Differences between American and British English. Are they so similar?

There are many varieties of English and no one version is correct. Today we are going to speak about the differences between American and British English.

The first and probably most obvious difference is our accents and how we stress and pronounce both vowels and consonants.

Take a look at the chart below and notice that even a lot of our spelling changes:  

British English	American English
Colour	Color
Favour	Favor
Centre	Center
Realise	Realize
Theatre	Theatre
Modelling	Modeling
Fulfil	Fulfill
Offence	Offense
Sizeable	Sizable
Ageing	aging

Many differences are found in the vocabulary used, in particular, phrasal verbs. The British would say; lift, film, biscuit, petrol, anti-clockwise, path... and the Americans would say; elevator, movie, cookie, gas, counterclockwise, sidewalk...

There are also words which exist in both language varieties but have completely different meanings, for example biscuit and bill. An American understands bill as money and English person, as an invoice. Biscuit for an American is what an English person calls a scone, and a biscuit for an English person is what Americans call a cookie. Now it is becoming clear why foreigners say the English language is so hard to learn!

Just to add to the confusion, the British “fill in” forms and the Americans “fill out”. Thus, even some of the prepositions change.

Now we are on the subject of verbs, the Americans use the present tense to express what a British person would express in the present perfect tense, for example:

-          American English: I lost the bus this morning.

-          British English: I’ve lost the bus this morning.

In conclusion, I would say that the key to writing English correctly is to decide which type of English you want to use and stick to it! Good luck! 

A língua portuguesa é cada vez mais atraente

De acordo com os atuais artigos do Observatório da Língua Portuguesa, cada vez mais pessoas querem aprender o português.

No primeiro caso falamos de milhares de pessoas que estão atualmente aprender o português nos Estados Unidos. A sós em Florida, no Sul dos Estados Unidos, há escolas com mais de 400 crianças inscritas para cursos de língua portuguesa. Beatriz Cariello, professora na Universidade Internacional da Florida e professora de português na Doral Middle School diz que se tratam tanto de crianças de pais portugueses como de pais brasileiros, mas está clara que no Sul da América sobressaem os dos brasileiros. Em Miami há uma escola bilíngue pública chamada Ada Merritt K-8 Center. Nesse dita escola as crianças podem escolher entre um ensino inglês-português ou inglês-espanhol. No caso do português obtêm 40% das aulas em português e 60% em inglês. Essa escola conta com 400 alunos. Estamos só a falar de Florida, em um total no Sul se observa mais de mil alunos a aprender a língua de Camões. Imaginamos o número grande em total nos Estados Unidos.

Outro país que vale a pena destacar é a Rússia. Também na Rússia se observa um número crecente de pessoas que queiram aprender o português. Neste país ainda não podemos competir com as línguas inglês, chinês ou espanhol, más também não se ade minimizar este acontecimento. O português é ensinado especialmente nas universidades e escolas superiores de Moscovo e São Petersburgo. Além destas notícias favoráveis, se supõe sobre tudo na Rússia por causa da procura cada vez mais crescente uma falta de professores e de instalações de ensino no futuro.

As razões para a vontade de aprender o português são que o cidadão russo já não precisa de visto para ir para o Brasil, a economia crescente no Brasil e também a atracão de Portugal e do Brasil como país turístico.

Vanessa Teixeira Marques

Mehrsprachigkeit

„Mehrsprachigkeit“ – ist es von Vorteil oder von Nachteil Kinder mehrsprachig zu erziehen?


Vor nicht allzu langer Zeit habe ich einen Artikel auf der Website der deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft gelesen, welchen ich hier zusammenfassen möchte. Der Artikel basiert auf eine Rede des türkischen Politikers Erdogan im Jahr 2011 in Deutschland. In diesem Jahr handelte alles von der fehlenden Integration der unter anderem türkischen Mitbürger in die deutsche Gesellschaft. Hierzu muss man wissen, dass es in Deutschland aktuell etwa 3 Millionen Menschen mit türkischem Migrationshintergrund gibt, die ihre familiären und religiösen Wurzeln in der Türkei haben. Während die einen die Meinung vertraten, dass vor allem türkische Kinder Deutsch lernen müssen, um sich in die deutsche Gesellschaft integrieren zu können, vertrag Erdogan die Meinung, dass Kinder zunächst ihre Muttersprache türkisch lernen sollten und danach die deutsche Sprache.  Dies sei, so Erdogan, „nichts anderes als eine sprachwissenschaftliche Notwendigkeit“

Die Sprachwissenschaft kann heute belegen, dass der Erwerb zweier Sprachen gleichzeitig keine Einzelheit mehr ist. Mehr als die Hälfte der Menschen auf der Erde wachsen mit mehr als einer Sprache auf. Oft wird behauptet, dass der bilinguale Spracherwerb dazu führe, dass diese Menschen keine von beiden Sprachen richtig können. Doch dies ist nicht richtig. Man fand heraus, dass diese Leute in beiden Sprachen zu gleichen Maßen kompetent sind. Auch die Behauptung Kinder würden mit dem gleichzeitigen Erwerb mehrerer Sprachen überfordert werden ist nicht ganz richtig. Man fand heraus, dass diese auch in nicht-sprachlichen Aufgaben oft bessere Leistungen erzielen. Im höheren Alter soll die Mehrsprachigkeit sogar zum Erhalt des Denkvermögens beitragen.

In dem Artikel wird aber auch veranschaulicht, dass der Erwerb in den eigenen vier Wänden, nicht mit dem Erwerb in der Schule zu vergleichen ist. Zudem kommt auch noch hinzu, dass es jüngeren Kindern oft leichter fällt eine Sprache zu lernen als Teenagern.

Ich persönlich habe auch eine zweisprachige Erziehung genossen und es ist wahrlich das schönste Geschenk was mir meine Eltern haben machen können. Es wäre schade, wenn Eltern aufgrund von unerklärlichen Ängsten ihren Kindern diese einmalige Chance verwehren würden.

Sind Sie auch mehrsprachig aufgewachsen? Was sind Ihre Erfahrungen?

Vanessa Teixeira Marques

Is Latin a dead language?

Upon reading many articles on this topic, I have come to the conclusion that the existence of the Latin language is unclear.

Is Latin a dead language?

On one hand, many people consider it is a dead language because it no longer exists as the main language for any group of people. It also is a language which has not developed and therefore it cannot convey modern concepts of this day and age.

On the other hand, some people believe that it is a very much present language for us, as many languages emerged from Latin, such as Spanish, French, Romanian, Portuguese and Italian, not to mention hundreds of scientific words with Latin roots which are used in other languages in scientific, law, medicine and religious contexts.

The recently resigned Pope Benedict XVI attempted to breathe life into this language by launching a Papal Latin academy in order to promote the language. He also announced his farewell speech in Latin.

In fact, Latin is taught as a second language in 1,081 schools in the United Kingdom, and has experienced a 7.5 percent increase in student numbers. All of this data got me thinking about how Latin is infiltrated in popular culture. In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, the Hogwarts Motto is in fact in Latin, “Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus” (Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon). Also, both spells and charms are in Latin. 

There are many common saying we use in English language which come from Latin: De Facto, Ad infinitum, et cetera, status quo, carpe diem, per se, vice versa...

After reading up on many articles which talk on this topic, I remain to have an unclear opinion on the existence of the Latin language. What do you think? 

Endangered languages

What a shame it seems that so many languages are extinct or in danger of being so. There are almost 6,500 languages spoken all over the world, and UNESCO believes that half of them are critically endangered and may be out of use by the end of this century.

You would imagine that these endangered languages be found amongst the deep Himalayan mountains or on the Tibetan border, but this is not the case. Today Welsh, Guernsey French, Scottish Gaelic and Manx are still among some of the world’s endangered tongues.

In 2008 the Eyak language, spoken in the Alaska region became extinct with the death of the last speaker, and just recently, in 2010, Bo, the ancient tribal language died out.

Can the extinction of a language be considered positive or negative?

Many articles have been written on this subject. Some claim that a loss of a language does not imply the loss of a culture. Others say that keeping a language alive does not keep a culture alive. I personally believe that a language occupies an important place in any culture. What do you think?

It is believed that unifying global communication through English can only be positive as it avoids possible language barriers. However, this isn’t as black and white as it seems. There are many types of English spoken today.  Many countries official language is English, but the style of English used is different to that spoken by an Australian, for example. This variant in the English language is usually due to the fact that many countries adapt the English language to the grammar of their dialect or second language. The differences aren’t just a matter of accent. In Indian English, people say half-pants when they are referring to shorts, neckerchief to refer to scarf and Nes-coffee to refer to instant coffee.

“Lingua Franca” which is English used as a communication between companies is just another dialect of the English language. The queer thing about this is that most English speakers find it difficult to communicate with these types of speakers as the English is too different.

In conclusion, we could probably say that languages are in fact influenced by cultures and that unifying global communication through English is a hard task. I think that it’s a real shame to unify communication. 

Languages are impregnated with culture... We should at least try to preserve some of them, shouldn’t we?

Is learning a third language really easier than the second?

Yes! It would appear so. If you are bilingual, you will in fact find it easier to learn a third language, as you will have gained a better aptitude in languages whilst learning the second one. 

A study was conducted in 2011 between students who were fluent in only one language and students who knew two languages. Both groups were given tests that assessed their reading strategies and familiarity with the orthography of each language. Bilinguals obtained a higher average than the monolinguals.

What does this mean?

When an individual speaks more than one language, he or she improves proficiency in native languages. When you learn another language, it normally requires you to gain more knowledge in you native language. Concepts such as “past simple”, “passive”, “present progressive” become clearer to somebody who knows another language. Other phonologic, morphologic and syntactic tools are reinforced too.  

How do I learn a third language without mixing it up with the second?

I personally think that the best method to retain any language, whether it is the second or the third, is practise, practise and more practise! It is important not to mix languages up so learning how to separate them is favourable. A good tip is to spend a few hours a week doing something in your second or third language. I consider that reading is also a very important factor in the learning process.  

It goes without saying that speaking a second language helps you in the learning process of a third language, but it also depends on the language. Japanese would obviously be considerably harder for English speakers than learning Spanish!

Emma Milnthorpe