The Story Of English

Wasn't Scottish the same language as English but with a different accent? That's what I thought, but apparently, according to Episode 4 of The Story of English, it isn't.

The video starts with a Scottish newswoman giving the news, obviously. At first, I thought she was joking or something but then I realized it’s the actual way they speak. It was actually really funny.

This episode talks basically about the origins of the Scottish tongue and it’s difference with regular English.

The narrator tells us that “during the fifteenth century, Scottish was the speech of kings and aristocrats and the inspiration of poets.” (3:38). Which is basically telling us that it was the language of the upper class.

I really don’t understand why this language was classified that important if to me it sounds like a joke. Well, that’s just me. Anyways, times have changed and thank God now a day it is not denominated as a “high class language”.  

I googled “Scotland” and only images of castles, fields and landscapes appeared. They were pretty amazing. Now I understand people’s need for learning this language. Times have not changed; everybody has always wanted to be denominated as high class, especially in such a beautiful country as Scotland. 

Loud Words

Loud Words

Don Juan

Yesterday, I attended the English play "Don Juan". I arrived a little late so I wasn't able to see the beginning, I was a bit lost, but managed to catch up.

First of all I was very impressed to see how good actors students are! I would have never imagined. I laughed so much during the play. The funniest part was when the wrestlers were fighting against the thieves because one of the actors accidentally threw a stick, hitting the other one really hard on the head! Sorry I just had to point that out, priceless! Anyways,

The Lord of the Fallacies

Mahatma Gandhi is an inspiration and role model to many people in the world. I never knew exactly what he did or what his thoughts were, but after reading this amazing speech, I can consider myself one of his followers.

It took me a long time to find fallacies in Gandhi’s speech. So I decided to look in other people’s blogs to help me out. I managed to find a few.

Almost at the end of the speech, Gandhi posits: “Hence I gather that God is life, truth, light. He is love. He is the supreme Good. But He is no God who merely satisfies the intellect, if He ever does. God to be God must rule the heart and transform it. He must express himself in every smallest act of His votary. This can only be done through a definite realization, more real than the five senses can ever produce.”

In this quote I was able to identify some fallacies including misinterpreting the evidence. He starts the paragraph by telling us God is practically the essence of life, convincing the audience of it. But ending the paragraph, he tells us all the bad things that don’t make a God, which are hard to fulfill, making us confused.

            I was also able to identify in this quote the fallacy of ignorance. He doesn’t give us an example of a God, therefore, not convincing us that it exists.

Wow it took me some time to identify only two fallacies in a quote. I know there are much more than two but I wasn’t able to explain them. 

The Out-Of-Bounds

“The purpose of argument is to be persuasive, not correct.” (156) As this chapter says, sometimes we tend to go off topic and care about winning instead of persuading. Which is wrong. It only causes our audience to get mad, and it doesn’t get you anywhere. Heinrichs states that “when someone commits a logical fallacy, it rarely helps to point it out.” (156)

At the end of the chapter, the author came up with seven  “fouls” in argument, which I thought were very true. Here are some of them with examples:

1.                   “Refusing to hear the other side.” I would say that this is the foul that we most commit. When proving a point we think that we are the correct ones and don’t want others to change our minds. From minute 1:20 to 1:36 of this video, the man changes his mind about his order and the woman doesn’t let him explain and she just calls security.

2.                   “Humiliation.” In this video, the girl corrects her father for pronouncing a word incorrectly; instead of agreeing with her he laughs at her correction.

3.                   “Threats.” In second 0:29 of this clip, these two girls are fighting, just when one of them threatens the other by saying: “you have no idea what I’m capable of.”