Blog 9

Slang? Maybe Not Such A Bad Thing

I really enjoyed this article and it's all about how slang begins and then sticks around which starts in spelling errors that then just happen to stick in common language use. It then goes on to discuss how if it's a good thing or a bad thing for teenagers to use it and ultimately says that it is a good thing. This is because kids are playing with language and helping the development of language and not just sticking to rigid grammar rules. I think that this is nice to hear because kids and teenagers get a lot of criticism for the slang that is used and it is often deemed as something that will be the downfall of higher thinking. This article sheds a different linguistic friendly approach to slang. If the younger generation is playing around with language, then I think that's using it to its full potential because language is arbitrary in forms of communication and is fluid due to each individual persons take on it.When language is diversified and ever changing, I think it becomes richer and more ingrained in the culture because it's something the new generations make up and it continues to happen with every new bunch of children. Overall I loved the different insight on texting and communicating as a teenager.

Blog 8

Brain anatomy and language in young children

This article is about a study done on children on the acquisition of language. The researchers hypothesized that the part of the brain they would be researching that helps children with the learning of a language would be gaining myelin. The thought was as the acquisition of language progresses and becomes greater, the amount of myelin would increase. This didn't turn out to be the case because even in children as young as one had a substantial amount of myelin already in the brain so the idea then became that the environment in which the child is in plays a role in acquisition. This study isn't just to understand how children learn language, but it will also help figure out the average way in which a language is acquired and in turn help understand how children with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia learn language. If that can be done, then there can be tools to help children like that overcome obstacles in an easier manner if the root of the problem s detected. It is also said in this article that parts of the brain that didn't seem important in learning a language became useful later on in their development. I think this just goes to show that as a mind of a child grows, different parts of it become utilized because more complex thinking is going on. Not only has the understanding of language happened when a child starts school, but the deeper knowledge of grammar and putting a sentence together is becoming more profound and rounded so it only makes sense that the same part of the brain would be used for language alone. Lastly, the myelin didn't develop in other places as the region of language usage in the brain moved, it stayed where it originated further implying that surroundings have a role with a child's language development.