To teach or not to teach ... 'bad' words

Recently, I viewed a very funny video about the many meanings of 'shit.' Although I have taught such common four letter words in the past, I wondered how my colleagues and friends (native English speakers and non-native English speakers) would respond to a query about teaching 'shit' to my intermediate-level adult students at a community college. Out of 10 people who responded via FB or email, not one of them waivered. They all said, "Yes, you should teach bad words." One even said that it is my 'responsibility' to teach them.

Here's the video. The performer is Finnish and definitely has a great sense of American English. I don't know if he was a comedian in his native country, but he definitely tickles my funny bone.

What do you think?  I did show this video to my students, and most of them (a dozen) enjoyed it. However, a few didn't seem to 'get' it. When you explain humor, it somehow kills it, so I had a brief follow-up reaction/reflection talk, advising caution (especially to the young adult males in my class) when attempting to use this kind of language with native speakers.

I agree it IS my responsibility as an instructor of English to non-native speakers to teach them awareness and self-consciousness when using four-letter words that can be seen as obscene or irreverent. I also want them to understand that context is extremely important - how powerful a definite or indefinite article is in changing the meaning of an expression. As a student of many foreign languages (Spanish, French, Quechua, Japanese, Arabic, Lingala), I find it easy to put myself in the position of my students. I would want to know these words in other languages I have studied to greater or smaller degrees, so that I might understand if someone is insulting or complimenting me.  It is up to each student to take what I've chosen to give, store it in memory, or throw it away.  

The Power of Pronouns

Have you ever thought that your use of pronouns might reflect your level of self-esteem and whether you belong or fit in a group?  Here is a link to a review of James Pennebaker's "The Secret Life of Pronouns." It came from brainpickings.org, which is a site you might want to subscribe to. (I think the name of the site captures the essence of it.)

I often start my ESOL classes with a brief review of the eight parts of speech. I am always amazed at how few students understand that our language and dictionaries are made up of words that belong to certain categories of speech. Why do we do that? It is so we can know how to use the vocabulary in a sentence.

What is a pronoun? Simply defined, it is a word that takes the place of a noun (=a word that refers to a person, place, thing, or idea). However, in English, we should not use a pronoun in a sentence unless it is obvious to the reader or listener what noun you are referring to. Here are some examples:

          "She loves to travel overseas."

If you had been talking about Maria previously and said the sentence above, I would assume that you were referring to Maria (="She").

Some languages such as Japanese and Spanish don't require a subject (often played by a noun or pronoun) to start a sentence, so you definitely need to be following the conversation or reading well to understand the subject of a statement.

         "Es muy interesante."  what or who is interesting?

Pronouns are useful, especially to allow us to avoid repeating the same noun:  "When John was at the zoo yesterday, John saw a giraffe."  Better and easier to follow would be to say "When John was at the zoo yesterday, he saw a giraffe."

For more in-depth coverage of Dr. Pennebaker's fascinating perspective on human social interaction and what language tells about our state of being, I recommend this recent 2017 Apple interview.  It will also connect to education and English language learning.

Teaching and Mindset Part 2

Teachers also need to get into a growth mindset. That is, we need to focus on our own growth and learning. Sometimes, we are made aware of other strategies for teaching students which are more 'fun' and incorporate more technology. I have done this with my college ESOL students. I get 'stretched' technologically and learn to teach a different skill (beyond English!).

However, after trying out new strategies, I sometimes realize (= learn) that I may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater.  I am constantly being torn between doing what my gut instincts tell me to do, such as drill students and do choral pronunciation exercises, not as a steady diet but intermittently. Yet, I know that by current California standards of project-based learning, someone overseeing me for one class session might view such an activity as very old-fashioned or 'old school.'  If they asked me why I did it, however, there would be many sound reasons (pun intended) based on what I've learned from psycholinguistics and from my own personal journeys sampling or studying several foreign languages (Spanish, French, Quechua, Japanese, Arabic, Lingala, German).

The following Op-Ed article last spring from the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal (May 13-14, 2017 (Saturday and Sunday), page A11, titled "A Polymath Mastered Math - and So Can You" by James Taranto, who interviewed Barbara Oakley) caught my attention as it forced me to rethink some ideas that I'd been forcing myself to give up. My insides were telling me that many of my students had not done the hard foundation-building labor (often repetitious and drill-like) to control English's many irregular verbs and our variety of tenses. Many were not even aware that there were so many identifiable grammatical structures in English. As a long-term ESOL instructor (nearly 20 years), I have recently been informed that grammar can be 'picked up' in the context of reading, by noticing how writers write. That may work for native speakers much better than it works for non-native speakers because native speakers already have some language intuition, but I often hear from my immigrant students that they want more instruction in grammar, not just passive learning.

What struck me a few years ago in 2016 was that some former Swiss students who came back to the U.S.A. to visit - and reconnected with their former ESL instructor (me) - had not lost much of their English skills from eight years earlier. How was it possible that former students who had not been in the USA for nearly a decade nor been required to use English in their jobs could still produce such coherent and accurate English? How could they still correctly form a question in English and ask if they were using correct grammatical construction (they were! - e.g., present perfect, simple past, conditional, and so on)?  Could it be that they drilled it years before we met and drilled again before the Cambridge Exam? They memorized and practiced English for an expensive test that would mean the difference between getting a raise or moving up the job ladder by proving their overall comprehension of the language.

In the Wall Street journal article, the author of Mindshift (Oakley) says, with respect to learning math and science that "The way you learn intensively for a language is very similar to learning well in math and science." Although some believe that practice and repetition kill creativity, Oakley says, "One mistake we make in the school system is we emphasize understanding. But if you don't build those neural circuits with practice, it'll all slip away. You can understand up the wazoo, but it'll just disappear if you're not practicing with it" (quoted by Taranto in WSJ, 5/13/17).

Ms. Oakley comments that "many, if not most," of her engineering colleagues "are from countries that have educational systems completely antithetical to [ours]. In places like China and India, 'practice and repetition and rote and memorization are really important parts of education.'" Oakley also points out that our Western approaches can enhance creativity, but that "Asian approaches ... build solid foundations in the most difficult disciplines like math and science."

This article resonated with my instincts and thoughts about language learning. My own long journey with foreign languages has definitely impacted my English teaching strategies. Now, I am rethinking my own mindset. Is it fixed, or can I continue to grow and change - the same as I ask of my students?

Spanish words that have no English equivalence

As an ESL (English as a second language) instructor, I often tell my students to avoid using translating dictionaries and to try understanding new English words by learning synonyms, paying attention to context, and by listening to or reading lots of examples from native speakers.

The Huffington Post recently came out with a list of Spanish words for which there may be no single comparable English word.  Since I'm not bilingual, I can only trust that the translations to English are as close as possible to the meaning of the words in Spanish. As with English, the main problem of providing a single definition for these Spanish words is that other meanings are possible, e.g., sobremesa (could be a tablecloth or dessert). The most common usage of a word is usually the only one provided in paperback translating dictionaries. Even when searching online for definitions in English, there are many dictionaries and definitions to choose from. Language is very much a reflection of culture (previously touched on here), so it's not surprising that there may be no single word equivalence between languages. Translation always requires interpretation of one culture's vocabulary into the standard of another. If Facebook is any indicator of how far we have to go with translating apps, we still have a looong way to go with non-European languages such as Arabic, Korean, and Japanese.  

Language and Thought ("Futured" and "Futureless" Languages)

Back in the 20th century before laptops, smart phones, and the Internet dominated student lives, I took my first course in anthropology. Since that time, I have been fascinated by the concept of cultural relativism and Benjamin Lee Whorf's linguistic relativism (or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), which views language as a cultural construct that shapes our thoughts and the way in which we view the world.

The academic debate about the influence of language on thought goes back at least a few centuries, and the discussion continues to pop up and to cause me to reflect on my English teaching practices.Students are often confused when they try to translate English into their own language or when they seek a word in English from their native tongue. Sometimes there isn't an equivalent concept, term, or item that exists in both languages. Most translating dictionaries do not show the range of usages of a single word in another language, so how far should I go in explaining to students that when they enter another language, their thinking and behavior might change?

Last year, I ran across this TED blog post and talk which made me pause to think more globally about human language, the English I teach, the vocabulary that enters American English from other languages, and the grammatical rules that continue to be broken and change as my American English becomes a species of English.

The findings of Keith Chen presented in this TED talk are provocative. (The published paper related to the talk is accessible here for free.) Chen's long-term research and surveys provide some compelling evidence to support the view that something basic like the existence of a future tense or lack of one can result in noticeable and measurable differences in behavior. Patterns of saving, for example, are correlated with the existence of a future tense. Wow!

Funny Translations from Chinese to English

The hardest thing to convey to students, especially lower level ESL students, is not to use a translating dictionary to write in English. Here are some very funny examples of signs (you may need to click on the replay button for Gallery after you get to the first photo) that obviously don't say what was meant. Most (all?) of them are apparently mistranslations or literal translations from Chinese to English. We hope that no one was injured by following some of the directions.

Even though there may be some pretty good translating programs online, creating signs are a challenge even to native speakers. To avoid this kind of comedic representation of English, it is essential to have a native speaker of English or a bilingual bi-cultural speaker of Chinese and English verify the spelling and meanings of signs before they go up in public. I have no doubt that Americans translate to other languages in the same fashion as the Chinese. As I pointed out here, we don't even make signs very comprehensible to our own people.

I hope that we can, however, all enjoy the many colorful Englishes used around the world and appreciate the effort that non-native speakers of English (who far outnumber us native speakers of English!) make to apply or master our tongue.

The Fancier the House, the Fancier the Words to Describe It

One of the areas of greatest interest to me in teaching ESL is vocabulary.  English is an incredibly rich language with the largest lexicon of any language in the world, and everyday people everywhere are affected by words, especially printed words.

Last year Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a brief article about a study on the language used by real estate agents to describe property.  One of the interesting findings was that the more expensive the house, the greater the number of characters were spent on describing the property.  Another way to look at it is that the fancier the house, the longer are the words (or the more words) used to describe it.  Just look at any real estate section of the newspaper!

Read some descriptions of mansions or luxury homes in San Diego and compare a $1,000,000 home with a $400,000 house. You can use the Word Count Tool to see if you can observe the pattern highlighted in WSJ. My observation just now is that I experienced a negative reaction when I compared a million dollar home with one for less than half that price because the description of the two houses, in this case, did not differ at all in number of characters. In fact, I had the feeling described below.

If there isn't a lot written about the million dollar home, a prospective buyer might suspect that it has a major drawback or shortcoming. In fact, Mark Liberman (Linguistics professor at University of Pennsylvania) is quoted in the article saying, "Given that all the descriptions of better properties are full of these empty-enthusiasm words, it might be interpreted by readers as an indication of problems if they're absent."  

We are definitely influenced by words, so it's good to be aware of all the power - indeed, 'empty-enthusiasm' words - wielded by marketers in every realm of sales.

Luxury apartments for monkeys at San Diego Zoo

Here are some popular high-end words for million dollar homes or to make a less costly house sound like a wonderful buy: exquisite finishes, luxuries/luxurious, expansive, gleaming hardwood floors, sea-view terraces, remodeled/updated to perfection, stunning.  If you want to grow your vocabulary of rich language, it's all around you. You can even find it by checking out real estate listings!  

More Really Funny English!

Some of you may have seen this set of 31 photos trending on Facebook. If you haven't yet, I hope you enjoy these very funny English translations of Chinese. As with most humor, explaining and analyzing the translation may destroy its hilarity. You'll know that you understood a sign correctly if you are chuckling to yourself or sometimes holding your sides from laughing so hard. Always keep your sense of humor.

Can You Teach English without Teaching Culture?

Most people would probably answer the above question with an unequivocal "No!"  On top of that, why would you want to teach a language outside the context of the culture that uses the language?  I guess I'm not like most, however, because I can see the point of teaching English in Switzerland, for example, using books that were created with Swiss people in mind - not for immigrants living in the USA and trying to learn American English.

The question of whether you can teach English without teaching culture is worth discussing. Maybe what we need to think about is whose culture we should embed the English in, ours or the culture where English as a foreign language is being taught.

At the beginning of this year in the Saudi Gazette, there was an article about how some Saudi families complained to a Saudi university about teaching English that had "inappropriate pictures and components of Western culture." Will learning English embedded in American culture change the value system and unique cultural views of an Arab student?  Does globalization via language lead to loss of unique cultural identities?

The fear that someone else's different and often attractive new language and culture will displace or "infect" one's own language and culture seems to be built into our human DNA.  This fear has probably existed since the first bands of human beings encountered people from another region, with another language and different customs and dress.  Throughout our history, languages have disappeared along with the indigenous people who spoke these rare tongues and who lived in non-industrialized small-scale societies.  Isn't it a legitimate concern that - with the spread of English and the cultures that embrace it - we will lose linguistic and cultural diversity? Do speakers of major languages such as French, German, Arabic, or Spanish, spoken by millions, have to fear that their cultural values will be destroyed or mutated by English?  Which English is the most dangerous?  After all, English is a national language of England, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Singapore as well as several African countries.

I've gathered some links together on the title topic and offer them to my readers for commentary and for cogitation.  For example, here is a discussion started by a well-regarded online ESL instructor. Another teacher argues in an advertisement and blog for its tutoring services that English is not enough. Finally, this one opens up a discussion of how to actually create a class to teach English as a foreign language and be sensitive to the "culture" issue.

As always in teaching a foreign language, the difficulty lies in implementing the principles and theories of cultural relativism in "real" classrooms. Often the books or materials teachers have to work with (if any at all, in some places) have been created for ESL students studying in England, Australia, the USA, or Canada. The vocabulary and topics concern life in those countries where English is the native language but may be inappropriate in Russia or Vietnam.

Going back to the original question at the beginning of this post, can we teach English without teaching culture?  I doubt it.  However, I do think we can incorporate more of the language (vocabulary) and context of the local environment when dealing with students learning English as a foreign language.  What I mean is that if you are teaching American English in Switzerland, for instance, it probably doesn't make sense to use a text that talks about baseball or American football heroes. It makes more sense to give Swiss students language and vocabulary for talking about relevant topics such as Alpine sports, famous Swiss mountaineers, or the cultural norms and customs of Switzerland. Indeed, there are many Englishes, and maybe our texts and other materials should reflect that reality.     

Test Your Knowledge of Spanish in English

Here's another crossword puzzle!  You can test yourself to see how many Spanish words you know in English.  If you're like me, you probably didn't know that all of these words have roots in español.  Have fun!

NB:  Because this online crossword puzzlemaker has a limit of 25 letters and spaces for the clues, the definitions are very short or terse.

The Logical Way to Teach English

I'm not quite sure how I found this article online.  Serendipity?  It was written by a well-traveled Japanese professor in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Chuo University, and it's an opinion piece about teaching English using "logic."  It is provocative and connects to my past roots in science studies.  I have long been fascinated with how science researchers who are non-native speakers of English communicate in English (as you can see from an earlier blog post in 2009).

I was, thus, excited to read this piece by an academic with a background in electrical engineering (who admittedly doesn't really like English).  The basic concept under consideration is that "communication [between non-native speakers at science conferences, for example] is established so long as there is logic" in the use of English.  The results of a "logic test" will be discussed sometime in September, according to the article.  You can be sure that I'll be checking in to see what the findings are.  Aren't you curious, too?

Test Your Knowledge of French in English (c)

By the end of last year, I had created three online crossword puzzles focusing on French words that are commonly used in English.  This is the third crossword puzzle.  There may be one or two repeats of words found in the previous crosswords, but you can see if you remember them here.  Good luck - and have fun with vocabulary!

The first link (a) is to my blogpost so that you understand how to use this online crossword puzzle site.  The other links take you directly to the crossword puzzle.  Have fun reviewing more French words in English!  Here are the links to the posts for all three crosswords, focusing on French in English (a), (b), and (c) = the most recent!

P.S.  I am aware that in one of the crossword puzzles, I used entree to mean the first course, and in another, I used it to mean the main course.  If you eat at a French restaurant in the USA, it could be the first meaning.  If you eat at a French restaurant here which has adopted the English meaning, it refers to the main course.  To avoid confusion, some restaurants avoid the French word completely, calling the first course, appetizers, and the main course, main course (what else?).

English is NOT enough

Although my profession as an English language instructor is being sustained by millions of people who want to learn English, we native English speakers are becoming the minority.  That is, since there isn't a lot of pressure here in the USA to learn a second language, we don't.  However, there is lots of evidence from brain-based learning research suggesting that being multilingual is a brain enhancement.  In addition, economic reports forecasting the job markets of the future say that bilingualism is better than monolingualism.

What does this mean?  It means that people who speak only English may be the dinosaurs of the future. In a recent article in Language Magazine, Kristal Bivona discusses the rise in importance of Portuguese as Brazil becomes an important economic force in the Western Hemisphere. Other reports suggest that Spanish is the language of the future.  If you see China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as markets to tap into, then Chinese, despite its daunting script and vocal tones, is a language worth learning. Not only that, we have to consider which Chinese to learn - Cantonese or Mandarin.

While Americans are opening up to China, some don't like the idea that schools in the USA are accepting funds from the Chinese government to teach Mandarin.  Despite NCLB policy that is supposed to raise the standard of education in this country, funding for education seems to be a low priority in most city and state budgets.  I guess the Chinese see a long-term benefit to teaching young Americans their language.  Those parents who aren't worried about some hidden agenda of a foreign power may find that their children who learn Mandarin Chinese will have a distinct advantage over their monolingual age-mates when they are old enough to enter the job markets in their 20's.

If only my ESL students could understand that they're actually in a great position relative to most of their instructors because English is their SECOND language.  They've got two languages to our ONE.

To memorize or not to memorize--that is the question....

A few years ago, I talked about memorization, but the topic came up again in a Wall Street Journal article at the end of last year and prompted me to rethink the subject.  Back in the day, memorization used to be a standard part of all my Spanish language classes from junior high school through high school.  In my view, it was a very effective tool for learning a foreign language.  What we now call "automaticity"was a large component of developing fluency in the language. Amazingly, I can still remember parts of poems that I memorized, just as I do in English.

If you're American of my vintage, you might have had to learn Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" ("Whose woods these are I think I know....  But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep....).  After one of my ESL classes seven or eight years ago, I impressed a couple from Mexico when I told them that I remembered a poem by Ruben Darío: "Juventud, divino tesoro...  ya te vas para no volver... Cuando quiero llorar, no lloro.  Y a veces, lloro sin querer...."  I have no idea where the words came from, but trying to think of something in Spanish brought parts of the poem pouring out of my mouth.  This phenomenon felt the same as my memory of the "times" table in arithmetic 9x2=18, 9x3=27...9x9=81...9x12=108.  It is a great advantage to be able to do these computations in your head.  Who needs a calculator?  In fact, a calculator slows down my brain as well as my answer.

You can practice reciting English at a site like English Central, where they've got great video and vocabulary exercises plus recording capability.  This one, for example, compares British and American English vocabulary for common or everyday items.  You can listen and record yourself. It even rates your pronunciation.

Here's another interesting link that gives you ideas for how to quote a long text verbatim.  I tried Lincoln's Gettysburg address just using the first letter of each word and was amazed that that mnemonic worked even decades after memorizing the speech.  It is amazing that some previously memorized material can stay embedded in the brain for years without using it and can be quickly reactivated.  Even though I don't demand it of my students, now I wonder how many of them memorize vocabulary.  Tomorrow I must ask.

Test Your Knowledge of French in English (a)

I often tell my students that if their native language is French, they have a distinct advantage over other non-native speakers because about 40% of English vocabulary comes from French.  That is, English is peppered with French, especially our language of food: maitre d', omelette, croissant, baguette, champagne, quiche, prix fixe, entree, soup du jour, and so on.  Then, there are those expressions, that je ne sais quoi quality of things that we admire and déjà vu and R.S.V.P....

So for fun, I've created a crossword puzzle for you to see how much French or English you already know. This puzzle has a timer and gives you clues and hints to the words.  It also can be used for building vocabulary and testing yourself to see how well you know the words.

FYI:  This online crossword puzzle-maker has a few quirks.  You cannot add any apostrophes or punctuation to the target word or clue, and there is a limit of 25 characters for any clue/hint.  When you type in the word, if you hit a key to enter a letter in a blank, it will NOT show if the letter you type is INCORRECT.  So, try another letter.  Also, below the crossword puzzle, you can click for an answer:  for a letter, the whole word, or the whole crossword puzzle.   Good luck!  Have fun!  Happy holidays!  Joyeux Noël!

Test Your Knowledge of French in English (b)

Here is another challenging crossword puzzle for advanced level students of English with some knowledge of French.  The words in the crossword are found in an English dictionary but come from French.  Remember that with this online puzzle maker, there are no spaces, accent marks, or other punctuation allowed either in the target word or the definition.

This is another way to develop and reinforce vocabulary, and I hope you have fun with it.  If you're a teacher, you can also use the site to create your own fun quizzes.  Let me know how you do!

"Chinglish"

Besides teaching English as a Second Language, I have a long-term interest in other Englishes. Chinglish, of course, is the word we sometimes humorously use to refer to the kind of English spoken by Chinese who are non-native speakers of English. This post, however, is partly about "Chinglish", the new play that was performed this summer in Chicago and is moving on to New York and (I hope, eventually) the West Coast.

Why did Davide Henry Hwang write the play "Chinglish"? It was in response to his experiences traveling in China. Despite his Asian roots, he discovered, as I have when I go to Japan, that our American upbringing compels us to see connections and disconnections between cultures and people's behavior and language. If we all speak in English, are we actually communicating?

First, I will give you a link to a funny YouTube video which streams a lot of Chinglish signs (some of which you may have seen at Engrish.com) with a nonsensical-sounding song. Next, you can play the game linked to the Broadway play, "Chinglish", to get you in the spirit of the performance. The answers are here if you want to skip the game. Finally, these are some links to a description of the play: interviews with the cast and the playwright (1, 2) and a review in the Chicago Sun Times. Cheers to Davide Henry Hwang and success to Chinglish!

Revisiting Indian English

One popular post that I've had here at 'Many Englishes' was on the topic of prejudice against Indian English. That was back in 2007.

Since then, I've had fewer phone exchanges with Indian customer service representatives than I had a four years ago, and we're not getting so many marketing calls at dinner time from non-native English speakers either. Maybe some American companies have learned that it doesn't help their product to outsource the telemarketing to people who are not fluent in American English. Perhaps these organizations have also become more discriminating in their choice of telemarketers, or accent reduction training programs have been very effective.

Indeed, last year I heard a discussion on NPR (National Public Radio) about just this topic. Instead of looking at Indian English from the outside, however, I'm trying to look at it from the Indian perspective (as much as I can from where I sit in San Diego). About three years ago, an article came out in the Washington Post which stated that "English-speaking is a self-confidence issue in India." What that apparently meant was that Indians themselves felt that it was important to speak English well in their own country. The article comments about a commercial where a young man from a well-to-do family feels embarrassed that his maid is listening to and singing along with a song in English which he himself can't understand.

What does it all mean? For a variety of comments and reflections on English in India, I offer some reportage from various online sources, such as Chilli in India, Global Voices, Mortarboard, and Language in India (1, 2). These latter reports and articles are presented to open up my readers (mostly American) to views on English from Indian English speakers.

Is English a 'true' multicultural language?

In a fall issue of the Japan Times, an article was published that got me thinking again about why English has stuck as an international language despite its many irregularities. Every day in the classroom, I am struck by the challenges that English brings to non-native speakers: the incongruities between spelling and pronunciation, the use of foreign words which are often not pronounced the same as the originals, and the abundance of sounds and structural aspects that do not commonly exist in other languages.

Dr. Nobuyuki Honna, an Emeritus Professor of Sociolinguistics and International Communication at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, the author of the article, is also the founder of The Japanese Association for Asian Englishes. Honna suggests that today's English would be more effective if it were truly multicultural. In other words, a language should reflect the culture where it is being used. However, when you learn English as a second language in Asia, you often learn it as American or British English. Consequently, the non-native speaker attempts to pick up expressions and concepts, customs and traditions associated with these Englishes, rather than adapt the English language to his/her own culture.

Professor Honna also claims that "Contemporary English has two major characteristics that no other language has ever developed in the history of linguistic evolution. One is its global spread and the other is the development of its regional and local varieties." I cannot deny the reality of the first claim, but I would add that the global spread of English correlates with the technological advancement of the worldwide web established in the USA (starting with the development of the ARPAnet) and is likely a bit of a fluke. Time will tell if the base structure of the internet limits its takeover by another language.

The second point about the unique 'development of regional and local varieties' of English is more problematic for me. Certainly, the Earth's population is larger in size than ever before, but regional and local varieties of French, Spanish, and German have abounded in the past. For example, recently, I was speaking to a friend who had spent some time in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where I also had done field research some 15 years ago. She commented about how difficult it was to understand their 'French.' They didn't have an 'accent grave,' for example. I have heard that Montreal (Canada), which is the second largest French-speaking city in the world, has a unique version of French, too. Whether or not, the varieties of French outnumber the varieties of English can probably be debated, but this puts the second claim into doubt.

Nevertheless, Dr. Honna makes many observations that are well worth examining in depth, such as 'mutual communicability' and a need to have 'language awareness' and recognition given to the many 'Englishes' spoken in the world. There is a huge range of topics for cross-cultural research raised in this thoughtful article. Check it out.

'The Sound of Science'

A classic Simon and Garfunkel song has been transformed into a catchy new one which this anthropologist-turned-English instructor couldn't resist. Advanced level students who already know the tune might like to sing along with this video. In addition, if you're really knowledgeable about evolution, American academics, and the English language, you might give a knowing laugh or two before the end. Enjoy listening and singing along now!