We are on the final strech of this English program; therefore,  we are also working on our semestral projects. The aim of this work is to encapsulate the knowledge that was obtained during the semester regarding the culture of English speaking countries and the globalization of the language.

For our final project we chose what we consider the main reason behind the constant evolution of English, expansional history. The thesis that we introduced in our research states that the difference between the English dialects from different regions is tightly related to the situations that surrounded the arrival of English to that specific region. I think that this project reflects a lot about what we have learned about the English speaking world, because from the topic it can be noticed that we have gained a new perspective of the language and how it has become what it is today.

Probably after these last sessions I have noticed that all of us have created new perspectives about what English implies and the relevance that it could and most probably will have in our future.

For this almost last week of class we repeated an assingment but with different cultural background. Last time we worked on the analysis of the movie "boy" from New Zealand, now we immerse ourselves in the South African history regarding the arrival of foreign people who imposed their culture through force, being this one of the scenarios were English got its bad reputation of an oppressive language. The movie was called "The Power of One" which told the story of a young man that learnt the point of views from different people through his childhood and choose to fight against the Apartheid regime in South Africa. The aim of this week activity was to learn from a South African text (Unto Dust) and the movie, from this we would create a personal opinion about the relevance of the situation in which a language arrive for the way local men percieve it.

India

India is the second largest English speaking country in the world. One of the biggest problems in India is the lack of space. It is said that their major cause of pollution is their own people.

Most people in India are devoted to a religion. Hinduism is the biggest in India, followed by Islam. Because of this, India has the largest number of vegetarians in the world. In India animals are loved and in Islam the most sacred animal is the cow because they believe that when a person dies their soul reincarnates in an animal depending on your life you incarnate in certain animals being the cow the biggest privilege.

Important places and people are from India. For example, most of the people in this world knows or at least heard about the Taj Majal may not know the history of the building or knows where it is, but the name is very famous. India’s most important person and for some people in world’s history is Gandhi. Gandhi fought for the independence of India, but believed more in dialogue than in war. He was able to achieve an independence without fighting.

New Zealand

Is an island located in the Pacific ocean near to Australia, due to this they’re a highly active culture regarding fishing activities and seafood cuisine. By watching their traditional dishes we could notice the marked influence from the Australian (British) culture. New Zealand origins go back to the maori people, the original inhabitants of the island that little by little were displaced by the Pakeha (both Australians and British) and now they only represent 14 % of the population. Another remarkable thing from this country is their truly amazing landscapes that attract every kind of traveler from photographers, journalist, documentarists and filming agencies.

There’s also a high multi-cultural population over New Zealand that provides the region with a variety of arts, language and religions. The most “authentic” New Zealand art is in someway wood carving characteristic for the Maori culture that they used a lot to represent their deities that also belonged to a polytheistic religion from their people. Also at the same time there can be find an strong  percentage of christian followers, although it wasn’t explained why Anglican religion was  not as positioned if they had a high index of England traits.

Liberia

Located in Western Africa, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean, between Cote d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone is born from the The American Colonization Society in an attempt of getting rid of slavery in West Africa. In the year of 1847 Liberia becomes independent from the United States of America after writing their official constitution at Harvard University and establishing their  first african governor Joseph J. Roberts. Because of their tight relation with the US Liberia has also been involved in several US conflicts like the two World Wars, backing up the american forces.

A shameful but yet unavoidable part of of the Liberian history and culture had been their brutal internal conflicts (civil wars). First one led by the s Samuel Doe in a military coup against the actual president, the attack was swift yet truly hurtful for the country leaving tens of thousands of casualties among its people. In 1985 Samuel Doe became the president of Liberia, yet “peace” did not last long. From 1989 to 2003 around 250,000 people died in civil conflicts due to paramilitary groups that fought against Samuel Doe government and against themselves. All these conflicts left a damaged country that was economically unstable and susceptible to suffering famine and diseases like Ebola taking even more lives in the process.

Scotland

Scotland was born in 124 by the Roman Empire. After more than a thousand years and different rulers from different empires. According to the presentation it is until 1306 when Robert “the Bruce” named himself as king of Scotland, but what it is not said in the presentation is that they are not and independent country. Scotland is part of the United Kingdom. Nevertheless Scotland is trying to be independent since 2014 when the idea was brought again.

Scotland gave birth to one of the most touching movies in the history of cinema. The speech given by William Gallace before the war is known as one of the most important speeches in movies.

Every person in this world when they hear Scotland the first thing that comes to their mind is men’s skirt. Being this the typical dress code in Scotland, they even play certain sports in this outfit.

English speaking countries are linked in many ways and must of them also share history and a mother culture, nevertheless during week twelve we worked and exposed an small research on different English speaking countries in order to understand more about the similarities and  differences in each one of them. It was certainly an activity that helped every one a lot regarding the understanding of English as a global language.

During the presentations we were able to listen different stories about how each one of this countries has adopted a particularly different culture although everyone of them under the "shelter" of English. In someway an interesting fact that I managed to retrieve was that indeed, has a really controversial point of view regarding how it made its way to all those regions. Because even if it has gave birth to a lot progress in sciences and art in all their levels, it has also came with a high level of conflict.

Last week was focused on the elaboration of the proposals for the final project. The team was gathered again and we started to elaborate the components of the essay theme and thesis as well as the overall structure of the project. At the end of the class we decided to talk about the relations between the variations   of English in different English speaking countries in relation to the roots that made English be adopted by that specific culture.

Next session we saw the movie "the boy" a New Zealand movie that served as an example of the variations that different regions develop in the English vocabulary that they adopt.

          On week number nine and part of eight the group started working on an essay that was about a crucial moment for the formation of English language as we know. This moment in history was the Battle of Hastings, that it was mainly about the conflict between to William of Normandy and Harold ll of England. At last William emerged victorious   and due to that, the french nature of his army was to provoke the bonding of this two languages by adapting a lot of words and sounds to the English vocabulary, this is a really interesting fact because it explains how French can find itself in English even if the last is a Germanic language.

          This kind of informations turns to be really important to understand the evolution of English as a global language and its also a great fact to bring up at certain conversations.  After that we also made an exercise of lecture identification, by reading an anonymous card written by an assassin which also turned to be based on a true event. This kind of historical approach is great for gaining new perspectives of English and what makes it up.

During the last few weeks the class has leaned to a different path. By this I mean that we have been working on literature culture, specifically with Thomas Hardy´s novel Tess from the U´bervilles. We worked on an activity for recreating certain scenes from the book and then we also develop presentation for the book How English Became English in order to make some studying material for this text. This book was actually really intersting due to the fact that it explained a lot of things about the language and how it has evolved through time.

At last i must say that exploring English through its literature authors its a more complete way of understanding the culture.