Dear Editor,
To begin, the study of Linguistics Science will help multilingual students and speakers develop a chosen career in the field of linguistics and phonetics. Linguistics science provides information concerning the historical development and structure of language.
This article provides vital information about linguistics science and phonology to students and speakers of Other Languages. The bilingual, multilingual, and general English speakers will find it necessary in the study of modern languages.
Linguistics – The science of language, or the study of language, including, speech, sounds, language structure, history, historical relationship and language forms. Phonology is the study of the system of sounds used in language. It includes the study of stress, rhythm and intonation, Phonology comes from the Greek (phoneme=sound).
A linguist is a person who studies the history and structure of language, or a person who speaks different languages or two languages well. The field of linguistics and phonetics dates back to the 4th-6th century B.C. Phonetics – the study of speech sounds, the means by which they are produced, and the manner in which they are perceived. Linguistics and phonetics are related to anatomy and physiology, neurology, antropology, physics and music. The classification of speech, sight and touch are essential in teaching foreign languages, correcting mistakes of children, and for teaching the deaf and blind to learn and perceived accordingly.
Linguistics dialects were made possible by construction of linguistics atlases by the Germans and French in 1875, 1902, and 1910 established that a phonetic law was a best statement of historical fact explaining the social, economic, and historical changes in the study of linguistics. Aitchison, Jean, in the book “Teach Yourself Linguistics”, sixth edition 2003, stated linguistics is the systemic of language, and tries to answer four important questions: What is language? How does language work? How does human language differ from animal communication? How does a child learn to speak? According to Aitchison, linguistics look first at the spoken word, which preceded the written everywhere in the world.
Dr. Rhoda Arrindell, a local linguist, in her book “Language, Culture and Identity”, explained spoken linguistics to include a national dialect of local cultural ancestors’ expressions for mother tongue usage.
John Duns Scotus (C.1266-C.1308) linguist, philosopher, theologist, teacher and scholar. He links the study of theology with the study of linguistics and fights against classical learning relating to ancient Greek and Roman influence on language, literature, and culture. The word “dunce” came from John Duns. His followers were called Duns men who were educated, smart, and brilliant. Today, the word dunce is misused in the English language and applied to any opponent of education to mean a dull ignorant person, or a learner slower than others.
Historical Linguistics and the English Language: During the 8th-11th Century AD, Vikings were Scandinavian sea pirates and traders. They invaded and settled in parts of North-Western Europe. England was one of those parts. The Danes-Scandinavian branch of the Vikings spread their territory and established the United Danish Kingdom in 1397-1523 in parts of Europe. They also brought their own words and symbols with them into the old English Language. When the Germans conquered England many years ago, Germanic became the mother language of England. Old English words were the Anglo-Saxon language of England. The Germans introduced their own symbols with pronunciation of words and letters of the alphabet into the English language. Examples include Germanic-Scandinavian words transfer from old English into modern English are words such as skill, window, leg, birth and glitter are just a few.
When the French Normans invade England in 1066, they also brought many French words into the English language. Many French words from old English days are still used in modern English language. Examples include: help, royal, clothes, dress, aid and kingly, and many others.
The Netherlands also made their own contribution to old words used today in modern English such as boom, deck, easel, stoop, freight and etch. Today, most modern English vocabulary are taken from the Greek and Latin. Examples include: biology (GK) bios means life and logos = study; psychology (GK) psche means soul or the mind; phonology (GK) phone means sounds; lingua (L) meaning language; navalis (L) meaning navy; datum (L) meaning data. The meaning of many English words can be easily recognized and identified by prefixes and suffixes, please see the above examples.
Slang and Phrases of Native Speakers: Slang – Words highly informal of a particular social group of people, or words and phrases that are used in everyday informal speech but which are not regarded as standard English. P.S. They should not be used in formal business communication. Examples are: I haven’t a clue – to mean I don’t know; rip-off – to mean steal; paps – to mean an elderly person; wheels – to mean a car; bloke or chap – to mean a man; dosh or dough – to mean money; you done know – to mean you know; spliff – to mean Cannabis, joint, cigarette; undocumented – to mean no legal residence.
Idioms are also slang dialects. They are mostly colloquial or local language. They usually understand locally by social groups. Examples include: countries within the Kingdom – for part of the Netherlands group; sells like hot bread – for fast selling items; a piece of cake – easy to understand; petite monnaie – for small money (Haitian dialect); Curaçao local Papimento – basta-bon for I am feeling all right; mi-ta-bon for I’m feeling alright; Dominica local creole – papa bondieu for oh my God; St. Lucian creole –toute le monde for everyone; Jamaican local dialect – tel im for tell him (they hardly pronounced the (h); Antiguan local dialect – nam for eating; puppa for father, gal for girl in other Caribbean territories; etc.
Jargons are specialized vocabulary or trade talk. Laypeople will understand the meaning of Jargons in words or phrases that follow: Data – information assumed; database – set of data held in a computer; interface – meeting between; quantum leap – big advance; death-trap – very dangerous; debt – money; equity – shares; build – save; plagiarize – copy other people’s work; path – career.
Homophones: homophones are words that sounds the same but have different spellings and meaning. They cause many problems to foreign students, and other speakers of English, both in spoken and written language. Examples are: bean, bin, been, being; to, too, two; bear, beer, bare; cheer, chair; counsel, council; principal, principle; licence, license; dependent, dependant; practice, practise; desert, dessert; ensure, insure; naval, navel; straight, strait; storey, story; its, it’s; who, whose; continual, continous; credible, credulous; affect, effect; flair, flare.
Irregular Plural Forms or Nouns that create difficulties amongst foreign learners:
child children; man men; foot feet; mouse mice; goose geese; tooth teeth; louse lice; woman women; ox oxen; eye eyes; hand hands; sheep sheep; ewe ewe; hoof hooves; half halves; wolf wolves; knife knives; thief thieves; elf elves; roof roofs rooves; life lives; scarf scarfs, scarves; wife wives; turf turves; salmon salmon; swine swine; cod cod; deer deer; squid squid; lobster lobster.
Words ending in (f) or (fe), the (f) and (fe) are dropped to form plural.
Practical and Theoretical Phonetics:
The phoneme concept (1935), W.F. Waddel define phoneme as a group of sounds which have, in sense, no significant differences. Some sounds may be distinctive in meaning in one language and not in another. In English a phoneme is the smallest unit sound. The study of phonetics is a vital part of linguistics. The English alphabet consists of 26 letters from A to Z, 19 consonants, b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v x z, and 5 vowels, a e i o u. The w and y are consonant letters when they come before a vowel and y is a vowel when comes after a consonant letter. However, consonants are letters that don’t start with a vowel sound.
Syllable – A word or part of a word which contains one vowel sound, for example, meat has one syllable and meatball has two syllables. Hate has one syllable and hateful has two syllables. A student learner of English can use the list of words below to guide s/he into knowing the different sounds: Heat-heatless; town-townhall; neat-neatness; mat-mattress; beg-beggar; bread-breadpan; meat-meatless.
Vowel – A sound that you make with your lips and teeth open. One of the sounds represented in English by the letters a,e,i,o,u, and sometimes by the y sound.
Consonant – A sound that you make by partly stopping the air as it comes through your mouth, e.g. the letters that represent consonants sound. See the 19 consonants of the English alphabet above.
Phoneme – the smallest segment of sounds which can distinguish two words. For example, take two words pin and bin. These words only different at the beginning letter sounds because pin begins with /p/ and bin begins with /b/. This is the smallest segment sounds by which these words could be different and remain distinctive. Smaller division is not possible because English doesn’t sub-divide /p/ and /b/ sounds. Words such as pen and pin are only different in the vowel sounds. This is the smallest segment by which these two words are different. There are no English language sounds halfway between /e/ and /i/ sounds. However, /p/, /b/, /e/, /i/ are phonemes of English language. Phoneme symbols are usually put into slanted brackets or slashes. Please see above! Pair words such as pin and bin, pen and pin which are different by one phoneme are refer to as minimal pairs. More practice can be done with beginning word sounds such as bill and pill, and vowel sounds bell and bill.
Schwa- The Schwa is an up-side down /e/, like a 6 turns backwards between two slashes, or slanted brackets. It is the most common English sounds. It’s also a short verson of a small letter /e/ between two slashes or slanted brackets. It is a very short sound at the beginning of some words, e.g. energetic, abstract, obstruct, airplane, aeroplane, ago, attend, ever, evergreen, and elf. The schwa can be also stressed in a final position in words such as teacher, murderer, conquer, signature, doer, encyclopedia, counselor, computer, gardener, creditor, counter, colour, zephyr, beer and amateur.
Evaluative comments
The English language went through many changes. From the old days of the Viking, Normans, Anglo-Saxon, Latin and Greek, it survived to become the world leading language today. Modern English has introduced new lexical content and phrases that will make the language more profound to native and foreign speakers. The English language gets its super recognition from the translation of the Holy Bible by King James 1. No other language will ever defeat this purpose as the world greatest language. Linguistics and phonetics provided a vast amount of knowledge and communication to native speakers and foreign learners to make language distinctive and easy to learn.
Conclusion
Finally, to conclude this article I would like everyone to read and enjoy this report, in addition make linguistics science a chosen career in the near future.
Joseph Harvey
The long-awaited transition from the Netherlands Antillean guilder to the Caribbean guilder is finally happening at the end of March. Originally, this new joint currency for Curaçao and St. Maarten was supposed to be introduced on October 10, 2010, the date when the Netherlands Antilles ceased to exist, giving way to the new CAS and BES entities. Now, 15 years later, the switch is finally taking place.
Good day, Honourable Premier,
Thank you for last evening’s Election date announcement.
I write again as in the previous three times.
At the onset of this New Year I send this communication requesting some information of Anguillian national significance.
Can you please share in detail why a NDA was signed concerning the .ai Domain Name contract with Identity Digital? Especially given that your party promised full transparency to the citizens and that no agreement was needed with our local, Vince Cate?
How can the Anguillian general public truthfully and rightly hold leaders accountable to an ID five year projected figure and help account against theft, mis-use and/or abuse of it, if they don’t know what that figure is?
How can the Anguillian general public correctly make their individual and collective appraisals of the financial wisdom of government’s decision without the requisite contractual information?
I am cognizant that your time is in high demand but many other citizens are concerned about the responses to the above questions. Thank you for your response.
Avenella Griffith
Resident Anguillian
Dear Editor,
There has been a lot of discussion in “The Daily Herald” regarding a few issues plaguing St. Maarten that have simple solutions or at least partial solutions that could be instituted quickly and with little difficulty.
Problem – vehicles that have excessively tinted windows.
Solution – have the vehicle inspection station do a test to determine if the tint is too dark. If it is, fail the vehicle and make the owner bring it back in a condition that will pass. This inspection occurs every two years and is required to get updated licensing. More controls should happen to enforce any offenses seen between inspections and fines levied.
Problem – traffic is getting worse and will deter tourists from returning to visit the island. We need to acknowledge that there are too many cars on the road, it is too easy to import one and there is no central control over ownership.
Solution – while we are waiting for a comprehensive traffic study to be done by UNOPS, which will likely take a long time, we need to limit the import of new vehicles to the island. This can be accomplished by establishing a small import duty that is used to fund the removal of a vehicle for every new one allowed in. There are many abandoned vehicles taking up valuable parking spaces and making the country unsightly, that should be removed. This duty tax would create a fund to do so and would simultaneously keep the balance of vehicles at status quo. Any excess funds could also be used for ameliorating the proliferation of potholes on the roads.
A central titling system should be established where an owner gets title to a vehicle and when sold has to transfer the registered title to the new owner. Initially, this can be done at the same time as an owner getting new plates for their vehicle. Subsequently, upon importation of new vehicles to the country, an SXM title is issued. This would allow the government to know who last owned a vehicle and be able to charge that owner for removal, if abandoned. The titling and registration of vehicles will also have a positive impact on diminishing the rate of occurrence of sales of stolen vehicles to unsuspecting buyers.
Problem – curtailing the use of single use plastics.
Solution – most residents are using reusable bags for their grocery shopping and will likely get used to taking those bags into other stores, as they keep some in their vehicles. Tourists, on the other hand, do not have reusable bags readily available. Rental cars could have a bag or two in the trunk. Hotel rooms, timeshares and condo rentals should also have some in their properties.
All retail establishments should charge a nominal fee for each bag, paper, or plastic that they give a customer. That charge, less an administration fee to cover the turnover tax and cost of the bag, should be turned over to the government to fund a separate fund used to beautify the country. New public trash receptacles (hopefully designed to allow recycling) should be placed along the roadsides in heavily trafficked areas, by both vehicles and pedestrians. The fund would also be used for periodic trash cleanup and beautification.
Encourage communities to establish a neighborhood watch and adopt a one-day-a-quarter cleanup of their own neighborhoods, to include children, which will have the effect of creating buy-in to good stewardship of the environment at an early age.
These suggestions are relatively simple partial solutions to much discussed problems. The implementation of a vehicle import duty and or a titling fee and a bag tax are a bit more complicated, but it is not rocket science.
R. Paul Speece
Simpson Bay
Dear Editor,
The race to the conclusion of the 2025 budget debate was long, and winding and fascinating and surprising, all at the same time. This marathon was an unforgettable display of knowledge, wit and stamina – a performance that grabbed the attention of many viewers and listeners; curious to be informed of the final decision.
Although it was 5 days of intense deliberation by the Council of Ministers and Members of Parliament, the nucleus of this article would be centered on the latter group only, as I bring into focus three MPs who really captured my interest – deeply impressed with not just the content of their presentations, but their disposition that interlocked with the sincerity of their individual messages.
During the budget debate, it was crystal clear that these MPs were independent thinkers, because they have studied the document, which provided them with the insight not to pose lots of questions that would result in superficial answers. Instead, they assessed the pros and cons of the budget, linked their evaluations and recommendations to the reality of the various situations, and then dialogued with the relevant ministers, via the Chair.
Based on space availability, I can only highlight a brief version of their presentations, starting with MP Veronica Jansen-Webster. From the start, she acknowledged to be very comfortable in her new position as an MP and that she would live up to the expectations that are required of her. This admission expressed maturity to move on and embraced her current role, in order to work in the best interest of the people.
When this MP spoke, her demeanor was so calm, and her choice of words were simple and well-measured. She linked her own experiences to solidity her advices to the ministers. I was very much touched when she revisited the Tourism Master Plan to extract information that has relevance today. This jolted my memory, because I can recall clearly when this document was put together, roughly 20 years ago.
MP Jansen-Webster urged the ministers to monitor their progress on a spreadsheet, to see what they have accomplished. This is up my alley because I started writing a similar article and I left it unfinished. To top it off, she pleaded with the ministers to recognize and encourage the good people who are around them and vowed to keep the ministers accountable for their actions.
MP Ludmila de Weever had a similar approach in her delivery, where her findings and requests were clearly defined. This MP stressed the need to present the budget with precision, to reflect the current year, and to make the document complete. She agreed with the principle of continuity, but was critical about new items added to the budget to incur more debts, which disputed the core meaning of continuity.
She also expressed the lack of unity among the Executive branch to focus on the issues that have plagued the country for months – matters such as safety and security for all; garbage disposal; road neglect; traffic congestion; economy and tourism. She encouraged cooperation across ministries, but reiterated that the Council of Ministers need to come together to work on these pressing issues.
The most crucial matter for me was when MP De Weever described the responsibility of Bureau Telecommunication and Post – how it failed to report matters in a timely fashion – and questioned if the organization’s personnel have the experience and knowledge to manage this entity, because of her experience with this institution.
The MP further emphasized that there was no oversight, and begged Prime Minister Luc Mercelina to look into the operation of BTP, to ensure that the supervision is carried out professionally. I really appreciated the explanation because all along I thought that BTP was only responsible for the regulation of telephone companies.
Hats off to MP Sjamira Roseburg for doing a fantastic job as the Vice Chair of Parliament. It was not an easy task to chair the debate for three consecutive days, especially when two days of these deliberations ended around 1:00am. This was a test of stamina. If anyone had tuned in for the first time, he or she would not have known that this was her first-ever, presiding over a budget debate.
She followed the Rules of Order to the best of her knowledge, and at times when the chatter among teammates rose above the acceptable level, she reminded her colleagues to maintain the decorum that is required in The People’s House. Great job, MP Roseburg!
What a memorable experience the budget debate of 2025 has been!
Joslyn Morton
