Blog Post #4

I decided to speak to my grandfather about English language because we speak English differently from accent to the way we pronounce word. He grew up in Guyana and so did my mom and I but he moved to the United States after he retired. I grew up in Guyana from birth until I was 17 when I moved from Guyana to United States. When I was younger, he would pronounce words so differently that I could not understand him. This happened because English in Guyana has changed over the years from the time my grandfather was born. When we were in public, he would speak in a more formal English because we lived in a country which was formerly ruled by Britian but once we arrived home or around family members, you would here his Guyanese accent and words. Some words he used were “ayo” which means people like “why ayo don’t go there” and “am” which can be used to replace “it” like “wuh you name am”. Many of those words are not used regularly anymore, you mostly hear them from older folks.  How they spell words is different, like color, spelt like “colour” or neighbor spelt like “neighbour”. I first realized this when I moved to the United States and the teacher corrected me during an English class. My teacher marked me wrong for misspelling words by putting “u” and “s” in some words. I also learned about the different ways Guyanese speak, like how people in the capital speak slower compared to people in the country areas.

Blog Post #3

Proposition:  I have three dogs.

Truth Value: True

Truth Condition: I would have at least three dogs.

Entailment: “I have three dogs.” entails “I have exactly three dogs.”

Proposition: Water is made of helium and oxygen.

Truth Value: False

Truth Condition: For this to be true, water would need to be composed of hydrogen and oxygen.

Entailment: “Water is made of helium and oxygen” entails that “Water is made of two elements, hydrogen and oxygen.”

Proposition: There exists life on other planets besides earth in the milky way.

Truth Value: Unknown

Truth Condition: Life exists on other planets besides earth in the milky way.

Entailment: “There exists life on other planets besides earth in the milky way.” Would entail “life existing on other planets in the milky way besides earth.”

Blog Post #2

One word that is borrowed from Arabic, which is the donor language is ‘coffee’. English would be the borrowing language. ‘coffee’ which comes from the Arabic word ‘qahwa’, was originally referred to a type of wine but later came to specifically mean coffee. ‘qahwa’ was then borrowed into Turkish as ‘kahve’, and from there it spread to various other languages. The English word ‘coffee’ entered the language in the 16th century (1582), likely through trade routes and interactions with the Ottoman Empire. In English, ‘coffee’ is typically pronounced as /ˈkɒfi/ or /ˈkɑfi/, with stress on the first syllable and a short vowel sound in the second syllable. The ‘o’ sound is often pronounced as a short ‘o’ or sometimes as an ‘aw’ sound. In Arabic, ‘qahwa’ is pronounced as /ˈqɑː.wæ/ or /ˈqɑː.wɑː/. The ‘q’ sound is a voiceless uvular stop, which is not present in English, and the ‘a’ sounds are pronounced differently from the English ‘a’.

Blog Post #1

During my school years, I would use many words that are considered informal like ‘gonna’ or ‘ain’t’. I do recall a moment in middle school where I was having a discussion between my friends and a teacher when I used the word ‘gonna’ during the conversation. I remember the teacher stopping me mid conversation to tell me gonna is an improper word. I remember this because it was my English teacher and she used this to create a lesson for the following class. She listed many words that were used during regular conversation but should not be used during formal essays. One of the reasons she gave is because ‘gonna’ is not standard English. We were thought about broken English, where it is a conversation between friends where ‘gonna’ can be used because it was more of a slang. She said it is better to use the full ‘going to’ instead because it was clearer in sending the message. This thought me about rules used in English.