Algeo's Origins and Development of the English Language - Research - Part One

Language is an excellent indicator of one's community. A very small amount of languages belong to any one community, and sometimes one language is the main language of several communities. Either way, language is part of what makes us human. Language is the biological aspect of being human. People have been speaking for almost as long as our species has existed, but written language is a separate matter entirely. Written language in any form has only existed for several thousand years, which is minuscule compared to the massive amount of time language in itself has existed.

The origin of language is very obscure. Almost no one knows where the very first language came from. The only theory of the beginning of language that exists is that communicating with hands became too complicated, and produced sounds began to have meaning.

Children also have an innate ability to learn a language without being taught it by their parents. But after very early childhood, learning a second language is very difficult. Acquisition and usage of a language seems to be a human instinct.

Bringing in the New Semester

Semester 2 has begun, and as a result, many aspects will be changed within the blog and within the content uploading schedule.

1. Any and all posts not pertaining to my blog topic have been subsequently removed. These are clutter posts and do nothing to benefit the forwarding of my knowledge.
2. The tag system has been updated and any tags that are now null and void have been removed. This will free up space and make looking for specific content much easier.
3. Research and analysis of said research will be the majority of my blog content and these posts will be much more detailed and much more frequent.

I look forward to the following months being the most productive months in my R199 research. I will still be continuing with John Algeo's Origins and Development of the English Language textbook to begin this semester.

What am I doing with myself?

It is blatantly obvious that my individual blog work has wound down to an unfortunate, disappointing halt. Over the few weeks that this occurred, I thought I would be able to administer a quick-fix simply, and have a new area of research ready to go before any significant gap appeared in my work history. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. I have too dim of an idea of any areas that I can cover pertaining to my topic, and I am hopelessly, utterly, lost.

These last few blog posts have been quite the same: I have an idea, I try it, it doesn't work. The analyses of popular works of literature was a total bust, and I was completely lost throughout my work on that over the break. It was such a terrible, utter failure that I didn't even bother to post my end result on the blog. Even though the foundations I have laid out have crumbled to ashes and dust, I still have one unanswered question that I must overcome before I can move on from my defeat – what am I doing with myself and the blog?

I need to discover an answer, but I'm not even sure that there is one for me. I have made an extremely terrible mess, and I don't think I can pick up the pieces anymore. In my own eyes, I have failed everything this course has assigned me to do.

Believe me, I still want to continue, but I do not know how I will continue.