Project: reworking classic literature

I love literature, and when you love something, you try to share it... don't you? Back in November, my 1º Bachillerato students worked on Poe's masterpiece The Raven, and the experience was really good. However, I thought it would be good to challenge them a bit more, by asking them to look at classic poets differently and therefore, to consider their works more relatable in spite of the time and cultural distance between, say, Lord Byron and a 17-year-old girl from Madrid.

When I was at university, I managed to change my view of classic poets- from cold, statue-like, unapproachable, venerable figures to warm, human and immediate people with day-to-day problems just like anybody else. I likened them to modern-day artists, and in a way they were. In an era (and a long one!) when the only way to make your works known was by writing them down, the immediacy artists enjoy nowadays,with Twitter accounts and media coverage, was unavailable to them, but that is not to say that poets in the past didn't behave unlike modern-day rockstars and had their quirks, eccentricities and diva moments... not forgetting that the reason why they have gone down in history is because they wrote wonderful poems, in the same way that, say, John Lennon has written wonderful songs and they supersede his personal life.

I digress. I presented my students the following:

The first step, of course, was to try to understand the poems. I didn't dwell in the literary devices, figures of speech or structure more than was strictly necessary- these are English language learners without a huge interest in such things-, so I tried to reach the meaning of the poems by asking the following questions:

- what is the topic of the poem?

- have you experienced something similar?

- have you read/watched/listened to anything similar?

- what sort of situation might have led to this poem being written?

By answering these questions, students had a more direct way to find themselves in the poem, as it were- they found links to their lives (either first-hand experience or witnessed events), and imagined situations which could have inspired the authors to write those lines, or other situations where the content of the poem would apply.

Their imaginations were working and their creative muscle was being exercised. Exactly what I wanted!

I split the students into groups of 4. I gave them a grand total of 5 periods for this. As usual, some of them threw themselves into it while others went through the motions-- but nobody was in their comfort zone.

You can check the final products clicking here.

Have you done anything like this in class? How was it? Please share your experience! 

Scottish English

There are a lot of difficult accents and, I'm not going to lie, the Scottish accent is one of them. It's not only the pronunciation that makes it a bit hard to understand, but also the fact that there are a lot of Scottish words most other native English speakers have never heard of, and they are used widely. This is because in most informal situations, people use a variety of English called Scots, which a lot of people from Scotland consider a language in its own right (and a lot of visitors do, too), and many Scottish people take pride in their distinctive sounds and words.

They do say that one of the clearest varieties of English is spoken in Scotland. In Inverness, for example, people speak in a recognisable Scottish accent, but one which is clear enough for anybody to understand without trouble. Go to Glasgow, on the other hand, and you may well need an interpreter.

What are the main characteristics of the Scottish accent, then?

Pronunciation

Broadly speaking, this is what makes it different from standard English:

- Scottish speakers roll their 'r', and it's a strong 'r', not the soft sound Americans make. It's sharp, it's short, and it's there. As a result, a word like 'girl' is not pronounced 'gal', but almost 'gerrrrral', with a small vovel sound between the 'r' and the 'l' (unpronunciable otherwise). Words like this include 'curl', 'whirl', 'Carlsberg'...

- Scottish long vowels are far less frequent than in standard English. 'Bath' contains a short /a/ sound, whereas in RP it's long, /a:/. Thus, there are some words that become homophones, like pull and pool.

- Some dipthongs become long vowels. For example, house is pronounced 'hoose', about is pronounced 'aboot'... and not all dipthongs stay the same. Home is commonly pronounced 'heim', toes is 'teis'...  And some words turn short vowels into dipthongs, like head: 'heid'.

- In some areas, speakers drop the sound /t/ when it's between vowels: be'er instead of better. 

- The sound /x/ ("j" as in "jamón" for Spanish speakers) exists, although it is a bit softer. Common words include loch (=lake), dreich (=wet, damp weather), och (sound people make to express annoyance)... it's very common in names of Gaelic origin, which are ubiquitous once you venture into the Highlands.

Vocabulary

There are a lot of common words that don't resemble regular English:

aye = yes

nay = no

ken= know

gie = give

bonnie = nice

kirk = church

bairn = child

lass, lassie = girl

blether = chat

braw = beautiful

haar = mist

how? = why?

crabbit = grumpy

loan = alley

wifey = woman

In Scottish English, it's common to use 'no' as a shortened form of 'not', although the word order is not always the same as in standard English.

'I'll no tell ye any lies" = 'I won't tell you any lies"

'Don't' is often pronounced 'dinny', and 'didn't' is 'didny', with the stress placed on the first syllable.

'I dinny ken him' = 'I don't know him"

It's also fairly common to use 'ye' to mean 'you', or 'yes' and 'youse' to mean 'you' in plural.

'I'll meet youse outside the pub' = 'I'll meet you all outside the pub'

All of these make it quite exciting (and, if you're new to the country, quite nerve wrecking) to decipher what people are saying to you.

Once you get used to it, it's quite alright, really.

Here are a couple of videos to illustrate some Scottish accents.

First, David Tennant reads Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. Tennant comes from Renfrewshire, in the West of Scotland. 

Next, a short clip from Brave, the Pixar film. Merida is played by Scottish actress Kelly MacDonald, a Glaswegian actress. Her mother, Elinor, is played by English actress Emma Thompson, who does a sterling job at speaking with a broad Highland accent. 

The trailer for Sunshine on Leith is a good example of the accent generally found in Edinburgh. 

Finally, in these videos you will find out some of the problems some Scottish people face because of their accent. 

Thanks for reading! See you next time! 

Australian English

Here's one of those accents most people would be happy to understand. However, few English learners try to sound Aussie when they try to sound 'natural'. At least, that is the case in Spain, where most native English teachers come from either the USA or the British Isles and, naturally, teach their students their own accents. 

There are two main differences between dialects: vocabulary and pronunciation. Grammar tends to stay more or less the same in every dialect, although we could make some generalisations about this as well and say that such-and-such a dialect is similar to British English or to American English.

I'd say that Australian English is similar to British English, as far as grammar is concerned, and thanks to TV series like Neighbours, a lot of Brits have adopted some Aussie words, and even some of the intonation typical of speakers down under. 

VOCABULARY

This video illustrates some differences between Australian English and American English. 

In this video, you can see how Australian speakers tend to shorten words in colloquial speech. 

PRONUNCIATION

Well, it's been a bit of a challenge to find good videos to illustrate pronunciation... most of them were either really boring, or had been made by non-Australian people. Anyhow, here we go. 

An Australian comedian, Simon Taylor, goes over a few Aussie accents. 

Here, you have a comparison between Canadian English and Australian English. 

I hope you enjoyed this post... see you next time! 

History of English: double words

Hi all,

I came across this short video recently, and I would like to share it in this blog. It illustrates neatly why we have some words that mean more or less the same thing, but that look very different.

This phenomenon isn't exclusive of the English language. In Spanish, for example, the words perro and can mean the same thing (dog), and their origins are different (Basque and Latin respectively), and there are countless other words like that. Without going into too much detail, this depends on how much one language has been exposed to others, whether or not one of the languages was used by the ruling classes or was considered more prestigious, and so on.

Apart from the words illustrated (sometimes, literally!) in the video, there are others. Can you think of any?Why do you think they have both survived and are in use nowadays? Feel free to use the Comments section below to post your ideas.

See you next time!