English Friends Research Articles

A Linguistic Investigation Into False Friends in Arabic and English: The Students of Al-Balqa Applied University as a Model

The present study investigates the concept of false friends in two genetically unrelated languages: Arabic and English. It provides explanations for the source of possible confusion and misunderstanding caused by false friends in contemporary Arabic and English. It also highlights the nomenclature related to false friends where they can be classified into two categories: absolute false friends and partial false friends. The study explicates how false friendship, as a linguistic phenomenon, can be a real hurdle to communication among the learners and teachers of a certain language. The etymological development of some words is very important to explain how false friendship occurs. Morphologically, some special cases of intralingual morphological false friends are explored in so far as they are related to the concept of false friendship to put them into a certain linguistic framework.

Nervoso – nervous, sensibile-sensible, morbido – morbid; the Traps of False Friends in Italian and English

Nervoso – nervous, sensibile-sensible, morbido – morbid; the Traps of False Friends in Italian and English

Analysis of English-Spanish False Friends

The present study aims to carry out an analysis of English-Spanish false friends in order to establish the most prevailing type of false friends and to determine their degree of falseness and semantic resemblance. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to conduct the research. The results of the analysis have shown that the most dominant part of speech among false friends in English and Spanish is the category of nouns. The vast majority of false friends share their origins in Latin. The most prevailing type of false friends is semantic total. The data gathered from the questionnaire display that the majority of language users are familiar with the phenomenon and can recognize and understand the meaning of the false friend word pairs.

“Liberty or Death!”

“Liberty or Death!”

Untold Stories of Polish Heroes from World War II

Untold Stories of Polish Heroes from World War II

Positive and Negative Lexical Transfer in English Vocabulary Acquisition

The aim of the paper is to explore the appearance of positive and negative lexical transfer of plurilingual learners in English vocabulary acquisition. Cross-linguistic influences in the study are examined by word translation tasks from Croatian into English, including true, partial, and deceptive cognates or false friends in English, German, and Italian. The results have revealed different language dominances and positive or negative transfer manifestation. Lexical transfer from L4 German is manifested positively, but the Italian language seems to play a dominant role in the acquisition of English vocabulary. The effect of Croatian is manifested both positively and negatively. The study has confirmed previous psycholinguistic studies on the complexity of lexical connections in plurilingual learners and the dynamic interaction of various learning-based factors, such as language recency, proficiency, exposure to languages, the order in which languages are learned, and the formal context in language learning.

Violence, History and Silence in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines

This article analyzes Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines to examine a narrative gap at its heart that conceals the central fact of the death of Tridib, arguably the most important character in the text. The novel concentrates on the Partition of Bengal and its impact on people from different countries and nationalities in Asia and Europe. Accommodating the story of three generations of people in three cities--Dhaka, Calcutta, and London--The Shadow Lines shows the interaction of characters belonging to Hindu, Muslim, and Christian faith. Important events in the text revolve around the family of Mayadebi, her sister Tha’mma and the Prices, their English friends. The narrative begins in 1939 and ends in 1964, connecting the Second World War, the Partition in 1947, and the riots of 1964 in Calcutta and Dhaka. Using Tha’mma, the grandmother of the unnamed narrator, as the connecting link between their pre-modern life before Partition in Dhaka and diasporic life in post-Partition Calcutta, The Shadow Lines depicts the traumatic suffering of characters from different nationalities but mainly from India and Bangladesh. The paper argues that the silence and secrecy maintained by Tha’mma and others about Tridib’s death mirrors the silence of official history concerning violence in their narrative of civilization, freedom, and progress which Ghosh unravels to produce a novelistic revisionist history that not only challenges the mainstream history but also fills the gaps it leaves.

London Yearly Meeting’s Response to the Richmond Declaration, 1887: A Case Study in the Avoidance of Religious Schism

London Yearly Meeting’s response to the Richmond Declaration of 1887 was neutral in that it neither endorsed nor rejected it. The Declaration was seen by British Friends in a variety of ways. These included it being viewed as either an affirmation or not of existing Quaker beliefs, a document that was more relevant to the American Quaker context, a useful statement of beliefs or an attempt to impose a creed. While failure to accept the Declaration has been interpreted as a move towards supporting an emerging liberal Quakerism, the decision to also not reject it has often been overlooked. An evaluation of the discussions about the Declaration that took place at the Yearly Meeting in London, May 1888, and which were reported in the Quaker journals The British Friend and The Friend (London), highlights the wide range of views that were held. It is proposed that the complex set of relationships that existed between different groups within London Yearly Meeting and the role played by key individuals determined a nuanced response to the Declaration which was sufficiently acceptable to all sides. Paradoxically, this unity was founded upon a collective acceptance of theological discordance within London Yearly Meeting. Consequently, schism was avoided as evangelical, conservative and liberal Quaker narratives were able to coexist alongside a non-committal response to the Declaration.

Exploring late Victorian (Co-)Authorship: Two Models of Popular Literary Collaboration

The lively and competitive popular literary market of the late Victorian era provided fertile ground for the development of an unprecedented number of alliances between authors. Literary collaboration triggered writers and readers alike, and in the 1880s and 1890s it became a fashionable practice of popular literature. Two writing partnerships stood out: the English friends Walter Besant and James Rice, and the Anglo-Irish cousins Edith Somerville and Violet (Martin) Ross. Apparently similar, these partnerships do indeed share some points, but they were based on completely different understandings of what literary collaboration was and how it should be handled: Besant and Rice’s alliance was based on a clear, almost mechanical division of tasks, with one partner being the literary ‘genius’ and the other working as his assistant and manager – but still to be considered an author; Somerville and Ross’s collaboration was grounded on an intertwining of their selves during the creative process thanks to a conversational method – as they called it – which they described as the mixing of primary colours to create secondary ones. Drawing on a vast range of metadiscourses by these collaborators themselves, the present study compares the two ways of collaborating and reconstructs the authors’ perspective on their own activity, shedding light on how literary collaboration was defined and understood in the late Victorian era. This will also help to understand why such a widespread practice swiftly declined and why its products have since then sunk into oblivion.

“My Own Old English Friends”: Networking Anglican Settler Colonialism at the Shingwauk Home, Huron College, and Western University

Focusing on Huron College, Shingwauk Residential School, and Western University, this article considers how common social and financial networks were instrumental in each institution’s beginnings. Across the Atlantic, these schools facilitated the development of networks that brought together settlers, the British, and a handful of Indigenous individuals for the purposes of building a new society on Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe Land. Looking specifically at the activities of Huron’s principal, Isaac Hellmuth, and Shingwauk’s principal, Rev. Edward F. Wilson, the article demonstrates how ideas about empire, Christian benevolence, and resettlement entwined themselves in the institutions these men created. Specifically, Anglican fundraising in both Canada and England reinforced the importance of financial networks, but also drew upon and crafted an Indigenous presence within these processes. Analyzing the people, places, and ideologies that connected Huron, Western, and Shingwauk demonstrates how residential schools and post-secondary education were ideologically—and financially—part of a similar, if not common, project. As such, the article provides a starting point for considering how divergent colonial systems of schooling were intertwined to serve the developing settler-colonial project in late nineteenth-century Ontario.

The allusion to East Lynne, coloniality and inter‐cultural gender politics in the first Bengali science fiction story

AbstractThis article contextualises and analyses the allusion to the novel East Lynne (1861) occurring in the first science fiction short story published in the Bengali language. The story entitled Rahasya (‘Mystery’ or ‘Joke’; 1882) by Hemlal Dutta contains a passing and off‐hand reference to the character named Cornelia present in the Victorian novel. Miss Cornelia Carlyle, who is shown to be an authoritarian and irritable unmarried woman in East Lynne, is briefly mentioned to indicate that Miss Harvey in the Bengali story possesses similar characteristics. However, the Bengali story ignores many of the respectable facets of Cornelia in favour of a reductive, sexist stereotype, thus betraying a patriarchal sentiment that is shared between the colonising and the colonised cultures. Miss Harvey’s anger at the narrator’s comically misdirected message shows her to be alien to the homosocial bond shared between the Bengali narrator and his English friend Harvey in the contact zone of the imperial metropolis. The allusion to Cornelia shows the story’s awareness of the broad socio‐cultural matrix in which science and technology are embedded. This article records the sparse evidence of the once‐popular novel’s reception in colonial India to indicate how the Bengali story alludes to the novel as part of its cultural capital and for naturalising gender stereotypes across a cultural divide.

Mainstream Media’s Obsession with Africa

Mainstream Media’s Obsession with Africa

DESIGNING ENGLISH SYLLABUS FOR DINIYAH PROGRAM BASED ON STUDENTS’ NEED ANALYSIS AT BABUSSALAM SELAYAR

This research aims to design an English syllabus for Diniyah Program at Al-Qur'an Babussalam Islamic Boarding School Selayar. The research design used in this research was Research and Development (R&D) by Richey and Klein. Types of data obtained in this research were qualitative and quantitative. The researchers used a questionnaire and interview guidance as the instrument to obtain the data. This research showed that 1) speaking skill is the priority for the students: In linguistic needs, students' learning abilities are fair in vocabulary and pronunciation but less in grammar. While vocabulary is the priority, then pronunciation, and the last is grammar. There are twelve real-life topics for learning vocabulary, and pronunciation and basic grammar become integral parts of each lesson. In learning needs, vocabulary learning preferences are memorizing, communicating, listening, and repeating. While learning by imitating, from the dictionary and the recording are the pronunciation learning preferences. In terms of learning style, talking to friends in English, talking in pairs, and role play are the three highest. 2) The design syllabus is based on students' needs. 3) The syllabus validation by the experts' judgment clarified that the syllabus had been designed can be used with a bit of revision.

False friends and lexical borrowing: A linguistic analysis of false friends between English and Arabic

Abstract This theoretical study aims at raising awareness of the existence of lexical false friends (FFs) in English and Arabic as genetically unrelated languages. It also provides a general categorization for FFs from a semantic point of view. A sample of more than fifty FF pairs is examined by contrasting their form, pronunciation and meaning. The analysis reveals that English Arabic FFs are of two types: Chance FFs (occur by coincidence) and semantic FFs(exist via lexical borrowing), the former being more frequent than the latter. This taxonomy is in line with those introduced by Chamizo-DomA­nguez (2008) and Roca-Varela (2015). Semantic FFs can be total (due to semantic shift, ellipsis, or figurative extension) or partial (through the process of semantic narrowing). Chance FFs are more problematic in the sense that they cause various degrees of embarrassment and confusion due to the fact that some constituents of FF pairs involve taboo and offensive words. Thus, such lexical FFs are considered potential agents that may create misunderstanding, miscommunication and confusion among L2 learners.

Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds by Nancy A. Hewitt

Reviewed by: Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds by Nancy A. Hewitt Julie Husband Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds. By Nancy A. Hewitt. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. xvi + 413 pp. $39.95 cloth/$26.49 eBook. Amy Kirby Post housed self-emancipated people fleeing slavery for Canada, helped Harriet Jacobs find an editor and publisher for her slave narrative, organized fairs and subscriptions to sustain Frederick Douglass’s newspaper, and followed Susan B. Anthony by attempting to register to vote in 1872. She forged many of the interracial, cross-gender, and cross-organizational bonds that drove social changes in the nineteenth-century United States; and yet, until recently, historians have paid little attention to her. In the course of recounting her extraordinary work, Nancy A. Hewitt builds a case for Post’s universal reform philosophy as well as her generous practice of opening her home and life to others. This philosophy and practice made Post, according to Hewitt, into a “conductor” across radical movements (5). For contemporary readers, Post emerges as a model for what it meant in the nineteenth century to be an anti-racist ally, one who need not be in the front, defining an injustice and its solution, but might more effectively work as a part of a team, amplifying the voices of those who speak for themselves. The first three chapters perform considerable world-building, as readers see how the Quaker communities of Jericho (Long Island), Ledyard (central New York), and the boom city of Rochester, New York, fostered a spirit of independent judgment and, for women, an unusual freedom to speak publicly. These communities, too, supported interracial education, which contributed to Post’s later sensitivity to the often fraught interracial dynamics within antislavery communities. White-dominated antislavery organizations welcomed the testimony of fugitive slaves but often rejected African American leadership. The issue could be magnified in the ladies’ antislavery societies where much of the fund-raising took place. Post’s own leadership in the Western New York Antislavery Society provides a model for interracial alliances. She hosted in her home Black abolitionists, including Douglass, his friend and fellow journalist William C. Nell, self-emancipated writer Harriet Jacobs, and Sojourner Truth, and became lifelong friends with them all. She facilitated Truth’s speaking career and Jacobs’s writing and speaking career by connecting them to her extensive reform network. She resourcefully established a reading room above Douglass’s offices at The North Star that marketed antislavery products. At one time, it was managed by Harriet Jacobs, thereby giving Jacobs both an income and a place to write. Meetings for the Western New York Antislavery Society also took place at the meeting room, making it easy for Jacobs to participate. [End Page 175] Nonetheless, Post recognized the need for autonomous Black organizations. As Hewitt explains, “Given black women’s relationships with white women—for whom they often worked as servants, laundresses, or seamstresses—and their well-earned distrust of white men, it is not surprising that they chose to labor in a separate society” (121). Hewitt claims that Post’s unique ability to bridge racial and gender divides owed much to her Quaker upbringing. Quakers hold each individual’s reflections on truth and justice—their “inner light”—sacred (3). Post resisted the kind of infighting that poisoned relations between political abolitionists and Garrisonian abolitionists, who rejected voting, public office, and political action. One limit to this strategy was her difficulty surmounting prejudices that made her a less successful fund-raiser than Julia Griffiths, Frederick Douglass’s English friend who became his greatest asset in making his newspaper a success in Rochester. Confident, extroverted, and status-conscious, Griffiths emerges in Hewitt’s telling as an antihero to Post. Griffiths offended many, most especially Frederick Douglass’s wife, Anna, but she likely saved Douglass’s paper from bankruptcy by forging connections with the wealthy and influential in Rochester. One area that remains somewhat under-explored in the biography is Amy and Isaac Post’s leadership within Spiritualism. They were central to popularizing this belief in communication with the dead, promoting the famed “rappers” Kate and Margaretta Fox and...

Transnational Francoism: The British and the Canadian Friends of National Spain (1930s–1950s)

ABSTRACT This article explores the transnational nature of the British movement Friends of National Spain and contributes to the study of organised pro-Franco support in Great Britain and Canada during the late interwar and the early post-war periods. Specifically, it considers the influence of British reactionary imaginaries upon Montreal’s extreme-right discourse on the Spanish Civil War, Francoism, and democracy. Overall, the paper uses the case of the Canadian Friends of Spain branch to disclose the international significance of the British Friends of National Spain and its branches in England and Scotland.

Ambasadorul englez al României sălbatice, Charlie Ottley: ”Legea silvică în sine nu este rea, dar nu există voință sau finanțarea necesară pentru aplicarea acesteia”

Jurnalistul britanic Charlie Ottley este, de aproape un deceniu, unul dintre cei mai perseverenți ambasadori ai imaginii României în lume. Fascinat de frumusețea și naturalitatea țării noastre, Charlie face emisiuni de televiziune, scrie editoriale și reportaje pentru cele mai prestigioase canale media din lume, necontenind să laude măreția și sălbăticia munților Carpați sau biodiversitatea. Născut în urmă cu 49 de ani la Winchester, în Anglia, Charlie a devenit prieten al României după de a colindat lumea în lung și-n lat spre a descoperi frumuseți. Mereu a fost omul încercat de focul cunoașterii și a căutat să descopere părțile frumoase ale națiilor. Dublu licențiat al Universității din Bristol, în teologie și filosofie, Charlie Ottley și-a încercat norocul și în jurnalism, absolvind și facultatea de profil de la City University din Londra. După un scurt stagiu la Londra, a ajuns șeful biroului de corespondenți de la Los Angeles al grupului media World Entertaiment News Network. Acum, Charlie Ottley scrie constant pentru The Dail Mail, Food and Travel Magazine şi Vanity Fair. În urmă cu două decenii și-a făcut propria televiziune, Forge TV, filmând reportajele pe care le făcea pentru Daily Express. A călătorit prin lume producând o serie de emisiuni culinare spectaculoase. Astfel, a descoperit ”aromele” mâncărurilor din Chile (Flavours of Chile), Columbia, Peru, Mexic, Spania, Grecia, Scoția sau Africa de Sud. Succesul seriei, difuzată pe Travel Channel, a asigurat o nouă serie bazată pe partea culinară şi de călătorii, intitulată Flavours of Chile. În următorii 12 ani a realizat serii similare în Peru, Spania, Mexic, Scoţia, Africa de Sud, Columbia şi Grecia. În 2011, Charlie Ottley a venit pentru prima oară în România cu același scop de a descoperi tradiția culinară și de natura. A fost fascinat și de atunci își canalizează eforturile pentru a ajuta la păstrarea bogăţiilor naturale ale României. A realizat celebra seriei de reportaje televizate, Wild Carpathia, difuzată în 110 ţări şi tradusă în 11 limbi. În vara lui 2017, Charlie Ottley a prezentat ultimul episod din Wild Carpathia la sediul ONU din New York, fiind aplaudat la scenă deschisă de reprezentanţii a 193 de ţări şi sute de personalități mondiale prezenți la acel eveniment. La finalul anului trecut, ambasadorul României sălbatice și-a cumpărat o casă în Bran și intenționează să o transforme într-un veritabil loc de pelerinaj al prietenilor englezi care, la rândul lor, vor deveni – asemenea lui Charlie – ”reprezentanți diplomatici” ai României.

Alpy w twórczości Zygmunta Krasińskiego

The Alps in the oeuvre of Zygmunt KrasińskiWhen it comes to the scope of its topics and level of detail, the sketch “The Alps in the oeuvre of Zygmunt Krasiński” is a preliminary reconnaissance. Krasiński’s image of the Alps was influenced by his “educational” trip to Switzerland on which he went with his guardians in the autumn of 1829. The primeval and monumental nature of the Alpine landscape left an indelible mark on the psyche of the young Romantic poet. This can be seen in Krasiński’s letters to his father as well as discursive writings of the future author of Non-Divine Comedy. Of crucial importance in the exploration of the Alps by young Krasiński were his Alpine trips: first in the company of his tutor and English friend Henry Reeve and then in the company of Adam Mickiewicz and Edward Odyniec.

What future for a democratic Europe following Brexit?

According to Jean Arthuis, Brexit is a chance for Europe. It casts a cruel light on the institutional fragility of the European Union, whose functioning is hardly defensible to public opinion. Beyond the EU’s significant achievements—peace on the Continent, freedom of movement, the single market, the euro—the deficits in democracy and governance are enormous. The time has come to identify the “public goods” that EU Member States can effectively assume at the national level, on the one hand, and those that must now be collectively supported within the Union, on the other. More than ever, Europeans need “public goods”, some of which can be made available to them only by Europe. A Europe with sovereign powers (money, economy and finance, diplomacy, armed defense, digital, energy, etc.) that is governed accordingly so as to boost its economy, ensure full employment, control migratory flows, combat terrorism, ensure security, and fight against tax fraud. A Europe that speaks to Europeans. This is why Brexit gives Europe a chance to set itself the goal of becoming a world power. After all, the United States of America was born of a divorce from the English crown; let us hope that our English friends will repeat the feat and that Brexit will be the catalyst of a United States of Europe. According to Henry Farrell, for decades, the European Union has sought to increase its democratic legitimacy in the eyes of citizens, by making good policy, by enhancing the powers of the European Parliament, and by providing greater power to national parliaments. None of this has worked particularly well, and some measures have had the perverse consequence of enabling populist nationalists like Britain’s UK Independence Party. The European Union would be better served by accepting the inevitability of political disagreement, and indeed harnessing it, by providing individuals with the real opportunity to vote on which kind of “Europe” they wanted. The lessons of Ernest Gellner and other scholars are that legitimacy is an effect rather than a cause, and that structured contention provides the best means towards stability and effectiveness.

Melville's London—and Ours

Melville's London—and Ours Wyn Kelley Click for larger view View full resolution Wyn Kelley. Photo courtesy of David Shaerf. As Edward Sugden's and Janet Floyd's "sleeping-partner" (the Melville Society liaison) in their splendid production of the Melville Society Conference at Kings College, London (KCL), I enjoyed extraordinary backstage access. The Society liaison participates in planning, reads paper abstracts, supports graduate students and staff, and circles around the edges of the conference. I helped out at the registration table, filled in where needed, and—like Flask—ate last. Also, I got to see London. Other conference-goers will sing their praises of the conference's many delights: superb keynote addresses (two of which are reprinted in this issue) [End Page 123] and exciting papers (some to appear in essay versions in a forthcoming issue); a dynamic public program at the British Library celebrating artists, filmmakers, and writers; trips to Tate Britain, Greenwich, and Liverpool that enriched what was already available in the vicinity of KCL; and gracious receptions, genial pub crawls, and guided walks, culminating in a marvelous banquet at Balliol College, Oxford, with performances of Schubert lieder and Norse tales. Less celestial, I celebrate London and the material residue of Melville's affection for it—his 1849 journal—not only for what it says about his urban travels and spirit of adventure and discovery, but for the boisterous, welcoming city it reveals. Melville begins laconically enough: "I commence this Journal at 25 Craven Street, Strand, at 6 ½ P.M. on Wednesday Nov 7th 1849—being just arrived from dinner at a Chop House, and feeling like it" (Journals, ed. Howard C. Horsford and Lynn Horth, in The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 15 [1989]: 12). I had anticipated a similarly workmanlike response. But before the conference, as news of two terrorist attacks and an unsettling Brexit vote made many of us wary, a London friend wrote to say that she hoped the disastrous events of spring 2017 would not keep conference participants from enjoying this historic moment of transatlantic fellowship. On the contrary, I came away with immense gratitude for the kindness of English friends old and new, too numerous to name here. Much as Melville's wanderings expanded his vision, these friends enlarged my heart and mind. His London and theirs offered a world of wonders. An MIT grant enabled me to arrive early and walk some of Melville's London routes, recorded in great detail in the journal. (The project included creating a digital map of Melville's journal, now visible, though still in process, as "Melville in London" at the Digital Research Center at Hofstra University: <http://hofstra.github.io/itinerary/melville-in-london/>.) In these walks, as in my research, the conference theme of "Crossings" figured largely, whether Melville was crossing the Thames via his favorite bridges (London, Westminster) or crossing more subtle social and racial boundaries. These subtler crossings became visible in Melville's travels when he visited the Charterhouse, site of a medieval almshouse; Greenwich Hospital, where he mingled with naval pensioners and spoke with a Baltimore "negro" later mentioned in Billy Budd; St. Bride's Church, where he attended a charity sermon; and in the crowded, often festive, sometimes sinister neighborhoods he sought out: Seven Dials, Angel Inn, Smithfield Market, the "labyrinth of blind allis & courts" near St. Paul's, the "cellars & anti-lanes in … the rear of Guildhall, with a crowd of beggars," and Haymarket, where one evening he had a "singular interview" (23, 21, 15, 23). As this research progressed, it became clear that while Melville called dutifully on publishers and attended salons and dinners as a young writer must, and [End Page 124] eagerly sought out museums, castles, and other tourist attractions, his wanderings in more ambiguous zones aroused more intriguing, though often veiled and coded, reflections. We may remember him gazing from "one of the Bridges" on what he called a "city of Dis" (14). His encounter with London was more complicated than that image suggests, as I learned from my London guides. The grant included honoraria for two KCL graduate-student assistants, and I was lucky to visit the Charterhouse with Anna...