Entertainment is one of the best way to learn English.

Assalamualaikum wbt,

I really want to thank Friso Gold commercial for featuring Bai Ann's song, The Incredible Journey because, today, I heard my nephew sings it to my ears today, and whenever the song comes out, they actually remember the melody and also the lyrics. 

So, congratulations to Friso Gold for doing great in the commercial.

I too have downloaded the amazing song from the internet and seriously, the song was soothing and yet very harmonious, I really love it.

It actually shows that, learning is at it best when it comes to music. I too learn *and still learning English language through music. Well, there are people learning English through games so, I could easily conclude that, learning languages (English) is at it best when it comes to entertainment. Obviously, people especially children love entertainment.

Since they were toddlers, most of the parents were singing them songs, then they bigger, the parents give them handphones, Ipads and what not to their children so that they could learn something from it. And when they managed to be able to tap on these touch screens gadgets, they are able to actually play something and most of the apps on the internet are in English, so, there you goes, my explanation is valid for present times. Haha...

But, those for children these days, but for me, I was not like that. I learned from books, tv, musics, lyrics *i even have lyric books, both Malay and English language. I just want to learn. That is all, I think, my passion is just English language. Why? I've tried to learn other languages, like Mandarin, French, German, but I just could not, but hey, nothing wrong with that right? hahaha..

So, that is all for now.

Assalamualaikum WBT

p/s: I definitely getting my groove back.

Temple Grandin is AMAZING!!!

Assalamualaikum WBT,

Who have watched Temple Grandin?

If you did not yet, please, do so. Why? Why is it important to watch it? Some might questioned that too right? I too questioned that questions to myself , why?

Why? Do you want to know why? 

Because, this movie is actually based on true story. There is someone who named Temple Grandin and she has this autism and she had hard learning anything. You should watch it. I have watched it on Al-Hijrah and it was an inspiring movie. I love it so much and in shaa Allah, I will look for this movie somewhere. I really want to watch it again. Love it so much.

If you want to read her story, you might want to buy her books, but if you rely more on Wikipedia and the internet, you should click on this name. Temple Grandin. If you do not want to care about it, well, I guessed you have missed on amazing inspiring moment of your life. Why? You just need to read about her and somehow, to you it might, 

"Why the hell she was obsessed with cow?"

Trust me! you will find it amusing, Why? Because she invented one amazing great device to actually calm the cows before going into the lorry to the slaughter house. 

Yes, I am talking about both, movie and herself (Temple Grandin). Anyhow, you should just watch this very inspiring movie. I actually love watching this kind of movie, drama, based-on-true story movie, biopic, documentary, same goes to, this one movie, Blind Side, it is amazing!!! I love it.

I have nothing to talk about, I just want to watch it again. Just. Again. Temple Grandin.

Wait.. in 2012, I downloaded a short video of her, at Emmy or Gloden Globes *I don't remember which one, but when she got on the stage, she was, proud and really-really grateful to her mother. I just, ahhhh... overwhelmed with the spirit.

And btw, she has a Doctorate in Animal Science and she is a Professor at Colorado State University. Hows that?

Assalamualaikum WBT

p/s: please Al-Hijrah TV, play it again.

What Do I Want To Do In My Life?

Assalamualaikum WBT,

Sometimes, I do questioned myself,

"What do I really want in this world?"

"What do I want to do in my life?"

"Why do live?"

Yes, these are just a few of plenty questions playing on my mind. Yes. Well, sometimes, I have things on my mind, what do I want to do, but again, the execution of those ideas were just not right. I do not know why. 

Well, as you all know, I am just a Kampung boy from Malaysia. I did not learn English language from outside of this country. Yup, some learned from England, America, Switzerland, Australia and such. Whatever. I did not. I learned it from television and teachers and readings. Yes, I read. But then, when we have this opportunity to learn, some of us just did not make the best of it, but then, after learning Psycholinguistics, I know now. Not all can acquire second language. Well, for those who happened to be able to learn second language, applaud yourself for making such amazing achievements. Congratulations.

To be honest, I do not have any English experiences after my uni life. Unlike my friends, they have the opportunity to practice their English in term of communicating, like Ayuni, she is working with Al-Hijrah TV, Belle, she is working with BERNAMA in Economic teams, Dean, who is now a lecturer, Wan Zul, he is working with The Red Warriors team (Kelantan FC) and soon-to-be a MA student, Zakiah, who is know a lecturer too, Tony, a personnel in A'Famosa Hotel, and so many others. I am so sorry for not mentioning your names. You are not forgotten my darlings, *like they read my writings. hahaha

I do want to pursue what I want to do. Yes, I want it, but know, I have the opportunity and I am going to grab it. Yes, I want to pursue a career in business, yes, Fashion Business. I want to create my own fashion line using my own name, Akmall Razlan, collection, sort of, but I want just my name of my clothes. 

I am now 26 years old, people say, you should be working now. Yes, I am, I am working my in my own ways to make my living. I going to earn money with the way I know and skilled best! This raya, I am promoting my sewing skills to my kampung, first raya, I wore a baju melayu with pants ( I made those), then second raya, I wore a thobe (I made it too), and people asked me, "Did you sew this on your own?", and I said, "Yes, I did". "Nice", Well, thank you. Yes, thanking other people for praising does not make your standard lower.

Yes, to be honest, I am happy now. Thank you. Thank you Allah, Thank you parents, thank you family, thank you friends and thank you all. Love you very much.

Assalamualaikum WBT

p/s: You are the winner, for a lifetime, if you seize that one moment in time, just MAKE IT SHINE!

The Principles of Newspeak; The B Vocabulary.

Assalamualaikum WBT,

I am so sorry for not writing for quite sometimes, well, for those who read my blog, thank you very much. I love you so much, thank you. I have no words to express my great feeling.

Well, in the last entry, I wrote about The Principles of Newspeak. I did write about the first part of the principles, it actually have two more. The second one would be The B vocabulary. It is consisted of words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes : words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them. 

To be honest, without a full understanding of the principles of Ingsoc it was difficult to use these word correctly. Well, I have problems to understand them too, hahha.. no kidding. To use something that really alien to use is actually hard eyh? The B words were a sort of verbal shorthand, often packing whole ranges of ideas into a few syllables, and at the same time more accurate and forcible than ordinary language. The B words were in all cases compound words.

They consisted of two or more words, or portions of words, welded together in an easily pronounceable form. The resulting amalgam was always a noun-verb, inflected according to the ordinary rules. Take this one example, the word goodthink, meaning very roughly, 'orthodoxy', or, if one chose to regard it as a verb, 'to think in an orthodox manner'. This inflected as follows; noun-verb, goodthink; past tense and past participle, goodthinked; present participle, goodthinking; adjective, goodthinkful; adverb, goodthinkwiser; verbal noun, goodthinker. These are just fron one example. Irregular formations of words in the B words are common. No word in the B vocabulary was ideologically neutral. A great many were euphemisms.

This is one important fact o Newspeak, euphony outweighed every consideration other than exactitude of meaning. Regularity of grammar was always sacrificed to it when it seemed necessary. For those who master Newspeak, they would be a really great note-taker, journalist. Why? Because they could easily understand things in Oldspeak and easily rephrase in Newspeak, right? 

If you can see, we have only few words to choose from this is because, Newspeak's vocabulary was tiny and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised. Newspeak's lexical are actually increasing year by year and there is one famous word in Newspeak which is duckspeak. Meaning, people talked without even using their own brains. In other words, 'to quack like a duck". Well, you know duck? They quacking and making weird, loud sounds, but then, there is nothing. 

Well, I think that is enough for now. To be honest, this topic is not an easy topic. Plus, I surely do not use Newspeak in my everyday life. Well, I might but my language was called sarcasm. hahha, I used that a lot. 

Assalamualaikum WBT

ref : 'The Principles of Newspeak' written by George Orwell 1948.

p/s: To be honest, I need to read more about this. Yes!

The Principles of Newspeak.

Assalamualaikum WBT,

Well, well, well... I am back again with more new information. After Malaysia's 13th General Election, dramas, dramas and dramas. Hahaha.. Well, whatever it is, the results were out and Barisan Nasional is back AGAIN to rule Malaysia. *sigh? hahaha.. I do not know. I wish for better Malaysia, I love Malaysia, but then.. Well, enough! 

Now, I am going to write about Newspeak. Do you know what is Newspeak? Well, Newspeak was official language of Oceania, and it had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc. What is Ingsoc? Ingsoc is English Socialism. Ingsoc is also a Newspeak, Eng-lish and Soc-alism so, Ingsoc. In the year, 1984, there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles of the Times were written in it, but this was a tour de force which could only carried out by specialist. It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or standard English language, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. 

Meanwhile, Newspeak gained ground steadily, all party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech. The purpose of Newspeak was not only provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc -- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought it dependent on words. 

Its vocabulary was constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever.

Let us see an example, the word free still existed in Newspeak, but could only be used in such statements as "The dog is free from lice" or "This field is free from weeds." It could not be used in its old sense of "politicaly free" or "intellectually free", since political in intellectual freedom are no longer existed even as concepts, and therefore it is necessity nameless. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum. 

Newspeak was founded on the English language as we now know it, though many Newspeak sentences, even when not containing newly created words, would be barely intelligible to an English-speaker of our own day. Newspeak words were divided into three distinct classes, known as the A vocabulary, the B vocabulary, and the C vocabulary. It would be simpler to discuss each class separately, but the grammatical peculiarities of the language can be dealt with in the section devoted to the A vocabulary, since the same rules held good for all three categories. 

A vocabulary : words are simple, concept word.

There are two outstanding peculiarities, 1. almost complete interchangeability between different parts of speech. 2. Regularity.

Number 1 is for example, speedful meant "rapid" and the noun verb, and adverbs by adding -wise as in speedwise meant "quickly". Goodful, goodwise and so on. Other examples, could be negative by adding the affix- un-, or could be strengthened by the affix plus-, or, for still greater emphasis doubleplus-. Thus, for example, uncold meant "warm" while pluscold and doublepluscold meant, respectively, "very cold" and "superlatively cold." Given the word good, there was no need for such a word as bad, since the required meaning was equally well --indeed better-- expressed by ungood. All that was necessary, in any case where two words formed a natural pair of opposites, was to decide which of them to suppress. Dark, for example, could be replaced by Unlight, or light by undark, according to preference.

I will continue with B vocabulary and C vocabulary, plus duckspeak and more.

Read this first and be good okay, do not be ungood.

Assalamualaikum WBT

Ref : 'The Principle of Newspeak' written by George Orwell 1948. 

p/s: Need to read more.

Introduction to Psycholinguistics.

Assalamualaikum WBT,

Hi, we are here again. Well, I am so sorry for not writing here, I have a lot of works needed to be done, so, since I have got the time, now I can write. In my uni life, I had a few subjects that I love learning, one of those subjects is Psycholinguistics. Yes, I love learning it.

They say, Psycholinguistics is not an easy subject to be learned. I do not know that, as long as we are interested in something, obviously, nothing could stop us right? *drama much? Please. Well, before we go any further, it is better for me to tell you a bit what psycholinguistics in brief. 

Language in general is important not only because it distinguishes human beings from all other animals on the earth but because, directly or indirectly, it makes possible the elaborate organisation of civilised society... and language in general is interesting because, although everyone knows and uses a specific language, few people understand what they know. Becoming self0-consiciously aware of what is known unself-consiciously carries a special brand of excitement. - George A. Miller

There are few main points that need to be in our minds are, 

1. Psycholinguistics is the study of how individuals comprehend, produce, and acquire language.

2. The study of psycholinguistics is part of the field of cognitive science. Cognitive science reflects the insights of psychology, linguists, and to a lesser extent, fields such as artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and philosophy.

3. Psycholinguistics stresses the knowledge of language and the cognitive processes involved on ordinary language use.

4. Psycholinguistics are also interested in the social rules involved in language use and the brain mechanism associated with language. 

5. Contemporary interest in psycholinguistics began in the 1950s, although important precursors existed in the 20th century.

The psychological study of language is called psycholinguistics. The diversity of how we use language is daunting for psychologists who wish to study language. How can something so widespread and far-reaching as language be examined psychologically? An important consideration is that although language is intrinsically  a social phenomenon, psychology is principally the study of individuals. They psychology of language deals with the mental processes that are involved in language use. There are three sets of processes needs to be remembered which are, language comprehension (how we perceive and understand speech and written language), language production ( how we construct an utterance for idea to completed sentence), and language acquisition (how children acquire language).

The Scope of Psycholinguistics.

Psycholinguistics is part of the emerging field of study called cognitive science. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary venture that draws upon the insights of psychologists, linguists, computer scientist, neuroscientists , and philosophers to study the mind and mental processes. As the name implies, psycholinguistics, is principally a integration of the fields pf psychology and linguistics. Linguistics is the branch of science that studies the origin, structure, and use of language. Like most interdisciplinary fields, however, psycholinguistics has a rich heritage that includes contributions from diverse intellectual traditions. 

Language Processes and Linguistic Knowledge

There are two questions that need to be answered in psycholinguistics, one would be What knowledge of language is needed for us to use language? and other one is What cognitive processes are involved in the ordinary use of language?

In a usual sense, we know how to use a language but we are fully aware of this knowledge. A distinction may be drawn between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge refers to the knowledge of how to perform various acts, whereas, explicit knowledge refers to the knowledge of the processes or mechanism used in these acts. We may distinguish between knowing how to speak and knowing what process are involved in producing speech. Generally speaking, much of our linguistic knowledge is tacit rather then explicit. I could simply say that tacit is the surface and explicit is the deep under the sea type of knowledge. Meaning, explicit knowledge is where we need to look deep down to actually get the knowledge, we need to learn as much as we can to gain the knowledge. For example, we know how to smile, but we do not know how many muscles are needed to make us smile right? If you know how many muscles needed to make us smile than you obtain the explicit knowledge. Easy right?

The same information as my entry in here, there are four broad areas of language knowledge, which are, Semantics, Syntax, Phonology and Pragmatics. Let me give you the brief definition on this areas. Semantics deals with the meanings of sentences and words. Syntax involves the grammatical arrangements of words within the sentences. Phonology concerns the system of sound in a language and last but not least, Pragmatics, it entails the social rules involved in language use. It is not ordinarily productive to ask people explicitly what they know about these aspects of language. 

Well, I personally think that is quite enough to digest and I will write more on this introduction to Psycholinguistics. Love it. There are a few more topics need to be written here so, I will analyse it first then, I will write it. Okay? Wait for it eyh? Thank you.

Ref : Psychology of Language by David W. Carroll.

Assalamualaikum WBT

p/s: Need time to rest. Really. Ugh.