps-national-spelling-bee-finals/">are generally proud</a> when spelling bees feature their community’s language in such a public way. </p>
<p>Although 2020 news headlines won’t feature 13-year-olds’ spelling feats, we can still marvel, not only at the accomplishments of our youth, but also at the richness of the English lexicon. Whether loanwords are from Icelandic, Korean or Hebrew, they remind us of the layered history of our language and the increasingly interconnected nature of our world.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re too busy to read everything. We get it. That’s why we’ve got a weekly newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybusy">Sign up for good Sunday reading.</a> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Bunin Benor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Scripps National Spelling Bee highlights the richness of the English lexicon by picking some tough entries with foreign roots.
Sarah Bunin Benor, Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Linguistics, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/106006
2018-11-28T13:09:16Z
2018-11-28T13:09:16Z
Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe and the languages of African literature
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247718/original/file-20181128-32185-4x4d69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Christian missionaries in Congo in 1911. From the biography of Gwen Elen Lewis.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Princeton Theological Seminary</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“One of the most infuriating habits of these people was their love of superfluous words,” thinks the colonial district commissioner to himself in the final chapter of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/31/things-fall-apart-achebe-review">Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart</a>. It is from the only section of this groundbreaking novel that is not written from the perspective of Africans. Telling of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/180569">colonisation of the Igbo</a> from their point of view, the line foreshadows much: how colonisation will attempt to write African perspectives, deemed “superfluous”, out of their own histories, but also that, “infuriatingly” enough for an oppressor, the colonised Africans wield words of their own.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247727/original/file-20181128-32191-xi4esr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247727/original/file-20181128-32191-xi4esr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247727/original/file-20181128-32191-xi4esr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247727/original/file-20181128-32191-xi4esr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247727/original/file-20181128-32191-xi4esr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247727/original/file-20181128-32191-xi4esr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247727/original/file-20181128-32191-xi4esr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The great African novel?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paull Young via Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Published 60 years ago this year by Heinemann in London, Things Fall Apart has sold more than 10m copies and been translated into more than 50 languages. It follows Okonkwo, a renowned warrior from a fictional Igbo village in early 20th-century eastern Nigeria. In straightforward and evocative prose, Achebe depicts how a culturally rich and well-governed society is destabilised by the arrival of Christian missionaries and British colonialists. Okonkwo is a flawed hero, but his attempts to confront the forces transforming his village speak to a long history of anti-colonial resistance.</p>
<p>Now considered essential reading in many African Studies and English Literature courses, Things Fall Apart can hardly be dissociated from the emergence of the African novel and modern African writing in general. However, Achebe’s debut also sparked a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935429?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">formative debate</a> on language and African literatures. With English so intimately entwined with colonial history, the fact that the novel hailed as inaugurating a modern, independent Africa’s literature was also written in English became a point of contention. Was Things Fall Apart upholding a Western model, or confronting and subverting it?</p>
<h2>Language is power</h2>
<p>Language is never ahistorical or apolitical, but it carries an especial charge in post-colonial contexts. Educational, administrative and religious institutions had conducted life in the colonies in the language of the coloniser. Speaking it would often mean access to privileges, while speaking only African languages could mean economic disadvantage at best, physical punishment at worst. With this history in mind, Achebe and his contemporaries had to ask: did reaching global audiences to challenge their perceptions about Africa matter more than enriching their own languages by helping African readerships flourish?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o7FS95IcRNU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The debate extended beyond the question of use and reach: it was also about post-colonial identities. Language provides the names, value systems and and discourses by which we “know” our world and ourselves. A dominant language dominates the terms by which your reality is constituted. To prioritise reading and writing in European languages could perpetuate colonial structures after independence, once again delineating <em>who</em> could speak, on what terms, and by what criteria African writers would be judged. </p>
<h2>Forging identity</h2>
<p>Whether to foster post-independence African literary cultures in European or African languages fuelled the historic <a href="https://90.mak.ac.ug/timeline/first-makerere-african-writers-conference-1962">1962 African Writers Conference</a> at Makerere University in Uganda. Many of its participants went on to become well-known literary voices from the continent. These included the first African Nobel laureate <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/soyinka/biographical/">Wole Soyinka</a>, a Nigerian poet and playwright; <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Grace-Ogot">Grace Ogot</a>, one of the first Anglophone female Kenyan writers to be published; and <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/christopher-okigbo">Christopher Okigbo</a>, who together with Achebe established Citadel Press. Also prominent were <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/kofi-awoonor">Kofi Awoonor</a>, a Ghanaian poet and diplomat who was among those killed in the 2013 attack in Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lewis-Nkosi">Lewis Nkosi</a>, whose literary career in exile from South Africa spanned nearly every genre. </p>
<p>There was division on the issue. Kenyan playwright and academic, <a href="https://ngugiwathiongo.com/">Ngugi wa Thiong’o</a> – then a student at Makerere – believed that the restoration of cultural memory rested on rehabilitating mother tongues. Now a major voice in African letters who writes mostly in <a href="https://www.ethnologue.com/language/kik">Gĩkũyũ</a>, Ngugi argued that, without this “decolonisation of the mind”, they would otherwise be forever living by moral, ethical and aesthetic values not their own.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247726/original/file-20181128-32226-1vicp04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247726/original/file-20181128-32226-1vicp04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247726/original/file-20181128-32226-1vicp04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247726/original/file-20181128-32226-1vicp04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247726/original/file-20181128-32226-1vicp04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247726/original/file-20181128-32226-1vicp04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247726/original/file-20181128-32226-1vicp04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Chinua Achebe by Steve Pyke (2008)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">New Yorker</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Born into a family of Christian converts in eastern Nigeria in 1930, Achebe was educated in local Anglican schools and went onto become one the first graduates of the <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/university-ibadan">University of Ibadan</a>. So English was indeed a part of his identity in ways not every Nigerian would have shared. But Achebe was therefore all the more aware that education and religion were complex facets of colonialism. Things Fall Apart dramatises this with nuance in the character of Nwoye, who rebels after his brother’s death by converting to Christianity.</p>
<p>Achebe advocated a “both” rather than an “either/or” approach in his 1965 essay <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272336796_African_Languages_and_African_Literature">The African Writer and the English Language</a>. He argued that the African writer, in “fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience”, would bring about a far more subtle rejection of the historical dominance standard English represented. </p>
<h2>Clearing ground</h2>
<p>Ultimately, English was one factor that helped Things Fall Apart, as it did other works of African literature, to transcend national boundaries for six decades. But these probing political and cultural questions were carried right along with it – and they informed a legacy of African thought on the meaning and purpose of literature, which the continent’s contemporary voices can stand on today. </p>
<p>When African writers choose to contribute to literatures in their mother tongues, this can only be positive. But when they chose to reach the world’s Anglophone readers, it is as Achebe <a href="http://wrightinglanguage.weebly.com/uploads/2/4/0/5/24059962/achebe_englishandafricanwriter.pdf">envisioned it</a>: with “a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106006/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Jilani receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK and the Isaac Newton Trust.</span></em></p>
It’s hailed as one of the greatest works of fiction to emerge from Africa. But Things Fall Apart was written in English, sparking debate about the colonisation of language.
Sarah Jilani, PhD Candidate, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/106500
2018-11-14T11:47:12Z
2018-11-14T11:47:12Z
A county in Idaho offered Spanish-language ballots for the first time and here’s what happened
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/un-condado-de-idaho-en-eeuu-ofrecio-papeletas-en-espanol-por-primera-vez-y-esto-es-lo-que-paso-106976">Leer en español</a></em>.</p>
<p>On the morning of Election Day, the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/matters-donde-votar-spanish-vote-googles-top-search/story?id=59003457">top trending search on Google was “donde votar</a>,” which means “where to vote” in Spanish.</p>
<p>Voter access to the polls was a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45986329">major issue</a> during the 2018 midterm elections in the U.S. Charges of voter suppression were made in in Georgia and North Dakota. Critics of new voting rules claimed they disenfranchised African-Americans and Native Americans. </p>
<p>While those problems were extensively covered by the press, less attention was paid to another problem that can affect voter turnout: the availability of foreign-language ballots.</p>
<p>Lack of access to non-English ballots can be an <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2647557">obstacle to voting for immigrants</a>. Simply put, if voters can’t understand the ballot, they may not vote.</p>
<p>That’s why the <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/about/voting-rights/voting-rights-determination-file.html">Voting Rights Act</a> has protections for <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/page/file/927236/download">language minorities</a>, defined as “persons who are American Indian, Asian American, Alaskan Natives, or of Spanish heritage.” The act requires local election officials to provide foreign-language election materials in regions that have a certain number of voters with limited English proficiency. <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/11/04/28CFRPart55.pdf">Election materials</a> can include registration or voting notices, instructions and ballots.</p>
<p>After the 2016 election, the Census Bureau released a list of 263 jurisdictions in 29 states required to offer such <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/16/more-voters-will-have-access-to-non-english-ballots-in-the-next-election-cycle/">foreign-language election materials</a>. Those areas included close to 70 million voters with limited English who could vote in the 2018 election. For the first time, Idaho had a jurisdiction required to offer Spanish-language ballots. </p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://sps.boisestate.edu/ipi/gabe-osterhout/">researcher</a> at Boise State University’s Idaho Policy Institute where I study the impact of electoral policy on voter turnout and outcomes. I examined how this new requirement affected voter behavior on Election Day in Idaho. </p>
<p>While my findings seem to be an outlier in the larger context of election language assistance studies, the experience of one county may help broaden our understanding of the impact of foreign-language ballots as the <a href="https://www.idahostatejournal.com/members/growing-hispanic-population-part-of-idaho-s-history/article_f65db386-4315-11e5-b41e-e731d99a9f78.html">Hispanic population continues to grow</a> in Idaho and elsewhere.</p>
<h2>The curious case of Idaho</h2>
<p>Idaho has 80,000 Hispanic voters, 7 percent of Idaho’s <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/fact-sheet/latinos-in-the-2016-election-idaho/">eligible voter population</a>. Lincoln County is a small, rural area in southern Idaho. It has slightly more than <a href="http://www.statsamerica.org/USCP/">5,000 residents, including 1,600 Hispanics</a>, representing 30 percent of the county’s population. Among those that speak Spanish at home, <a href="https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml">60 percent do not speak English very well</a>. </p>
<p>I studied <a href="http://lincolncountyid.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Nov-2018-General-election-Unofficial-results-1.pdf">Lincoln County’s turnout</a> before and after the 2018 election to see if election language assistance affected voter behavior in the Latino community.</p>
<p>Compared to previous midterm elections, the county’s 68 percent turnout was higher than in <a href="https://sos.idaho.gov/elect/results/index.html">2014, 2010 and 2006</a>. However, this year’s elections also saw <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/11/08/665197690/a-boatload-of-ballots-midterm-voter-turnout-hit-50-year-high">higher voter turnout</a> across Idaho and the United States, which makes it difficult to isolate the impact of Spanish-language ballots.</p>
<p><iframe id="Kpi4M" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Kpi4M/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>To dig deeper, I compared voter turnout in Lincoln to three neighboring and demographically similar counties: Minidoka, Jerome and Gooding. The four counties all have Hispanic populations ranging from <a href="https://icha.idaho.gov/menus/idaho_counties.asp">29 percent to 34 percent of the population</a>. But unlike Lincoln, its neighboring counties were not required to offer Spanish-language ballots.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245470/original/file-20181114-194516-1bfp2ua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245470/original/file-20181114-194516-1bfp2ua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245470/original/file-20181114-194516-1bfp2ua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245470/original/file-20181114-194516-1bfp2ua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245470/original/file-20181114-194516-1bfp2ua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245470/original/file-20181114-194516-1bfp2ua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245470/original/file-20181114-194516-1bfp2ua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245470/original/file-20181114-194516-1bfp2ua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Map showing the percentage increase in turnout in 2018 from the previous three midterm years in four counties in Idaho.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I found that Lincoln County’s voter turnout didn’t increase in 2018 from the previous three midterms any more than its neighbors. </p>
<p>Turnout in Lincoln rose <a href="http://lincolncountyid.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Nov-2018-General-election-Unofficial-results-1.pdf">5.4 percent</a> compared to the previous three midterm elections, while <a href="https://www.jeromecountyid.us/DocumentCenter/View/496/General-Election-Results">Jerome</a> rose 5.6 percent, <a href="http://www.minidoka.id.us/DocumentCenter/View/430/Nov-6-2018-General-Unofficial-Abstract">Minidoka</a> rose 8.4 percent, and <a href="https://www.goodingcounty.org/DocumentCenter/View/1071/NOV-6-2018-UNOFFICIAL-RESULTS0001">Gooding</a> rose 9.1 percent. These three counties had higher rates of increased voter turnout compared to recent midterms than Lincoln County did.</p>
<p>Does this mean that Spanish-language ballots don’t affect Hispanic election participation? From this case, it’s hard to tell. </p>
<p>Here’s what we know based on previous research.</p>
<h2>The bigger picture</h2>
<p>Counties that offered language assistance in previous elections have experienced increased minority participation. Since the Voting Rights Act was amended to include minority language assistance in 1975, <a href="https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/tfcl12&section=10">Hispanic voter registration doubled over the following 30 years</a>. Language assistance has a significant effect on voting turnout for minority groups, <a href="http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eoh&AN=0801553&site=ehost-live">especially for first-generation citizens</a>.</p>
<p>Other studies show that, despite helping increase voter turnout, election language assistance <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2011.00302.x">does not help increase voter registration</a> for people who don’t speak English fluently. This is an important consideration since voter turnout compares the number of ballots cast to the number of registered voters, not the total population.</p>
<p>Overall, studies show that foreign-language assistance, and especially Spanish-language ballots, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23025122">make it easier for immigrant populations</a> to engage in the election process and have increased voter turnout among Hispanic citizens. </p>
<p>The turnout in Lincoln County, Idaho this year seems to be an outlier. This may be due to a few reasons. For one, the small sampling size of a sparsely populated county means that even minor changes in voting behavior can create erratic statistical swings. Further, with 2018 being Lincoln County’s first major election to offer Spanish ballots, we can only look at one data point. Its turnout numbers will become more reliable and significant as future elections take place and offer more data points. As the first bilingual election, it is also possible that some members of the community were not aware of the opportunity to vote in another language.</p>
<p>Lincoln County also has a significantly <a href="https://sos.idaho.gov/elect/VoterReg/2018/11/partybycounty.html">lower percentage of registered</a> Democratic voters compared to other regions in the country offering foreign-language ballots. This is important because turnout in 2018 was higher in <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/09/04/643686875/democrats-2018-primary-turnout-mirrors-previous-wave-elections">liberal-leaning areas</a>.</p>
<p>There are likely other electoral factors at play that need more consideration, but these findings will perhaps prove helpful, as other Idaho counties <a href="https://www.idahopress.com/news/elections/county-poll-workers-can-assist-voters-in-spanish/article_f9120b0c-da3d-515c-854b-406d4ca39e59.html">will likely be required to offer</a> Spanish-language ballots after the next census as the state’s Hispanic population continues to grow.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106500/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabe Osterhout does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Voting Rights Act offers language assistance for voters with limited English proficiency. What can we learn from an Idaho county’s experience offering foreign-language ballots?
Gabe Osterhout, Research Associate, Idaho Policy Institute, Boise State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/106531
2018-11-11T19:04:40Z
2018-11-11T19:04:40Z
Explainer: what’s the difference between decodable and predictable books, and when should they be used?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244863/original/file-20181110-39548-lgzbnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It makes sense for children in the early stages of learning to read to be given decodable books.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A child’s early experiences with books both at home and later in school have the potential to significantly affect future reading performance. Parents <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/15589611.pdf">play a key role</a> in building oral language and literacy skills in the years prior to school. But it’s teachers who are responsible for ensuring children become readers once at school. </p>
<p>While there’s much we know about how students learn to read, research on books used to support beginning reading development is sparse. Guidelines provided in the <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Search/?q=ACELY1649">Australian Curriculum</a>
and the <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/resources/national-literacy-and-numeracy-learning-progressions/national-literacy-learning-progression/reading-and-viewing/?subElementId=50915&scaleId=0">National Literacy Progressions</a> complicate matters further. Teachers are required to use two types of texts: decodable and predictable books. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-phonics-and-why-is-it-important-70522">Explainer: what is phonics and why is it important?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Each book is underpinned by a different theory of reading, arguably in conflict. This contributes to uncertainty about when and how the books might be used. </p>
<h2>The difference between decodable and predictable books</h2>
<p>Predictable books and their associated instructional strategies align with a whole-language approach to reading. </p>
<p>In this approach, meaning is prioritised. Children are encouraged to draw on background knowledge, memorise a bank of the most common words found in print, and to use cues to guess or predict words based on pictures and the story. This method is not consistent with a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257643693_The_influence_of_decodability_in_early_reading_text_on_reading_achievement_A_review_of_the_evidence">phonics approach</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244862/original/file-20181110-38449-o6sif1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244862/original/file-20181110-38449-o6sif1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244862/original/file-20181110-38449-o6sif1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244862/original/file-20181110-38449-o6sif1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244862/original/file-20181110-38449-o6sif1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244862/original/file-20181110-38449-o6sif1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244862/original/file-20181110-38449-o6sif1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This is a good example of predictable text.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the earliest levels, <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-07799-002">predictable and repetitive sentences</a> scaffold beginning readers’ attempts at unknown words. Word identification is supported by close text to picture matches and familiar themes for children in the early years (such as going to the doctor). </p>
<p>While there is some evidence the repetitive nature of predictable books <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19388070802613450">facilitates the development of fluency</a>, the features contained within disadvantage young readers as they do not align with the letter-sound correspondences taught as part of phonics lessons. This is particularly problematic for children who are at risk of later <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/rev3.3121">reading difficulties</a>. </p>
<p>In comparison, decodable books consist of a high percentage of words in which the letters represent their most common sounds. Decodable books align with a synthetic phonics or code-based approach to reading. This approach teaches children to convert a string of letters (our written code) into sounds before blending them to produce a spoken word.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T87VRHXUNJo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The reading video above is an example of a child reading one of the many widely available decodable books.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When reading decodable books, children draw on their accumulating knowledge of the alphabetic code to sound out any unknown words. Irregularly spelt words (for example was, said, the) are also included, and children receive support to read these words, focusing on the sounds if necessary. </p>
<p>There is <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1985-15758-001">mounting evidence</a> for the use of decodable books to support the development of phonics in beginning readers and older kids who haven’t grasped the code easily. Decodable books have been found to promote self-teaching, helping children read with greater <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10573560590523667">accuracy and independence</a>. This leads to <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11145-011-9355-2">greater gains</a> in reading development. </p>
<h2>The role of books in early reading development</h2>
<p>Children need lots of opportunities to practise reading words in books. Given research demonstrates a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251371861_Long-term_effects_of_synthetic_versus_analytic_phonics_teaching_on_the_reading_and_spelling_ability_of_10_year_old_boys_and_girls">synthetic phonics</a> approach provides young readers with the <a href="http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/5551/2/report.pdf">most direct route to skilled reading</a>, there’s a strong logical argument for supporting early reading with decodable books. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-easy-as-abc-the-way-to-ensure-children-learn-to-read-1373">As easy as ABC: the way to ensure children learn to read</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Until the most recent version of the Australian Curriculum, only predictable books were included in the Foundation and Year one English curricula. The addition of decodable books recognises the critical support they provide beginning readers. But this places teachers in a difficult position because the elaborations in the curriculum documents place more emphasis on the strategies designed primarily for use with predictable books. </p>
<h2>Using different books in the classroom</h2>
<p>While reading is an extraordinarily complex process, a model of reading called the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0741932518773154">Simple View of Reading</a> is very helpful from an educational perspective. It explains skilled reading as the product of both decoding and language comprehension. This helps us understand what we need to do when teaching children to read, and the types of books they need to support early reading development. </p>
<p>Before they enter school, the majority of children are considered to be in the “<a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ683147">pre-alphabetic</a>” stage of reading. In this stage, children have little or no understanding the written code represents the sounds of spoken language. They would not have the skills to use decodable books. </p>
<p>Instead, they recognise words purely by contextual clues and visual features. For example, children know the McDonalds sign because of the big yellow arches (the M) or can read the word “stop” when they see the sign, but not out of that context. </p>
<p>Predictable books would help the pre-alphabetic reader gain insight into the workings of texts, especially with regard to meaning. In particular making the connection between spoken words – which they are familiar with – and written words, which they are not. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244697/original/file-20181109-74787-13hm1ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244697/original/file-20181109-74787-13hm1ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244697/original/file-20181109-74787-13hm1ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244697/original/file-20181109-74787-13hm1ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244697/original/file-20181109-74787-13hm1ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244697/original/file-20181109-74787-13hm1ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244697/original/file-20181109-74787-13hm1ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After decodable books have been used to get children beyond beginning reading, real books provide broader vocabulary and language structure.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beyond this stage, predictable texts become less useful because memorisation and meaning-based strategies aren’t sustainable long term. Once children have advanced to the partial and full alphabetic stages of reading, usually fairly quickly after starting formal reading instruction, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19388070109558338">they benefit more from decodable books</a> which allow them to apply the alphabetic code.</p>
<h2>So where to from here?</h2>
<p>There is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1529100618772271">no evidence</a> children benefit from the continued use of decodable books beyond the beginning stages of reading. In the absence of any empirical studies, we suspect it would be a good idea to move children on once they have sufficient letter-sound knowledge and decoding skills that they can apply independently. At this point, the introduction of real books would <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01443410903103657?journalCode=cedp20">benefit students</a> and provide access to more diverse language structures and vocabulary.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/international-study-shows-many-australian-children-are-still-struggling-with-reading-88646">International study shows many Australian children are still struggling with reading</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Given what we know about how reading works, it makes sense for children in the early stages of learning to read to be given decodable books to practise and generalise their developing alphabetic skills. At the same time, they will continue to benefit from hearing the rich vocabulary and language forms in the children’s books being read with (to) them. </p>
<p>It’s less clear what predictable texts contribute to beginning reading in schools when considering how reading skills develop. But there is evidence they might have a useful role to play in pre-school prior to the start of formal reading instruction. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Update: the authors’ disclosure statements have been updated with further information.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106531/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simmone Pogorzelski consults to MultiLit Pty Ltd which sells decodable readers, among other reading materials that the company researches and develops.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robyn Wheldall is a director of MultiLit Pty Ltd which sells decodable readers, among other reading materials that the company researches and develops.</span></em></p>
Children in the early stages of learning to read should be given decodable books to practise and generalise their developing alphabetic skills.
Simmone Pogorzelski, PhD Candidate, Sessional Academic, Edith Cowan University
Robyn Wheldall, Honorary Fellow, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/98831
2018-09-20T20:15:36Z
2018-09-20T20:15:36Z
Curious Kids: Why does English have so many different spelling rules?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224570/original/file-20180624-152140-112kqg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More spelling problems came in when French scribes introduced new spelling conventions — their own of course, and not always helpful.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an article from <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/curious-kids-36782">Curious Kids</a>, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky! You might also like the podcast <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/kidslisten/imagine-this/">Imagine This</a>, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.</em> </p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Why does English have so many different spelling rules? – Melania P, age 12, Strathfield.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>English spelling has been evolving for over a thousand years and the muddle we’re in today is the fall-out of many different events that have taken place over this time. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-aussies-have-a-different-accent-to-canadians-americans-british-people-and-new-zealanders-94725">Curious Kids: Why do Aussies have a different accent to Canadians, Americans, British people and New Zealanders?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A bad start</h2>
<p>It was a rocky beginning for English spelling. Quite simply, the 23-letter Roman alphabet has never been adequate — even Old English (spoken 450-1150) had 35 or so sounds, and our sound system is now even bigger.</p>
<p>More spelling problems came in when French scribes introduced new spelling conventions — their own of course, and not always helpful. Using “c” instead of “s” for words like <em>city</em> was messy because “c” also represented the “k” sound in words like <em>cat</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236999/original/file-20180919-158246-2ex29k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236999/original/file-20180919-158246-2ex29k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236999/original/file-20180919-158246-2ex29k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236999/original/file-20180919-158246-2ex29k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236999/original/file-20180919-158246-2ex29k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236999/original/file-20180919-158246-2ex29k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236999/original/file-20180919-158246-2ex29k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236999/original/file-20180919-158246-2ex29k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Caxton set up the first printing presses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/William_caxton.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And then printing arrived in the 15th century — and with it more mess. William Caxton (who set up the presses in the first place) liked Dutch spellings and so established the “gh” in <em>ghost</em> and <em>ghastly</em>. Some printers were European and they introduced favourite spellings too from their own languages. Not terribly helpful either! </p>
<h2>Those pesky silent letters</h2>
<p>One of the biggest problems for English spelling has always been changes in pronunciation. Printing helped to stablise the spelling of words, but then some sounds changed their shape, and others even disappeared altogether. Think of those silent letters in words such as <em>walk, through, write, right, sword, know, gnat</em> — these were once pronounced. </p>
<p>If only the printer Caxton had been born a couple of centuries later, or if these sound changes had occurred a couple of centuries earlier, our spelling would be much truer to pronunciation.</p>
<p>And now comes another little wrinkle in this story – there’s a bunch of silent letters that were never actually pronounced. They appeared because of linguistic busybodies who wanted to make the language look more respectable. This caused some serious mess. </p>
<p>Take how we spell the word <em>rhyme</em>. When we swiped the word from French, it had a much more sensible look — <em>rime</em>. But this was changed to <em>rhyme</em> to give it a more classy classical look (like <em>rhythm</em>) – an interesting idea, but hardly helpful for someone trying to spell the word!</p>
<p>The 16th and 17th centuries saw many extra letters introduced in this way. Think of the “b” added to <em>debt</em> to make a link to Latin <em>debitum</em>. Now, the “b” might be justified in the word <em>debit</em> that we stole directly from Latin, but it was the French who gave us <em>dette</em>. </p>
<p>The “b” consonant was a mistake, and now we accuse poor old <em>debt</em> of having lost it through sloppy pronunciation! </p>
<h2>Let’s make spelling more sensible</h2>
<p>And so it is from this haphazard evolution that we end up with the spelling system we have. </p>
<p>But you know, there are in fact over 80% of words spelled according to regular patterns. So wholesale change is not what we want. However simple improvements could certainly be made without any major upheaval. </p>
<p>We could iron out inconsistencies such as <em>humOUr</em> versus <em>humOrous</em>. To introduce uniform <em>-or</em> spellings would be a painless reform (well, perhaps not painless, since many people are quite attached to the <em>-our</em> in words like <em>humour</em>)</p>
<p>We could also restore earlier spellings like <em>rime</em> and <em>dette</em>, and while we’re at it give <em>psychology</em> and <em>philosophy</em> a sensible look by spelling them <em>sykology</em> and <em>filosofy</em>. </p>
<p>So now, you can see the problem. No matter how silly spellings are, people get attached to them, and new spellings – even sensible ones – never seem to get a foot in the door.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-who-made-the-alphabet-song-77297">Curious Kids: Who made the alphabet song?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to us. You can:</em></p>
<p><em>* Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
<br>
* Tell us on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationEDU">Twitter</a> by tagging <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationEDU">@ConversationEDU</a> with the hashtag #curiouskids, or
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<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98831/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Burridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It was a rocky beginning for English spelling. Then things got worse.
Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86348
2017-11-08T10:20:01Z
2017-11-08T10:20:01Z
The Americanisation of the English language: a frightfully subtle affair
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193084/original/file-20171102-26456-44l7b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The terribly good Brief Encounter (1945).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-brief-encounter-1945-online">The BFI/Eagle Lion Distributors</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Brits can get rather sniffy about the English language – after all, they originated it. But a Google search of the word <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Americanisms&rlz=1C1JZAP_enGB727GB727&oq=Americanisms&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.1154j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">“Americanisms”</a> turns up claims that they are swamping, killing and absorbing British English. If the British are not careful, so the argument goes, the homeland will soon be the 51st State as workers tell customers to “have a nice day” while “colour” will be spelt without a “u” and “pavements” will become “sidewalks”. The two versions of English are intelligible but have long had enough differences to inspire Oscar Wilde to <a href="http://www.oscarwildeinamerica.org/quotations/common-language.html">claim</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, the language.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/american-and-british-english/7A88E83825A736368D8AC96E981C4CC5#fndtn-information">My research</a> examined how both varieties of the language have been changing between the 1930s and the 2000s and the extent to which they are growing closer together or further apart. So do Brits have cause for concern?</p>
<p>Well, yes and no. On the one hand, most of the easily noticeable features of British language are holding up. Take spelling, for example – towards the 1960s it looked like the UK was going in the direction of abandoning the “u” in “colour” and writing “centre” as “center”. But since then, the British have become more confident in some of their own spellings. In the 2000s, the UK used an American spelling choice about 11% of the time while Americans use a British one about 10% of the time, so it kind of evens out. Automatic spell-checkers which can be set to different national varieties are likely to play a part in keeping the two varieties fairly distinct.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193085/original/file-20171102-26448-12g1tpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193085/original/file-20171102-26448-12g1tpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193085/original/file-20171102-26448-12g1tpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193085/original/file-20171102-26448-12g1tpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193085/original/file-20171102-26448-12g1tpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193085/original/file-20171102-26448-12g1tpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193085/original/file-20171102-26448-12g1tpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oscar Wilde posing for an 1882 studio portrait by Napoleon Sarony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/oscar-wilde-18541900-irish-literary-genuis-239399173?src=0bDl3MOjBaAy5ocR-zYhXQ-1-2">Shutterstock/Everett Historical</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is also no need to worry too much about American words, such as “vacation”, “liquor” and “law-maker” creeping into British English. There are a few cases of this kind of vocabulary change but they mostly tend to be relatively rare words and they are not likely to alter British English too much. </p>
<p>The British are still using “mum” rather than “mom”, “folk” rather than “folks”, “transport” rather than “transportation”, “petrol” rather than “gas”, “railway” rather than “railroad” and “motorway” rather than “highway”. Words to keep an eye on, however, are lawyer, jail, cop, guy and movie – all of which are creeping into the lexicon more and more.</p>
<p>But when we start thinking of language more in terms of style than vocabulary or spelling, a different picture emerges. Some of the bigger trends in American English are moving towards a more compact and informal use of language. American sentences are on average one word shorter in 2006 than they were in 1931.</p>
<p>Americans also use a lot more apostrophes in their writing than they used to, which has the effect of turning the two words “do not” into the single “don’t”. They’re getting rid of certain possessive structures, too – so “the hand of the king” becomes the shorter “the king’s hand”. Another trend is to avoid passive structures such as “a paper was written”, instead using the more active form, “I wrote a paper”.</p>
<h2>I’m rather fond of gradable adverbs</h2>
<p>And some words are starting to be drastically eroded from English – especially a grammatical class called gradable adverbs which consists of boosters like “frightfully” and “awfully” and downtoners (words or phrases which reduce the force of another word or phrase) like “quite” and “rather”.</p>
<p>If anything marks out the British linguistically, it’s their baroque way of using adverbs, especially as a form of polite sangfroid or poise – so “the worst day ever” is “things perhaps aren’t quite as wonderful as they could be”. As the American critic Alexander Woollcott once <a href="http://izquotes.com/quote/201805">said</a>: “The English have an extraordinary ability for flying into a great calm.” </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eMqzgYfZVsw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Classic films such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037558/">Brief Encounter</a> are absolutely packed with gradable adverbs. Americans, on the other hand, tend to communicate in a more straightforward manner, telling it “as it is”. However, and here’s the thing, in all these aspects Brits are changing too – and in exactly the same way as Americans. They’re just about 30 years behind the trend that Americans seem to be leading.</p>
<p>So this raises a question, is British English actively following American English – copying its more economical, direct use of language – or is this something that is simply a global trend in language use? Perhaps we’re all just on the same path and the British would have gone in that direction, even if America had never been discovered? I’d like to think the latter but due to the large amount of American language that British people encounter through different forms of media, I suspect the former is more accurate.</p>
<p>These stylistic changes generally make for a more user-friendly version of the language which is accessible and easy to follow so they’re hard to resist. Except for the loss of those gradable adverbs, though – I’m slightly annoyed about that and would like to advocate that we keep hold of them. They’re a linguistic passport and also a marker of national character, so it would be rather lovely if we could hold on to them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86348/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The work discussed in this article was made possible through the CASS research centre at Lancaster University which is funded by the ESRC.</span></em></p>
Is British English being swallowed up by American English – or are both versions simply following the same path to a more informal language?
Paul Baker, Professor of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/57470
2016-04-15T09:58:19Z
2016-04-15T09:58:19Z
Why the baby brain can learn two languages at the same time
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118779/original/image-20160414-2657-1bqrolz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How do babies learn language?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/irenezaccari/5745450917/in/photolist-9KGWoz-5HCfUn-8xGzdH-ep8c1D-avPTiY-4Ee9zx-dPamP3-58ijVf-5ww1yt-7jNyZd-dbSvBo-ep8dMt-5zXSmc-7WW7qS-af3eH8-dfqMuf-8Pby5A-dGrrzV-5e1poT-eMhKvD-8P9xQD-5wAkxE-gNvtw-6mmzW-iwU32-9strtj-7uhncG-bE9jtV-K4REY-4DBWKx-4ApiAq-avMcyx-kppiR-6SJRi5-98ev41-bB6FQH-3qStoQ-5ww2zH-4d9mPa-bEUUvt-iSSkb2-6KtqdV-8GECBK-jxbaJT-8E8pA3-28KzW-4CdpT8-xoLyo-4VCHfq-bsEoPd">Irene Zaccari</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Any adult who has attempted to learn a foreign language can attest to how difficult and confusing it can be. So when a three-year-old growing up in a bilingual household inserts Spanish words into his English sentences, conventional wisdom assumes that he is confusing the two languages. </p>
<p>Research shows that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900009971">this is not the case</a>. </p>
<p>In fact, early childhood is the best possible time <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0010028589900030">to learn a second language</a>. Children who experience two languages from birth typically become native speakers of both, while adults often struggle with second language learning and <a href="http://www.jimflege.com/files/Flege_Yeni-Komshian_age_constraints_JML_1999.pdf">rarely attain native-like fluency</a>.</p>
<p>But the question remains: is it confusing for babies to learn two languages simultaneously? </p>
<h2>When do babies learn language?</h2>
<p>Research shows babies begin to learn language sounds before they’re even born. In the womb, a mother’s voice is <a href="http://doi.org/10.1080/02646839308403210">one of the most prominent sounds</a> an unborn baby hears. By the time they’re born, newborns can not only tell the difference between their <a href="http://ilabs.uw.edu/sites/default/files/2012%20Moon%20et%20al.pdf">mother’s language and another language</a>, but also show a capability of distinguishing between languages. </p>
<p>Language learning depends on the processing of sounds. All the world’s languages put together comprise about 800 or so sounds. Each language uses only about 40 language sounds, or “phonemes,” which distinguish one language from another. </p>
<p>At birth, the baby brain has an unusual gift: <a href="http://ilabs.washington.edu/kuhl/pdf/Kuhl_2004.pdf">it can tell the difference</a> between all 800 sounds. This means that at this stage infants can learn any language that they’re exposed to. Gradually babies figure out which sounds they are hearing the most. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118758/original/image-20160414-2614-crlwdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118758/original/image-20160414-2614-crlwdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118758/original/image-20160414-2614-crlwdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118758/original/image-20160414-2614-crlwdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118758/original/image-20160414-2614-crlwdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118758/original/image-20160414-2614-crlwdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118758/original/image-20160414-2614-crlwdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Babies learn to recognize their mother’s voice even before they are born.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmichaelmayer/6870462134/in/photolist-bt7V2G-ftLq75-9msoye-bBpW47-27cLW-aKYRr4-aKZ8ir-nYXrSb-nRUnCD-cZuumC-qAhU8p-9oCvkd-beq3a4-nVtnQg-nobq41-99xQRx-bepVh2-4qJdSM-ftKEtN-9byCMj-bnMnsm-cr3bnj-98H9Fs-ftvVLZ-6V3L7U-eS7mU7-6YvUB9-Gztnk-7UMtfq-cUkPvW-8WSZdS-a8bUKC-a8cUAh-7V7nzX-9Gk5W-9mMQew-4nyXMB-eVrXTA-5RHTcg-98CNew-7CUQZV-6FeB8-9XeMNS-7VaqUQ-639Vik-Pd3P1-9buGpR-cZutFw-8YqdT2-9cFt6F">John Mayer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Between six and 12 months, infants who grow up in monolingual households become more specialized in the subset of sounds in their native language. In other words, they become <a href="http://ilabs.washington.edu/kuhl/pdf/Kuhl_etal_2006.pdf">“native language specialists.”</a> And, by their first birthdays, monolingual infants begin to lose their ability to hear the differences between foreign language sounds.</p>
<h2>Studying baby brains</h2>
<p>What about those babies who hear two languages from birth? Can a baby brain specialize in two languages? If so, how is this process different then specializing in a single language? </p>
<p>Knowing how the baby brain learns one versus two languages is important for understanding the developmental milestones in learning to speak. For example, parents of bilingual children often wonder what is and isn’t typical or expected, or how their child will differ from those children who are learning a single language. </p>
<p>My collaborators and I recently studied the brain processing of language sounds in 11-month-old babies from monolingual (English only) and bilingual (Spanish-English) homes. We used a completely noninvasive technology called <a href="http://ilabs.washington.edu/what-magnetoencephalography-meg">magnetoencephalography (MEG)</a>, which precisely pinpointed the timing and the location of activity in the brain as the babies listened to Spanish and English syllables. </p>
<p>We found some <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12427">key differences</a> between infants raised in monolingual versus bilingual homes. </p>
<p>At 11 months of age, just before most babies begin to say their first words, the brain recordings revealed that:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Babies from monolingual English households are specialized to process the sounds of English, and not the sounds of Spanish, an unfamiliar language</p></li>
<li><p>Babies from bilingual Spanish-English households are specialized to process the sounds of both languages, Spanish and English. </p></li>
</ul>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TAYhj-gekqw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Here’s a video summarizing our study.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our findings show that babies’ brains become tuned to whatever language or languages they hear from their caregivers. A monolingual brain becomes tuned to the sounds of one language, and a bilingual brain becomes tuned to the sounds of two languages. By 11 months of age, the activity in the baby brain <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12427">reflects the language or languages</a> that they have been exposed to. </p>
<h2>Is it OK to learn two languages?</h2>
<p>This has important implications. Parents of monolingual and bilingual children alike are eager for their little ones to utter the first words. It’s an exciting time to learn more about what the baby is thinking. However, a common concern, especially for bilingual parents, is that their child is not learning fast enough. </p>
<p>We found that the bilingual babies showed an equally strong brain response to English sounds as the monolingual babies. This suggests that bilingual babies were learning English at the same rate as the monolingual babies. </p>
<p>Parents of bilingual children also worry that their children will not know as many words as children who are raised with one language. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118805/original/image-20160414-2625-15xpgjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118805/original/image-20160414-2625-15xpgjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118805/original/image-20160414-2625-15xpgjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118805/original/image-20160414-2625-15xpgjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118805/original/image-20160414-2625-15xpgjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118805/original/image-20160414-2625-15xpgjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118805/original/image-20160414-2625-15xpgjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bilingualism does not cause confusion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakeliefer/306499266/in/photolist-t5Ty7-vitzc-3gnsd1-4XbYKT-aCoK3V-85woV7-bTqBk4-FUfJgo-5H9ZoV-7DEWgo-23vBn-fWcNXJ-hLeWWR-aapvN1-avtvd6-nB6EUJ-6HBwHF-9jPJvJ-avw6kN-Grwiv-7q1rWt-7B53ex-4VwK6v-b3ijHR-gfike-eWuRLy-vitzz-9ycGeQ-iiEtM-7iY76g-57b8Us-2cy4dp-aLD3GP-og4UjY-9gY7HA-avw4YW-daxohx-i2SsC-atMpUm-avwcg3-bMaKsD-aoZQ5X-57b7C5-4rYnE4-6RXGUZ-8Rzozd-o5X91S-x4imX-dTuGgX-ad6Hv9">jakeliefer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To some extent, this concern is valid. Bilingual infants split their time between two languages, and thus, on average, hear fewer words in each. However, studies consistently show that bilingual children <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305000910000759">do not lag behind</a> when both languages are considered. </p>
<p>Vocabulary sizes of bilingual children, when combined across both languages, have been <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24297614">found to be equal to or greater than</a> those of monolingual children. </p>
<p>Another common concern is that bilingualism causes confusion. Part of this concern arises due to “code switching,” a speaking behavior in which bilinguals combine both languages. </p>
<p>For example, my four-year-old son, who speaks English, Spanish, and Slovene, goes as far as using the Slovene endings on Spanish and English words. Research shows bilingual children code-switch because <a href="http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/perpg/fac/genesee/11.pdf">bilingual adults around them do too</a>. Code-switching in bilingual adults and children is <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=63647&fileId=S1366728900000365">rule-governed</a>, not haphazard. </p>
<p>Unlike monolingual children, bilingual children have another language from which they <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=37003&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0305000999003852">can easily borrow</a> if they can’t quickly retrieve the appropriate word in one language. Even two-year-olds modulate their language <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0142716400008183">to match the language</a> used by their interlocutor. </p>
<p>Researchers have shown code switching to be part of a bilingual child’s normal language development. And it could even be the beginning of what gives them the extra cognitive prowess known as the “bilingual advantage.”</p>
<h2>Bilingual kids are at an advantage</h2>
<p>The good news is young children all around the world can and do acquire two languages simultaneously. In fact, in many parts of the world, being bilingual is the norm rather than an exception.</p>
<p>It is now understood that the constant need to shift attention between languages leads to several cognitive advantages. Research has found that bilingual adults and children show an
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4341987/">improved executive functioning</a> of the brain – that is, they are able to shift attention, switch between tasks and solve problems more easily. Bilinguals have also been found to have <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2007.00412.x">increased metalinguistic skills</a> (the ability to think about language per se, and understand how it works). There is evidence that being bilingual makes the learning of a third language <a href="http://www.bilingualism.northwestern.edu/bilingualism-psycholinguistics/files/KMjeplmc2009.pdf">easier</a>. Further, the accumulating effect of dual language experience is thought to translate into protective effects against <a href="http://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181fc2a1c">cognitive decline with aging</a> and the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. </p>
<p>So, if you want your child to know more than one language, it’s best to start at an early age, before she even starts speaking her first language. It won’t confuse your child, and it could even give her a boost in other forms of cognition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57470/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The research described here was supported by the National Science Foundation Science of Learning Center Program grant to the UW LIFE Center (P.K.K., PI: Grant No. SMA-0835854), the Ready Mind Project at the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, and the Washington State Life Science Discovery Fund (LSDF).</span></em></p>
Research shows babies begin to learn language sounds before they’re even born. What about babies who hear two languages from birth? Can a baby brain specialize in two languages?
Naja Ferjan Ramirez, Research Scientist, University of Washington
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/51916
2015-12-09T04:08:00Z
2015-12-09T04:08:00Z
Why Afrikaans doesn’t qualify for special treatment at universities
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104624/original/image-20151207-2962-1k6uvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students at Stellenbosch University call for Afrikaans to be scrapped as the institution's main language.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Foundation essay: This is a foundation essay. It is longer than usual because it takes a wider look at a key issue affecting society.</em></p>
<p>There is a fierce debate underway about the language of instruction at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Students <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-08-27-not-open-says-open-stellenbosch">protested</a> throughout 2015 against the use of Afrikaans as the institution’s main language. This culminated in the university management deciding to <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/sea-change-in-varsity-language-policies-1.1949008#.VmVxeHYrLIU">adopt English</a> as its primary language of instruction.</p>
<p>The Afrikaans language is widely used: it is the third <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/about/people/language.htm#afrikaans">most commonly</a> spoken of South Africa’s 11 official languages, after isiZulu and isiXhosa. But it has a torrid history. It has not, two decades after the end of apartheid, shaken off its <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">association</a> with that system. Its critics argue that it continues to have a racially exclusionary impact in, <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-04-28-op-ed-open-stellenbosch-tackling-language-and-exclusion-at-stellenbosch-university/">for example</a>, Afrikaans language universities. Its defenders <a href="https://www.afriforum.co.za/afrikaans-stellenbosch-university-exclusion-technique-says-nzimande/">strongly fight</a> for the language’s place in the South African higher education sector.</p>
<p>Those opposing the change at Stellenbosch have invoked the country’s Constitution, saying it guarantees everyone education in their mother tongue. This suggests that Afrikaans-speaking communities have a constitutional right to demand tertiary education in Afrikaans. This line of argument also holds that a public university like Stellenbosch must maintain the privileged status of Afrikaans, or at least afford it an equal status with English. </p>
<p>In our view, the assumptions underlying these arguments are false. This becomes apparent when examining the <a href="http://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/chapter-2-bill-rights#29">actual content</a> of the Constitutional right concerning language in education. It is also crucial to interpret this right in the context of the Constitution’s overall purposes and values.</p>
<p>Section 29(1)(2) of the Constitution reads: Everyone has the right</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a. to a basic education, including adult basic education; and</p>
<p>b. to further education, which the state, through reasonable measures, must make progressively available and accessible.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It continues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everyone has the right to receive education in the official language or languages of their choice in public educational institutions where that education is reasonably practicable. To ensure the effective access to, and implementation of this right, the state must consider all reasonable educational alternatives, including single medium institutions, taking into account:</p>
<p>a. equity;</p>
<p>b. practicability; and</p>
<p>c. the need to redress the results of past racially discriminatory laws and practices.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This provision does not guarantee the unqualified right to mother tongue education. It also doesn’t preclude the existence of single medium institutions. And, importantly, it sets out very specific factors the state must consider in implementing the right. These are equity, practicability and the issue of redress.</p>
<h2>1. Equity</h2>
<p>Equality and social justice are the Constitution’s founding values. It <a href="http://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/chapter-2-bill-rights#9">defines</a> equality as including</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This means that the right to higher education must be equally accessible to all without any form of unfair discrimination. It must be delivered in a way that allows everyone to participate equally.</p>
<p>This is not only a constitutional imperative. It is core to the teaching project of any excellent university. A diverse body of staff and students enables exposure to a variety of world views and experiences. It is vital to the creation of new forms of knowledge and learning. If a language policy in any way undermines the creation of a diverse, inclusive campus community it impoverishes a university’s academic life.</p>
<p>Educational institutions, whether they are schools or universities, should not function as static and insular entities. The broader community’s interests must be taken into account, especially in light of the Constitution’s values. The Constitutional Court made this clear in an <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2009/32media.pdf">important judgment</a> about language policy in public schools.</p>
<h2>2. Practicability</h2>
<p>“Practicability” in tertiary education includes a range of considerations like budgetary constraints, the availability of staff to teach in particular languages of choice, learning infrastructure and students’ language preferences.</p>
<p>Academics and university managements cannot simply ignore the reality that growing numbers of students choose to be educated in English even when this is not their mother tongue. In our discussions with students at Stellenbosch University, two reasons have been offered in support of English as the medium of instruction. </p>
<p>Firstly, it is a common language which enables shared communication both in the classroom and in extra-curricular activities, residences and campus social environments. It is also the de facto language of business, politics, academia and law in South Africa and globally. A solid command of English is essential to graduates’ future careers and their ability to function effectively in a transformed South Africa as well as multi-cultural global environments.</p>
<p>The second reason may be more difficult for sections of the Afrikaans community to come to terms with. This relates to the language’s history and its continued association with the apartheid era. More than 20 years into the democratic dispensation, black students continue to testify to their painful experiences of Afrikaans being used on Stellenbosch campus, in residences and in the town to exclude and marginalise them.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“Luister” (Listen), a short documentary about black students’ experiences at Stellenbosch University.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. Redress</h2>
<p>This is particularly relevant to Stellenbosch University. The institution, many of its academics and former students contributed to the ideological, political and economic underpinnings <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2013-06-08-rethinking-maties-apartheid-past">of apartheid</a>. It did not challenge the injustices of apartheid.</p>
<p>The pace of racial change and redress at the institution has been glacially slow since democracy dawned in 1994. As far as the Constitution’s demands are concerned, there is still much to be done at Stellenbosch University to ensure open and free access to tertiary education. This will not happen by entrenching the language-dominated patterns of past privilege. It will be driven through changes and reforms to open up the institution to a diverse body of staff and students.</p>
<p>The admission of substantially more black students and the appointment of more black staff must be the highest priority. This is not only to help create a diverse campus community but because it gives effect to the constitutional imperative to redress the racial injustices of apartheid. </p>
<p>The university’s language policy must support and promote this fundamental constitutional objective, not constitute a barrier to it. All indications are that this objective will not be achieved without a significant shift towards English as the primary language of both teaching and official interaction at the campus. </p>
<h2>Support needed</h2>
<p>Stellenbosch University’s management team is trying to create a language policy that will offer pragmatic, sound solutions to this complex set of issues. It is working with academic staff who are experts on language and education, and in consultation with a broad range of student bodies. This makes sense. Academic staff at a particular institution are best placed to understand their students’ needs, teaching principles in specific disciplines and institutional constraints. </p>
<p>This is presumably why the Higher Education and Training <a href="http://www.che.ac.za/sites/default/files/publications/act101.PDF">Act</a> does not give university councils exclusive jurisdiction to determine language policy, as is often mistakenly believed. It requires that such policy be made with the concurrence of university senates - that is, bodies made up primarily of academics.</p>
<p>Similar work is <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Free-State-University-to-review-language-policy-20150611">underway</a> at another historically Afrikaans institution, the University of the Free State.</p>
<p>These approaches are by no means perfect. But they are precisely the kind of reasonable, pragmatic endeavours which we believe deserve support and further engagement - not the condemnation coming from sections of the Afrikaans community.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51916/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandra Liebenberg receives research funding from the National Research Foundation. She writes here in her personal capacity and her views should not be ascribed to the National Research Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>The South African Research Chair in Property Law is funded by the Department of Science and Technology, administered by the National Research Foundation and hosted by Stellenbosch University. AJ van der Walt writes here in his personal capacity and his views should not be ascribed to any of these institutions. </span></em></p>
Those who don’t want Stellenbosch University to make English the main language of instruction have invoked South Africa’s Constitution - but the assumptions underlying their arguments are false.
Sandra Liebenberg, HF Oppenheimer Professor and Chair in Human Rights Law, Stellenbosch University
AJ van der Walt, Distinguished Professor Faculty of Law, Stellenbosch University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49157
2015-10-14T15:32:49Z
2015-10-14T15:32:49Z
The Man Booker Prize still has a long way to go before it is truly inclusive
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98386/original/image-20151014-15165-1ijepwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeffrey Skemp</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction was announced last night at a glitzy ceremony held at London’s Guildhall. Marlon James’s book, <a href="https://theconversation.com/review-a-brief-history-of-seven-killings-by-marlon-james-48135">A Brief History of Seven Killings</a>, was awarded the £50,000 prize, beating the bookies’ favourite, Hanya Yanagihara’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/review-a-little-life-by-hanya-yanagihara-48928">A Little Life</a>.</p>
<p>When the Booker Prize Foundation <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/shock-as-man-booker-prize-plans-to-consider-works-by-american-writers-8818052.html">changed the rules</a> of entry in 2014 to allow American authors to be considered for the first time, there <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/14/man-booker-prize-american-british-writers-ruin">were concerns</a> that Americans would dominate the prize’s long- and shortlists. It <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/12/man-booker-prize-american-authors">was suggested</a> that, by broadening the prize’s terms and conditions, the organisers would actually reduce the cultural diversity of the winners.</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="http://themanbookerprize.com/man-booker-prize-2015">this year’s longlist</a> seemed to prove such predictions right. Five of the 13 longlisted books were by American writers, and it <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/sep/18/man-booker-prize-2015-is-this-the-most-diverse-ever">has been reported</a> that four of the six shortlisted authors currently reside in the US – although an author’s eligibility for the award is defined by their nationality, not by where they live and by this criteria this year’s shortlisted authors were a diverse group. </p>
<h2>A new chapter?</h2>
<p>Indeed, in his speech at the awards ceremony, Michael Wood, the Chair of the Man Booker Prize judging panel, <a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/news/man-booker-prize-2015-shortlist-revealed-312406">once again</a> extolled the diversity of the shortlist.</p>
<p>On the surface, James’ win appears to support this claim. But his status as the first and only Jamaican author to win (or be shortlisted for) the Man Booker Prize also highlights the awards’ historic lack of diversity. </p>
<p>With the announcement of James’s win, people took to Twitter to applaud the fact that the recent changes in eligibility had enabled hitherto overlooked authors to be considered for the acclaimed literary prize. But the Man Booker Prize has always been open to authors from Commonwealth countries writing in English and published in the UK. </p>
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<p>Consequently, the fact that James is the first Jamaican author to be shortlisted in the award’s 46-year history – and that his fellow shortlistee, Chigozie Obioma, is only the second Nigerian author ever to be shortlisted – is indicative of a longstanding failure to reward authors from a broad range of backgrounds.</p>
<h2>A familiar tale</h2>
<p>Of the 49 authors who have won the Man Booker Prize since its inception in 1969, 28 have been British and 75% of those, English (though this proportion roughly aligns with <a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/population-and-household-estimates-for-the-united-kingdom/index.html">census data</a>). Such inequalities do not only relate to an author’s nationality. It is also worth noting the award’s propensity to reward male rather than female authors. Following James’ win, the prize <a href="http://themanbookerprize.com/timeline">has been awarded</a> to 30 men, but only 16 women. </p>
<p>As I highlighted <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-man-booker-fiction-prize-became-stacked-in-favour-of-the-big-publishers-45344">in an article</a> earlier this year, such disparities are even evident in the number and type of publishers who are invited to nominate books for the award.</p>
<p>While we shouldn’t underestimate the significance and importance of James’ Man Booker Prize win, it would be wrong to suggest that it is illustrative of the award’s long-term track record on social and cultural diversity. It’s true that great strides are being made in the equal promotion and celebration of literature from authors from different cultural backgrounds around the globe – and we should take heart from <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/sep/18/man-booker-prize-2015-is-this-the-most-diverse-ever">the diversity</a> of this year’s shortlist. </p>
<p>But the fact that so much of the coverage of last night’s announcement focused on James’ being the first Jamaican author to win in the prize’s 46-year history suggests we need to keep pushing for this inclusivity to be a hallmark of the Man Booker Prize if it is to truly be seen as the world’s most prestigious fiction award.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stevie Marsden receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>
Whether it’s ethnicity, gender or publishing firm, the Man Booker must do more to correct its poor track record.
Stevie Marsden, PhD student, University of Stirling
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42736
2015-06-22T10:17:04Z
2015-06-22T10:17:04Z
How should kids learn English: through Old MacDonald’s farm or Ali Baba’s farm?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85293/original/image-20150616-5816-j4ir9x.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Why not use Ali Baba Had a Farm, instead of Old McDonald Had a Farm?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Murat Yilmaz</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Children love to sing songs. Think about the time when you were a child. What was your favorite song? What songs did you learn at home and at school?</p>
<p>Traditional children’s songs introduce children to the world around them. They do this in a fun and developmentally appropriate way. In the US, preschool age kids learn about farm animals like cows, ducks and sheep as well as their sounds, like moo moo, quack quack, and baa baa through the popular, traditional song Old MacDonald Had a Farm.</p>
<p>Without realizing it, children learn language and content simultaneously. Songs build <a href="http://www.academia.edu/11293415/Musical_plus_phonological_input_for_young_foreign_language_readers">skills</a> that help children distinguish the sounds of a language, and connect sound to script and assist with <a href="http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v8n1/Galicia.html">vocabulary building</a>.</p>
<p>It is no surprise, then, that English language programs for young children frequently use songs to <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10643-008-0277-9">enhance language and literacy instruction</a>.</p>
<p>Even when teaching children English in other countries, teachers typically use traditional songs from the US and the UK. However, English is the world’s <a href="http://www.tesol.org/docs/pdf/10884.pdf?sfvrsn=2">lingua franca</a>, a global language shared by many cultures. It is not solely connected to American and British cultures. </p>
<p>So, do kids around the world always have to sing about Old MacDonald to learn about farm animals in English? Or is there another way?</p>
<h2>Global perspective on songs</h2>
<p>Since 2004, I have been providing professional development to thousands of English teachers in over 100 countries through online courses and in-person workshops. This experience, primarily with teachers of young learners, has given me a global perspective on English language teaching around the world. </p>
<p>It also inspired me to search for a new approach for teaching English through songs.</p>
<p>Based on my own passion for using songs to teach children language and my interest in other cultures, I began collecting children’s songs in different languages through my global network of teachers. </p>
<p>Although distinctive in their language and melodies, the songs I collected from over 50 countries had much in common. The songs were all short, repetitive, catchy and easy to remember. They played with the sounds of the language through rhyme and rhythm and often had corresponding body movements. They also had common topics interesting to kids, like animals, nature, toys and family. </p>
<p>All the songs shared certain qualities that made them attractive to children. This led me to consider the possibility of using these songs as an interesting and compelling source of cultural material for the classroom.</p>
<h2>International children’s song approach</h2>
<p>The approach I developed is simple. It combines my research in using songs to teach children with my search for appropriate cultural materials for teaching English as a global language. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85605/original/image-20150618-23232-ragg7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85605/original/image-20150618-23232-ragg7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85605/original/image-20150618-23232-ragg7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85605/original/image-20150618-23232-ragg7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85605/original/image-20150618-23232-ragg7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85605/original/image-20150618-23232-ragg7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85605/original/image-20150618-23232-ragg7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teaching kids through songs from the world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Murat Yilmaz</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is called the “international children’s song approach” and uses songs from around the world to teach English to kids. Children can learn a version of the song their peers are learning around the world. Examples can be found in the English language program I coauthored, <a href="http://ngl.cengage.com/ourworldtours/welcome-to-our-world/ae/songs/">Welcome to Our World</a>.</p>
<p>Instead of singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” to learn about farm animals, children can sing a song in English that originally comes from another country or culture. </p>
<p>For example, children in Turkey learn a song about farm animals through a similar song in Turkish, called <a href="http://dinolingo.com/blog/2011/05/15/ali-babas-farm-ali-babanin-bir-ciftligi-var-ciftliginde/#.VWOaQ0s-Cpo">Ali Babanın Çiftliği</a> or Ali Baba Has a Farm.</p>
<p>See the original song and a translation in English below.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ali Babanın bir çiftliği var (Ali Baba has a big farm.)</p>
<p>Çiftliğinde inekleri var (On his farm, there are cows.)</p>
<p>Mö, möö diye bağırır (Moo moo, they go.)</p>
<p>Çiftliğinde Ali Babanın (On Ali Baba’s big farm.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The melody for Ali Baba Has a Farm is completely different from Old MacDonald; but similar to its American counterpart, the Turkish song has a catchy, rhythmic tune that is repeated with other animals and their corresponding sounds.</p>
<p>Using the international children’s song approach, teachers from around the world can use an English adaptation of Ali Baba Has a Farm in their English language curriculum. </p>
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</figure>
<p>This is a way to introduce children to different cultures through music and songs using English as a global language. Children in any country can enjoy learning about farm animals in English by singing about Ali Baba’s farm, even children in Turkey! </p>
<p>From Mexico to Greece, from Egypt to Japan, children from over 20 countries around the world have been learning English and sharing culture through international songs using <a href="http://ngl.cengage.com/ourworldtours/welcome-to-our-world/ae/songs/">Welcome to Our World</a>. This series for three- to five-year-old learners of English includes 24 songs that originated from 18 countries, such as I Have a Ball from Tunisia, Three Bears from Korea, and Tiny Little Boat from Spain, to name a few.</p>
<p>Of course, they continue to learn English through the typical children’s songs from American and British culture, but they also learn through English adaptations of their own as well as other international songs.</p>
<h2>English is a global language</h2>
<p>English is the <a href="http://www.tesol.org/docs/pdf/10884.pdf?sfvrsn=2">most commonly taught foreign language worldwide</a>. Statistics show that there is a <a href="http://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/sites/ec/files/books-english-next.pdf">“wave of English”</a> building up in this century. This is hardly surprising considering English is the language of science, technology, commerce, diplomacy, tourism and the internet.</p>
<p>An estimated <a href="http://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/sites/ec/files/books-english-next.pdf">two billion people are learning English</a> — that is, almost a third of the world’s population. In many countries where English is not widely spoken, there are government <a href="http://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/research-papers/global-practices-teaching-english-young-learners">mandates</a> to teach English as a foreign language in primary schools.</p>
<p>In countries such as South Korea, Turkey and Brazil, many children begin learning English in addition to their native language as early as three years of age.</p>
<p>Whether children are learning English as a second language, or even a third or fourth language, they are being exposed to it at earlier and earlier ages worldwide.</p>
<p>Using international children’s songs from around the world is an effective approach for teaching English as a global language to kids.</p>
<p>Language is a carrier of culture, and English is uniquely positioned to communicate across cultures around the world. Materials to teach it <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.1949-3533.2000.tb00276.x/abstract">should embrace all cultures</a>.</p>
<p>Why only sing about Old MacDonald and his farm? Why not sing about Ali Baba and his farm too?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42736/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan Kang Shin is a co-author and series editor for Welcome to Our World published by National Geographic Learning.</span></em></p>
English songs from the US and the UK are typically taught to kids around the world. With English now a language of many cultures, why not incorporate songs from the world?
Joan Kang Shin, Associate professor, George Mason University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.