Search results for 'tag:Phonetics tag:Essays' matching tags 'Phonetics' and 'Essays'

Is the internet destroying the English language?

Cuckoosnest — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 04:31:10 GMT

I can recall back in college I wrote an essay about the internet and how it would change our lives. I wrote that the biggest change would be the amount that the average person writes in their lifetime. I believed, and still do, that, with email and web forums, the internet created for the first time a place where amateur writers could freely express their ideas. Though I don't have any statistics to back up this claim, I do believe my prediction was correct, and I'm sure most of you would agree.

There was one thing, however, that I didn't anticipate-- the deterioration of English's written grammar. I'm assuming it began with chat rooms and instant messages, where a quick response outweighs grammatical quality. The end product became a hodgepodge of phonetic abbreviations (wat r u doing), acronyms (imo, btw, brb, g2g), and lower case letters (i am fine), some of which is virtually indecipherable unless you are in the know.

This may be suitable for chat rooms and instant messages, where part of the goal is to communicate as quickly as possible, but now this new English "grammar" has settled into other areas of the internet, such as forums, blogs, and personal web pages, where time is certainly not of the essence. Chat room conversations and instant messages disappear shortly after they are posted, but now people are posting for posterity their messages written with these new grammar "rules" in forums where the message is saved indefinitely. In the end, these posts simply look like they were written by someone who couldn't pass their elementary grammar class. As an English teacher, they're quite literally painful to read.

IMHO, dis iz a sine of da destruction of our written language, but im obviously biased on da issue. so wat do u think? iz dis sumthin we shud b ashamed of, or has ben franklins dream of a simpler english language finally cum of age?

Self-Evaluation Essay

Super Sonic — Sat, 19 May 2007 22:54:48 GMT

Hi,

I had my final exam from the writing course as a home take-in, but the type of the essay sounded a little bit weird to me. Here is what my lecturer gave as information:

Writing FINAL

Write an evaluation essay on the following topic

The Self-Evaluation essay is a reflective essay assessing and describing your learning experiences. Write a self evaluation essay considering the guidelines below.
The following are guidelines for your Self-Evaluation Essay:

Include each of your learning objectives,
Describe how the learning objectives were accomplished and the steps used to complete objectives,
For objectives you did not meet, state why not. What did you learn from the failure to meet objectives? (Is this even proper English? )
What else did you learn that was not in your initial objective? Specific examples should be cited. The student should review the learning objectives set at the beginning of the term and assess what growth he or she has achieved during the term."

And here is what I have written (Could you please proofread it considering the notes above?):

This Is Only the Beginning

This is my first year in the Linguistics department of Hacettepe University. I can easily say that this university is not quite what I expected it to be. I was hoping to improve myself in many fields, but this did not happen in the first year, since I had to deal with my courses more than anything else. However, my English dramatically improved thanks to the courses. I would like to evaluate this year in terms of how I improved my English skills (speaking, writing, reading and listening), while doing nothing about the other fields I was interested in (arts and sports).

First of all, I have been able to improve my expressive English skills thanks to a native speakerâs being our lecturer, and having courses on how to express ourselves better in English. Margaret was the lecturer of our writing course. I learned many new words, idioms, grammar structures and expressions in her classes, which would have me state my thoughts in a more comprehensible way in written language. Also, both in our writing and reading classes we had discussions about various controversial subjects that helped me improve my speaking skills. We were having phonetics at the same time, and as a student trying to attend all the classes, I improved my pronunciation. So, I can say that I am grateful for my department to help me meet my objectives in expressing myself both in spoken and written language.

Secondly, my receptive skills have also improved with the help of the courses like reading, literature, and listening comprehension. Even though I did not have much difficulty in reading and understanding course books, articles, reading passages and the like, I was rather poor at literal texts, or in other words, the figurative use of English language. By the help of our literature classes, I got over this problem, and now I can mostly understand what Shakespeare or Hemingway says. My listening skills, likewise, improved remarkably after having taken the listening comprehension courses. I was unable to differentiate between the words that resemble each other like âmateâ and âmadeâ before I took those courses. I can say that listening to someone speaking English has become one of the easiest tasks ever with the help of my lecturers.

Thirdly, even though there has been a big improvement in my English skills, I have not been able to deal with arts or sports, both of which are my main interests. I was hoping to have art lessons such as painting and music. However, all the courses are academic ones. Another deficit of my department âor of the university in general- is that there are not many sports activities going on. Because of these reasons, I felt rather âantisocialâ in my first year in the university. As a result, not having done anything in these two areas is the only objective that I missed this year, but I am thinking of taking piano and karate courses next year from another university. If only my university gave more importance to these two areas!

Consequently, although I was not very content with the overall situation of the university this year, I must admit that my English skills have improved drastically within this year. I, however, still feel sad about not being able to take any courses from my areas of interest. Who knows, maybe this was only the beginning. Maybe, I am going to like this university better. Only time will show!

Thanks in advance

Re: help

myprofe — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 07:04:17 GMT

Anonymous wrote:
could you tell me from where i can find a good new essay on phonetic or it`s branches?i want it to be written between 2005 to 2006.

Corrections and suggestions: Could you tell me where I can find a good, new essay on phonetics or it`s branches? I would like it to be written between 2005 to 2006.

Comment: I don't understand what you mean by "it's branches".

help

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 04:42:29 GMT

Veris wrote:

Does anyone know in which site can i find phonetic transcrptions ? or Dictation with its phonetic transcrption? Because i've to practice phonetics in English.
It would be very helpful.
Thank you.
Vero

could you tell me from where i can find a good new essay on phonetic or it`s branches?i want it to be written between 2005 to 2006.thank you for your help.

Re: Linguistics not science

Randy_Tam — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 18:57:46 GMT

ah... it seems nobody is reading. Anyway, this thing has gone really too far - fetched.

No offense, but that it pains and is time - consuming to do the a - level is a rather common opinion among high school students. At any rate, this is a conclusion that information available to me has led me to draw.

As to the jargon thing, if 'etymon' be defined as 'the root of a lexical item', and given one is going to use the word many times... haha, this is going to be a lot of fun: the root of a lexical item (an etymon) is something that students should at any rate have some knowledge about; however, the study into the root of lexical items (etymology) is par excellence a profound subject that is worth as much attention as such other linguistic subjects as phonetics and semantics.

'Why use jargons when simple words will do?'

in the very same manner, I will ask, 'why use a long expression when a shorter and plainer one is available'? (again, the 2 arguments are treated as 'equally important' in George Ornwell's 1946 essay...) An analogy could be observed from maths:

1. (2x + 2y)

2. 2(x + y)

is the latter one not more palatable?

'Last time I checked, linguistics is still in the Faculty of Arts. Never seen it listed among the sciences. '

That's why every year members and professors from that field take pain in explaining the nature of THEIR linguistics. Go to the open days of those institutes where linguistics classes are given. You will find them all stressing on the irrelevance of studying languages (presumably an arts matter) to linguistics defined in their own fashion. Taxonomy is one thing; the nature of what is taught can be another. Economics is, as a tradition, treated as an arts subject (though yes... it is changing). But does it not fall under a branch of science, with a coherent framework of theories and tools for predictions?

'Your prof. is right to keep your project in hiatus. Students should be well-rounded before they become specialized--there's plenty of time for that yet! Again, going back to what I've said about a lopsided education. '

Not really... linguistics in its own right is a subject, English is another. That I skim through linguistics issues does not mean I am leaving other subjects high and dry. A history major fella tells me he is doing some sort of research into the military history of the Chinese warlords, 1911 - 1927. (a field on which few historians even bother to write). I am somehow envious of him not really because of the freedom (I am going to study myself anyway) he is given, but because somebody is serving for him as a good 'reader'.

' Linguistics is like åµæ³. Too much strategems on paper will turn anybody into a é¦¬è¬.'

That depends on how you define 'linguistics'. If you mean to be so ambitious as to include language phenomena into 'linguistics', then yes. But if the usual sense of this word is preserved, then I must decline. Linguistics, treated on a par with 'French studies', 'Literary analysis', or 'history', is a STUDY of human linguistic behaviour, but not 'human linguistic behaviour' itself: I do not need to know linguistics in order to speak my mother tongue or English, or French. By the same token, an apple does not need to 'know' Newton's laws so that it will fall from a tree. Linguistics is (currently) a study concerned with the nature of the language faculty. So it is appropriate to speak of L1 acquisition, X' theory, etc.

BUT to study the subject is one thing, to APPLY it is another. This is true of... I am sorry to say, everything. One can well attend a so - called 'leadership training camp' and score high, but fail to manage his subordinates in an orderly manner. One may well recite the X theory and Y theory, but still doesn't know to deal with the lack of initiation (on which X theory is based) among his subordinates. But that does not mean a study into such phenomena as aforementioned is unnecessary or will turn a chap into a pedant. That is a matter of how one understands the relationship between a study and the practical application the knowledge he possesses.

Re: Linguistics not science

julielai — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 01:48:07 GMT

Yes, Hong Kongers adopt a rather utilitarian, if shortsighted, approach to learning. Sadly, the longest distance between two points is often a shortcut.

A-level shouldn't take up that much time. Active listening, thinking, and participation in class all minimize the need for revision. My elder sibling became é«èçå without burning that much midnight oil. (I did okay in my mock exams, though I didn't take the real thing.). Just goes to show you: in HK, quantity trumps quality--students put in more time to make up for their increasingly passive learning style (writing 50 essays with the same mistakes instead of doing one right, for instance) You've just proven my point.

etymons (... um... I mean the root of a lexical item. I don't really remember the English jargon for it):

Why use jargons when simple words will do?

Looking at dictionaries for meanings, phonetic representations whatever does not mean you are forming rules of some sort.

Didn't I say we would be spinning around our own definitions of "prescriptivism"? Your understanding of the term is framed by grammar; mine by the outcome.

In any case, the example proves we shouldn't make assumptions as to what native speakers use dictionaries for.

Language is of course not a science, but the STUDY into it can be, just as one may well argue whether translatology is an art or a science.

Last time I checked, linguistics is still in the Faculty of Arts. Never seen it listed among the sciences.

CUHK translation majors told me all they do is practise; no theories. Beijing U.'s foreign lang. institute (???) does the same thing: language labs all day long. They are not elite programmes for no reason.

I am not really sure whether university English courses lay more stress on the scientific side of languages than on the cultural side thereof.

You're mixing up English and Lang. Ed. programmes (Yes, Lingnan has both in the same dept., with IED components as an add-on) But most TEFL-like programmes cover mostly linguistic and educational theories, including sociolinguistics. Mandatory cultural literacy coverage, including literature, are kept to a max. of five courses. (Lingnan's has four; some have fewer or none.) No wonder my CUHK friend says "Lang. Ed." depts aren't real English programmes (sorry!). My TEFL friends tell me themselves how little they are learning (there's more, but I won't leave specifics here).

My IELTS suggestion isn't about cultural literacy; I'd like the incompetent English teachers screened out. I've nothing against exams, as long as they are only part of the requirement.

If these programmes have a common core curriculum, we won't need a benchmark. As it stands, many TEFL majors aren't learning the same thing; exams will help measure everybody against one standard.

even if the government has declared equal legal status of Chinese and English. Discriminations of this sort conduce to English being >treated the utilitarian way.

Beg to differ. English used to be the medium of instruction for many secondary schoolers, so cultural literacy wasn't a big problem. We were exposed to English vocab. in every core subject. After 97, HK lost its linguistic identity, as is epitomized in the ever-changing language education policy.

But the 'study' was halted by the profs, on the grounds that I am but a yr1 student, so that I should leave the topic to my yr 3 (actually yr 4) final paper.

Your prof. is right to keep your project in hiatus. Students should be well-rounded before they become specialized--there's plenty of time for that yet! Again, going back to what I've said about a lopsided education.

Your suggestion relative to the English curriculum is good... but I wonder if it would be possible even in the university, as the topics suggested are each already a large topic.

Many of these courses I've seen in curriculum outside of HK. Eng. teachers don't have to be experts in any of these areas; a basic course in each will suffice (except for writing and lit.--we are making up for lost ground)

This is a fairly typical Eng. teacher curriculum in the states: http://www.tamiu.edu/catalog/current/ba-engl8th-12th.shtml (and this is not even a top program. See how much a HK student is missing, both in English and general education)

I love linguistics not really because I treat language in a parochial scientific way. I am limiting 'language' to the 'essence' (leaving >this undefined) because I am more interested in the common traits shared by ALL human languages.

Linguistics is like åµæ³. Too much strategems on paper will turn anybody into a é¦¬è¬.

am therefore applying by non - JUPAS for CU linguistics... to see if I have a chance.

Good luck. You have a great shot given your passion for the subject--but won't non-jupas disqualify you from student aid? (I have no clue)

PS. I've written to the local papers on these subjects, so some of my comments are nothing new.

Re: Inferior dialects?

Randy_Tam — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 09:36:48 GMT

I am not quite close to 'homeless'. I am living at my aunt's home because my granny invited 3 of her siplings to stay... aiya, according to my parents this is going to last 2 weeks or more. I am currently using my uncle's PC just to get here and take a look at what you say. Though I cannot come here as frequently as I used to.

Looking at dictionaries for meanings, phonetic representations whatever does not mean you are forming rules of some sort. I am sorry I didn't include this in describing what a native speaker's going to do with a dictionary... lol. This is especially true with languages belonging to the Sino family, the orthography of which is ideographic, for which reason the phonological form can hardly be guessed just from its shape (I remember I read a passage during my F3 Chinese lessons called <æ¼¢åççµæ§>, in which the author asserted that there's a kind of Chinese letters, the å½¢è²å, whose pronunciations could be guessed. I can hardly agree with this. Even an L1 speaker of Chinese, without prior training, can hardly succeed in this.). This is also true, to a certain extent, of English because of its hybrid source of etymons (... um... I mean the root of a lexical item. I don't really remember the English jargon for it): French, Old English, German, Irish, Greek, Latin... all contribute to the English language as it is today, leading to the lack of consistency between the orthographical and phonological forms of English words. These little 'cracks' of course can not be formulated by the human cognitive system (simply by means of conjecture, etc).

Language is of course not a science, but the STUDY into it can be, just as one may well argue whether translatology is an art or a science.

I am not really sure whether university English courses lay more stress on the scientific side of languages than on the cultural side thereof. To the best of my knowledge, this is not the case. Both are given equal stress. I come to this conclusion from information available to me. Lingnan University, where I am taking my undergraduate yr1 course in Contemporary English and Education, and Chinese University, where a friend of mine is currently a yr2 student in English, both have introductory courses into 'English Grammar', as well as introductory courses into literature in English. The workload is virtually the same for the 2 parts, at least in yr 1. But as the course goes on, more such courses as 'language and culture' or 'sociolinguistics' are available, making the curriculum more relevant to the relationship between language and social factors.

But your statement is true in that Hong Kongers are culturally more and more illiterate, being ignorant not only in foreign cultures but also in their own. Their ignorance in local culture being irrelevant here, I'd like to suggest some plausible reasons why language education from a cultural perspective is losing its ground.

1. It appears students are less motivated (in their learning) these days. What I mean by this is that days at school become more and more dreary: schooling is more or less a long toil, against which students devise one of the most primitive countermeasures known to man --- go have some sleep and look for your Juliet in your dream, handsome Romeo.

But this 'countermeasure' has its roots in that at night students have to attend tutorial classes, which they deem even more useful than classes at school. They having had such classes head back home have their dinner, do some homework and perhaps some reading as well, and, hey mama, I need time to play and relax a while. Voila, time to sleep puppy, it's already 0300 in the midnight. Frankly last year when I was having my A Level, I spent almost 7 hours everyday after school just to revise and read something more (I didn't take tutorial classes, save for economics), it was already 1200 when I returned home from the self - study facilities. It was hell. All this lead to a persistent fatigue in students.

So, the consequence is that, even if the cultural side of language is come across at school, there could hardly be anyone listening (lol.... reminds me of my UE class. Almost 2 / 3 of our class were sleeping if no assignments were given).

2. One may well ask an old question, 'why do students opt for tutorial classes instead of school?' To this old question I give an old answer, 'because students think tutorial classes are more useful, in that they cut the craps and just get straight to the point.' ---> I didn't take tutorials so don't blame me for that. But from what I hear, from my ex - gf (...), my friends, and my classmates, this is the case.

What is meant, then, by 'craps'? ie. anything that is not relevant to the examinations ahead. Examinations, strangely enough, dominate students' minds. My classmates may well think that I am good at linguistics, and so they will immediately conclude, without exception, 'so you must score a high GPA'... Sadly, the thing that is immediately associated with 'good or bad' is a score.

Your suggestion about IELTS (that I took 2 years ago lol without attending any tutorial classes or doing preparations of any sort... just fulfilling your 'minimum requirement' when I was a 6th former) therefore, in this context, does not really render any use in determining the (always abtract) 'language standard' of English teachers. IELTS has nothing about 'culture'. Given that absurd formula (good / bad = score), and given the fact that actually there are tutorial classes given on this test available in Hong Kong, IELTS is simply another UE.

3. These lead to the 3rd possible cause: All that Hong Kong (as a physiological identity separated from its people) wants about English is to make it a little utility: the current English curriculum is concerned with how to use English (as the name of the subject suggests: Use of English), not how to appreciate English as a language or, as Sapir - Whorf's hypothesis suggests, a fruit of a culture. Think about the writing assignments: Letter to the editor, Letter of complaint, Informal letter to a friend (sharing students' own experience perhaps), and essays (on the sheer knowledge on some current social issues). Listening is more or less to make students a 'phono - type', write whatever you hear. (of course, that needs some thought... but what is needed in a real dialogue: any puns suggested? the attitude of the speaker? 'slips of tongue'? all these are absent). Oral~ haha, that's a joke. Just keep talking and make your points understandable to your partners to score high. If this is not enough, sham having some 'foreign accents'. What is the most 'important part' in English exams in Hong Kong, as an interviewee in a programme produced by TVB (name really forgotten, but the programme is great!) pointed out, is 'comprehension', not how to express oneself, accounting for the 'deteriorating English language standard' these days.

4. What makes the situation even worse is the availability of such 'lures' as PC games, movies, and the Internet (-_-... am I not surfing the net?). Students 20 years ago may take pleasure in reading fictions: Le Docteur Pascal, Women in Love, the God of Small Things (I didn't take AL E. Lit.; I really read it for pleasure), Sybil (by Benjamin Disraeli), these are all fictions that I like. But as other forms of leisure can be more easily reached today, reading (to learn from the 'experience of another person': a 'function' of literature) becomes a hefty burden from which every students wants to escape.

So... the entire 'English pedagogic machine' becomes a miserable thing brewing students who treat English as nothing more than a tool to show their 'erudition', as is observed from the fact that complaint letters written in English to the Government or to such other authorities as concerned are paid more attention to, even if the author thereof is a Hong Konger. I do not mean Hong Kongers are in their nature 'inferior' to non - Hong Kongers. What I am trying to bring out is that there exists a sort of 'linguistic discrimination', even if the government has declared equal legal status of Chinese and English. Discriminations of this sort conduce to English being treated the utilitarian way. Actually I was writing an essay on this attitude toward English when the semester started. But the 'study' was halted by the profs, on the grounds that I am but a yr1 student, so that I should leave the topic to my yr 3 (actually yr 4) final paper. Anyway, I don't give a damn anymore.

Your suggestion relative to the English curriculum is good... but I wonder if it would be possible even in the university, as the topics suggested are each already a large topic. Or are you actually suggesting it as a framework that is to be followed through during the 16 years (university years inclusive) of schooling?

I love linguistics not really because I treat language in a parochial scientific way. I am limiting 'language' to the 'essence' (leaving this undefined) because I am more interested in the common traits shared by ALL human languages. Culture... yes, that sounds great, and in my literature studies I remember I once looked into the relationship between 'gender roles' and why Alice Munro's <Boys and Girls> is written that way. But still, linguistics studied in the way I mentioned before is what I am most interested in, for which reason I am not really ok with the course I am taking and am therefore applying by non - JUPAS for CU linguistics... to see if I have a chance.

Please look through this essay (2) ;)

leruffiant — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 12:47:55 GMT

The Influence of Dadaism with the emphasis on the works of Kurt Schwitters

Introduction
The reason why I wanted to write about Dadaism and Kurt Schwitters is that I âdiscoveredâ Kurt Schwitters on a Compositional forum I attended at my old University. The way of dadaist performance, which may seem spontaneous - but jet ârealâ and ânaturalâ is in a way what a lot of performances today seem to lack. I think that this is something I think more performers should strive for. Dadaism may sound a bit inaccessible for the average listener of today â but what many people donât realise is that the Dadaists where hugely influential on todayâs music. I think it must be said that Dadaism is not widely known for its contribution in music, but more in poetry, painting and sculpture. I shall try to focus on musical aspects of Dadaism in this essay â especially the influential âUrsonateâ by Kurt Schwitters, and geographically and period-wise I am going to limit myself to the Hanover Dada (As Richter points out in his book Dada you had several periods of the movement, being Zurich Dada from 1915-1920, New York Dada from 1915-1920, Berlin Dada from1918-1923, Hanover Dada, Cologne Dada, Paris Dada from 1919-1922, Post-Dada, and finally Neo-Dada).

The Origins of Dada
Where and when did Dadaism begin? The answer to that, unlike many other directions and genres in art is not a very clear one. According to Hans Richter in the book Dada â art and anti-art â 1964, Raoul Hausmann, the chief of the Berlin Dada movement believes that it was himself that discovered Dada in 1915. On the contrary, Claude RiviÃ¨re, names Picabia as the originator of Dada.
All of this put aside, I really think that one should focus on the ideas and concepts of Dada, rather to decide who to give credit for whom started the movement. But as for now â we can say that Dada was established around 1915, and it was something that happened in different parts of the world for similar reasons. The reasons why many believe Dada happened was that in 1915, after the outbreak of the First World War began, many artists travelled to neutral Switzerland. Amongst them was Hugo Ball and Emmy Hemmings, and we can with certainty say that Ball was the first one to publish a Dada text (published after his death in 1927 under the title âFlucht aus der Zeitâ), first dated 1st if February 1916, and it was a diary he wrote â which Richter often quotes in his book to support different stories.
The first Dadaist music can said to have come from âCabaret Voltaireâ â mentioned in Balls diaries as a âgroup of young artists and writers has formed with the object of becoming a centre for artistic entertainment. The Cabaret Voltaire will be run on the principle of daily meetings where visiting artists will perform their music and poetry. The young artists of Zurich are invited to bring their ideas and contributionsâ. This was basically a night-club in Zurich (No1 Spiegelgasse) where they got together and shared ideas â they had readings of modern French poetry which alternated with recitals by German, Russian and Swiss poets. They played old music as well as new. Tristan Tzara was one of the poets frequenting Cabaret Voltaire â and as Richter says:
âHe declaimed, sang and spoke in French, although he could do so just as well in German, and punctuated his performances with screams, sobs and whistles.. Bells, drums, cow-bells, blows on the table or on empty boxes, all enlivened the already wild accents of the new poetic language, and excited, by purely physical means, an audience which had begun by sitting impassively behind its beer-mugs. From this state of immobility it was roused into frenzied involvement with what was going on. This was Art, this was Life, and this was what they wanted!â

The Futurists had already introduced provocation in art, and this as an art form was called Brutism. This was very much inspired by the Futurist Luigi Russoloâs Noise Organ which he made in 1911 â which could conjure up all the distracting sounds of everyday existence. Both Futurism and Dadaism was very much about provocation and was extreme in many ways. As Futurism showed an excitement about chaos, war, noise and destruction â the Dadaists also tried to follow this through in their artistic expression and with a world in rapid change the art movements also gained a furious momentum. One could say that Futurism had a very clear agenda or programme whilst Dada was against having any clear agenda or programme.

Automatic poetry: Springs directly from the poets bowels or other organs, which have stored up reserves of usable material.

Ball 18th April: Dada as a name for the magazine is agreed. No-one, to this day know who invented the word Dada, or what it means. But, as Richter says: Da, da (Russian) means Yes, yes â and is an appropriate description of their way of life.
Different meanings though: Rumanian / Russian: Yes, yes â French: Rocking Horse â German: Idiot naivety.

A man from Hanover - Kurt Schwitters,1887-1948

âSchwitters (Ill. 69) was absolutely, unreservedly, 24-hours-a-day PRO-art. His genius had no time for transforming the world, or values, or the present, or the future, or the past; no time in fact for any of the things that were heralded by blasts of Berlinâs Trump of Doom. There was no talk of the âdeath of artâ, or ânon-artâ, or âanti-artâ with him. On the contrary, every tram-ticket, every envelope, cheese wrapper or cigar-band, together with old shoe-soles or shoe-laces, wire, feathers, dishcloths â everything that had been thrown away â all this he loved, and restored to an honoured place in life by means of his art (Ills. 67-74)â â Hans Richter

Schwitters never had the acceptance of his contemporary Dadaists, which one could say is quite sad â he was frozen out for unknown reasons by Huelsenbeck of the club Dada â which upon Schwitters request to join the club Dada had said that the club was not for âevery Tom, Dick and Harryâ. Schwitters failed to be recognised in his time â but in the last years, people have taken a renewed interest in him. A factor in this is probably the release of his Ursonate on CD in the mid-nineties. When Schwitters failed to join the club, he made his own movement called MERZ in Hanover, which the name he extracted from âCommerzbankâ. This word would be the name of an early picture of Schwitters, but later on he gave the word a lot more meaning, by saying that it was the term for his art. He started to use this term on all of his works, and he also released a regular column named Merz. The term Merz is in some way understandable, given the materials he worked with. He re-used commercial items in a way that it was never used before â and thus, maybe the word Merz became a metaphor for this.

The Music
One could argue that what I would today call music (Schwittersâ poetry), would maybe then be classified as non-sense Dada-poetry. But the phonetic and rhythmic qualities are so exaggerated in Dada poetry, that for me â this becomes music. The Ursonate is Schwitters most extensive and most complex sound seal. The structure follows, ironically broken, the structure of a classical Sonate - the border between linguistic and musical composition is waived. The Ursonate lived own legendary presentations on development and permanent changes in Schwitters. In order to let it accessible become deliverable and other interpreter, Schwitters looked for nevertheless over many years for appropriate possibilities of fixing it. Shape wins the work therefore in three different forms: as performance, as pressure version and as clay/tone carriers.

In this tension between improvisation, completion, and different shapes to exceed in the complexity of topics, layers and parts as well as in the consequence, borders the Ursonate is comparable to the Merzbau. Schwitters called it its most comprehensive and most important poetic work. The Merzbau was Schwitters lifework â it was a massive 3d sculpture consisting of relics of old friends in small cages. One sculpture was started in Hanover, when the war started he had to leave the first Merzbau, he later started a new one in his exile in Norway. That was later destroyed by accident. A reconstruction of the sculpture can now be seen in the parish museum in Hanover. The reason why the Merzbau is comparable to the Ursonate, is that in both cases he used scraps, bits and pieces gathered from literally everything to make his art â it was both non-sense that made sense. Both comprehensive and complex â he developed them all through his life, making changes as Schwitters changed personally.

Looking in to the chaos: Why Dada was influential on todayâs art
On the one hand Schwitters was focusing on the Gesamtkunztwerk, but on the other hand â one could say that Schwitters was simply art. A master propagandist and businessman, leaving stickers everywhere he went with the words âJoin Dadaâ, âAnna Blumeâ or âMerzâ. He sold his collages to everyone he wanted to â even if they didnât want to buy them, Schwitters is said to have had a very persuasive nature. When he performed his poetry people often burst in to hysterical laughter, but he continued any way. Maybe he wanted people to laugh, that is never to be revealed. But when such things happened he turned his voice up to volume ten, continuing to perform his art. I think this is something that says it all. His methods of working was later adapted (or reinvented) by many artists who got a lot more credibility for their work, and I think that works like the Ursonate is still valid as a original piece of art today. Dadaism has often been called anti-art because of its âI donât care if you think if this is art or notâ attitude. But the techniques used in most dadaist work is highly sophisticated. Schwitters can seem to be on the brink to madness sometimes with his schizophrenic style poetry â and maybe he was a little mad. But if one look closer on such works as the Ursonate one will see a highly structured and well made piece of music! âDada is our style of the time â that does not have any style â do you understand?â â Schwitters
âThe Ursonate was my fatherâs reply to make a melody out of something that was
spoken rather than being played by instruments.â â Erik Schwitters

Dadaism was a movement that happened between two wars. In many ways it made a path for art saying that it was okay for art not to be understood â art can also be anti-art. Art was to be created for its own sake â not by some conformist ideas and a rigid set of laws and ideas. Dadaism reflects in many ways the free human being â driven by nature rather than laws. Kurt Schwitters was seen as a outsider in many ways, and even though his art was self-classified as Merz â and the tension between Merz and Dada was significant, I think it is important to see the two movements as one. The scrapbook method is still used today, in plunderphonics and sampling. The ideas of gathering everyday material and reusing it is found in music concrete â comparable to Schwitters way of gathering any material that had a nice surface, or something appealing and putting it together in a context again. Whereas Schwitters decomposed sentences from magazines and other texts to create his popular poem âAnna Blumeâ, people like John Oswald with his plunderphonics are decomposing popular music and putting it together in a new context. Who knows what would have happened if Schwitters had access to the same technology as we do today? If we look close enough â we can see aspects of Dadaism, Merz, Anti-art and the automatic poetry in newer contemporary art: Music as a process often uses a set of mathematical rules to build its music upon (the Ursonate by Schwitters can be analysed in a similar way), Plunderphonics (as described earlier), Acousmatic art (the Merzbau can be said to be a similar concept, but with other objects than sound), Stockhausen with his early electronic works uses non-sense and manipulation of concrete sources â and adopts the same art for arts sake attitude â and the list can probably go on for longer. The Dada movement has probably had way more impact than most people, and even artists of today realise! I would dare to suggest that the whole avant-garde movement as we know it today, has strong roots in Dadaism and Futurism.

NOTE!! Please note that the argument / conclusion in this essay is not quite finished!

References
http://www.soroptimist.de/kshome.htm (A Kurt Schwitters tribute page)
http://www.kurt-schwitters.org (Parish museum Hanover)
http://www.roland-collection.com/rolandcollection/section/18/563.htm (Norwegian documentary - 1991 on Schwitters with English subtitles)

Re: Why is it You were and not You was?

Timbo — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 16:30:14 GMT

Hi Pemmican,

I'll try to answer these in order:

- No I have not had the pleasure of conversing with you.

- I would be more than happy to tell you where I am from and living, however I would prefer not to on a public forum due to certain work related issues...I am but a small fish in a vast ocean; I say no more. You could always use the email as you have already seen.

- Yes, I knew of the Du form (I didn't mention it, as I guess some readers would have enough difficulty with Sie und Ihr)

- If you call that a short answer, I would shudder to see a long one...lol! I would perhaps say that languages tend to evolve, and in some instances becoming simpler. I have noticed in the last years, the tendency for mainly younger ones to shorten words even further. It used to be out of laziness in speech, but I see it more often in the written form. Why? Well all of us have written txt messages, and how to save space with characters? Shorten previously long words by mainly leaving out the vowels. This then creeps into the essays written by students who unintentionally or through ignorance use these same short forms. E.g Like=Lyk Sleep=Slyp You=U
It is becoming phonetic.

Anyway, enough rambling....

- English being Germanic. Well, I guess the Saxons did come from Germany originally, but as they lived on the coastal fringes, where did they come from before that? The Celts perhapsâ¦

- In Dutch, what happened to U for Oma?

Cheers,

Tim