3rd Denver

 Photo Credit: https://www.istockphoto.com/illustrations/lost-in-translation Although language is very powerful and greatly affects the world around us, it is not often that we think about the way words affect our lives. Language is something we often take for granted because it comes so naturally to us, seamlessly blending into our backgrounds. However, when different languages come together, their importance becomes more evident.  Translating is more than converting words from one language to another; it requires an understanding of literal and cultural audience, intention and purpose, target audience, and other nuances as well. According to an article I read from the Guardian, a study found that there may not be any universal concepts for some emotions. It cites an example of the concept of the word "love." In Indo-European languages, it is closely linked to "like" and "want," but in Austronesian languages, it is linked closely to "pity."  Sin...

         https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2018/03/saturday-evening-post-history-minute-suffrage-march-riot-1913/           When I think of a group of individuals who fought tirelessly to gain the respect and opportunities they deserved, the first thing that comes to mind is the women’s suffrage movement. It took the movement “ nearly 100 years ” to gain their ultimate goal; the right to vote. Women such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and many others were extremely determined to accomplish this goal. To convince more men and women to support this cause, reformers traveled from state to state to make speeches and lectures for different audiences to educate them on why equal rights for all Americans was so important.            Not only did these reformers strive for equality for women, they also held much respect for African Americans which meant the two causes we...

 Amratha Rao Week #9 Mother Tongue I’m sure most of us have grown up listening to and learning other languages at home. I am no exception. From the moment I was born, the idea of accepting and adopting my ancestral mother tongue became my parents mission. I was constantly spoken to in Tulu and annual India visits made it impossible for me to ever forget the language. Even today, my parents constantly converse with me in Tulu, and it's become a huge part of my life.  Tulu is most commonly spoken in Mangalore, Karnataka, India with only 1.85 million people in the world speaking it, all from India. To provide a wider image, that’s only 0.00134% of India’s population and 0.00023% of the world’s population.  Image Credits However, my language has never been anything I’ve ever been able to share. No one around me, outside of my immediate family, has ever even heard of the language, let alone spoken it. While this may not seem like a big deal, it definitely was to me. Growing u...

Week 9: Checks and Balances of Power   – 1/19 - [6:36PM].          Power can be a scary thing when it exists disproportionately. When people have too much power and authority, they often become corrupted by greed and abuse their power for personal gains. However, having too little power is just as harmful and leads to oppression and endless suffering. It is important to realize that the surplus and deficiency of power exist hand in hand; if one group has more power, there must also be a group with less power. There is always a dominant and subjugated dynamic.      The framers of the Constitution were clearly aware of the danger of having a government with a disproportional balance of power. They witnessed the pain of being part of a colony controlled by Britain. They experienced their hard-earned money being unjustly taken away and the king ignoring their complaints. They also saw the consequences of having a weak government under the Articl...

There is no doubt language has significant impacts on people's lives, but how important is it when communicating about medicine? In an article noting the weight of language in medicine , researcher Andreea Calude at the University of Waikato discusses instances of how people need to be wary of what language they use to describe medicine or illnesses. Readers can grasp the effects of words when Calude brings up the editorial, from around a decade ago, “Words that harm: words that heal” by Nefyn Williams, Welsh doctor and academic. He demonstrated how his patient, who had pain in his knees diagnosed as “degenerative change,” asked if it was “wear and tear,” Williams indicating as not the most appropriate terms to explain his condition. Degenerative change implies a negative connotation that signifies the patient is stuck in a “passive, helpless state” and is “engulfed in a gloomy prognosis of ensuing pain and disability” when that was not the case for this specific patient. Utilizing...

As everyone knows, we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, January 19, in honor of his powerful works to advocate for justice for all people. His efforts were entirely nonviolent, but he was still able to have such a large impact. How then, was he able to have so much influence over so many Americans? When I think of power, the first thing that comes to mind is military power. Countries with strong militaries can establish their dominance and have power. An example is the Nazis, who used violence to completely oppress the Jews into submission and prevent anyone from challenging them. Money also comes to mind when I think of power. Money can serve as leverage and can get people to do things for your interest. However, peace and nonviolence are typically not associated with power. Even so, Martin Luther King Jr. was able to make a huge impact on the lives of people in America and around the world. He was one of the most prominent leaders of the civil rights movement and ...

Week 9: Winter Abernathy - 19 January 2022 [10:52am] There is a quote from Richard Price referring to how the human psyche copes with loss. The quote goes "the bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance." The power that war takes from civilians is an atrocious concept for the human mind to grasp. I have always found the way the human mind protects itself from the outside world to be quite the bittersweet phenomenon. The brain takes the most basic, the smallest parts of the most horrific tragedies and holds moments as an allusion, a way for our minds to identify with the tragedy without remembering it. I think what we fail to notice however, is that the brain protects us from trauma, it protects us, and that is incredible.  The pandemic is a trauma, the pandemic is a larg...

The Power of the Electoral College  By: Kirti Kande P3 When given the topic of Language and Power, I was confused. What should I discuss and write? After pondering, the electoral college popped into my head. The electoral college is a system that decides who should hold the highest office of the land, the President. What else could be more powerful? You would think a system that essentially decides our President, the leader of our country, would be perfect; however, that is far from it.  When we vote for the President, we are not voting for him/her; rather, we are voting our state representatives in the Electoral College who then go on to decide who will be the President. Most states, 48, use a winner-takes-all system making it easy for presidential candidates to win and prompting candidates to only focus on battleground states because they know no matter how much campaigning they do, some states will always be for one party. An example is our own state California. Almost no ...

     In any established government, the necessity for the support of the people towards the government's intentions is always an essential requirement. The task of maintaining the people's approval must always be one of the priorities of a government, or that government most likely will not last very long and end its numbered days with a revolution (just look at the French and Russians). However, accomplishing the task of convincing the public is not always as easily done as said. Over the centuries of formal governments in both Europe and America, multiple government officials have attempted to tackle this constant tug-of-war between passing their desired policies and maintaining public support. Over the course of history, the use of language in the press has been proven to be an effective method of accomplishing such a tremendous goal.     One prime example was seen during the U.S. entry into the First World War. Heavily unpopular with the ...

 Pranav Sreejayan Ms Benedetti  APENG 11      Power: A versatile word Coming back from a much needed vacation, I was greeted by Infinite Campus with my ever-awaited email about what we’d be doing in APENG this week. A little skim through it showed me that this time, the blogging topic would be ‘power’. That got me thinking; what exactly is power? Using my incredible deductive reasoning abilities, I arrived at the conclusion that I would not be forced to write blogs about my electrical appliances and instead about the concept of power itself: power over others, power over myself, power over my surroundings etc.  A quick look at Merriam Webster gives one dozens of definitions of power. Everything, from power in physics, to math, to its geo-political connotations, all show up. But one stands out: that power is simply the “ability to act or produce an effect.” In the end once you think of it, that’s all power really is. The ability to do something. My parents h...