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English 001 - Introduction
Folder:
English For Poets .
Introduction:
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The English language is hard to master and worse to learn if it is not your first language. Most English speakers do not speak it well. Most foreign students of the language do not write it well. Because of usa and UK, the vocabulary is large and most other languages do not have the diversity of development that has adapted to the new inventions and innovations in a high-tech world. Many interpretors of English in business and politics can not understand the language because it is adage rich with allusions, references, sayings, and idomatic expressions becaue you have to live inside the culture for serveral years to grasp the nuances and comparison flourishes. It would also help to be well read in English literature to capture allusions to imaginary and real people and places and the things those imaginary characters do in their made-up worlds. More references are added annually due to expansion of manufacturing in high tech, videos, or rap music, so it is hard to keep up. Bable syndrome is well underway.
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I have tried to make the English For Poets series firstly, correct, secondly, easy to absorb, and thirdly, candid and witty to help get the big pill swallowed. English is NOT easy. I have been studying it (reading a prosody book and English for Foreign Students) over fifty years and I still mess it up sometimes. Okay, all the time. The goal is to expand syntax and style - ways of thinking and recording how the thought originated - your unique voice. I hope you have fun with it.
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Another reason for so many allusions and idoms is that uk and usa have fought in and destroyed utterly or colonized entire countries, those languages have taken a lower rung as candidates for being the international language for business, trade, and political wheeling and dealing. Conversely, terms and phrases from lesser states worm their way into English. The rule is: Take the wealth, rebuild the country you destroyed, and in so doing, absorb the culture. English evolves.
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Question: How many reads would you have on PostPoems if it were written in your native language? (Probably far more than you get with the English version is my guess). The world outside usa is more literary oriented in honoring poets and authors. usa English speakers do not read much literature. They read bills, menues, and advertisements mostly.
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As Earth born, we are language territorialists. Due to the 19th - 21st Century roles of usa and uk diplomacy and wars, grant programs (lend-lease et al) foreign aide, and other contributions to emerging nations that you and I will never know about, English emerged as the language of choice. Technology has equaled the playing field, see UN session with delegates plugged into interpreters. No need to learn English now, acutally, except when sitting in trade negotiations or summits; and even then interpreters are present. If you are going to write in the English language, you have to learn it's written forms.
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When in Rome or rather, when attempting to get Rome to buy your nation's commercial output, you learn to speak Italian. When money speaks, language becomes part of the currency. So it goes with poetry - a form, a genre, a mode of expression like no other anywhere in human history.
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Historically, that pretty much covers why English won as the international trade language and Farsi did not. Yoruba is not likely going to unseat English either. It is a difficult language to learn because there lots of exceptions to mostly every rule. But if you are going to write poetry in English, learn the rules. You are not alone if you were not born in the usa. A lot of usa citizens do not speak English well either and seldom write. That you want to pick up a pen and express human emotions is already an application to an exclusive club. Writer. It has an interesting ring to it. :D
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HERE ENDETH THE LESSON
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Lady A
03-05-19
1010a
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