Thursday, January 23, 2020

Nuclear Iran Essay -- Foreign Policy

Nuclear Iran Should United States confront Iran for its behaviors for enriching uranium? For decades the extremist Islamic regime of Iran has been the number one enemy of U.S and its allies particularly, Israel. Also, Iran has been supporting the terrorist groups such as Taliban and Al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan to kill American troops. Moreover, during the past ten years Iran has been working to become nuclear which can allow them to make nuclear bombs and weapons to wipe Israel off the map which they have claimed before they would without any hesitation. While, Iranian government insists that it has no intentions of expanding its nuclear program to make weapons and it is only for peaceful purposes, ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Kharrazi, secretary general of Iranian Hezbollah, stated, â€Å"We are able to produce atomic bombs, and we will do that(1).† So, there is a great conflict between Middle Eastern countries and Arab countries that are U.S’s allies such as Israel and Saudi Ara bia to let Iran become a nuclear power, and a greater conflict inside U.S because of the two invasion wars that have cost trillions and thousands of lives. Therefore, there are two sides to this important issue that whether U.S should let Iran to become nuclear or shall we air strike them and maybe cause a war that we will not be able to afford? Even though Iran persists that there are no harmful intentions and they are only enriching uranium to help their technology and hospitals, I believe U.S and its allies should stand up united to Iran and stop giving them any freebies and confront them militarily because of Iran’s behavior in the past and present; also, proving themselves as not trustworthy to U.S. At first, beginning with the opposition side of this... ...eneral of Iranian Hezbollah, February 14, 2005, written for CQ Researcher, cqpress.com, the Iranian leadership is far more dangerous than most Westerners realize, argues a longtime Iran hawk. 2. Senator Byrd, Robert, chairman, senate appropriations committee. Written for CQ Researcher, November 2007, arguing with President Bush’s administration over attacking Iran. 3. Bakhtiari, Farshid, a young computer salesman, February. Quoted in Kim Murphy, â€Å" Iran reformist want U.S. to tone down†, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 11,2007, p.A1 4. Rubin, Michael, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute. Rubin argues that the sanctions won’t be effective due to Iran’s history of untrustworthiness, cqpress.com, pro/con part, pp3, November 11, 2007. 5. Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, the 62nd U.N. assembly, unmistakably referring to the United States, sep. 26,2007, www.president.it/en/.

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Complexity of Poetry Essay

Poetry is a way for the reader to openly interpret a poem in almost any way they see fit. Because there is so much freedom of interpretation with poetry, there leaves a lot of room for discussion and opposition. Billy Collin’s poem, â€Å"Introduction to Poetry†, breaks down the basic ways for interpreting and understanding a poem. In summary, he explains that the reader cannot focus on trying to figure out one specific meaning of a poem, but instead, try to piece together small parts to understand a deeper meaning. Collin’s rules on how to interpret a poem can be applied to Hughes’s poem about a young student writing a poem for homework. Instead of looking at Hughes’s poem as a whole, the reader can better understand it by breaking it down and figuring out why each line is important and how it ties together with the poem as a whole. Understanding Collins rules to interpret a poem, help the reader decipher Hughes poem on a deeper, more academic level. Langston Hughes’s poem explains how a black, twenty two year old man and the rest of his white classmates are given an assignment to write a paper. The narrator, who is also the student, explains his thoughts about the assignment and how him being the only colored one in his class might be reflected on his grade on the assignment. At the beginning of the poem, he explains how he has to get to class everyday by traveling across some of the â€Å"better† parts of town. The student goes on to explain how even though he is colored, he likes the same things and has the same wants as everyone else. He states that he is no different than the rest of his class and that he too has knowledge to share. By stating this, the student is expressing to the reader how he thinks him and the instructor are equal. In the last few lines the student writes, â€Å"As I learn from you, / I guess you learn from me† (37-38). This explains how even though their skin color and age is different they are still able to learn from each other. The student has a somewhat optimistic and confident tone throughout the poem. He is aware of his capabilities and knows that he can be just as successful as anyone else. Billy Collins â€Å"Introduction to Poetry† explains how whenever people analyze a poem they do not try to find the true message of it. By writing, â€Å"But all they want to do / is tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of it,† explains how the majority of people are lazy and want everything handed to them effortlessly (12-14). This last stanza explains how some people look at poems from one point of view and expect the meaning of the poem to be written out for them. The author is stating that people should look at the poem from different angles just as one would look at the world from a color slide. He tries to explain to the reader that if one were to interpret the poem from a whole new approach, then they could find a deeper meaning than just the surface meaning. After reading Collins â€Å"Introduction to Poetry†, the reader should have a better sense of how to interpret Hughes’s poem. Throughout the first part of Hughes’s poem the reader may think all of the characters background information including his address, age, and hometown is pointless. After reading an entire stanza about this â€Å"pointless† information the reader may try to stop understanding the poem before they even finish it. If the reader uses Collins instructions about analyzing a poem, they may find that all of this â€Å"pointless† information is actually important and helps contribute to the characters feelings of insecurity. Collins poem explains that not all poems have one specific answer or meaning the writer is trying to get across. Keeping this idea in mind, the reader may realize that Hughes’s poem, in fact, does not state an answer or solution to the characters mixed feelings. Although both of these poems leave room the readers own special interpretation, there is a basic meaning and idea to each one. Both of these poems fit well together because Collin’s thoughts and ideas can be directly applied when reading Hughes’s poem. The poems are an effective example of how even though a poem may seem short and simple, there is usually a deeper and greater meaning beneath the surface.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

English Language History, Definition, and Examples

The term  English  is derived from  Anglisc, the  speech  of the Angles—one of the three Germanic tribes that invaded England during the fifth century. The English language is the primary language of several countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and many of its former colonies, and the United States, and the second language in a number of multilingual countries, including India, Singapore, and the Philippines. Its an official language in several African countries as well, such as Liberia, Nigeria, and South Africa, but is spoken worldwide in more than 100. Its learned around the world by children in school as a foreign language and often becomes a common denominator between people of different nationalities when they meet while traveling, doing business, or in other contexts. According to Christine Kenneally in her book The First Word, Today there are about 6,000 languages in the world, and half of the worlds population speaks only 10 of them. English is the single most dominant of these 10. British colonialism initiated the spread of English across the globe; it has been spoken nearly everywhere and has become even more prevalent since World War II, with the global reach of American power. The influence of the English language has also spread globally through American pop culture, music, movies, advertising, and TV shows. Spoken Worldwide About 20 percent of the worlds population speaks English as a first or secondary language, about 1.5 billion people. If you include people who use it, that brings the estimate up to more than one-fourth of the world, or more than 2 billion of the worlds 7.7 billion people, as of 2019. Only about 360 million people speak it as their first language, though. There are now estimated to be 1.5 billion English speakers globally: 375 million who speak English as their first language, 375 million as a second language and 750 million who speak English as a foreign language, noted Tony Reilly in English Changes Lives in Britains  The Sunday Times. He continued: The elites of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon have dumped French in favour of English. India has reversed its former campaign against the language of its colonial rulers, and millions of Indian parents are now enrolling their children in English-language schools—in recognition of the importance of English for social mobility. Since 2005, India has had the world’s largest English-speaking population, with far many more people using the language than before independence. Rwanda, in a move dictated as much by regional economics as post-genocide politics, has decreed a wholesale switch to English as its medium of instruction. And China is about to launch a colossal programme to tackle one of the few remaining obstacles to its breakneck economic expansion: a paucity of English-speakers. English has official or special status in at least 75 countries with a combined population of two billion people. It is estimated that one out of four people worldwide speak English with some degree of competence. When English Was First Spoken English derived from a  Proto-Indo-European  language spoken by nomads wandering Europe about 5,000 years ago. German also came from this language. English is conventionally divided into three major historical periods:  Old English,  Middle English, and  Modern English. Old English was brought to the British Isles by Germanic peoples: the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles, starting in 449. With the establishment of centers of learning in Winchester, histories being written, and the translation of important Latin texts into West Saxons dialect in 800s, the dialect spoken there became the official Old English. Adopted words came from Scandinavian languages. Evolution of the English Language In the Norman conquest in 1066, the Norman French dialect (which was French with a Germanic influence) arrived in Britain. The center of learning gradually moved from Winchester to London, so Old English no longer dominated.  Norman French, spoken by the aristocracy, and Old English, spoken by the common people, intermingled over time to become Middle English. By the 1200s, about 10,000 French words had been incorporated into English. Some words served as replacements for the English words, and others coexisted with slightly changed meanings. Spellings changed as people with the Norman French background wrote down the English words as they sounded. Other changes include the loss of gender for nouns, some word forms (called inflections), the silent e, and the coalescing of a more constrained word order. Chaucer wrote in Middle English in the late 1300s. Latin (church, courts), French, and English were widely used in Britain at the time, though English still had many regional dialects that caused some confusion. Structural and grammatical changes happened as well. Charles Barber points out in The English Language: A Historical Introduction: One of the major  syntactic  changes in the  English language  since Anglo-Saxon times has been the disappearance of the S[ubject]-O[bject]-V[erb] and V[erb]-S[ubject]-O[bject] types of  word-order, and the establishment of the  S[ubject]-V[erb]-O[bject]  type as normal. The S-O-V type disappeared in the early Middle Ages, and the V-S-O type was rare after the middle of the seventeenth century. V-S word-order does indeed still exist in English as a less common variant, as in Down the road came a whole crowd of children, but the full V-S-O type hardly occurs today.   Usage of Modern English Many scholars consider the early Modern English period to have begun about 1500. During the Renaissance, English incorporated many words from Latin via French, from classical Latin (not just church Latin), and Greek. The King James Bible (1611) and works of William Shakespeare are considered in Modern English. A major evolution in the language, ending the early subportion of the Modern English period, was when the pronunciation of long vowels changed. Its called the Great Vowel Shift  and is considered to have happened from the 1400s through the 1750s or so. For example, a Middle English long high vowel such as e eventually changed to a Modern English long  i, and a Middle English long oo evolved into a Modern English ou sound. Long mid- and low-vowels changed as well, such as a long a evolving to a Modern English long e  and an ah sound changing to the long a sound. So to clarify, the term Modern English refers more to the relative stasis of its pronunciation, grammar, and spelling than it has anything to do with current vocabulary or slang, which is always changing. Todays English English is ever adopting new words from other languages (350 languages, according to David Crystal in English as a Global Language). About three-quarters of its words come from Greek and Latin, but, as Ammon Shea points out in Bad English: A  History of Linguistic Aggravation, it is certainly not a Romance language, it is a Germanic one. Evidence of this may be found in the fact that it is quite easy to create a sentence without words of Latin origin, but pretty much impossible to make one that has no words from Old English. With so many sources behind its evolution, English is malleable, with words also being invented regularly as well. Robert Burchfield, in The English Language, calls the language a fleet of juggernaut trucks that goes on regardless. No form of linguistic engineering and no amount of linguistic legislation will prevent the myriads of change that lie ahead. Additions to the Dictionary After a certain amount of usage, dictionary editors decide whether a new word has enough staying power to add it to the dictionary. Merriam-Webster notes that its editors spend an hour or two daily reading a cross-section of material looking for new words, new meanings to old words, new forms, new spellings, and the like. The words are logged into a database with their context for documentation and further analysis. Before being added to the dictionary, a new word or change to an existing word must have a considerable amount of use over time in a variety of types of publications and/or media (widespread use, not just in jargon). The Oxford English Dictionary has a similar process for its 250 lexicographers and editors who are continually researching and updating language information.   Varieties of English Just as the United States has regional dialects and there are differences in pronunciation and words in British and American English, the language  has local varieties around the world:  African-American Vernacular English, American,  British, Canadian, Caribbean, Chicano, Chinese, Euro-English, Hinglish, Indian, Irish, Nigerian, Nonstandard English, Pakistani,  Scottish, Singapore,  Standard American, Standard British, Standard English,  and  Zimbabwean.