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Unit 04 and 05: International English and its influences and  Comparing cultures

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Unit 04 and 05: International English and its influences and  Comparing cultures

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In those two units, we mainly learned about global awareness, English as a Lingua Franca, the impact of Global English on language diversity and culture shock. It was really nice to get in touch with those different points of view, especially because I've never thought about some of them, like the video that was brought to us at the class about how tourism could help us to be more tolerant towards other cultures and people, how it can be an opportunity to connect with people, respect and learn more but, most of all, to put an end to the prejudice we might have. I think it can be a great idea, but that's not enough. Global awareness has to come along. The fact that we might be able to talk to other people from other culture doesn't really mean that we will accept it, respect it or even like it. We can actually see that by just watching the news or searching on the internet many many cases of violence against immigrants and refugees.

Global Awareness is a conceptual understanding based on an applicable knowledge of global and cultural perspectives but is not limited to, environmental, social, cultural, political, and economic relations. Diversity is such a rich word that brings a lot with it, diversity is intrinsic to the human being, and as soon as we recognize that we can actually begin to understand each other. It is so embracing that it is not limited to ethnicity, religion, age, gender, culture, cognitive ability, life experiences, family situations, and sexual orientation. Since education is one of the most important things in our life, global awareness should always be present and come along with education. We cannot become better human beings if our education doesn't lead us to that. This kind of humanistic education is crucial if we are to foster global citizens. True education summons forth the innate goodness of humanity—our capacity for nonviolence, trust, and benevolence. It enables individuals to reveal their unique qualities and, by encouraging empathy with others, opens the door to the peaceful coexistence of humanity.

We should be aware that it is really important to develop some skills in math, geography, writing, and reading, but one thing should not be forgotten is, besides all of that, we still have to deal with other people throughout our lifetime and the fact that the world is really just one, a globalized one, we still have to learn to deal with people from different culture. Businessmen, for example, they value the skill of knowledge and awareness of a wider world as an important skill as the ability to speak a foreign language. It is the "soft" skills of cultural awareness and understanding of global issues that are particularly valued. Just think: is it really worth to be a great businessman without even knowing how to greet someone? How to deal with that person? Isn't it more important to not offend someone and actually be able to do business? We should learn how to be wise, to perceive the interdependence of all life. We should learn how to be brave, to respect one another's differences and use them as an impetus to creative living, rather than rejecting or excluding others on the basis of differences of culture, nationality, and race. We should learn how to be empathetic, to empathize with and share the pain of every person and all of life. By that, we fill the 3 requirements to be a global citizen.

But does global awareness prevent us not to witness culture shock? Culture Shock is a feeling of disorientation or confusion and anxiety, experienced when a person is exposed to a new or unfamiliar culture and way of life. It has several stages: the honeymoon, during the first few weeks after arrival, when everything and everyone is new and interesting; you feel like you’ll never miss home; the crisis (culture shock), from 2 to 3 months after arrival, when irritability and hostility flourish, when you criticize the way the country does things, you feel hostility toward natives, the symptoms are: sad/ loneliness, homesickness, insomnia/sleeping a lot, shy/insecure, and depression; the adjustment phase, from 6 to 9 months, when you start to accept cultural differences even though you might still be angry and frustrated; the integration and acceptance phase, from 10 to 12 months, when you finally start to feel like your self again, you start to consider your new city your home, you have routines, make friends, etc.; the re-entry phase, like a reverse culture shock, when upon arriving home, you feel restless, bored, depression, misunderstood, isolation, and confused; and, finally, coping methods, when you learn as much as you can about the host country’s culture, you get to know your new neighborhood, you keep in touch with friends and family and make new friends.

I've never moved houses or changed jobs or schools several times, but I lived outside the country for 1 year. It is funny to think about all those adaptation stages that we discussed in class. First of all, I was pretty lost and only focused on HOW TO SURVIVE. I laugh when I think about that now, but it was really tiring. And yes, everything was awesome, new, and interesting. After a while, I started to feel really tired, but I don't think I was ever sad or homesick (actually, I've had been barely homesick during my exchange year), but I was surely shy and insecure, but thanks to my host family, everything was easier and I had support. I started to notice how different things were and yes, I got a little frustrated, like people saying that I shouldn't do some things that I was doing otherwise people would think I was weird (but it was totally normal for me, like putting two slices of salami on the bread [what's weird about that?]), but after a while I actually started to do some Norwegian things and I started to like it, it became a part of my routine, I made friends and started to feel like the city was nice and I got used to it and used to the school. I still miss eating bread with butter, strawberry jelly and brunost.

One funny thing to notice is that although I went on exchange to Norway and they spoke Norwegian, we could only, at least in the beginning, speak in English. But how come we are from two different cultures, countries and backgrounds and still be able to communicate with each other? The answer to that is English became a global language. Due to globalization, many cultures got to be connected influencing how people use the language to communicate, once it can be used as a tool for communication. The English have already come to be used by more people than any other language. The statistics suggest that about a quarter of the world’s population is already fluent or competent in English, and this figure is steadily growing – in the early 2000s that means around 1.5 billion people. No other language can match this growth. Even Chinese, found in eight different spoken languages, but unified by a common writing system, is known to ‘only’ some 1.1 billion. There are many reasons and factors that resulted in English as a global language, such as economic and political interest, especially between countries. which might be used in warfare strategies.

English has become a global language not because it is a beautiful language or anything. People started to learn it especially because of the US and its hegemony. Nowadays, English has become a powerful symbol of modernity and liberating practices. The UK attracted other nations to develop their economies, so this way they adopted English and now more and more countries are becoming economically dependent on the USA, therefore no language of wider communication has been employed by speakers so divergent in cultures, nationalities, and backgrounds as English is today, especially because of the socioeconomic opportunities open to speakers of English. English brings a lot of opportunities and open doors to those who could speak it since the language was related to the power of the US, just like Latin was a king of power to the Roman Empire, and also because it is connected to business and others, and since the world has become more globalized and more capitalist, people wanted to do more business all around the world, transforming English as a global language. But what we are watching now is the Chinese growth in the international scenario. If China becomes the next hegemonic country and takes possession of that status which belongs to the USA now, will we start to learn Chinese? Is it that simple? Will we change English for a much more complicated language like Chinese, which has another alphabet? Does it work like that? Is language a real symbol of power?

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UNIT 2 - The history of the English language

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UNIT 2 - The history of the English language

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In this unit, we learned the history of the English as a language, but also its variants like the Scottish, Irish and Welsh. We studied and discussed about many people, like the Celts, Romans and Anglo Saxons but also some periods of time like the Renaissance and the industrial revolution, and how they influenced the whole language formation progress. Therefore, the language as we know today is a result of over thousands of years development. We couldn’t forget, of course, of Shakespeare, which was a brilliant author that knew like nobody else how to play and create such art with just words. He also created many of them.

We started this unit by reading the text "O Inglês" talks about the history of the English language: the influences, people and cultures that helped with its development, particularities and how it is related to the church, not sparing the use of geography to explain why and how English became English. It shows us how the Celtics and Vikings influenced in the language's formation, how the Old English started to decay, how and why church and religion were in the service of English, and the choice of a spelling. People usually think that French influenced English, while the truth is actually the opposite, furthermore the contributions of Latin are undeniable. Oftentimes, the Scandinavian term did not completely supplant the Anglo-Saxon term and the two forms have been preserved to our own day, but sometimes with a nuance of meaning, evidencing the survival of the two forms. Alfred the Great was a very important person that cared a lot about the language and the history of his people and thus helped to translate a lot of texts that were previously in Latin. He created and developed a great translation center, implemented a true literacy program, and organised the writing of a chronicle about life in his time. Thereby, he favoured the constitution of a written norm.

By looking at the timeline of the English language history, we can see in a very didactic way all the development that happened and where it all came from. The text 07, which also talks about the language timeline, isn’t as didactic as the other one, but it’s placed in a simpler and cleaner way. The English language is a vast flea market of words, handed down, borrowed or created over more than 2000 years.

The European languages came out of India: it developed there, but as people started to travel north and divide across Europe, the Indo-European  Languages became distinct, culminating in the Celtic in ancient Britain, they were the earliest inhabitants of the British islands to leave a mark on the English language. Although very few Celtic words have lived on, many places names have Celtic origins, such as “London”. As we learned at class, the Britain islands were invaded by many people, but one the first of them was the Roman invasions that conquered much of the territory, but only about 200 words entered the language, which many of them passed on from this era are those coined by Roman merchants and soldiers.

The Germanic tribes, such as Angles, Saxons and Jutes had a special rule because they helped to form the basis of the language we now call Old English.  The Anglo Saxons were so important that approximately one-third of their vocabulary survives into modern English, including many of the basic and everyday words. Moreover, Latin had a more powerful influence later in the 6th century when Christian missionaries, led by St. Augustine, brought Latin as the language of the new religion, injecting hundreds of new Latin words into the English language. Thus in the 7th century, the Latin speakers named the country that we know today as “the Land of the Angles”, developing later into “England”. The Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon and Kentish dialects resemble the English we know today, although it is spoken differently in many countries.

For 100 years, the Vikings invaded repeatedly the East of England and established the Norse as the dominant power there. Their influence waned as they were repulsed to the North East of England by King Alfred the Great, remaining in power there until the late 900s. Thereby 2.000 new words were introduced and King Alfred used the English language to develop a sense of national identity amongst the English. About 300 years later, in AD 1066, A French king from Normandy, King William, conquered England, and the French language was settled as the language of the law, aristocracy and power. So, as the society was divided into social and hierarchical classes, as was the language. Latin was used by the religious people, while the common man spoke Old English and the aristocracy, French. Britain was a trilingual land.

The Hundred Years War happened from 1337 to 1450 because of some tensions between English and French civilization. It was a bloody war that determined the French language as the language of the enemy and therefore was no longer de rigeur,rising the status of English. That’s when some universities, such as Oxford and Cambridge were established, increasing literacy that was still copied by hand and really expensive. Not long after that, William Shakespeare was born. We can not deny how brilliant this man was, and how important he is to the world, literature and the English language. He, alone, was responsible for over 2.000 words and phrases that we use in today’s English: “eyeball”, “breaking the ice” and “flawed” are some examples.

From now on, things started to happen faster, and there were some important people that contributed to what English is today. The Renaissance era was important because William Caxton introduced the first printing press to England, allowing printers to opt to use the spellings and grammar on South and East dialects and therefore their choices helped to set and spread a standard language. besides allowing books to become cheaper. That was a time wonderful discoveries and innovations are made in the fields of art, theatre and science, helping society to become what we are today. King James, on the other hand, was responsible for many phrases popular today, like “labour of love”, “heart’s desire” and “filthy lucre”, by translating the Bible from Latin, Hebrew and Greek into English, making Scripture more accessible to the common man. About 100 years after that, in 1755, Samuel Johnson published his famous first Dictionary of the English language, which demanded nine years for making, since many scholars believe that the English language is chaotic and in desperate need of some firm rules. He intended to catalog each and every word including their “proper” spelling. This impossible task for an ever envolving lexican was only repeated decades later with the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1884.

In the Industrial Revolution, from 1760 to 1800, as we know as an era of lots of progress and development, the language adapted to the needs of the people that were passing through big changes.  Around 1900, some American capitalist words like “merger”, “downsizing” and “breakeven” were adopted. In the present day, the internet allowed us also to create and adopt new words in our typing, most of them being abbreviations, like “LOL”, “BTW” and “firewall”. Therefore, the English language has words taken or derived from over 350 languages.

The English language is still expanding, changing and trading, incorporating new jargons, slangs, technologies, toys, foods and gadgets. Words enter the language in all sorts of ways: with invaders, migrants, tradesmen; in stories, artworks, technologies and scientific concepts; with those who hold power, and those who try to overthrow the powerful.

References
- O inglês - unknown author

- Language Timeline - bl.uk, <http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/changlang/across/languagetimeline.html>

- English Language History - Brighton School of Business and Management, <https://www.brightonsbm.com/wp-content/uploads/english-language-history.jpg>

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Where did English come from? - Claire Bowern

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UNIT 3: English speaking countries seminars

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UNIT 3: English speaking countries seminars

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In this unit, we got together in groups and presented many seminars about English speaking countries. The countries presented were Scotland, Jamaica, Singapore, New Zeland, South Africa, and Australia. I think it was nice to bring all those different countries to the classroom so we could learn more about them, but was also challenging to speak in front of everyone.

I guess the main difference between those countries presented and Brazil is the government. For example, Brazil is a Federal Presidential Constitutional Republic, South Africa is a Unitary dominant-party Parliamentary Constitutional Republic, New Zeland is a Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy, and Australia is a Federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. But one main thing in common between Brazil, South Africa, and Jamaica is that those countries are big exports of commodities, like agriculture and mining.

But I don't think there is any country in the world that is going to be completely different or similar to any other one. What I mean is that there is something about each country that is similar to Brazil, like Jamaica that also went through a colonization period and Australia that has many dangerous animals as we do in Brazil. But when it comes to Singapore we can rapidly notice how different the cuisine from both countries is. Every country has something in common and something that diverges from each other. One thing related to at least 4 (New Zeland, Jamaica, Australia, and Scotland) of those countries is that Elisabeth II is still the Monarch, therefore all of them are constitutional monarchies. They are in three different continents but still connected somehow. That's one thing that amazed me.

One of the things I didn't know about Scotland is that it's a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain, having more than 790 islands. Although its capital is Edinburgh, it's not the largest one: Glasgow carries that title, being the third most
populous city in the United Kingdom.

One thing I didn't know about New Zealand is that it was discovered by settled by Polynesians, and, surprisingly, the country has one of the highest populations of foreign-born citizens. Besides that, it's amazing how New Zealand tries to include everyone by making sign language and Maori as official languages.

I am a big fan of languages and what caught my attention is that South Africa has 11 official languages and I think that's awesome because somehow they try to preserve the gorgeous variety of language that was perched through time. Also, how come one person can have 6 different names throughout a lifetime? Mandela, besides being a person who fought to defend people's right, has this peculiarity.

I also like the fact that in Australia the most popular sport isn't football (thank God), but surf! Surfing is one of the things that I wish I could learn but the fact that I don't live close by the sea is what keeps me from doing it. Also, I don't think my balance is so good so I kind of know that it's something that I'm going to struggle with. Besides that, isn't it weird to think that, according to CIA's data, there are more English people than Australians in Australia? What a bizarre but amazing country! I really wish to spend some time there.

What amazes me the most about Singapore is that it is an extremely small country, with no natural resources and no space for agriculture, but with a growing economy, composed of 63 different islands! How great and creative can humans be? The country is also known for its transition from "third" world to "first" world in a single generation, but is it really that beautiful as it sounds? Or does that development bring

The country my group chose was Jamaica. We were between Jamaica and Canada, but we decided to bring something different that most people don't know much about. Everyone got their own topics to talk about and it worked really well. I helped the group by creating and choosing the powerpoint presentation style, searching about curiosities and making the socrative quiz. I think everyone did their best and it was an easy group to work with.

I really enjoyed reading your text, congrats for the reflections and comparisons you did between the countries.

Your grades:
textual - 2,0
organization - 2,0
delivery - 2,0
content  - 4,0

total: 10,0

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We started this unit by reading texts and watching some videos that would help us to define what culture is. They were very helpful because we could see many different arguments and thoughts about it from many different points of view. The video showed a metaphor of culture: an iceberg. It represents the culture very well. The surface, which corresponds about 10% of the iceberg and can be considered what we can really see, primarily in awareness, is about fine arts, literature, cooking, dress code, folk-dancing, and language. The deep culture, which is under the water, presents all the things that we can't visualize; primarily out of awareness, about 90%, corresponds to conception of beauty, facial expressions, social interaction rate, conception of justice and roles in relation to status by age, sex, class, kinship etc. I was amazingly surprised because I've never thought about culture in such a way, and the iceberg metaphor made me think and realized that culture, something that I thought I knew what it was, was much a more complex idea. Nonetheless, my notion of culture completely changed. That was a very interesting way to start thinking about culture.

Among the texts, we were able to get in touch with other definitions. The text "What is Culture? What is Culture? A Compilation of Quotations" brought us some enlightenment. For many years, people would judge and hierarchize cultures. Some of the people would divide the world into barbaric and civilized, putting them in a scale of "high" and "low" culture. The first one (barbaric) is considered a low culture, often associated to savages, which were worse than the second one, the high culture, considered to be the "best" and the "right" one. This lead to a lot of racism and prejudice. The Europeans thought it was a great argument to use when they were colonizing other regions and continents, simply because they thought they were superior. How can we assume that one culture is better than others? Isn't the African culture as rich as the Asian one? Didn't it all come from a long process throughout the human kind history? Is it better, or is it just different? Today this idea is not widely spread, but we can see some traces left on how we deal with foreigners or how sometimes we feel superior to other countries. One thing that we should be careful about and that we discussed in class is stereotypes. According to the dictionary, "stereotype" is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified an image or an idea of a particular type of person or thing. I think it is impossible not to have some stereotypes, especially about other cultures, because we can't fully understand it and sometimes we have little contact, so it seems to be unharmful. Unharmful in a way that foreigners usually define Brazilian culture in football, samba and carnaval. And yes, we have all of that, but that doesn't apply to every Brazilian. We all have our special way to live this culture that we call Brazilian and that's because we have different personalities, habits and backgrounds. Therefore, we can assume culture is not just one solid definition, it is made of many variants that come from all those individual differences. Besides all that, our individuality is forever and we should learn how to respect each other, how to live together besides our differences. We can’t think about the macro without thinking about the micro. Stereotype can be harmful when it turns into prejudice, like saying Brazilians are lazy or incompetent.

Culture is a concept really difficult to define or even to put into words. It can't be defined once and used forever: it is in constant change. The way I see, understand and incorporate the Brazilian culture in my life is different than, for example, my neighbor or even my close friends. Culture is an organized system in which particular components may be related to other components. I think the notion of culture changes throughout time, age, gender, and place. Each generation will have different variants which will affect their notion of culture. We can watch it nowadays the Japanese youth having problems in identifying themselves with the oriental (That's not the word in English) culture because the country went through a process of westernization. As we can see, culture is a social construct, learned or created, passed on by ancestors, from generation to generation but also subject to externalities. To illustrate, we to look at the far-reaching effects on the culture of a single technological innovation, like the TV set. To me, culture can also be a method of hegemony, and an example of it can be the "American Way of Life", which affected us in many ways and ended up also changing our culture, the way we think and how we look up to the US. Yet culture doesn't define a person, it's actually the opposite. I can share the same culture as my classmates, but maybe some of our values and customs differ in many points. Yet it is a huge interaction among people that keep the culture present and alive because culture is not made by a hermit. According to the Japanese example, we can see how important it is to maintain traditions and customs making it possible to keep the memory and history alive, honoring and remembering the ancestors.

The "What are the origins of the English Language?" text perpasses from the Old English to Middle English and posteriorly to the Modern English. In the fifth century A.D., after the Norman Conquest, certain Germanic tribes started to migrate, impacting on the lexicon of Old English which preserves some resemblance between the language of the tenth century and our own, and some words can be recognised, such as "he", "of" and "him". The influence of French (and Latin) upon the lexicon continued throughout the Middle English period (from the twelfth century through the fifteenth) and many changes took place within the systems of the language, insofar the phonology began. The printing press at that time had a stabilising effect on spelling and as the colonization was happening, the distinctive dialects of English developed in the many areas. Therefore, "English is just one relatively young member of an

ancient family of languages whose descendants cover a fair portion of the globe."

From my experience, Brazilian culture will always be with me, and I can even say that it became intrinsic in me. I think the first culture you have contact with will somehow impregnate in you. Just like our mother tongue which is learned and stored in a very specific place in the brain, while the other languages that you might learn during your lifetime will be stored in another one. When I went to Norway, I had my first and big contact with another culture that we Brazilians barely know about. I spent one year there, and during that time I experienced many culture shocks. Throughout the process I had many difficult but also pleasant times, and I couldn't be more grateful because being in touch with another culture changed me in a way that nowadays I see myself more open and tolerant with differences. The iceberg metaphor made me realise about many things that I've never thought about. Although I learned Norwegian really fast, sometimes I couldn't find myself integrated in the society. And now, looking at the metaphor, maybe it wasn't my fault at all, but maybe because we didn't share the same values or what is called "deep culture". I could fit in their dress code, eat their food (not lutefisk) and learn their language, but one I could never understand is what it is to be raised and educated among Norwegian culture and thus what it's like to be a child in Norway. One of the requirements of the exchange was to spend the whole year with 3 different families. Do you know why? Because people are different! I learned so much and so many different things with each family, precisely because although they had the same culture they had different values and habits. The last part was the one I liked the most, specially because I love languages and I had a class about it in Norway, when we talked about English and Old Norse.

I think one of the greatest things is to be able to spend some time in another country, being in contact with another culture. Respect and patience should come from both parts: of course, we are going to make mistakes while learning the culture, but showing some effort is important. No culture is perfect, but I "imported" some Norwegians habits like being really punctual, but that's one habit difficult to not be stressed about in Brazil. But what I could never understand is why people stay so far away from each other while waiting for the bus in Norway. Do they hate human contact that much that they have to stay 15 meters away form each other? That's what I missed about Brazil: how open we can be to people. Honestly, I really like the person I became after that culture "miscegenation." That’s what I think progress and development is: become better a human being (Word order - start with become a better human being). (Rafaela, I really liked how you were able to use your own background and experience to discuss the topic we studied during our classes related to the first unit.
Here are your grades:
textual markers - 2,0
organization - 1,5
delivery - 2,0
content - 3,5
total: 9,0.

References:
- What is culture? Definition of culture – by Kim Ann Zimmermann

- What is culture? - By Spencer-Oatey