Blog 9:

http://www.pbs.org/speak/words/sezwho/socialsetting/

This article talks a lot about language and society, and how the affect on another. It gives examples about how language differs between different races, genders, and locations. Even when it is all the same language, the slang and dialects can make it hard to understand one another.

I think that the race and gender differences in language are mostly stereotypical. They don't affect a person's language as much as where they grew up and who they grew up with. If a young black male grew up in an all white neighborhood, he would puck up the slang and accent that they use there, regardless of how similar or not it may be to "black english." Also, as stated in the article, men and women have stereotypes of knowing different language too. A man is supposed to know more about tool names and car parts, while a woman is supposed to know more color names and decoration pieces.
However, if a man is a painter or an interior designer, he will know the "women's" terms and know less of the "men's" terms. Or if a woman is a mechanic, she would know the "men's" terms and vice versa.

Overall, I think that where a person lives will affect their language much more than what they are.

Blog 8: Acquiring language as an adult.

Many people say that learning a language is too hard once they become an adult. They say that their brain doesn't work the way it did when it was a child, and therefore, they cant learn a new language. It is true that the brains work differently in adults than in children, but adults certainly still have the ability to learn more languages. This article makes a few good points about this. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/10315238/Are-children-really-better-at-foreign-language-learning.html


First, a child has to learn language from the beginning. They don't know grammar or many words yet. As an adult, one will already be fluent in a language and understand grammar rules. That gives an advantage to adults because they just have to learn to change some of the rules around and learn only a few new rules to get the grammar of the new language. Second, when put into a similar environment, an adult learns language just as well as a child. In general, a child will be learning a language in a class type setting, playing games, singing, and reading with the language. Many adults try learning on their own. If an adult plays games with the language, they will enjoy it more and be more willing to study. The singing is very useful because it puts the language to a tune or rhythm. Tunes and rhythms are very useful for learning because they are very easy for a human to remember. If an adult makes the effort to get these things included in their language studies, they will have a much more fun, and easy, learning experience. The article also give more examples that I didn't put here.


No matter how old you are, don't let anyone tell you that you are too old to acquire a new language.