While using Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network, it is not unusual to be corrected by someone or to see someone “teaching” the “right” way to talk or write. Sometimes, this argument may be accompanied by other prejudices: speak right if you want me to listen to you and to consider what you’re saying; illiterate; go to school; if you want to talk about this, learn how to write first. All of the sentences above can be easily said on the internet, but its root is not there. 

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Many people claim that there is a correct English to be spoken: The Standard – Standard American English, United Kingdom Standard English, and the Received Pronunciation. They are the so-called language purists, prescriptive grammarians, people who consider the English taught in school to be the appropriate and unique, criticizing and humiliating others dialects as if they were superior, they claim to use the “good” language.

 

 Language is a tool of power: to build – by its changes and transformations naturally caused by the socials involved; or to destroy and conquest – by colonizing, downgrading the users of a dialect and banning languages as a mean of political control, as it happened with Cajun English and French in southern Louisiana, American Indian languages, or even during the occupation of Korea (1910-1945) when the Japanese prohibited the Koreans to speak their language by 1943, trying to Japanize it. If you are interested in learning about Korea under Japanese Occupation, I recommend the Korean drama “Chicago Typewriter”. 

 

Máquina de Escribir Chicago - Episode 6 | Rakuten Viki

 

This also happened in France, 1977, when the French Government passed a law banning the use of English in official contexts (political, juridic, etc.) aiming to preserve French expressions, but it didn't work out (CRYSTAL, 2002, p. 273). However, from a linguistic point of view, one dialect is neither better nor worse than another, nor purer nor more corrupt, nor more or less logical, nor more or less expressive. It is simply different (FROMKIN et al., 2002). For example, despite American English is the most influential dialect worldwide and British English the “purer” and “elegant” English, it is wrong to assume that they rule the social language use, once we have different dialects, idiolects, regional dialects, cultural groups, word choices that are made according to the context (how formal is the situation, the relationship between the speakers, etc.). 

 

English, as we can see when we study its development, emerged from the contact and transformation of different languages and cultures – as well as other languages. Today, considering the limitless internet, the viability of information, and the use of it as commercial, technical or cultural language (ALGEO, 2009, p. 183) it is baseless and clueless to assume that it has a purity or a pattern that must be followed. It is contradictory to downgrade a dialect or even a pronunciation when it comes to language – being a native or not – once it is made and transformed by its users, that are affected by at the same time that is affecting it.

 

 Language change is not corruption it is richness. 

FOR FURTHER READING

Meet Geoffrey Chaucer

        Geoffrey Chaucer is known as the father of English poetry, not because he was the first but because his works are mesmerizing. He is one of the greatest of all, being literate in French and English, who also read Latin and studied French and Italian poetry (THORNLEY; ROBERTS, 2008, p. 15). He lived during the Middle English period (1100-1500) and was born in the reign of Edward III, 1340, dying in 1400 (HUDSON, 1913, p. 20). The language used, as we will be able to perceive below, changed substantially, being much easier to read the original version when compared to Beowulf, which was written in Old English. Read the original passage below and its translation:

When people hear or read the word “Aryan”, they probably think about Nazism, a fascist ideology that defends the supremacism of a “superior German race”, which led to the torture, dehumanization, and death of Europe’s Jewish, Romani and other racialized people, LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities.

 

Aryan (ārya आर्य) is a Classical Sanskrit term which means “one who does noble deeds; a noble one” (WIKIPEDIA, 2020) it was also used to refer to the Indo-European language branch spoken in Iran and India (ALGEO, 2009, p. 51). However, in XIX, some Philologists referred to the Indo-European Family as “Aryan”. In 1861, Max Muller, a German Scholar of Comparative language, religion, and mythology, was the first writer to mention the existence of an “Aryan Race” (DAVID and NICHOLLS, 2016, p. 96).  In 1926, Gordon Childe, Australian Archeologist, specialist in European Prehistory, published a book called The Aryans, which was full of archeological and linguistic arguments in an attempt to establish the supposed homeland of the Indo-European Family.

 

According to Colin Refrew, a British Archeologist and Paleologist, the discussion about a homeland it wasn't purely academic, once the “German Scholars preferred and Indo-European homeland in Northern Europe”. The “Aryan race” Theory then became more and more popular in Germany. While some authors opposed to it, other writers argued that the Aryans were a biologically superior group of humans, based on it's Nordic Traces, while the Semitic were considered an “inferior race”. Muller was deeply saddened that his studies were used to justify and reinforce a false ethnic superiority based on nordic traces. In 1888, he wrote that "an ethnologist who speaks of the Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary, or a brachycephalic grammar".

 

Since this term was appropriated by the Nazis, Linguists substituted “Aryan” to “Indo-European”, a term without a racist connotation, that refers “only to the culture of a group of people who lived in a relatively small area in early times and who spoke a more or less unified language out of which many languages have developed over thousands of years.” (ALGEO, 2009, p. 52). The Academic words, must always be free of prejudice and a sense of superiority, in language and race.

"Indo-European is a matter of culture, not of genes."
— John Algeo 

FOR FURTHER READING

CHILDE, VERE GORDON. The Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & CO,. LTD, 1926. 264 p. Disponível em: http://ignca.gov.in/Asi_data/21510.pdf. Acesso em: 12 out. 2020.

Aryan. Wikipedia contributors. 2020, October 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Disponível em: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aryan&oldid=983612531. Acesso em: 17 out. 2020.

ALGEO, John. The Backgrounds of English. In: THE ORIGINS and Development of the English Language. 6. ed. Boston: Wadsworth CENGAGE Learning, 2009. cap. 4, p. 49-77. ISBN 978-1-4282-3145-0.

John R. Davis & Angus Nicholls (2016) Friedrich Max Müller: The Career and Intellectual Trajectory of a German Philologist in Victorian Britain, Publications of the English Goethe Society, 85:2-3, 67-97, DOI: 10.1080/09593683.2016.1224493. 

ARYAN. In: ADVAMEG, Inc. (org.). World Culture Encyclopedia. [S. l.]: Advameg, Inc, 2010. Disponível em: https://www.everyculture.com/South-Asia/Aryan.html. Acesso em: 16 out. 2020.

When children or a second language learner is acquiring English knowledge, they may commit common mistakes, such as in the example below:

The child above chose "eated", "telled" instead of "ate" and "told", that is, misapplying the rule of the -ed suffix. It is fundamental to have in mind that, instead of a bad English performance, that means that the user understood the simple past and it is using their knowledge to communicate using logic. 

Many irregular verbs derive from Proto-Germanic language – that it is also related to Proto-Indo-European – more specifically, from the Germanic Strong Verbs (CHAMONIKOLASOVÁ, 2014, p. 17), which are verbs that suffer the Great Vowel Shift (ablaut), for example: sing – sang – sung (it changes the root vowel). It is interesting to notice that while some irregular verbs are relatively simple (sit - sat), others may be considered "creative" (seek - sought). However, even when a grammatical rule was disused, some verbs kept the old form (being creative or not). Check the words below:

1.  IRREGULAR VERBS: bear, beat, beget, bite, blow, break, choose, cleave, draw, drive, eat, fall, fly, forbid, forget, forsake, freeze, give, grow, know, lie, ride, see, shake, shear, slay, smite, speak, steal, stride, strive, swear, take, tear, throw, tread, wake, weave, and write (WIKIPEDIA)

Oppositely, the regular verbs (preterites and past participles ending in -ed) follows the Germanic Weak Conjugation that was for about ¾ of Old English Verbs (CHAMONIKOLASOVÁ, 2015, p. 30). Initially, the weak conjugation involved -t or –d (dental suffix), but it has developed to add the –ed suffix at the end of verbs in preterites and past participles. Yet, there are a few irregular verbs that partially follows the weak conjugation, for example:

 Well, looks like that the child is not wrong, but playing a major role in language: using the grammatical rules at the same time that is changing it. In short,

SOURCES: 

CHAMONIKOLASOVÁ, Jana. Proto-Germanic. In: CHAMONIKOLASOVÁ, Jana. A Concise History of English. Masarykova Univerzita: [s. n.], 2014. cap. 3, p. 17-21. ISBN 978-80-210-7480-4. Disponível em: https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/data/handle/11222.digilib/131572/monography.pdf. Acesso em: 20 set. 2020.

CHAMONIKOLASOVÁ, Jana. Old English. In: A Concise History of English. Masarykova Univerzita: [s. n.], 2014. cap. 4, p. 22-44. ISBN 978-80-210-7480-4. Disponível em: https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/data/handle/11222.digilib/131572/monography.pdf. Acesso em: 20 set. 2020. 

WHY do We Have Irregular Verbs?. Direção: Arika Okrent. Brasil: Arika Okrent, 2017. Disponível em: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o82_XBJXxMk. Acesso em: 20 set. 2020.

English Irregular Verbs. Wikipedia contributors. 2020, September 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Disponível em: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_irregular_verbs. Acesso em: 20 set. 2020.

Verbs with regular and irregular past tense forms. (Fandom Grammar, Deleted Profile)

What is behind the name "Growing English"?

 This e-portfolio was created by Dheyse Medeiros, an undergraduate English student. First of all, the blog has evaluation and educational purposes, once it is going to be used for the discipline "History of English" of Universidade Federal de Campina Grande. 

Nothing of this blog is unplanned. For example, the title "Growing English" was chosen instead of "English analysis" or other simpler names once the languages are alive.  When something grows it grows from a seed (or embryo) that may never result in something identical, it tends to have its variations. Language works the same way: we have the roots, trunk, branches, leaves, and the fruits. However, when it comes to language, the trunk is the social culture, transporting and supporting, the dialects/languages are the branches with such a great variety, while the leaves, flowers and fruits represents the natural impulse to communicate, attracting us to understand each other and to create new ways of communication, but the roots are the history, collecting nutrients continuously, it never stops.

The position of the verb to grow has some explanation too: Who is making the English grow? We do it all the time.  It doesn't matter if we are native or second language speakers, we are always reproducing and recreating the way the language is being spoken/written. 

All of those pieces of information may be easily understood if you pay attention to the URL: thesiteisloadingthelanguageisgrowing. The site loads fast and so grows the language.

Sometimes, the best way to portray your learning process is by using mind maps. Check the Introduction Mind Map below to know some of the subjects which shall subsequently be discussed by Growing English.

When a bug happens, it bugs us. However, a bug, that is, a little insect, does not "happens" it grows, procreates, and dies. Today we are not going to talk about ladybugs or mites, but about computer bugs. According to Techopedia, a bug refers to an error, fault, or flaw in any computer program or a hardware system. A bug produces unexpected results or causes a system to behave unexpectedly. We already know that both (the animal and the error) can irritate us, but there is a reason behind the computer bug be called bug? The answer is yes. The image below shows the nosey responsible for this word:  

source: National Museum of American History

"On September 9th, 1947, an error in the US Naval-operated Mark II computer was caused by a moth being trapped between two electrical relays. William Burke, the operator who found it, was so amused that he took the moth and placed it in a log-book with the annotation “First actual case of bug being found”. This was meant as a pun and is certainly not the first time the word was used to denote errors. The log-book now rests on display in the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institute, with moth still attached." (TECHOPEDIA)

    Despite having good evidence, as well as plenteous words of the Proto-Indo-European language family, it is not clear to trace its first usage. According to the National Museum of American History, Thomas Edison, an American inventor, talked about bugs in electrical circuits in 1870. In other words, it is not possible to assume the reason behind the title software bug, even knowing the more likely field to create it: technology. But it is possible to see that even having nothing to do with it (bug x computer bug) the meaning may change and is particularly likely to change in a field undergoing rapid expansion and development, such as computer technology (ALGEO, 2009, p. 209).

SOURCE

ALGEO, John. Words and Meanings. In: THE ORIGINS and Development of the English Language. 6. ed. Boston: Wadsworth CENGAGE Learning, 2009. cap. 9, p. 206-223. ISBN 978-1-4282-3145-0.