WRTG-101-003

As I entered the American world, a new form of language was presented to me: slang. Yes, as I came into the U.S. I already knew English pretty well, but I was definitely not updated on the slang. Going to high school, I would hear plenty of words I didn't know from my classmates, such as "hip", "fierce", and "low key". Now, after having spent almost two years here, I can proudly say I am a slang-used as well, or I'm very "hip" to slang. But this made me question why is there such a big slang culture in the United States? First, we need to know what slang is. Britannica.com defines it as Slang[:] unconventional words or phrases that express either something new or something old in a new way. It is  flippant , irreverent, indecorous; it may be indecent or obscene. Its colourful  metaphors  are generally directed at respectability, and it is this  succinct , sometimes witty, frequently impertinent social  criticism  that gives

“Chao como estas?” “Ciao come stai?” Even to a person who doesn’t speak neither Italian or Spanish these two sentences sound very similar. It is known to basically everyone that Spanish and Italian sound very alike, but I would argue that is basically the same language. In Italy, you are required to choose a language (apart form English, of course) to take in middle school. The most popular choices are either French or Spanish. I, of course following my life philosophy of “work smarter, not harder”, chose Spanish. I though it would be an easy ride given that I knew already that the languages were very similar so I wouldn’t have to work as much as learning French. Given that, I was not stressing that much about the class, but as the first lesson came around, I was surprised how the teacher could talk in Spanish and me and all my classmates could understand her perfectly. Someone could have a full conversation in Spanish in front of me and, yes, maybe I wouldn’t

Coming from Italy, we use a lot  of swear words, at least young people do, but since I came to the United States I noticed one huge difference: many people here use swear words in very friendly ways. The most noticeable one I found was the word "bitch". I remember my American friends saying "How are you, bitch?" or "You're such a bad bitch" and it took me a while to figure out that they were actually being nice to me and not insulting me. In Italy, calling someone bitch is taken seriously, as it is a very offensive term, but here, it seems to signify strong female friendship, why? I went to my bible for American slang: The Urban Dictionary . The definition they give is very interesting: one of the most versatile words in the english language; it is used to express a multitude of emotions; anger, anticipation,  despair ,  endearment , envy, excitement, fear, horror, joy, shock, surprise, warning; all achieved by one's enunciation and  intonati

Having an Italian background, I was used to read words as they are written, nothing more and nothing less. But, as I was learning English, I came to realize that it is not the case for this language, but why? I have struggled extensively with silent letters in words such as knight or island, as it seemed crazy to me that someone would not pronounce certain letters if they were so clearly in the word. I have also always wondered why, as English comes mainly from latin, the same root language as Italian. Claire Nowak explains the history of these silent letter in her article "Why Some English Words Have Silent Letters" by saying: about 60 percent of English words contain a silent letter. But these often distressing words weren’t intended to be so confusing. In many cases, these silent letters actually were pronounced, like when “knight” sounded like “kniht” or “bite” sounded like “beetuh.” In the Middle Ages, the English language was rocked by the Great Vowel Shift, a m

As I was doing research for my paper topic: forensic linguistics, I came across a Ted talk called "Forensic Linguistics Profiling & What Your Language Reveals About you" , which talks about forensic linguistics (the application of linguistics knowledge, methods and insight to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure) and how it could be applied to social media. I really thought this was interesting because so many crimes nowadays are committed behind a computer. From bullying to fraud. In fact, Harry Bradford talked about online harassment, and that around 20-25% of people who experience it online do not even know and never met the person who is harassing them. Forensic linguistics, though, could help fight that. It could analyze these anonymous people's language and deduct information about them such as their age, gender, education and much more. It is truly fascinating how forensic linguistics can be used in so m

As I was doing my daily Instagram scrolling the other day, an interesting picture by @factonfeed  came up on my feed. Now, Instagram is not exactly known for its source reliability, so I decided to more research. Just starting from my personal experience, I do think that I kind of switch personalities from Italian to English. I believe in Italian I might sound more knowledgable, as I know more words, and I become more extrovert than I already am (in English). The article " Switching languages can also switch personality: study"  states that People who are bicultural and speak two languages may unconsciously change in their personality when they switch languages, according to a U.S. study. Another article that I found on Psychology Today   also mentioned a really interesting quote by a Bilingual person, who says that in English their speech is very polite, and they always say "please" and "excuse me". I do have to admit that I feel a very similar way