"A Language without Limits"

The text "A Language without Limits", published in the Toronto Star and written by Deena Kamel, talks about how Language is changing and the different Variations of Language.

In the text the author said English is getting "spiced with flavours from foreign languages", this means that English is expanding and Variating in different cultures, for example Hinglish, Chinglish, Spanglish, and others. The author also said that the English that we hear today will be different to the English of the future, because people is getting creative and people are transforming language in a good way.


Hinglish is the English Variation of Hindi people. This Language started spreading quickly by the internet and satellite channels, is the language of globalization. The University of Wales predict that the world's 350 million Hinglish speakers may soon outnumber the native English speakers in USA and the UK. 


The author also refers of English as a sponge Language, because since it was written around the year 700, it has adopted from Norse, French and Latin, among others. Jack Chambers (professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Toronto) mentioned that English is an amazingly tolerant Language, because it have traveled all around the world and it have being mixing-up with so many cultures and influences.


At the end the author puts a quote of Rena Helms-Park (professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto), "written English will remain stable, but we will see a "melting pot of Englishes".


In my opinion, Deena Kamel has an interesting opinion of people changing English, she thinks that people have being creative and they have being modifying the Language in a good way. Many people will think this is a attack to Language but y concord with her opinion.

Politically Correct Language

The Politically Correct Language is the one we use for not offending anyone or for being respectful. The typical example in United States is white people trying to say "the African American Guy" instead of "the Black Guy" as we can see in this video:




In the video, a worker in a office is doing something, and a mailman appears, the worker didn't looked at him, so when the mailman said "I have a delivery for Richard Evans", he immediately responded "He is the Black Guy", but when he saw the mailman, he started confusing himself by trying to replace the word with a politically correct one.

Sofia Vergara Modern Family

In the TV show Modern Family Sofia Vergara plays the part of Gloria. She is a Colombian that traveled to United States so she speaks with a very bad pronunciation, some kind of Spanglish. Here is the video for you to see:

As you have seen in the the video, Gloria made a lot of mispronunciations, this is because of the location she comes from. English is very hard for her because is her second language, thats why she mix-up English with Spanish (First Language).

Language Variations

Language can reveal people's precedence by just hearing the accent they have, for example, English have a lot of Variations that we saw in class, like "Hinglish", "Spanglish", "Chinglish", etc.

Spanglish now days is making a revolution in Music industries, artists like Pitbull or Prince Royce are writing these songs in Spanglish for making it understandable for more people around the world.

Ebonics is another example of language variations. Ebonics was a language made by the african american people to speak with each other, it didn't get very popular, but the rapper Souja Boy used it in a song we read in class, it was a little bit hard to understand it because of the differences with the regular English. Ebonics was also used by Toni Morrison in the book Beloved.

Language in Cultural Context

Language is constantly changing for different cultures and social groups, here in Viña del Mar we say Typex and in Santiago they say Liquid, doesn't matter what culture we are talking about, language change. Also, language have variations for different activities, professions, or particular groups, using different types of Jargon or Argot.

The same type of Language can Variate on the same country or location, for example in Chile, people in the south speaks "cantaito", but in the north they speak with better pronunciation. That happens in countries all around the world Because of the different cultures.