Blog 9: Hawaii Pidgin

I saw this video in one of my classes from last semester, and have been waiting for this blog to show everyone.  Hawaii pidgin is a language that based on English, a way to communicate with English speakers. Although, the Hawaii pidgin language has a mixed of many different languages such as Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, and so on. A man in the video said this is a result of immigrants coming from different areas, just everywhere. He does not know when exactly this happened. For example the Pidgin word "manapua" that is used in the video was the influence of the Chinese language, that probably come from the word "meo'ono pua'a," that translate to "delicious pig thing."  I thought that was quite interesting, especially the way they speak with mixtures of different languages, borrow words basically. 

Blog 8: Language Acquisition & Child Development

Your child is growing more social as he learns how to speak. 

Link: How Language Acquisition Affects A Child's Development 

I found this article about how children's development be affected by language acquisition. Obviously, language is an ability we have to communicate, either speaking, facial expressions, or understanding others. Although, it is different for children they are still developing their skills and learning new things everyday, even when they hit their adult years. What I found interesting by reading this article was that there are "stages" in the child's development in  language. As a infant that is when they start disguising tones in people's voice such as, "no." Also, the ability to read facial expressions like if your angry, and the beginning of communication skills. As a toddler this is around when the children start to talk a little more, they should be able to speak about 600 words. In preschool stage this is when adults start to get annoyed with their kids, because they are able to speak in full sentences and asking so many questions. This is when the child is starting their grade school years, and developing more on their language skills. Also, reaching the more complex sentences structures. I and no idea there were actual stages in the child's development of learning the language(s). In addition the more the child speaks the more social and is communicating with others, since they are still trying to learn what is the world they live in. 

Blog 7: Eyak Language

Link: Last Fluent Speaker Dies 

The link above gives an audio video of how a women dedicated most of her life trying to preserve the language of her people along with other dying languages. In the video it also gives us a example of how her language was spoken, which is something you should definitely check out!

When Marie Smith Jones died, she took an important treasure: the language of the Eyak Indians. Jones, who died six years ago, was the chief of this tribe of the southern Pacific coast of Alaska and the last person who spoke their language with fluently.

This is a truly sad news to hear. While listening to the audio video I thought to myself, "Why are there not more people learning about dying  languages? How can we preserve them?" Which Jones demonstrates some ways of how to preserve the languages, so we won't lose them completely: creating a dictionary or make recordings.

Each of these languages expresses a worldview and what it means to be human, and as the language dies, these visions are lost as well.

Blog 6: Homonyms, Homophones, and Homographs

In chapter five it talks about homonyms, homophones, and homographs. Homonyms words that have different meanings. Homophones are words that sound like each other such as to, too, and two. Homographs are words that have the same spelling, although the way you say it and the meaning are different.  Each of these components are similar to one and other that may sound confusing and we wouldn't be able to tell what the word means, if it wasn't for the context of the sentence. The video above is a very cheesy song about homophones, but it does get the message across, how the words can be confused from another word.

Link: Homonyms, Homophones, and Homographs 

Blog 5: The Five Senses

Link: Five Senses In Human Communication 

I choose this topic because I thought it was interesting how we use our five senses to communicate. We think that the process of the senses are simple, but there are so much things that take place when receiving these messages. 

First sight, we can see the facial expressions, gestures, and the body language of other person or thing. These pictures we see turns upside down to your brain then your brain tells you what kind of response you make of the picture.

Second is hearing, this is the most common way of communicating. In the ear there are three parts where the sounds travel to send messages to the brain. The outer dart is the first part where sound goes through to get to the eardrum. Then the sounds goes to the middle ear where sound becomes louder. Last part is the inner ear where the tiny hairs in the cochlea sends the signals to the brain. By having two ears we can tell where the directions of these sounds are coming from.

Third taste, babies are a great example that displaying the sense taste to communicate.  Babies are learning how the world works by tasting everything around them to see what they can or cannot eat, which can be funny sometimes. In your tongue there are these things called taste buds that sense four different types: sour, sweet, bitter, salty. The front of your tongue you can taste sweet, the back you can taste bitter, the sides you can taste sour, and the all your tongue can pretty much taste salty.

Fourth touch, we feel things to communicate. For an example we shake hands with one and other to show agreement or a polite way of greeting someone. Another example is people hugging each other to show they are friends or they are happy with each others company.We are touching things there are receptors in the skin that send signals to the brain.

Finally smell, the hairs in our noses called sensory hairs is what helps us distinguish the different smells in the world. For an example smoke if there is fire around you or the wonderful smell of flowers. 

I find how each of the senses works in order for us to communicate interesting in its own way. I agree with the article our senses does help us a lot in communicating. Each of the five senses does its contribution for us to recognize everything the way it is or the way it is not. the article does make me want to learn more as to how exactly this works. This most definitely affects the world because if we didn't have our senses we will be robots who can't feel anything or experience for ourselves.

Blog 4: Morse Code

Link: Morse Code

While I was watching ones of my favorite shows, Bones, love that show. Anyways in one of the episodes they had to use analog types of technology in order to communiceate without being track at all. My thoughts lead to one thing then another and somehow I started to think about morse code, a type of communication using a telegraph. What I really thought was fascinating was the different combinations of dots and slashes there are for each letter of the alphabet. I agree with the article saying that when there is a difficult situation morse code is a great way to communicate. For an example in the military they sometimes use the morse code to communicate. If they had not use the morse code then their plans could have been exposed to enemies, so yes this can affect the world. Of course this makes me want to learn more about morse code to communicate in such difficult situations.

Blog 3: Autism Childern

Link: Affects In Communication 

One of my friends takes care of autism kids because her brother also has autism. This is what made me wonder, more aware, to learn about autism people. I soon realized that autism can affect their communication to learn words and to communicate with other people. While most babies will listen and try to imitate their parents words. Some autism children will be more interested in sounds, for and example a vacuum. There are some autism children that have a huge vocabulary and use long sentences, but when it come down to social interaction it is difficult for them. I found this quiet interesting. Autism can make it very difficult to make friends due to the social interaction that they might lack. I agree with the article autism can have affects to communication, but I do wish I knew the reason why. Also, making me want to learn more as to why we cannot figure out the reason autism makes communication hard for them. This does affect the world because if we learn more about autism, maybe we can communicate in way that it does not make them uncomfortable.