How to link language and culture into teenagers of today.

The relationship between civilization, culture and language, may sound a little bit crazy but if you analyze the concept you will see that the three of them are related. This is what you are going to read in the next topic. How is it that the construction of a language is basically the cultural base of a society? How this is one of the first steps to the formation of a civilization, how is it that these terminologies are related to our teenagers, and how can them being linked them to education.

The main point here is that when you ask someone about what civilization is? These people usually have no idea, recently I did a questionnaire and many people tended to confuse culture with civilization.To understand the whole context, the first thing that people need to do is to define civilization, which not many people know how to do it. The Cambridge dictionary defines civilization as: “a highly developed culture, including its social organization, government, laws, and arts, or the culture of a social group or country at a particular time” < http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=civilize*1+0&dict=A >. The definition made in the Cambridge dictionary is actually the one that put together all the concepts that I am trying explain. A civilization is in simple words, a group of people who work together and share the same cultural bases.

Now, the subject that comes immediately after civilization is culture, this is because these terms are really close related, culture is everything that a group of people share, like for example religion, customs and special celebrations. It can be said that each family have different culture. The Cambridge English dictionary defines culture as: “the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time”< http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=18888&dict=CALD >. Nowadays, there are some things that can be also called culture; these new sub-cultures that are now among the teenagers, like “Pokemons” and “Visuals”, but I’ll talk about them later.

You must be asking yourself, what civilization and culture have to do with language? Well, it turns out that with out language the simple idea of culture or even civilization is impossible. For example England, which is one of the most powerful countries in the world, was once just a small group of people with no country and land. They arrived to what is now England from near countries, like Germany, Finland, France, etc… and as you can realize by now, English is actually a mix of different languages. But they weren’t a country until they develop their own writing system, which opened a lot of new windows to a developing country. As you can read, language is one of the most important tools in a civilization and culture, it is something that as I said before, a group of people share and exchange.

Consequently, the relationship between civilization, culture and language is always going to be important. These concepts are what keep people unified, in other words you can know what other people like throughout speaking. You realized that you may share some activities, and then with out even noticed you have developed a really important bound like a friendship. The simple terminology of civilization, culture and language can be pertinent in different context and that’s how you can introduce the importance of language to a class.

I think that teenagers nowadays are creating new ways to express themselves, and this is actually something that can be used to teach English or any other language. Young people understand themselves as unique individuals that need to be with a group of people who understand and think like them. Therefore, making them noticed that they are behaving like small societies, with different customs and among them they use special slang that make them unique. Pokemons, Visual, Aggros, etc… are sub-cultures that as a society or cultural group share opinions, ideas and in some cases special ideologies. Throughout all this you can try to introduce the importance of languages in a class, and hopefully kids will feel more in touch with the subject.

Concluding, the relationship between civilization, culture and language is something that interests us all, because believe it or not we are all part of a society that works together for a common goal.

"Modern Times" by Charles Chaplin

Modern times is a movie that tells us the story of 2 different characters, first: Chaplin’s character, who was a hard and funny worker. And a girl, who helps her family. Her father was unemployed and as he couldn’t bring food to the house, she felt the impulse of do it herself by stealing it.
In this movie we can realized many facts that were real in those days, when the life as we know it stared. The first thing that call my attention during the movie, was the very first scene, when the screen shows us a group of sheep and then the scene changes showing us a group of people walking together. I think this is a metaphor that was trying to show us that in these new days that were coming, industrialization, people was starting to act and fall into a routine of work, where they are no more than a sheep that works for the factory.

The film also shows us how people were all the time looking for a stable job, and how riots, famine and theft where things of everyday. What seems more interesting in this film is that even though many people were suffering the consequences of not having a job.

Some other people were having a very good time because there was a department store full of food and clothe, there was also a restaurant where people were eating and dancing really happy.

In this movie we can see both sides of the coin, the side of the poor people who work really hard to kept a job and the rich people who had all the benefit of the industrialization but suffering the consequences, like the pollution and the delinquency.
I can say after everything that Modern times is one of Charles Chaplin’s master piece, where he showed to the world the reality of the industrialization days, and what people was able to do to survived. At the end of the movie, both characters left the city together really happy and with a lot of hope in the future, I interpreted this as a message from Chaplin to society, that even though thing may look really hard, we have to be strong and fight for the future.

Age of reform or sacrifice

If we star thinking about the industrial revolution and the consequences that brought to the English society, we could realize that many people suffered during this hard process.
To make a clear idea of the issues, we have to understand that in those days a new era was breaking into the country, which was supposed to bring successful and greatness to England and their people, but instead of that, the industrialization of big companies was a potential bomb.
Thinking that England was already in a bad economic time, the industrialization was supposed to repair everything and help the country to star going up again. But with machines in the factories less people was needed and the number of people with out work grow up amazingly.
We have to considered that there was many people coming from town to work in these amazing factories and their machines, but these working conditions wasn’t healthy. People started to have diseases because of the working condition and what was most scary of all, was the fact that kinds were working too.
People in those days never thought about the impact of all the town people coming to the city, we are talking about overpopulation, insane working conditions, kinds working or stealing on streets and famine. Besides, the new machines were causing pollution, something that was completely new in those days.
If we read the poem “the cry of the children” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), which I think show the reality about the conditions that children where living, we can have an example of what was going on.
To conclude, the main problem was the overpopulation in cities that weren’t prepared for such arriving. Moreover if we think about of the people coming from different parts of the country we’ll se that these people brought to the big city, their slangs and languages variation. Mixing the English that people talked in the city with the different slangs and accent of the countryside. The Victorian age or also called, the age of reform, was a painful time for English people where the only winner was technology evolution.

The Protestant Queen

The movie “Elizabeth, the golden age” is most about the religious war between Catholicism and Protestantism, where kingdoms were defending what they thought was the right thing to do, and to prove which the most powerful empire on Europe was.
If we start thinking about the first scene of the movie, we can realized that there was a problem inside the country because half of the it was catholic and the other half was protestant. What to do? The Queen’s consulters were telling her to kill all the catholic people who didn’t wanted to be turn protestant. This is mainly important because they could be a threat to the kingdom.
During the film we can see that the Queen was really objective with this theme she thought that no one could be murder just because they were catholic, she said “they are all English, and English people are not judged until they commit a violation to the law”. This was a wise decision, I think. She never talk about their people as “protestant people” she always said English people, my people. Spain in the other hand wanted everyone to be catholic and Queen Elizabeth was a threat to that ideal, even thought Spain, which was a powerful country, saw England as menace not because they were protestant but as a growing up kingdom.
Spain tried to invaded and conquered England, because it wanted to be the most powerful country in Europe, and used the religion as an excuse to attack. They were helped by” Mary Stuart”, who was Scotland’s Queen, and catholic too. But Spain used Mary Stuart’s ambition to be England Queen in Its own benefit. They attempted against Queen Elizabeth’s life with the support of Mary Stuart, but the attempt was just an excuse so Elizabeth would kill Mary Stuart for treason.
Her death was the perfect Excuse for Spain to Attack England, but England loose and England remained as a powerful country.
The movie was amazingly great; it showed us a powerful woman standing for her people and her country. I think that it’s a movie everyone can see and learn about English history.

"Stonehenge"

Stonehenge is a beautiful monument located in South United Kingdom. Many people I wonder for the form and reason to be of this edification.
Stonehenge calls the attention of scientists, archaeologists, writers, etc…. all of them have tried to explain the official use of those stones.

Stonehenge is not quiet young because the oldest stone in the construction is from the 3100 BC. I said this because Stonehenge was built and rebuilt many times regarding the different people who used to rule over the country, from the Anglo Saxons to the Celtics. Each one of these cultures put something new into the edification making it unique and quiet mysterious.

Since if was discovered Stonehenge have been protagonist of several digs which so far hadn’t discovered its principal function. But a few months ago a new digs, which is the first one in forty years, has discovered several bodies under the edification but all of them seems to be sick, or at least they used to be. What they have concluded it’s that Stonehenge was a sort of healing circle was people could go looking for salvation.

We can say that Stonehenge it was and it is nowadays a circle of mystery for everyone who have ever been there or at least read about it. Moreover, no one can surely say why was it made, we still see it like a beautiful monument to The United Kingdom history.

"Language evolution, Vikings and Danes"

During the process of development of England, the country was rule for different people all over. But in the south were the Danes who were up in the power until the Vikings invasion in 787 AD.
The Vikings were men of fight and rule over the south of England during the 11th century until the attack of the Anglo Saxons in 878 AD.
After the great strike back, the Danes were moved to the Northeast of England separated from the rest by the “Dane law” which was from Chester to London.
Finally the Danes were able to recover the whole south with several attacks under the influence of “Cnut”. They rule from 1016 to 1042.
The importance of this is to understand that across the years in England different cultures were raiding the country and this means that the people who stay just in the middle of the conflict was acquiring the different costumes, culture and what is important for us language.
With this I mean that English in fact is a mix of different languages and accents, but it was constantly changing because of the several wars and power changes. Because if you are going to rule over a place you will obviously pretend that everyone speak your native language. Imagine that same happening many times during a long time. The result is now of course “English”.

Ways of seeing the past and the future.

The way people see the world it is always diferent, we are unique and so it is every opinion and understanding of the world. It is like the appreciations of a master piece like “The Monalisa” many people will see a woman standing to be paint, but some other will see a sad person or a person without any expression; the way we look art it is an example of how big is the difference between the views of humanity.
When we refer to art it is because it is the best example when we try to explain why we all see the world with different eyes. Moreover paints or sculptures are already a person’s view of something, a great emperor like Napoleon, or a great master piece like “The last dinner” of Davincci. When we look to these paints we are creating an opinion about them, but also we are seeing these moments just like the artist saw them, and over everything we are wondering how was the artist able to paint it if he just saw it for a short period of time.
The ability to catch a single moment in old times was unique and of course really appreciate, but if we want to do it we just use a camera, a really great device that allow us to be artists all the time. But do we really wonder ourselves how was for the artists to realized that may loose their work, that nobody else will call them to do a portrait or more important to know that the paints that they did before may not be that important because now people would just take a picture of them with a camera.
But instead of that the appreciation turns completely different, people star thinking that they may have a copy but it is not the same that have the original, why happened that? Was the original painting able to express something that the picture couldn’t? Maybe the picture that we take of a master piece does not express what the artist wanted to say, because we took the picture we made the copy, it is our way to see the world what changed the original master piece.
As we can realized many of these paintings may be old but showed us how the world was seeing in other days in others times, when there was no camera, where we could see different realities thanks to a person who paint the rich the poor, they paint the world as we knew it.
Nowadays it is important for to think as this past, ponder if we have done well in old times, we have to remember that in old times artists couldn’t paint what society didn’t want them to paint. The world had to be paint just like God did it. Like an example Vincent Van Gogh who sow the world with really special eyes, and as consequence his paintings where never sell until many years before his death.
We can’t commit the same mistakes like we did in the past, we need to be aware of the past, it is ok to see the world differently, we all are different and we are also able to understand and accept others opinion and mistakes, that’s how we can build a new future for everyone.