ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN THE NORTH OF IRELAND

      ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN THE NORTH OF IRELAND

The dialect of English language within the North of Ireland has a lot of influence from Scotland. In 1609 Gaelic language was suppressed by the British. English language in the north of Ireland is a mixture between English, Scot-English and Gaelic. In the northwest of the island, people developed their own style of English.

Typical accent in the north of Ireland is the rhotic (pronunciation of the r when it is preceded by a vowel) , for example: farm, first, etc.

There are other features in Irish English:

-/t/ isn’t pronounced as a plosive where it doesn’t occur word-initially in some Irish accents; instead, it is often pronounced as a slit fricative [θ̠]

-The distinction between w and wh is preserved , for example, wine vs. whine.

 -There is some variation with the consonants that are dental fricatives in other varieties (/θ/ and /ð/); after a vowel, they may be dental fricatives or dental stops ([t̪ʰ] and [d̪] respectively) depending on speaker.

-The distinction between /ɒː/ and /oː/ in words like horse and hoarse, is preserved, thought not usually in Dublin or Belfast.

-A distinction between [ɛɹ]-[ɪɹ]-[ʌɹ] in words like herd-bird-curd may be found.

-/l/ is never a velar, except in (relatively recent) South Dublin English.

-The vowels in words such as boat and cane are usually monophthongs outside Dublin: [boːt] and [keːn].

-The /aɪ/ in the word night may be pronounced in a wide variety of ways, e.g. . [əɪ], [ɔɪ], [ʌɪ] and [ɑɪ].

-The /ɔɪ/ in boy may be pronounced as [ɑːɪ].

-In some highly conservative varieties, words spelled with /ea/ and pronounced with [i:] in Received Pronunciation are pronounced with [eː], for example: meat, beat.

-In words like ``took´´, speakers use /uː/ instead of /ʊ/. This is most common in working-class Dublin accents and the speech of North-East Leinster.

-/eɪ/ often becomes /ɛ/ in words like gave (``gev´´) and came (``kem´´).

-Consonant clusters ending in /j/ often change:

     

           */dj/ becomes /dʒ/, for example: dew/due, duke and duty sound like ``jew´´,

             ``jook´´ and ``jooty´´.

           */tj/becomes /tʃ/, for example: tube is ``choob´´ and tune is ``choon´´.

Here, we’re going to show some videos about English accent in areas of the north of Ireland.

       WALLACE & GROMIT IN THE CURSE  OF THE WERE RABBIT 

I am going to talk about the film Wallace and Gromit in the curse of the were rabbits. This film is an animation comedy film where the main characters are an inventor addicted to the cheese and his dog Gromit.

                            

The other characters of the film are the participant of an vegetable competition.

 

The plot of this film is that the Vegetable competition that has to take place is threatened with a plague of rabbits that steal the vegetable. The mission of Wallace and Gromit is to protect the vegetable garden of the participant.

The vocabulary use in this film is easy because his main aim is entertain the children and for this is necessary that they understand the language use in the film.

Only the human characters talk. They use the RP Standard English:

They distinguish between long vowels and short vowels.                         Example: car /kɑː/ man /mæn/

They have not a rhotic “R”. They only pronounce it when appear in final position of word or syllable and it is followed by a vowel. Example: car /kɑː/ carriage /ˈkærɪdʒ/

Some of the actors who put their voice to the film are: Peter Sallis, Elena Boham Carter …

The dog can´t talk but he expressed his ideas and opinion with facial language and body language.

In this film the characters are made with plasticine. It is an original form because all the characters of animation films are made by a computer program.

 

Wallace is showed as a British citizen. They want to do this character the most similar to an British person to bring closer to the English culture because Wallace & Gromit British icons of British culture around the world and they appear daily in the newspaper “The Sun”.

 

Olympic Games

 OLYMPIC GAMES

The Olympic Games are events where athletes of all the world go to a chosen country to participate in different sports competition.

The sports competitions are:

-         Diving

-         Modern pentathlon

-         Swimming

-         Synchronised Swimming

-         Basketball

-         Handball

-         Cycling BMX

-         Cycling Road

-         Football

-         Volleyball

-         Canoe Sprint

-         Rowing

-         Boxing

-         Fencing

-         Judo

-         Taekwondo

-         Table Tennis

-         Weightlifting

-         Wrestling

-         Equestrian

-         Cycling Mountain Bike

-         Beach Volleyball

-         Triathlon

-         Canoe Slalom

-         Archery

-         Athletics

-         Gymnastic Artistic

-         Trampoline

-         Hockey

-         Shooting

-         Water polo

-         Badminton

-         Gymnastics Rhythmic

-         Sailing

-         Tennis

The symbol of the Olympic Games is five rings that symbolise the five continents. They are united to symbolise the sporting of all the world.

In England has taken place four Olympic Games:

1908 - Fourth edition- London

1944 - Thirteenth edition – London

1948 – Fourteenth edition – London

2012 – Thirtieth edition – London

 The sports competition in London has taken place in different places : Aquatics centre, Basketball Arena, BMX Track, Box Hill, City of Coventry Stadium, Copper Box, Earls Courts, Eton Dorney, Excel, Greenwich Park, Hadleigh Farm, Hampden Park, Hampton court Palace, Horse Guards Parade, Hyde Park, Lee Valley White Water Centre, Lord´s Cricket Ground, Millennium stadium, North Greenwich Arena, Old Trafford, Olympic Park, Olympic Stadium, Olympic Village, Riverbank Arena, St. James´ Park, the Mall, The Royal Artillery Barracks, Velodrome, Water Polo Arena, Wembley Arena, Wembley Stadium, Weymouth & Portland and Wimbledon.

 

All the countries fight to celebrate the Olympic Games in them but only four are chosen. It occurs because celebrates the Olympic Games has a lot of benefits.

One of the most Important benefits it´s the economic increase and the image of the country that report more tourist. These terms are associated: How more tourists come to the country more economic increase.

The other Benefit is the recognition in the entire world because the sports competitions take place in different parts of the country and show it. We can compare it with a shop window because only shows the good things of the country to interest the people who see it.

The Olympic Games always produce different attitudes in people but all the people have fun seeing the games.

 

 

EXPOS IN UK

 

 

EXPOS IN UK

 

I am going to talk about the Expos that had taken place in UK.

There were a lot of Expos in UK. All of them have showed aspects of UK: Social aspects, Technological aspects …

They had taken place in England and Scotland. They began to take place after the Industrial Revolution to show the improvements of each countries in specie of meeting.

 

 

The Expos that have taken place are:

* 1849 - Birmingham (England) – Exposition of the British Society

* 1849 - Birmingham (England) – First exposition of British Manufacture

*1851 - London (England) – Big Exposition of Industry Works of all the Nations–The Crystal Palace

* 1857 - Manchester (England) - Art Treasures Exhibition

*1862 - London (England) – Universal Exposition of London (South Kensington, England)

* 1866 - London (England) – Universal Exposition of London (South Kensington, England)

* 1871 - London (UK) - First Annual International Exhibition

* 1872 - London (UK) - Second Annual International Exhibition

* 1873 - London (UK) - Third Annual International Exhibition

*1874 - London (UK) - Fourth Annual International Exhibition

* 1884 - Edinburgh (Scotland) - International Forestry Exhibition

* 1885 - London (England) - International Exhibition of Inventions

* 1886 - London (England) - Colonial and Indian Exhibition

 * 1886 – Edinburgh (Scotland) - International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art

* 1886 - Liverpool (England) - International Exhibition of Navigation, Commerce and Industry

 * 1887 - London (England) - American Exhibition

* 1888 - Glasgow (Scotland) - International Exhibition

* 1899 - London (England) - Greater Britain Exhibition

* 1901 - Glasgow (Scotland) - Glasgow International Exhibition

* 1905 - London (England) - Naval, Shipping and Fisheries Exhibition

 * 1906 - London (England) - Austrian Exhibition

 * 1908 - London (England) - Franco-British Exhibition

* 1910 - London (England) - Japan-British Exhibition

* 1911 - London (England) - Coronation Exhibition

* 1911 - London (England) - Festival of Empire

* 1911 - Glasgow (Scotland) - Scottish Exhibition, Art and Industry

* 1912 - London (England) - Latin-British Exhibition

* 1914 - Nottingham (England) - Universal Exhibition

* 1921 – London (England) - International Exhibition of Rubber and Other Tropical Products

* 1924 - Wembley (England) - British Empire Exhibition

* 1929 - Newcastle upon Tyne (England) - North East Coast Exhibition

* 1938 - Glasgow (Scotland) - British Empire Exhibition

*1951 – London (England) - Festival of Britain

Most of the Expos took place in The Crystal Palace that was as an specie of conference place.

The Expos produce an improvement in different aspect of life:

-         It produces a refinement in technique innovations and new material for the construction.

-         It produces the economic increase of the country for the money that leaves the tourist and the upper classes that inverts in new things.

In conclusion the Expos are as a sample of the economic and technological power of the countries.

Poor Use of English Language in Politics

The function of politics is to serve the public and provide the members of the public with the truth on matters concerning it as well as trying to solve any problems that may appear, with honesty.So the language of officials should be accesible and understandable as well as honest.However,when it comes to government officials and politicians in the UK, the language used is distorted, it is used in a way that misleads the public and is no longer the language “of the real world”.

As George Orwell put it “political language was designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. Language used by politicians and civil servants serves to disquise some wrong they may have done, something that would be a source of shame to them, something that does not fit with the image a politician must have. Politicians also use language called “grandiloquently opaque language”, to seem as if they are saying something extremely important, when in reality what they are talking about is a trivial matter.

Euphemisms such as “downsizing”, “realignment of resources” “efficiency savings” are being used instead of budget or staff cuts.The civil service uses the term “delighted” for nearly everything the ministers are asked to do. Politicians say they “stand ready” to deal with any problems that may appear, but this actually means they will not do anything unless it is urgent and absolutely necessary.

The problem is that when the members of the public need to understand what is being said to them for official business and transactions with administratives of the government, the language used is too official and hence the public cannot make sense out of what they are reading.This leads to individuals avoiding to deal with matters concerning the public authorities.

A suggestion is to rid of the phrases, words, the language in general, used to mislead the public in order for the members of the latter to be able to communicate and understand government officials effectively.



Source: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmpubadm/17/1702.htm

We believe in God

For more than 1.400 years the countries preceding the UK has been dominated by different forms of Christianity. Nowadays a majority of inhabitants are still related to the Christian faith, but a change in their religious habits has taken place. During the 20th century a dramatic fall in church attendance and a wave of inmigration supported the appearance of other kinds of religions.

In 2001, a survey reflected that nowadays Christianity is supposed to be the major religion, but followed by Islam, Hinduism, Neo-Paganism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism. Moreover a great number of people do not identify themself with any kind of religion. This fact has made the UK become a secularised and also called post-Christian country.

This graphic illustrates the distribution of religions in the UK:

There is much public discussion of such issues as how secular Britain really is, how religiously diverse, whether people see political and religious identities as conflicting, and how polarised religious views actually are.

Religious data is also important for public decisions by local authorities, central government and other public bodies. Religion may have a role in forming “social capital” and in building civic life. Religion may affect lifestyle and health, where people choose to live, and what opportunities are available to them.

Moreover, social and moral politics are severely determined by this religious beliefs, the whole country depends on how its religions behave for the development of the nation.

Twit,twit!

Twitter is one of the most popular social networking services, gaining more and more followers every day. More than 500 million people post their tweets on a daily basis, while it is very popular among the  “Hollywood stars” as well, functioning as a bridge of communication with their fans. This is not something that you did not know.

Have a look at this or even better follow the link http://zoom.it/IIY6

This is a London map showing the languages used in Tweets! The majority of them are in English, but there are a lot of other nationalities too. What’s next? Spanish, French, Turkish, Arabic, Portuguese, German, Italian, Malay and Russian are the languages used with this order, respectively. In total, the languages detected were about 66, among them Swahili, Creole and Basque. Impressive isn’t it?

Ed Manley and James Cheshire at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, collected 3.3 million tweets that had been posted in summer 2012 during the period of Olympics, visualizing the languages of Twitter. The classification of course does not seem that reliable in order to discuss about ethnic groups or minorities, but as an approach it’s really interesting!

Sources http://londonist.com/2012/10/twitterlanguage.php