Thanks, Merci, Gracias

Thanks, Merci, Gracias

Finally we want to thank to you for reading our blog and  we hope you enjoy it a lot


Finalement, nous voulons vous remercier pour lire notre blog. Nous esperons que vous l'aimez

Finalmente queremos agradecerles por leer nuestro blog esperamos que les guste

Luisa Duque 

&

Jeyson Pérez

Pedagogical Implication

Pedagogical Implication

Since language and cultures are intertwined with each other, learning a language can not be separated from learning its culture. Only by learning the culture, the L2 learners can better understand the language and use it in communication as native speakers do. Educators now generally believe that it is important to help the L2 learners to achieve the communicative competence as well as the linguistic competence. In pedagogy there is a method of foreign language teaching called communicative language teaching (CLT), and the goal of CLT is to develop students’ communicative competence, which includes both the knowledge about the language and knowledge about how to use the language appropriately in communicative situation. In CLT, culture teaching plays an important role. 
In language teaching, on one hand, teachers and learners should pay attention to the culture difference since different languages reflect the different value system and worldviews of its speaker. By knowing the culture difference, one can avoid some mistake in communicating. On the other hand, the same concepts of the two cultures should not be neglected. By sharing the same concept, language learning may become easier and happier. More importantly, since languages have influence on thought, when learning a second language, the L2 learners should at the same time strengthen their mother tongue.

The Relationship between Language & Culture and the Implications for Language Teaching

The Relationship between Language & Culture and the Implications for Language Teaching

The relationship between language and culture is deeply rooted. Language is used to maintain and convey culture and cultural ties. Different ideas stem from differing language use within one’s culture and the whole intertwining of these relationships start at one’s birth.

Everyone’s views are dependent on the culture which has influenced them, as well as being described using the language which has been shaped by that culture. The understanding of a culture and its people can be enhanced by the knowledge of their language.

The implications of language being completely entwined in culture, in regards for language teaching and language policy are far reaching. Language teachers must instruct their students on the cultural background of language usage, choose culturally appropriate teaching styles, and explore culturally based linguistic differences to promote understanding instead of misconceptions or prejudices. Language policy must be used to create awareness and understandings of cultural differences, and written to incorporate the cultural values of those being taught.

Implications for language teaching

Teachers must instruct their students on the cultural background of language usage. If one teaches language without teaching about the culture in which it operates, the students are learning empty or meaningless symbols or they may attach the incorrect meaning to what is being taught. The students, when using the learnt language, may use the language inappropriately or within the wrong cultural context, thus defeating the purpose of learning a language.

Also, due to the fact that language is so closely entwined with culture, language teachers entering a different culture must respect their cultural values. As Englebert (2004) describes: “…to teach a foreign language is also to teach a foreign culture, and it is important to be sensitive to the fact that our students, our colleges, our administrators, and, if we live abroad, our neighbors, do not share all of our cultural paradigms.”

Language teachers must realize that their understanding of something is prone to interpretation. The meaning is bound in cultural context. One must not only explain the meaning of the language used, but the cultural context in which it is placed as well. Often meanings are lost because of cultural boundaries which do not allow such ideas to persist. As Porter (1987) argues, misunderstandings between language educators often evolve because of such differing cultural roots, ideologies, and cultural boundaries which limit expression.

Language teachers must remember that people from different cultures learn things in different ways. For example, in China memorization is the most pronounced way to study a language which is very unlike western ideologies where the onus is placed on free speech as a tool for utilizing and remembering vocabulary and grammar sequences (Hui 2005). Prodromou (1988) argues that the way we teach reflects our attitudes to society in general and the individual`s place in society.
When a teacher introduces language teaching materials, such as books or handouts, they must understand that these will be viewed differently by students depending on their cultural views (Maley 1986). For instance, westerners see books as only pages which contain facts that are open to interpretation. This view is very dissimilar to Chinese students who think that books are the personification of all wisdom, knowledge and truth (Maley 1986).

Animal Language

ANIMAL LANGUAGES

The term “animal languages” is often used for non-human systems of communication. Linguists and semioticians do not consider these to be true “language”, but describe them as animal communication on the basis on non-symbolic sign systems, because the interaction between animals in such communication is fundamentally different in its underlying principles from human language. Since animals aren’t born with the ability to reason, there is no true and developed “culture” among animals as it exists in humans. Without this culture, there is no need for complex language. A dog may successfully communicate an aggressive emotional state with a growl, which may or may not cause another dog to keep away or back off. Similarly, when a human screams in fear, it may or may not alert other humans of impending danger. While both of these examples are often successful in terms of communicating a feeling state, they are instinctive, not linguistic, in nature, they are specific to their respective species and do not reflect a complex language system that had been evolved through history.

Nevertheless, some scholars have tried to disprove this mainstream premise through experiments on training chimpanzees to talk. Karl von Frisch received the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his proof of the sign communication and its variants of the bees.

In several publicized instances, non-human animals have been taught to understand certain features of human language. Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans have been taught hand signs based on American Sign Language. The African Grey Parrot, which possesses the ability to mimic human speech with a high degree of accuracy, is suspected of having sufficient intelligence to comprehend some of the speech it mimics. Though animals can be taught to understand human commands, they are not capable of repeating those commands. Without the ability to reason, animals are also unable to learn the concepts of complex philosophical ideas such as the past and future, which are core fundamentals of complex language. Without this ability, animals are not able to pass these teachings on towards other animals of the same species. Thus, even though we can teach animals to understand aspects of human language, they are unable to develop that language around a culture suitable for them. Humans on the other hand, have been proven to learn languages not native to them, and use those languages as a native speaker would, and pass those along to other members of their native culture.

While proponents of animal communication systems have debated levels of semantics, these systems have not been found to have anything approaching human language syntax.

Artifitial Language

Artifitial  language

The first book ever published in Esperanto, the world’s most widely spoken constructed language.

An artificial language is a language the phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary of which have been consciously devised or modified by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally. There are many possible reasons to construct a language: to ease human communication; to bring fiction or an associated constructed world to life; for linguistic experimentation; for artistic creation; and for language games.

The expression “planned language” is sometimes used to mean international auxiliary languages and other languages designed for actual use in human communication. Some prefer it to the term “artificial” which may have pejorative connotations in some languages. Outside the Esperanto community, the term language planning means the prescriptions given to a natural language to standardize it; in this regard, even “natural languages” may be artificial in some respects. Prescriptive grammar, which is related to ancient times for classical languages such as Latin, Sanskrit, and Chinese are rule-based codifications of natural languages, such codifications being a middle ground between naive natural selection and development of language and its explicit construction.

The ASCII Table

The ASCII Table, a scheme for encoding character strings. Mathematics, Logics and computer science use artificial entities called formal languages(including programming languages and mark up languages, and some that are more theoretical in nature). These often take the form of character strings, produced by a combination of formal grammar and semantics of arbitrary complexity.

A programming language is a formal language endowed with semantics that can be utilized to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer, to perform specific tasks. Programming languages are defined using syntactic and semantic rules, to determine structure and meaning respectively.

Programming languages are employed to facilitate communication about the task of organizing and manipulating information, and to express algorithms precisely. Some authors restrict the term “programming language” to those languages that can express all possible algorithms; sometimes the term “computer language” is applied to artificial languages that are more limited.

Natural Language

Natural language

Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science of studying them fall under the purview of linguistics. A common progression for natural languages is that they are considered to be first spoken and then written, and then an understanding and explanation of their grammar is attempted.

Languages live, die, polymorph, move from place to place, and change with time. Any language that ceases to change or develop is categorized as a dead language. Conversely, any language that is in a continuous state of change is known as a living language or modern language. It is for these reasons that the biggest challenge for a speaker of a foreign language is to remain immersed in that language in order to keep up with the changes of that language.

Making a principled distinction between one language and another is sometimes nearly impossible.  For instance, there are a few dialects of German similar to some dialects of Dutch. The transition between languages within the same language family is sometimes gradual.

Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. In either case, the ultimate difficulty may stem from the interactions between languages and populations. The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.

A sign language (also signed language) is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns (manual communication, body language) to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker’s thoughts. Hundreds of sign languages are in use around the world and are at the cores of local Deaf cultures.

The Tower of Babel

“TOWER OF BABEL”

According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where they resolved to build a city with a tower "with its top in the heavens...lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the Earth." God came down to see what they did and said: "They are one people and have one language, and nothing will be withholden from them which they purpose to do." So God said, "Come, let us go down and confound their speech." And so God scattered them upon the face of the Earth, and confused their languages, and they left off building the city, which was called Babel "because God there confounded the language of all the Earth."(Genesis 11:5-8).

The Tower of Babel symbolizes the division of mankind by a multitude of tongues provided through heavenly intervention.

As far back as the classical period the connection between human culture and language has been noted and probably long before. The ancient Greeks, for example, distinguished between civilized peoples and bárbaros “those who babble”, i.e. those who speak unintelligible languages. The fact that different groups speak different, unintelligible languages is often considered more tangible evidence for cultural differences than other less obvious cultural traits.

Languages, understood as the particular set of speech norms of a particular community, are also a part of the larger culture of the community that speaks them. Humans use language as a way of signaling identity with one cultural group and difference from others. Even among speakers of one language several different ways of using the language exist, and each is used to signal affiliation with particular subgroups within a larger culture. Linguists and anthropologists, particularly sociolinguists, ethno-linguists and linguistic anthropologists have specialized in studying how ways of speaking vary between speech communities.

A community’s ways of using language is a part of the community’s culture, just as other shared practices are, it is way of displaying group identity. Ways of speaking function not only to facilitate communication, but also to identify the social position of the speaker. Linguists call different ways of speaking language varieties, a term that encompasses geographically or socioculturally defined dialects as well as the jargons or styles of subcultures. Linguistic anthropologists and sociologists of language define communicative style as the ways that language is used and understood within a particular culture.

The difference between languages does not consist only in differences in pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar, but also in different “cultures of speaking”. Some cultures for example have elaborate systems of “social deixis“, systems of signalling social distance through linguistic means. In English, social deixis is shown mostly though distinguishing between addressing some people by first name and others by surname, but also in titles such as “Mrs.”, “boy”, “Doctor” or “Your Honor”, but in other languages such systems may be highly complex and codified in the entire grammar and vocabulary of the language. In several languages of east Asia, for example Thai, Burmeseand Javanese, different words are used according to whether a speaker is addressing someone of higher or lower rank than oneself in a ranking system with animals and children ranking the lowest and gods and members of royalty as the highest.