Thursday, October 14, 2010

Option1

       This book Bastard Tongues a story expressed by Derek Bickerton , the author, who spent more than thirty years his time researching language from different areas including Guyana, Mauritius, Hawaii, Suriname and many more. The overall idea of this work is to explain what language is, how it transport from generation and how it is used. The objective of this book is not only to focus on the different languages but on language within a language. In other words, creoles or dialect creoles and dialect are languages that have evolved from the mixture of two or more languages. In Guyana the native speaker speak English; however in a dialect. Same as in Suriname, they speak a mixture of English and Portuguese Creole. Do not get confused with pidgin because creoles have a larger vocabulary and grammar. Bickerton express first hand accounts on how he was able to analyze the different languages it is as if he is a field work linguist who goes out to get answers for his hypothesis.
                   
        When I seen the title Bastard Tongue I knew in my mind this was a book for me. When I read a the table of contents on Amazon I noticed that one of the title of the chapter is Grappling with Guyana. I thought to myself how cool can it be to read about language from the perspective of where I was born. I shared a great connection with the author and his experience. From the way he was able to put his first hand account in book form is amazing. I thought it took a great about of skills to write about a different dialect not familiar to you.the thing i dislike about this book is that Bickerton waits till the end of a chapter to get his ideology across instead of spreading it throught the chapter.All in all I enjoy reading this book because it remind me of back home because of the language Bickerton uses.

3 comments:

  1. the author of your seems to be very knowledgeable, considering that he has been studying language for over 30 years. before this class i didn't even have an idea about how many different dialects there are. i think its great that you get to read about it in your book.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good job on your presentation! i enjoyed the section where you translated words from your vernacular into "academic English". was it exciting to read about the language of your culture in your book?

    ReplyDelete