Have you had enough (or enuf) trouble spelling to make you want to scream (or skreem?) You are not alone. Since the 17^th Century, scholars have been protesting the irregularities that occur in English spelling. Reform movements can boast such iconic English-speaking figures Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, and Theodore Roosevelt. English is currently the most widely-spoken language on the planet, yet it is the only language among the top ten most spoken that lacks an official regulatory academy to approve spelling.

One of the problems that spellers face is the diverse origin of English words. German, Latin, French, and Greek are all common sources, and each follows a different set of rules for spelling. Even within any one of these languages, it’s impossible to guarantee internal consitency; when these systems mix together helter skelter, one ends up with English orthography.

Students of the SAT know that memorizing the Latin roots of English words is a great way to expand vocabulary, but most Latin-rooted words entered English usage from French after the Norman Conquest of the 11^th Century. The British English spelling of colour and centre are vestiges of this relationship. The Normans replaced French as the language of the court, throwing Old English, a Germanic language, out of official usage for 300 years.

By the time English was again allowed at court, it was a French-infused Middle English. Geoffrey Chaucer is a great example of English spelling and pronunciation at this awkward phase. In fact, there was no set form for spelling – there are sentences in The Canterbury Tales in which the same word is spelled differently. This was no fault of Chaucer’s; he was simply following the spelling of the moment.

Our current spelling of words dates to the typical pronunciation of the 15^th Century, when technology effectively froze English orthography (writing.) The use of the printing press and mass distribution of books for the first time standardized the spelling of words through repetition. Taking into account the variant spelling of Anglo-Saxon words and the French-influenced Latin, English orthography did not respond to contemporary pronunciation, but to the word’s country of origin.

Now the story gets a little tricky. Between 1450 and 1750, English pronunciation went through what linguists call the Great Vowel Shift. How English speakers spoke evolved, yet the letters used to represent the words they spoke remained static.

Some advocates of English spelling reform argue that replacing words with more phonetically accurate letter combinations will enhance literacy. However readers often experience difficulty in fluency when they first approach works written in dialect, such as Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. While the dialect rounds out the characters of the stories, the difficulty reinforces arguments against spelling reform – whose pronunciation is chosen as the “correct” pronunciation that spelling should be modeled for?

Others argue that, while it may at first be difficult, English spelling leaves plenty of keys to unlocking the history and etymology of words, helping readers understand not only the phonetic foundation but also semantic heritage of a word. What do you think? Should English try to “fix” the spelling of words?

Read more at http://hotword.dictionary.com/spelling/#XYfOR75YIkXrkxS0.99

Everyone has their own writing style, of course, but there are certain words and phrases that tend to appear very often in professional email communication as a typical, almost expected way of expressing something – so it is useful to know what they are, and when to use them.

Corpus linguistics
What are these phrases and how do we find out about them? This is where corpus linguistics comes in. Corpus linguists analyse large collections of texts (such as those collected in the Cambridge English Corpus) to identify any patterns or other features that stand out, and to learn more about how we communicate in different contexts. Nowadays, corpora are stored and accessed electronically, and some of the biggest ones run to several million words (e.g. the British National Corpus, 100 million words).

Email corpora aren’t as big yet – it’s hard to collect this data as both individuals and companies have, understandably, concerns about the private or commercially sensitive content of their emails – but researchers have reached agreements to use some of their email archives, so we are now starting to carry out research based on real email data.

Analysing the data
With this data, we can find out what people actually write when they are carrying out a particular task via email, rather than rely on our intuitions, or what we think ‘should’ be written in these cases.

For example, what do people typically write when they are trying to arrange a time to talk or meet with someone? It turns out that direct, specific requests, such as Can we meet at 2 p.m. on Wednesday? are very rare. It is more common to give the other person, the email recipient, the option to suggest a time. By far the most frequent phrase in this context is let me know, used in sentences such as let me know what time you would like to talk/have the meeting; let me know when you’d want to meet. By using these kinds of expressions, we are making it clear to the other person that we value their time and their needs, and that we are willing to accommodate them. It is important to bear in mind that email practices may vary from one cultural context to another; a phrase that might be the most frequent in a corpus of British English may occur far less frequently in a corpus of American English.

If there are constraints on the meeting time, it’s still possible to mention them without coming across as too demanding, as in these examples:

Would you maybe have time to meet on Tuesday?

Please let me know if there’s a time after 1 p.m. that works for you.

What time between 7 and 11 suits you best?

As you can see, the imposition caused by restricting the possible meeting times is softened by the use of words such as maybe and please, and by emphasising the focus on the recipient’s needs, as we saw above, with phrases such as works for you or suits you best.

If you think about your personal emails, you’re probably a bit more direct when arranging to meet someone. Looking through my own messages, I found plenty of examples where the writer is not making as much of an effort to show flexibility about times:

Meet you at 5.45? That ok?

Shall we just meet there at 11.30?

Shall we aim for 9?

How about 12.30?

To read more of this article by Rachel De Felice visit: http://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2012/01/13/what-can-we-learn-from-emails/#more-1033

What a perfect definition, and who better to define it than our national pop ambassador? Australian English is often mysterious when heard outside its native land: nothing is more confusing than the moment an Aussie talks about their love of thongs; an embarrassed British silence may follow, as listeners struggle to realise that we are talking quite innocently about ‘flip-flops’ (and you think our word sounds silly?)

The most familiar terms are the old Aussie cliches -  strewth, crikey and sheila – but while g’day is still in good health, many of these words are no longer widely used, except for in the outback. These days, mainstream Australian speech is all about avoiding too many syllables: we could meet up in the arvo for a convo about your recent compo; later on we’ll have a barbie with the rellies, but don’t forget your sunnies, and don’t let me find out you’ve been playing the pokies again. That’d be beaut.

Humorous and earthy topics are also fertile with Australianisms: cheap wine is goon or plonk, though beware or you might spend the next morning chundering into the dunny. A really daggy and uncultured person is a bogan, and the most scandalously daggy items of clothing are surely budgie smugglers – as worn by the losing candidate in our 2010 federal election.

Echoes of the past

Australia has a rich heritage of some 250 Aboriginal languages, from which names have been derived for our most famous national icons, including kangaroos, koalas, and boomerangs. For the most part, the influence of Aboriginal languages on Australian English can be found in plants, animals, and Aboriginal cultural practices; but there are also some well-known general words, like yakka (for hard work), bung (for ruined or broken), and willy-willy (a sort of small tornado).

Many Australian place names are also derived from Aboriginal languages. Canberra (our national capital) means ‘meeting place’ in Ngunnawal, Ballarat means ‘resting place’ in Wathaurong, and Uluru, the Pitjantjatjara name for Ayers Rock, became officially recognised in 1993. (For bonus points, take note that possessive apostrophes are never used in Australian place names, like Ayers Rock!)

Tragically, many of the languages from which these words were borrowed are no longer being spoken, as the influence of English has spread across the land.

To read the full article by John Mansfield go to: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/01/dag-aussie-english/

According to Jennifer Jenkins, “English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) refers to the English that is used as a contact language among speakers who come from different first language and cultural backgrounds.” This means non-native speakers using English to communicate and its goal is different from EFL/ESL where it’s more often the goal to speak with native speakers and/or to use native speakers as a model.

One main idea is that non-native versions (or variants) of the non-core features of English should be considered, “legitimate features of individual ELF varieties rather than errors.” In EFL, we consider an ‘error’ in the context of standard native English whereas an error in ELF is therefore be redefined in relation to mutually-intelligible non-native speaker communication. Should we worry about the general question, isn’t it? Should we worry about the 3rd person ‘s’ if intelligibility is not affected?

We’re still very much in the theoretical argument here though and from a language training perspective, we also need to ask our learners what English they want or need to learn. How do they feel about the approach to errors? No doubt, the debate will continue.

Read Jennifer Jenkin’s full article here:

http://associates.iatefl.org/pages/materials/voicespdf/gi8.pdf

What kind of mind will it take to create a prosperous and peaceful work (and life) space? Lou Tice, a well-respected academic suggests that it is a mind that is, “receptive to change and able to figure out how to do more with less.”  It is what noted psychologist Abraham Maslow termed “self-actualizing.” To be self-actualizing means that we accept ourselves and others, we have a strong focus on solving problems outside the self, and we have deep feelings of sympathy and affection for humankind. It also means that we have strong ethics, definite moral standards, and independent stability in the face of hard knocks.

In Maslow’s words, “Self-actualizing people are, without a single exception, involved in a cause outside of themselves. They are devoted, working at something precious to them ? a calling, a vocation…. They are working at something fate has called them to somehow, and which they love, so that the joy/work dichotomy in them disappears.”

When we are self-actualizing, we are most likely to experience the level of happiness that Father Spitzer of Seattle University calls “H-4.”

At level H-1 we see happiness as a “feel-good” thing. All we want is to feel good, avoid feeling bad, and that’s it. We don’t give a hoot how anyone else is feeling.

At level H-2, we do a lot of work on ourselves, because we want to be better than the next guy. We have plenty of self-discipline, but it’s all ego-driven, and we’re not really happy, except when someone’s telling us how great we are.

At level H-3, we’re starting to make the best kind of happiness happen. That’s because what we want most is to help other people, and it feels great when we do. We forget about ourselves. More than anything else, we care about others ? our team, our community, the whole darn planet, and we want to be a contributing part of all of it.

At level H-4, we can see beyond the good of the team or the group to the ultimate good. We start to understand what unconditional love is all about, and we’re always thinking about what we can learn and how we can give. At level H-4, we can see the highest good in everything, and we just naturally respond to it with the best, most loving part of ourselves.

For the full article, see: http://www.thepacificinstitute.us/v2/index.php?name=library_d21

Even incremental steps forward—small wins—boost what is called “inner work life”. What does this mean? Well, it’s “the constant flow of emotions, motivations, and perceptions that constitute a person’s reactions to the events of the work day.” Crucially, beyond affecting the well-being of employees, inner work life affects the bottom line.People are more creative, productive, committed, and collegial in their jobs when they have positive inner work lives. But it’s not just any sort of progress in work that matters. The first, and fundamental, requirement is that the work be meaningful to the people doing it.

The article reminds us of the traps that as managers or leaders, we can fall into. So what should be considered in order to provide a coherent and motivating environment in which to work?

- (it’s a no-brainer but…) have a clear purpose and communicate it.

- allow sufficient time to discover whether initiatives are working.

- communicate rationales to employees when strategic shifts are made.

- articulate a a BHAG (‘big, hairy, audacious goal) AND provide milestones along the way.

- provide co-ordination and support to employees and regularly audit these processes.

These are the key steps to create a more meaningful work environment and along the way, you may find greater meaning to our own work as a leader.

Read the full article at: https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Governance/Leadership/How_leaders_kill_meaning_at_work_2910