Happiness

1. If you want happiness for an hour -- take a nap. If you want happiness for a day -- go fishing. If you want happiness for a month -- get married. If you want happiness for a year -- inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime -- help someone else. - Chinese Proverb (Source:  http://www.quoteland.com/topic/Happiness-Quotes/72/)

2. I know that am happy when I have a giant smile on my face because I am doing something that/with someone I love. Similar to the author of the quote above, I would consider taking an nap an hour of happiness but playing an hour of tennis or hanging out with family and friends for an hour is also happiness to me. I also agree with the author of the above quote that long-term happiness comes from helping others; every summer for the last few years, I have been a tennis instructor to children who live in the town of Barnstable, and I sincerely enjoy going to work everyday because I love both tennis and teaching the children. This job makes me so happy that I am consider a career in elementary education (happiness for a lifetime). 

3. Feeling happy can promote learning in the area of knowledge of history. I am extremely happy with history at the moment because (definitely not to brag) I have the highest grade average for all HL 1 students according to the teacher's gradebook. This happiness has motivated me to continue to work hard in the class because I want to continue to have the best average in that class out of all HL 1 history students.  

Save the Yiddish Language!

Language: Yiddish

People & Culture: Yiddish is a 1000-year old language of the European Jews, and it is spoken by Jews today in several countries including in the United States and Israel. The basic grammar and vocabulary of Yiddish, which is written in the Hebrew alphabet, is Germanic. However, Yiddish is not a Germanic dialect but instead a language which is part of the family of Western Germanic languages. The Holocaust contributed to the endangerment of the Yiddish language; while 11 million Jews spoke Yiddish prior to World War II (2 out of 3 Jews spoke Yiddish), the U.N. estimates that only about 1 million people worldwide speak Yiddish today. Although the U.N. still classifies Yiddish as an endangered language, some argue that currently there is a Yiddish revival (http://languagesoftheworld.info/geolinguistics/endangered-languages/yiddish-revival.html).

Sources: http://www.germanic.ucla.edu/yiddish, http://www.yivoinstitute.org/yiddish/yiddish_fr.htm

Why save Yiddish?: Yiddish is a rich language, full of unique words and phrases. The richness of the language is expressed through a variety of mediums including poetry. An example of such a poem is "Gracious Angel" by Arthur Esselin.

Poem (translated into English from Yiddish): http://www.esselin.com/poetry.htm#graciousangel

Image: http://i1.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/590/draft_lens8331701module71802611photo_1259595862over-under.jpg

The above picture shows a Yiddish proverb both in the original Yiddish and in English. Although translated into English, some of the richness of the Yiddish language is 'lost in translation.' If the Yiddish language is lost completely, many Yiddish texts and proverbs will be 'lost in translation.'

Knowledge in Symbols

Image Source: http://www.medart.pitt.edu/_medart/image/glossary/GREEKCR.JPG

1. This symbol, a cross with arms of equal length, is a symbol whose origin cannot be traced back to a single culture but to many. The cross is found in every part of the world including in prehistoric caves and on engraved rocks .  
2. The symbol has a variety of meanings, and these meanings vary for different societies. In pre-Columbian America, the sign seems to have been associated to the four points of the compass (north, south, east, & west) and the weather gods. Contrastly, the symbol means perfection or 10 (the most perfect number) in China. Additionally, to alchemists, this was a sign where the four elements (water, wind, fire, air) were represented by the four arms. 
3. This image can be classified as ambiguous because of the variety of its meanings.  
4. Problems of knowledge include misinterpreting the meaning or being unable to understand the meaning if someone is not a member of a particular cultural group (i.e. not alive in pre-Columbian America, not Chinese or not an alchemist.) People may also mistakenly believe that this symbol represents only the Christian cross. 

WOK Language: Global Views

Article: They’re, Like, Way Ahead of the Linguistic Currrrve

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/science/young-women-often-trendsetters-in-vocal-patterns.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=languageandlanguages 

Summary: This article highlights that linguists, who once that the vocal trends of young women were markers of immaturity and stupidity, now believe that the way in which young women use these vocal trends in more sophisticated ways than many people realize. These vocal trends include uptalk (pronouncing statements as if they were questions), slang (current slang includes YOLO (you only live once) and 'wicked'), the use of 'like' as an filler word, and vocal fry (raspy sound at end of sentence)*.The article emphasizes the idea that young women start vocal trends when the author states "As Paris is to fashion, the thinking goes, so are young women to linguistic innovation" (Quenqua, 1). Although the article suggests that women start vocal trends, it mentions that these vocal trends spread to other groups. One article mentions that a 2011 study demonstrated that men use the word 'like' more than women while another study highlights that the most common uptalkers were fathers with young women. Dr. Eckert of Stanford stated that uptalking was a way for these fathers to show that they were friendly and were "not asserting power in the situation" (Quenqua, 2). The article also states that like uptalking, vocal fry can have several uses. These uses include trying to sound more authoritative or disinterest.

*Example of Vocal Fry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L0eJp7V2Zs ("Why don't you come up sometime and see me?")

Knowledge Issue: To what extent can the human sciences affect language?