The aim of this blog is to serve as a meeting point to those who study or have studied English philology and, more broadly, to all those who love literature and language.

9 May 2010

LANGUAGES

The Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies (Southampton University) includes in its website different kinds of resources, among them a list of 700 reasons for studying languages, all of them quoted from diverse sources such as linguists' works, surveys done to sixth form students, EU documents, and many more. After a bit of browsing, I have chosen this reason in order to provide an example:


"Languages give us access to other "countries of the mind", and help us to look back at our own country and culture from a different and more healthily critical perspective"
Reference:
Footitt, H. (2001) 'Lost for words' in the Guardian, Tuesday October 23 2001

Another section of this website contains the Power Point presentation Why Study Linguistics?, an informative and entertaining slide show aimed at encouraging people to study linguistics.

I've stopped at the following slide:
"What makes a word beautiful?" When reading it I have recalled an evening among friends when someone proposed us to say our favourite words. I found it curious the possible reasons that could make us select words. I'm not saying them here before inviting readers -anyone around here?- to share their favourite word in any language.
Posted by Maite P. at 16:33
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4 comments:

  1. Maite P.15 May 2010 at 15:15

    Well... not too many contributions so far... Anyway, blogs can also be useful to take notes. Just by sheer chance I've come across the following three blog posts which deal with the idea of 'favourite words' in the last hours:

    A way of using Spanish 'favourite words' in the classroom, http://apiedeaula.blogspot.com/2010/05/el-grupo-en-el-dia-e.html

    'La palabra más bonita del español'. Some writers, journalists, politicians... choose a word they like and give some reasons to explain their choice, http://www.materialesdelengua.org/LENGUA/lexico/palabrabonita/palabrabonita.htm

    Some contributions in another blog, this time in English, http://wordstogoodeffect.wordpress.com/your-words/

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  2. Anonymous17 June 2010 at 12:30

    Hi, Maite! I have a question: Who was the one that proposed such a game? Maybe it was a woman? For no particular reason I can't imagine a man suggesting it.
    Any comment?
    Juan

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  3. Maite17 June 2010 at 17:16

    It was a man. At least he looked like a male. Anyway, it was a curious gathering. Five people in a house in a small village in Bierzo. Two of us had not met the person who suggested the game before, but communication flowed easily. Part of the interaction took the form of this game. Funny.

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  4. Maite P.21 June 2010 at 22:15

    Just taking note of another blog post on the issue of favourite words: http://www.fzayas.com/darlealalengua/?p=1434

    When I played the game I realised that many of the words we chose were of an Arabic origin like albaricoque or alhelí.

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