Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón
I have an interest in Old English and historical linguistics, also in modern languages such as German, Norwegian or Welsh, not to mention fairy tales, medieval stories, and J.R.R Tolkien's writings.
Location Miðgarðr, Heorot, Spain
Achievements
Activity
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You are right. My definition was far from correct. I meant not Classicsl or Medieval Latin but Renaissance Latin.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I particularly enjoyed the 1971 version because I like scenes like the portrayed here, without flashlights, special effects, tense music or screaming. Besides, I think it reflects quite well Shakespeare's play.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I think the witches spring Macbeth's ambition by prophesying the future. They just water the seed that was already in Macbeth's soul. Otherwise, listening Macbeth to the witches' words, he would have thought they are just rubbish and nothing to be cared of.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I have learned a lot in this course and I'm looking forward to implement in my own researches and projects the ideas presented here. Thanks!
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Thanks for the extra content!
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The awareness of different accents in England began much earlier: we already can appreciate scribal differences in monks from different parts of the isles, since each of them reproduced in writing how words already sounded to them according from the place they were born and grew up —there were no such thing as a grammar or a dictionary nowadays. A Northumbrian...
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For instance omitting part of the word in 'para / pa' is more and more common in many other parts of the country. I am living in the south of Spain fornearly eighteen years —but I am from Valencia— and this is quite common there, though not among all people. The same happens with 'dedo / deo'.
In my opinion, this is not laziness, nor vulgar, it is economy of... -
And not only in the south of Spain, but from the isles, let's think of Canary Islands. Think of Francisco Montesdeoca, a well-known weatherman, who changed his Canary Island accent for a more 'proper neutral' accent. Or even some popular singers who also changed their southern accents in order to become more 'standarised'.
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It is clear the BBC wants an aesthetically and correct speech from the presenter, and 'heyah' doesn't fit in their mission. It is a pity, but things like this contribute to the idea of cultural diversity, instead of making one accent the proper one. For the BBC, things like this is equal to 'chaos', 'social disorder' and 'low culture'.
On the other hand,...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Is quite an interesting and fascinating matter to me. Moreover, it can also expand to historical perspectives, i.e. historical sociolinguistics, as for example when it comes to analise the relationship between Kent or Midland accents in Middle English during the Middle Ages.
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@AngeloCappetta This also happens in Spain. I thinks it is something common to every country in the world.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
What a great explanation of what cues are!
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
The Padlet wall worked for me, probably the link was repaired.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
There is no access to the public spreadsheet: it says the URL is not correct: the archive has also been eliminated.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
"Language attitude" is, to me, the attitude someone has when listening to how other speakers express themselves (i.e. the accent) and to which (s)he has: a "positive" feeling (the listener likes the accent but the speaker is treated a bit differently), "neutral" (the listeners just ignore the accent), or a "negative" one (the listener despise the speakers...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Here in Spain there is a lot of accents, not only in the South as many people think, but also in the North, East and West. I'm also familiarised with many England accents, and (among other things) is what I like of the English language as a philologist. The world would be a really boring place if we all spoke the same way.
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"Do you think Milgram’s experiment would be allowed today?"
Not legally, at least, according to The Nuremberg Code and The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki.
"Do the gains in knowledge made by the experiment justify the means?"
Not at all. This type of knowledge is, I think, not necessary. It can be obtained through other means, i.e....
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I'm a graduate in English linguistics and literature. This course seems quite interesting when trying to recolect data for a future MA or doctoral degree.
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From my point of view and discipline, television can be seen as a medium of transmitting language and art related to language —i.e. adaptation of novels, plays, etc. I analize the way the medium uses language to communicate humanities as a way of depicting human feelings, expressions, history, language, attitudes towards others, and much more.
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@KathleenWalker I didn't know following someone needed further details in FL (still a newbie), but I saw in your profile a lot of interesting courses and thought 'why not'?
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
One of the best courses I had online. Thanks a lot!
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@BradleyK This conversion from /c/ to /s/ before /e/ also happens in some Spanish territories, i.e. in Andalusia.
I think Spanish is a more conservative language because it has more solid foundations than other languages in the world that has had, for example, more influence from other countries. As @MonicaElisabethSacco says, grammar (and also syntax) has... -
Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Mryka HB
@MrykaHB That is because cinema is an incomplete medium, whereas literature is the most complete form of telling stories (Tolkien's words). I enjoyed LOTR films —at least the better parts—, but fails to provide what literature and myths provide, which the films don't, though the context, though softened, is somehow present in a certain way.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Mryka HB
Don't we forget the Finnish epic "Kalevala", which Tolkien did admire. He even wrote his own short version of the character of Kullervo —in 'The Story of Kullervo', apart from what @MonicaElisabethSacco just said: he was inspired by the Kalevala to write 'The Children of Húrin', a book a true LOTR or The Hobbit fan should not miss.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Quite an interesting course, thank you, Prof. Caroline. The sound effects and the backgrounds of the videos were amazing. Well done.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I've learned other points of view from my peers and though I already knew the stories presented, I also learned some details from them and how to interpret the stories from other ways. It has been an interesting and fun course with plenty of questions and activities to make us think and debate on morals and ethics.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I can think of her (the wife) having post-traumatic stress after seeing so many corpses at the ground room, but the tale doesn't mentions it. Probably in a modern take of the story this detale would appear, but not at the time, because the main point here is how Blue Beard is killed, how she gets the money, and in what she spends it.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I felt anxiety —in a similar way as when reading "Little Red Riding Hood"— because I wanted the heroine be saved and Blue Beard punished. On the callings to Sister Anne, it is a device that works well in quite a lot of fairy-tales (even in popular pieces of literature, not only fairy-tales): the three-times repetition in order to cause an effect in the...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I think I'll wave goodbye and enjoy the party, since I don't see the necessity of running away because I couldn't even imagine Blue Beard is a killer. Furthermore, there is even no need for getting the money at once, since every coin I could possibly wish is at my dispossal whenever I want.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Jan Anderson
That's true, Ineke. They are not always funny, not at all, whenever it affects people in a direct way. But errors which lead to linguistic amendment they are the healthiest.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
After "Sleeping Beauty", it seems quite fascinating to me, though it is pretty much a darker story than expected, but quite in the mood of fairy tales such as "Snow Queen", "Beauty and the Beast", "Sleeping Beauty", "The Little Mermaid", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Rapunzel", etc. —save for the homocide part, of course.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
"Sleeping Beauty" is my favourite Perrault's tale. Its Disney adaptation is beautiful, quite an artistic masterpiece, but as an adaptation lacks what "Beauty and Beast" also lacked: the original ending —though I must admit Perrault's ending can be more easily detached because it would otherwise totally broken the tone of the Disney adaptation —they used it...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
As I previously said, I had the pleassure of studying many of these writers, from Andersen —his "Snow Queen" and "Little Mermaid", which I strongly recommend, are a bit different from modern Disney versions, to Grimm's tales and George McDonald's writings —I think "Phantastes" or "At the Back of the North Wind" are a must; many of his short stories are...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I studied some of them, though I haven't read yet all the tales included in the anthologies. Otherwise, Basile's "Pentamerone" is a book I recommend because there are earlier versions such as Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, among others that eventually Perrault and the brothers Grimm adapted. There is a nice English translation published by Penguin, "The Tale...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I was very happy with Beaumont's ending: turning the villains into statues seems to me the most exquisite of punishments, to gaze eternally what you think you are. "Eternally", which means that when Beauty and Beast are gone, they'll continue their no life as statues, and that also means that anybody could destroy their fragile stone bodies. A harsh...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Jan Anderson
@WulfVeldasson Yeah, misinterpreations and mistranslations always happen throughout history. Fortunately, these type of errors are always fun and a bit like a puzzle. Thanks for the link!
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
In my opinion Gaston serves as a contrast to the Beast: his aspect, qualities, and so on. I'm not 100% sure if he is necessary for the story or not (for the plot per se I think he isn't), because I haven't read a version (or seen a film) in which Gaston is not present. Anyway, in Disney's film he is clearly the villain of the story and serves as a proper...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I think plucking the rose is a punishable action, but not in the way Beast does. The punish seems to me quite excessive. The father, as human as he is, only tries to get a present for his daughter, but for many people a rose is just a flower (for others it seems a great treasure), something so small and easily replaced that is not worth of consideration...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I think it is a great and regarding course (to me, some knowledge of phonetics and historical linguistics is required), but I missed more additional material, in the form of external links to, e.g., more articles and conferences, and recommended readings, plus additionally some selected chapters from books which are crucial for the development of historical...
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True, is quite rare a specific term becomes more general. It referss to words with a full semantic charge, e.g. verbs or nouns. In the case of 'great' it is just an adjective without a complex semantic meaning, since it only modifies a noun, an action, etc. It requires another main word to have its effect. The case of 'to disappear' or 'to die' es different,...
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@SusanaBiemmi Yes, the euphemisms are very old, as old as poetic language has been active. I have read in sagas and more or less old text expressions like that, so to me 'to disappear' has some poetic connotation, because implies a lack of knowledge of how the passing happened, whereas 'to die' is a more specific term which implies, plainly, what the word...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Maggie Grigg
@InekeFioole There are other ways of pushing out a language, e.g. making a law that one language serves as the official language of the empire, the reign, etc., usually imposing over another language, which is automatically seen as a non-desirable language: a low-rank tongue, the language of the defeated, etc.. It is in fact legally banishing a language —this...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Old English, which is the oldest language I'm in contact with nowadays, is quite appealing to me, not only by how it sounds, but also by its grammar, syntax and vocabulary —three for the price of one. Having a knowledge of German and Norwegian also helped me a lot to have a better understanding of the language —or so I think!
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Michael Manzer
Totally true, mastering 'Beowulf' is quite a complex task, many anaphoric elements, poetic concepts, words that appear only once in all Old English corpora —this is called hápax legómenon— and much more.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
If anyone has a serious interest in learning Gothic I recommend Joseph Wright's 'Grammar of the Gothic Language' —not the painter, but the linguistic who also was Tolkien's tutor—. It is a 1910 book and a quite authoritative text though a bit harsh to learn —as usual in a grammar written more than a century ago.
Moreover, William H. Bennett has his 'An...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Jan Anderson
I think they were called "good, excelent" Goths probably by the person who made the distinction —for some personal reasons they deserved that consideration. That's all.
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Of course! Skalds were warrior poets who sand the deeds of kings and the stories of gods, runes, giants, and more. Those Norse poets were usually court poets.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Maggie Grigg
Probably the problem was due to maintenance routine. I had the very same problem some days ago: videos not loading properly, images taking a ton to load, etc. Fortunately the problem seems solved and I haven't encountered the same issue again.
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Of course, German tribes borrowed many words from Latin —than eventually passed into Old English—, think for example of the modern German words 'Straße' and 'Küche'.
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Surely, velar consonants are produced at the back of the mouth, but what Laura Dees says in the video is that velars are pronounced more towards of the mouth "under the influence of the following vowel that is also produced in the front of the mouth", which means they change depending of the environment in which they operate. So, those velars are influenced by...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
It's been an interesting course and while I already knew the majority of the concepts regarding pronounciation, backness, manner, articulation, etc., the way it is explained, the exercises and the tips on how to teach pronunciation helped me a lot. I'll put many of them into practice!
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I have noticed over the years that the sound schwa is particularly difficult for many people. They didn't even struggle, many others don't know this particular sound even exists, and people pronounce it indistinctively as an /e/ or an /a/, so the resulting word is pronounced in an robot way (as my previous partner points out), or just quite plainly. I think...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to deborah deithrick
Hi, Deborah. When dealing with height and backness, you have to be aware of "where" in the mouth and "how" —the position of the tongue in the mouth— the vowels are pronounced.
Try to slowly reproduce, for example, the sounds /e/ and /o/. When pronouncing /e/ (which are both front vowels, because they are pronounced putting the tongue against the front part... -
Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Great explanation. This is extremely useful if you are, for example, studying the language in its previous stages (say Old English or Middle English). Thanks!
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
1. 3
2. 4
3. That they are quite important for fluency and understandability
4. Some students make the usual mistakes when placing the stress on the wrong part of the word.
5. I would like to emphasise how words are linked together and how pronunciation works, firstly, individually, secondly, at sentence level (based on individual words). -
Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I remember the teacher using gestures during my English apprenticeship some time ago. It worked well, I suppose. So, great advice.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Great tips to teach stress.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to I. Sz.
Exactly, Anglo-Saxon poetry was alliterative poetry and has no rhyme, but what is known as caesura at the middle of the verses which produces such a great effect in the reader/listener —great examples of this are the poem 'Beowulf' or 'The Wanderer', among others.
Who knows if Taliesin or Aneirin were ever thinking in rhymes or just in concepts which...
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@InekeFioole With "Low Latin" she refers in fact to "Late Latin", meaning the language spoken during the Renaissance in Italy (and in other countries of the continent and isles where Renaissance took place). It is the Latin influenced by Italian, so the pronunciation of Cicero as "Sisero", or "civis" (pronounced "kivis").
As you say, "centum" is pronounced...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I think people say this branch of Linguistics is like "mathematics" because 2+2=4 and by the fact that a number means one thing, and sounds and words mean other things at the same time.
In fact it is quite similar, one rule is applied and the result is unequivocal, but when a rule fails to apply, then it is because we haven't taken into consideration such...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I was introduced to Old Church Slavonic at university and studied some vocabulary, cases, letters, history, texts, etc., and was quite interesting. Glagolitic alphabet was amazingly strange, but curious, impossible to decipher without a chart —for many reasons the course was taught in Cyrillic.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Prohibition, love, tragedy.
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It is exactly what some filmakers would have included in their historical films in order to set the tone of the plot and setting —think of 'The Lion in Winter' , 'Ivanhoe' (1952) or Ridley Scott's "plays" such as 'Gladiator' or 'Kingdom of Heaven'.
Great Shakespeare and his predecessors. -
Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I think linking causes more than often difficulty because individual sounds are misheard or even not heard at all. Teaching linking but at the same time why those words/sounds are linked together is essential for me —probably not at the same time, so much theory could be not easy to handle.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Rocio Rivera
They are just different realisations of a phoneme depending on the context in which they are uttered —I have always been taught this call this 'phonetic environment'—, or by its position in the word They mean the same, but the pronunciation is different. In English, one of the most common examples of allophones are the 't' or the 'd' sounds.
They occur not... -
Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
When learning English games were somehow seen as a relief from theory and drills, so they with any doubt an interesting piece of learning: linking words together, symbols, pictures, fill in the gaps, etc.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Quite useful chart.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Srđan Tomić
@MaestraTiama I said "much probably" because I have no idea (I should hace erased that "much" though). :D :D Sorry for that. I figured out it could be a reason due to historical facts. Unfortunately for me my knowledge of Croatian is quite quite quite limited. Sometimes coincidences occur.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Hi!
I am from Spain, I study languages (I try my specialty to be Old English and Germanic languages) and literature, and sometimes I teach English for B1-B2 learners, which many of the times require a little aid with pronunciation and how sounds are produced.
I think this course will be of interest for me and for my occasional students.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Thank you so much for the course!
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
The most important thing for visitors to know I think is what and why is the Book of Kells, plus the meaning of the manuscript: imaginery, narrative, figures, symbols, and so on.
But the most interesting part for them would probably be how the book itself is made: designs, embroidery, pictures, pigments, etc., i.e. the visual impact and what can be...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Some years ago I read Joyce's 'Dubliners' and was a nice reading. Probably I'll try out 'Finnegans Wake', or even 'Ulysses', though many people warned me about the complexity of the text (which I am of course aware of). But what is literature but sensation? They deserve a try.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Maybe someday I'll get the chance to see the Book in person. Meanwhile I'll be enjoying the rest of the course (just one week to go!) and recommending it to other people. I've learned a lot so far, that's for sure.
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Such an entertaining activity! Delving in the intricacies of the image, its symbols, animals, letters, and so on, is delightful. It's been quite an interesting exercise and a great complement to this course.
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@MaggieGrigg I agree with you, David Crystal's books are a must! The one I like the most is 'The Stories of English' (2004). If there is someone here interested in the evolution of English from Old English to modern times this a book to delve into.
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@KathleenWalker I did a module at university but from the perspective of English as an Indo-European language and its evolution as a Germanic language influenced by German, Saxon, Latin, French, etc. What I did not do was a module of historical linguistics in general (but did a module of other ancient languages also from the evolution as Indo-European), though...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
I studied English at university (grammar, literature, history, and so on) where —also thanks to Tolkien!— I began to study Old English and some of its texts (for academic and personal interests), the like of Beowulf, the Battle of Maldon, the Wanderer, etc. I also touched Latin at secondary school, Old Church Slavonic (also at uni) and the medieval Valencian...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Ineke Fioole
I think that where the text displays...
"when the monk Mesrop Maštoc‘ developed the Armenian alphabet in order to translate the Bible into Armenian"
... it means literally that the language appeared there, not from the scratch, but from the oral tradition . Obviously, the language existed prior to that moment, but it wasn't until this particular monk...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Maggie Grigg
I admit I studied history of the English language at university (where I began to learn Old English; also Old Church Slavonic and some of its Indo-European roots —quite interesting!), and more than a couple of classes were on the development of English from its Indo-European roots as a Germanic language, until Middle English and so on. Morever, the development...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Srđan Tomić
Much probably to the influence of the Roman Empire, and thus, of Latin.
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón replied to Maggie Grigg
The change from sound /p/ to /f/ can be described thanks to Grimm's Law (or First Sound Shift), which tells us how Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants developed in Proto-Germanic, let's put it that way:
(PIE) bʰ > (Germanic) b > p > f (e.g. pater > Vater/father, piscis > fish/Fisk, pod > foot; brother, etc.)
(PIE) dʰ > (Germanic) d > t > θ (z) (duo >... -
Around this time (between V-VIII c.), it flourished in Spain many examples of religious Christian architecture (churches, chapels, and so on) and precious jewelry too, due to the presence of Visigothic people who came to the Iberian Peninsula after the fall of the Roman —they also adopted Latin. Then the muslims came to the peninsula and, what is nowadays...
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Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
My name, Lorenzo, is transliterated to moderno Greek as Λορενσο or Λορενςο. It has Latin origins, which derives from 'Laurentius' —meaning 'laurelled', or just 'from the city of Laurentius', a city southwest of Rome.
Maybe I'm wrong, but the phonology of the name presents no problems at all, since the correspondence of Greek and Latin sounds in this case is...
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Let me give an answer:
1. the words "plōgr", "pfluog" and "plōg" are chosen because they share the same initial consonant cluster, i.e. "pl-/pfl" (they are quite similar albeit they have some differences in pronounciation).
2. "wæter" in group 2: though sharing the final "-r" it has a vowel before the ending consonant (-e-) which differenciates the word...
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@EvaKominiak Thanks for the info, Eva.
Let me add a remark: "patata" and "batata" are not synonyms in Spain since they are different products -even they taste different, though they can be cooked in a quite similar way; in other cases not (depending on the dish to be prepared, naturally). The extended term for "batata" in Spain is "boniato", which is also...
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@EldonSawyers Correct, English was almost lost, but survived, especially after the reign of King John, when relationships between England and France were partially cut off.
We also must take into consideration that Norse people left a considerable amount of grammatical, lexical, and sound features (loan words, pronouns, sounds, etc., e.g. the pronoun... -
Lorenzo Martínez Tarazón made a comment
Aside from Aesop's Fables, I find certain similarity with "Pinocchio", tough not a fairy tale per se, it's a very popular story which has been also used to teach morals and has been adapted into several films. One of the animals in the story who tries to deceive Pinocchio is not a wolf, but a fox. I know they are different animals, used in different styles,...
