Losotho visit

Today, we were so lucky to have a visitor from Lesotho in our class. Moliehi Sekese, who is a teacher in Lesotho told us about the circumstances in Lesotho and compared them to ours. Lesotho is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the children in her school are far from as lucky as we are; they only have two computers to use for 700 students, and one teacher to teach a group of 100 students. Their classrooms are only three quarters the size of the classrooms we got, and we're only about 25-30 students in one classroom at the time. Sekese told us that they're in a lack of tables, chairs and books. When she teaches a class she has to write down everything for her, as well as their assignments. There is no possibility for the students to do work by them selves; they're dependent of their teacher. 
Many of the children have to worry about things as if they got enough food, if they have anything to wear ect. There is few places with electricity and running water. They have to walk very far to get their water. I wrote a little poem about my associations to this.

Far far away

Too far to really understand

Just imagine 

A crying child

An empty stomach

A closed door

The sun is heating 

The throat is dry

The people walk far far


Far far in the heat
To the nearest waterhole
Carrying buckets on their heads


Small children 
Only hope for a better life
Is to get an education


Schools without electricity 
Without pencils and books
Depending on their teacher


Children going home
Don't knowing if there will be dinner

 Will mom survive today?


Diseases fighting the population
But there is a hope in medication
A hope in plants


So they plant
They make their own botanic gardens
Where hope will grow


Poem by me

The Varieties of English

There are many varies of English in the world today which might sound odd, but considering English is a global language this is not that weird at all. With all these countries all over the world; in Asia, Australia, America and Europe and in Africa, and all with their different languages, dialects and accents there's no wonder how their ways of speaking English turned out differently.

The most known English varieties that we know well are, perhaps, American English, British English and Australian English. But in this entry, I am going to write about three more kinds of english; Singapore English, Caribbean English and Hinglish.

Where Singapore English and Caribbean English descend from are quite obvious, but Hinglish might be a little bit trickier for some to figure out? Hinglish is a blending of the two words "Hindi" and "English". Hindi is the official language in India, besides English. Hinglish is most common in the Urban and semi-urban centers of the states in India where Hindi is spoken, and the Hinglish speakers are assumed by some to soon outnumber the native English speakers.

The columnist Devyani Chaubal was the first author to use Hinglish, and after her Shobhaa De who used Hinglish elements in her books and columns in the Indian magazine Stardust.  And through the years, Hindlish has been used in advertising, for example in slogans. An example is the Pepsi commercials; "Yehi hai right choice, Baby" which means "this is the right choice, Baby".  There is also written a book called "The Queen's Hinglish: How to speak Pukka".

Hinglish is also affecting the English spoken in England because people adapts words and expressions used by the Indian immigrants. Kind of like the "Kebab Norwegian" language in Norway which is Norwegian influenced with words and expressions from other languages.

But back to the Singapore English. This is a dialect of the English language used in Singapore, influenced by both Chinese and Malay (Malaysia). The Singapore English is emerging and the the difference between the English of the various ethnic groups in Singapore is mainly the intonation.

David Deterding claims that it is fully possible to sound Singaporean and still be easily understood in the rest of the world. Considering this I would guess that the Singaporean language havn't influenced the Singapore English much.

The Caribbean English is a broad term for the various dialects of the English language spoken in the Caribbean. The daily use of English in the Caribbean includes a different set of pronouns, for example; me/meh/mi, you/yuh, we/wi/alawe and dem/den/deh for "them". They often skip the "th" in words

The Caribbean English is also influenced by other languages, as Irish and Scottish. For example the Jamaican English: "Whierr iz dath bwoy?"  Also from Bahamas their tongue is similar to the accents of south western England and Wales: "Wey iz dat boy?".

I think it's curious that there are so many languages, so many varieties of English with influences and accents, and still, most of them are understandable. Don't you? Letting the English language getting influenced by other languages makes us richer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_English

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinglish

http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/SingaporeEnglishterm.htm

Gran Torino

 Today we saw Gran Torino in our english class. Gran Torino is a movie directed by Clint Eastwood from 2008. The movie is about Walt Kowalski who fought in the Korean war and is played by the director, Clint Eastwood. Walt is a grumpy old man who dislikes(as it seems) everyone, especially Asians, and is not exactly happy when a Hmong family moves in next door. The Hmong people are from Laos, China and Thailand. Two of the family members that moves in are a tough girl called Sue and her brother Thao. While Sue is tough, Thao is quite the coward. He is quiet and insecure.
Because of various incidents, Walt and Thao and Walt and Sue gets to know one and each other and relationships are built.

The movie consists a lot of racism between ethnic groups, especially between "white" and Asians. From my opinion Hollywood often portray people of different races as enemies and there is often a lot of violence, guns and swearing. Kind of mafia like with threatening of families ect. I think Hollywood often overdo it when making movies.. At least so I hope.

It can be really hard to be an immigrant, because you need to be able to become a part of the new society and you're also dependent to be accepted by the new society. It is also very important that you do an effort yourself; to learn the new language for example. Also you have to accept the new society and their traditions and morals.

Megacities

Today's theme in English class is megacities. First of all, what is a megacity? To become a megacity, there has to be more than 10 million inhabitants. In our English book, that we use in class, there is a text about megacities including a quote by Kofi Annan who where the UN secretary-general. Kofi Annan speaks about the problem about people moving from the country and into the cities. The rural population is decreasing while the urban population is increasing. Cities are having challenges accommodating new inhabitants.

Beneath the quote  there are three statics. The first one is illustrating the percentage of the growth of the urban population . As we can read from these diagrams, in 1800 there was a growth of 2% which have increased to 47% percent in 2000. The diagram is also foreseeing the percent in 2015 and 2030. In 2015 it's foreseen that the percent of urban population growth in the world has increased to 52% while it's 60 percent in 2030. That's a huge increase.

In the next diagram we're shown the statics of the rural and urban population percent in different regions in the world. We can see the population statics in 1995 and 2015, a twenty year difference. As we can read from this diagram, the region with the widest rural population is Asia with 2249 million people in 1995 and it's foreseen that this will increase to 2380 in 2015. In 1995 they had an urban population corresponding 1180 million people and 1970 by 2015. As we can see, both the urban and rural population is foreseen to increase. After Asia with the largest rural population there is Africa, and then Europe. In Europe the urban population were 518 million people in 1995 and foreseen to increase to 532 million in 2015, while the rural population which were 209 million will decrease to 188 million people. After Europe there is South America and on top, with the lowest rural population, and urban population matching Africa's there is North America. In 1995 the rural population were only containing of 67 million people and the urban had 231 million people(Africa: 247mill.) In 2015 it's foreseen for the rural population to have decreased to 59 million and the urban to have increased to 301 million people.

What we can see from this diagram is that the rural population in the developing countries is increasing as well as the urban is, while in Europe and America the urban population is increasing and the rural decreases.
This is of course a global challenge because the developing countries has the biggest population increase and then will get, as Kofi Annan said, problems hosting their new habitants, both immigrants and natives.

The third static is showing a rank of the world's biggest megacities. The three biggest cities is Tokyo with 33.4 million people, New York with 24.1 million and Mexico City with 21.7 million people.

Japan

I worked together with Heidi Emilie and Eline while learning about Japanese culture.We decided to watch some japanese anime to learn about the culture. The culture is reflected in the anime, though it's very overdone. However, we watched some episodes of a comedian anime. Afterwards we discussed what we had seen and what we thought was different in the japanese culture from the european. For example, we thought that homosexuality is much less a tabu in Japan than in Europe. Neither is cross-dressing.

Also the Japanese seems more straight forward and not as "cold" as europeans. They show their feelings much clearer than we do through the way they talk and body language. Also I have the impression that japanese girls are very girly. They're very interested in hair dues and nail design. After all japanese(and Asia) is quite famous for their imaginative nail designs. The west has recently started to adopt this trend, though it's not a big hit yet.


Also the Japanese has a quite unique fashion culture. Ever heard of Lolita for example? But also, the japanese are very found of the western fashion.
Also the japanese food is very different from the european. We have already adopted the sushi, but there's still yet to come! Pocky is one example. Really tasty Japanese candy which can be bought in a few "foreigner" stores in Norway.
In Japan they also have the Sakura season, which is when the cherry trees blossom. This is a very popular time to visit Japan and therefore also quite expensive. But very beautiful! They also have the hot springs which are very different from the western standard spa. And the school uniform is very common as well.

So all summed up, the japanese has quite a different culture from us europeans. I know someone who is studying there right now, and she wrote on her blog that the first time she arrived in Japan she was shocked. It was so different and weird.

I think the way we worked on this was great, and I would not have chosen any other way! :)


Pictures:
[link1] [link2] [link3]