Category Archives: Uncategorized

Just a bit of a rant this time: It has come to my attention that a student at my high school qualified for all-eastern orchestra. He is an amazing cellist, probably one of the best that has ever gone through that school district. You would think that the school would send him to represent our music program, but no, they didn’t.  The school didn’t want to “waste” the money on sending him and a teacher to the music festival. Others even offered to chip in to let him go, because this is an amazing achievement not only for the student, but for the school district. The music students are outraged at this, because they are already under-appreciated and under-represented. The student himself was not too upset by this, but he still wondered why the school wouldn’t allow him to go, especially when it would make the district look good.

Honestly it irks me to see a personal friend of mine being denied the chance of a lifetime. It upsets me to see that there are schools that care so little about their music programs. It’s annoying to see that my high school orchestra can no longer sell tickets; we are only able to take donations. It’s terrible to see students that are truly talented being hindered by their own school, where kids are encouraged to be themselves and express themselves in a way that they love.

Why is it that music is not appreciated in some areas? My high school has some of the best musicians in Northeastern Pennsylvania, but they are rarely recognized as much as the sports teams. My school has one of the top 10 cellists in Pennsylvania but he isn’t well known outside of our hometown. Over half of the PMEA district orchestra in 2017 was from Abington Heights, and we were barely recognized.

I guess that no matter what, sports will always trump music and art. Such a shame.

Language contact is an interesting topic because you never realize how prevalent it is in everyday life. Language contact between many European languages lead to a large number of loanwords in English. If you look at some words, you can see that some words are directly from another language. For example, do you write in a journal? That’s a loanword from French! Jour is how they say “day” which makes sense, because one typically writes in a journal daily.

Another example is “bon voyage” which is also directly from French. The word voyage itself is straight from French and “bon” means good. So when you say this to someone, you’re wishing them a good voyage. Another French example is “bon appetit” when you’re telling someone to enjoy their meal.

There are also simple words used in everyday life that you might think were English words. Some foods like croissant and bratwurst are directly from foreign languages. Other words like genre and rendezvous are also directly from French. There are also words from German in the English language. A few examples are waltz, kindergarten, and fest.

Interestingly enough, there are also words from non-European languages in English as well. The words glitch and klutz are actually from Yiddish. You see Japanese words like karate, karaoke, and origami. The word chocolate is actually derived from a Native American language, due to the cacao plant being indigenous to the Americas.

When you stop and think about it, you can see that you’re already on your way to knowing vocabulary from other languages. Words come from all over the world and it’s cool that we experience it, sometimes without realizing it!

In my last post, I mentioned that a school district near mine had thought of getting rid of the music and art programs, just to save money. I just wanted to talk about this in more detail. I have first hand experience in music and theater programs and they were absolutely fantastic for me. Through my high school orchestra alone, I was able to make some amazing friends. These friends stayed with me through the years, even though we only saw each other maybe 3 times a year. I was able to form friendships with amazing people, some of which even became some of my best friends. I also learned to express myself through music. I found songs, both old and new, that I fell in love with. My orchestra class unlocked a passion in me that I never knew existed.

My point here is that music is not just an extra curricular to some people. For some people, it’s a way of expressing themselves when they have no other way to express themselves. It’s an outlet for people that aren’t academically inclined. Just because a student is bad at math doesn’t mean that the student is a bad student. People all have talents, some have scientific talent, but some also have musical or artistic talent. Students need to be able to express themselves and not go through a school day upset because they go to class after class feeling sub-par about themselves.

Schools need to start realizing that “core courses” are not the only important courses. Schools need to think about the student body and not just money. School boards need to look at arts and music like they’re the same as STEM.

Kids are told to follow their dreams, but those very same kids are discouraged when their dreams conflict with the social norm that “the world needs more engineers” etc. If we, as a nation, are going to tell kids that they should do what they love, or that they should follow their dreams, then we need to make an effort to help them follow those dreams, not hinder their progress.

There’s an interesting concept that I stumbled upon recently that got me thinking. The “Middle English Creole Hypothesis” states that the transition from Old to Middle English was not an evolution, but a complete change in the language.

Linguists look at written works of Old and Middle English and see large differences between the two, even if the sentence was the same. This was due to the Norman conquest of the British isles in 1066. William the Conqueror, who spoke a French-based language, brought his language over to the Britain.

The combination of the now lower class Anglo-Saxons, who spoke Old English, and the higher class Normans gave way to language contact. Since both groups continued speaking their own language, a new pidgin language began to form. A pidgin language is essentially when two languages begin to form one new language.

After years and generations of people, this pidgin became a creole language. A creole is a pidgin language after it becomes one’s first language.

Linguists believe that this new creole is what we know as Middle English, since the vocabulary and syntax of Old English changed greatly. This is why Modern English is so screwed up. Every time that you think “man, this word is weird” it’s likely because of the creolization of Old English.

It’s interesting to think of the how language contact changes an entire civilization essentially. In modern day, this is a rare occurrence, as the number of native Spanish speakers in the USA is not beginning to change the English language. There are few examples of the two languages interfering with each other, but “Spanglish” will likely never become an official recognized language, as funny sounding as it may be.

Across the country, we see the continuous decrease of non academic and sport related programs in secondary education. Whether it be art, language, music, or even architectural designing, there is something either being underfunded or straight up cut from the curriculum.

I know I’ve preached this before, but I cannot stress this fact enough; Math, Science, and Literature are not the only important subjects in school. Some people are not wired for that, per say. There are some people that excel at music and language that very rarely get to shine because of school boards not seeing these subjects as important.

From personal experience, I can say that both students and teachers care about these pushed aside subjects. People need to realize that the arts should be valued equally as much as the “main academics”. The fact that there are people in the world that are are looked down upon in society because of low math scores is astounding. That student might be an incredible musician or artist, but the world may never know.

There is a school district in my home area that recently proposed cutting its music program, and many people I know, both from the district and outside of it, were outraged. I personally knew some musicians that graduated from this school and they started a petition to bring the program back.

Under-representation and under-funding of the arts is a serous issue in the world. People need to see this and then see how valuable these skills are. Just because it’s not a “mainstream” course doesn’t mean that it’s not important.

It’s interesting to think about the meaning behind names. You’re given a name at birth and here in the US, you’re called that essentially for the rest of your life. I personally always wondered why my parents chose the name “Jason”. My mother said that she liked the sound of it, and my father said that he just agreed with her.

After a small amount of research, I learned that “Jason” is of Greek origin and it means “healer”. My parents did not know this before they named me. Interested in this, I decided to look into etymology of names. I then found out that my Vietnamese middle name, Thien, means “benevolent”.

I would have never guessed that my Italian father’s name, Raymond, is derived from a Germanic word meaning “protector of the word”. He always thought that his name had something to do with the concept of the world, hence the “mond” section of his name. My mom’s name Eileen is actually an Irish version of Helen, which is of Greek origin.

Learning this just made me more interested in names, so I looked into my last name, Giovagnoli. After searching, I did not find anything oddly enough. I had asked my Italian friend and his family if they knew, and their answer was astounding. Giovagnoli roughly means “son of big John”.

My family was also astounded when they heard this, since they had never looked into the meaning either. This encouraged us to look into the family tree to look for someone named John, or some variation.

What about you? What does your name mean? Is there a reason you were named that?

Something that I’ve always found extremely interesting is the origins of words, this is referred to as etymology. This process looks at the root of the word and possibly derives what exactly the word comes from based on the root. Usually, the word is only able to be traced to an old language group, however that is still fascinating to me.

For instance, the word “word” is Germanic in origin, stemming from the German word “Wort”. Looking at  both German and English, there are many similarities as I’ve mentioned before. English as we know it is relatively young in comparison to other Indo-European languages, due to the Norman invasion in 1066. With William the Conqueror bringing a Romance based language into the Anglo-Germanic culture, the language began to shift from Old English to Middle English. Due to this shift, spellings changed as well as pronunciation. This is why some German words are recognizable to a non-German speaker. Consonants shifted and “d” became “th” in many cases, and “b” became “v”. This is evident when looking at the word for “bath”. The German word for “bath” is “Bad”. The “d” at the end shifted to a “th”.

Another interesting concept is what I personally call “the why of words”. I look at certain words and ask myself “Why would ____ be called ____?” An example that is always one of the first in my head is the French word for “potato”. The word is “pomme de terre” which literally translates to “apple of the Earth”. It’s strange how the French viewed the potato as an apple. Maybe it was due to the similar round shape of the two foods? Who knows? Another interesting idea is the French numbering system. Many base-10 counting systems have separate words for multiples of 10, such as twenty, thirty, etc. all the way to ninety. French is now like this. The French decided to call seventy “soixante-dix” or “Sixty ten”. The numbers 71-79 are then “sixty eleven, sixty twelve, and so on”. Now, one may THINK that 80 will be “sixty twenty” but no. It is in fact “quatre-vignt” or “four twenty”. The numbers 81-89 are then “four twenty one, four twenty two, and so on”. Finally, 90 is “four twenty ten”. This numbering system is interesting and perhaps it even aids children when learning simple math.

Words are strange when you look at them. Why did some ancient human being decide that “apple” was what to call a red fruit? Why did the Germans decide that a mountain should be named “Der Zugspitze”? (train point). Why did the moon cause people to act strangely? The word lunatic comes from Latin “luna” or “moon”. It’s a fascinating topic. If you’re ever looking for a quick interesting mind-blower, just take a look at interesting etymology.

One look at this image and some people will be amazed. This image is simple on the surface, but it has a deeper meaning if you dig into it.

The image simply shows a man showing a child, presumably his own, the sky during the evening (or break of dawn). The man is pointing into the sky showing the vastness of space, while the child appears to be enthralled by the beautiful scenery.

Digging deeper into this, I feel as tho this picture represents how little everything on Earth is in relation to the “grand scheme of things”. I don’t mean to say that we, as humans, don’t matter. I just mean to say that we’re not the only thing in the universe.

I personally believe that the image is showing how much more there is to life than just the one planet that we live on. We live on a small planet, orbiting a relatively small sun, in a remote part of the galaxy, which is barely visible when seeing the observable universe. Think about that now, the observable universe.  It’s not even the whole picture.

This image is also showing the great potential that we possess as people. People are powerful beings. We’ve accomplished so much since the dawn of man. This image proves that. Not only are we able to see the stars with our own eyes, but now we’ve created technology to give detail to the beautiful sky. The sky and stars represent the infinite potential that humans possess, just as the universe itself appears to be infinite.

The picture even shows a child. Think about how powerful children are. Many people believe that “children are the future”. I agree with this statement, and I would go as far as to say that this image is also agreeing. Not only is man as a species infinite, children are even more so. Children have so much untapped potential. They are the ones that will shape mankind for years to come.

All in all, I feel as though this photo is putting mankind in perspective in relation to the universe. It’s not showing the insignificance of people, but it’s showing that we, as a species, can be just as big and powerful as the universe itself. We’ve come a long way from nomadic tribes wandering aimlessly around a nameless ball of dirt and water. Think of where we’ll be in just 100 years.

John McWhorter makes a very interesting point in his TED Talk titled, “4 reasons to learn a new language“. As the title suggests, he gives 4 reasons as to why we should still be learning foreign languages. His main 4 points are increasing cultural awareness, learning to multitask, having fun, and being able to easily learn a new language.

From this, I feel like he makes a very convincing argument. As a language learner, I agree with 3 of the four points. While the speech itself didn’t help to expand my personal views on the topic, I feel as though it would expand the viewpoints of many other people that watch the video. He really states good reasons to become interested in, as well as begin to learn language. He gave an anecdote that furthered my interest in foreign culture. I believe that if it furthered my personal interest, which was already fairly high, then it would definitely spark interest in many others.

Not only does he know what he’s talking about, he sounds very convincing. It’s not just due to his logic, but it’s also due to his manner of speaking. It’s not as though this man is just trying to “get this over with”. He is very passionate about the subject. He seems well educated on the topic, and stutters very few times throughout his presentation.

Overall, McWhorter was able to expertly convey his message through this presentation. He has visual aids to help his presentation, but they do not take attention away from him. He spoke clearly and firmly, so the audience was able to take him seriously. He was passionate, adding to his already high ethos. He conveyed his ideas simply, allowing for just about anyone to understand his point.

The best way to sum up my opinion of this speech is the word “wow”. He was able to motivate me to continue on my path of learning languages. McWhorter knows how to give a good speech, and he absolutely did at this time as well.

In my brief studies of German, French, and Russian, I’ve become fascinated with trying to link the three together and to English. I like to see if words are connected in any way. Normally I see connections between 2 of the 4 languages at a time, both in terms of vocab and grammar.

A notable similarity between these languages as well as English is the concept of verb conjugation. This is the idea of putting different endings on a verb depending on the subject of the sentence. This helps to avoid potential confusion when speaking or reading.

Another concept is the idea of different tenses. All four languages have different ways of changing the verb of a sentence to match when the action took place. Some languages do this differently than others, but a common pattern is using a conjugated form of the verb “to have” and then using the past participle of the main verb.

In terms of vocabulary, it seems like a good chunk of words come from a Germanic base. When reading a German sentence, there is a good chance that there is at least one word that’s easily recognizable. For example, people can guess the meaning of the sentence “Der Mann hat einen Kind”. Two of the most important words in the sentence, “Mann” and “Kind” are close to their English counterparts, so the sentence can be understood even without prior German knowledge.

An interesting concept that I stumbled upon was the idea that names for animals are derived from Germanic words, while the meats and other food based words have a Latin or French based root. This likely comes from the lower class German peasants in the British Isles working with animals, while the upper class French people prepared the food. An example of this idea is the German word for cow being “Kuh” and the word for beef is “Rinderfleisch”. The word for beef is unrecognizable, but if you look at the French word for beef “boeuf” there is a slight similarity.

It’s always fascinating how languages that seem to foreign in relation to each other can connect to each other as such basic levels. Even French and Russian have words that sound alike, such as the word for ticket being “Billet” in French and “Beelay” (This is a romanization of the real word) in Russian.

When you look at language in the bigger picture, it’s not always too different. It’s an idea that should not create boundaries between people, but it should be shattering them. People focus on how things are different from what they know, but they should look at how they’re similar first.