English as a Lingua Franca: The VOICE of Vienna

The ultimate description of ELF, a variety of English in its own right, is now available - thanks to the astounding work of the University of Vienna.

http://www.univie.ac.at/voice/page/index.php

The Ugly One With The Jewels

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFIpxaAzi9k

Lyrics of this Journey Account by Laurie Anderson, follow below:

In 1974, I went to Mexico to visit my brother who was working as an anthropologist with Tsutsil Indians, the last surviving Mayan tribe And the Tsutsil speak a lovely birdlike language and are quite tiny physically; I towered over them Mostly, I spent my days following the women around since my brother wasn't really allowed to do this We got up at 3am and began to separate the corn into three colors And we boiled it, ran to the mill and back, and finally started to make the tortillas Now all the other women's tortillas were 360°, perfectly toasted, perfectly round; and after a lot of practice mine were still lobe-sided and charred And when they thought I wasn't looking they threw them to the dogs

After breakfast we spent the rest of the day down at the river watching the goats and braiding and unbraiding each other's hair So usually there wasn't that much to report One day the women decided to braid my hair Tsutsil-style After they did this I saw my reflection in a puddle I looked ridiculous but they said: “Before we did this you were ugly, but now maybe you will find a husband?”

I lived within in a yurt, a thatched structure shaped like a cob cake And there's a central fireplace ringed by sleeping shelves sort of like a dry beaver down. Now my Tsutsil name was Lausha, which loosely translated means ‘The ugly one with the jewels’ Now ugly, OK, I was awfully tall by local standards But what did they mean by the jewels? I didn't find out what this meant until one night, when I was taking my contact lenses out, and since I'd lost the case I was carefully placing them on the sleeping shelf; suddenly I noticed that everyone was staring at me and I realized that none of the Tsutsil had ever seen glasses, much less contacts, and that these were the jewels, the transparent, perfectly round, jewels that I carefully hid on the shelf at night and then put for safekeeping into my eyes every morning

So I may have been ugly but so what? I had the jewels

Full fathom thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade
But that suffers a sea change
Into something rich and strange
And I alone am left to tell the tale
Call me Ishmael

The Ugly One With The Jewels, Laurie Anderson

ELF

A radio report about English as a Lingua Franca. Its causes, its status, its evolving.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013q210

Ten Years After 9/11

An interesting video on Official Propaganda. It shows how the world has alledgedly become a safer place after 9/11, together with the marvellous spread of Democracy, as David Cameron points. Too bad there's just something on such spotless discourse that doesn't seem to totally coincide with reality
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/frostovertheworld/2011/09/201191093336805237.html

Are you where you are?

Sweeping across virtually thousands of anonymous travellers at Rome-Fiumicino Airport this morning, some words came to my mind. And still do they they resound in my unconscious for some reason I can't really seem to pin down... It's often like this. Like when a song unexpectedly lingers on somewhere in you, in that silent inside you which is, however, so pretty much full of music. It's a poem written on the flagstones on the floor at the arrival hall of Oslo-Gardermoen Airport. The easiest thing would be not to ever discover it and to keep stepping on it countless of times. Words that say:

Are you where you are?
Are you not where you are?

Go to where you are

I'll wait for you

-there

Philosophers or Poets?

"Now, between philosophers and poets, the latter, paradoxically, are perhaps the least naive. For if today's philosophers think they know what they don't know, the poets, for their part, know that they do know, but don't know that.”

S. Felman


Any thoughts after such eloquent words? Feel free to put them down here!:)