Final Wrap-Up

 













Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sociolinguistics

Image
For my last blog post, I wandered around YouTube looking for something that would catch my eye. I almost started a 1+ hour long video about how U.S. military linguists learn languages so quickly. I decided that might be a bit more than I wanted to take on. Then, this video popped up. My favorite part about this class, Introduction to Language Studies, has been learning more about how language ties into the different parts of society. Eleven minutes seemed like an easier video to digest, as well. The video, from Crash Course Linguistics , explains how linguistic differences between and within languages are based on factors such as our location, education level, race, gender, and more. There are so many different variables that play into how we speak with each other. Taylor, the narrator, started out the video stating that everyone has an accent. It is influenced by who we grew up with and where we live. As someone that grew up in Iowa, a place considered almost "accent free", ...
Read more

Learning about the Gullah Geechee language

Image
 Learning about the Gullah Geechee language I stumbled upon Sunn m'Cheaux and his work while killing time on TikTok. I wanted to make sure my For You Page was diverse and included creators of color so I followed him. I found how he connected language to racial issues fascinating. Prior to TikTok, I had no idea how much I seriously enjoyed those parts of linguistics. The short video lessons opened my eyes to concepts I had never had presented to me before. For example, Sunn m'Cheaux made a post (see video attached at the top) on July 10, 2022 about the use of the word "throwed" in Usher's hit song "Confessions" (see video attached below). He explains that "cross-over" (white) audiences misheard the lyrics because "throwed" was not a formally recognized word at the time the song came out.  Watch this   These are my confessions Just when I thought I said all I can say My chick on the side said she got one on the way These are my confessi...
Read more

Linguistics Outside of Academia

Image
When I tell my Alexa to announce that dinner is ready, not only does this magical electronic device understand what I'm saying, but it does just that by first ringing a dinner bell on all my connected Amazon devices and then speaking my recording of, "Dinner is ready." This is no small electronic feat. Behind all the devices we carry that understand spoken language: Siri, Google, Alexa, and more, is a team of Language Engineers using their knowledge of linguistics and human nature to improve the accuracy of our verbal commands. I read a fascinating interview with Language Engineer, Brent Woo, on the website Superlinguo . I had never thought about linguistics being such an important part of making our artificial intelligence (AI) work the way it does. When asked, "What is your job?" this was Mr. Woo's response: Language Engineers work on the language designs for voice assistants. When you say something funny like “let’s raise the roof” and the voice assistant...
Read more