 Hi, I welcome you to another Question of the Month video where I will deal with the questions that were asked by our YouTube channel community, in this case the questions that were asked during May 2013. And as usual I will present everything using the active board behind me whose content you can download via the e-lecture library on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. How this can be done, I will explain to you later. Here is the first problem. It concerns the use of distinctive features and the question is that someone read that the feature anterior designates all those sounds produced with the front part of the mouth. That would include the present day English phoneme per the bilabial plosive. Well, as I already explained in another Question of the Month video, we have taken our distinctive feature information from the phonology book by Iggy Rocha and Wyn Johnson. And there on page 96 the feature coronal is defined as pertaining to the blade of the tongue. So per is clearly non-coronal. Thus the feature anterior which is dependent on coronal and divides the heart pallet into two regions does not apply at all in this case. So per the bilabial plosive is neither associated with the feature coronal nor with anterior. So it is not listed among those present day English phonemes that are coronal. The top line, coronal plus anterior phonemes, the bottom line, coronal minus anterior phonemes. The next question. Well, here is a minor thing that surprised someone. Someone thought that Adelfos means brother in Greek and not Frater. Well, Greek Frater means clan member and therefore has a broader meaning than its cognate in most dialects of present day English, the cognate brother. It is thought that Adelfos originated as an adjective used in combination with Frater to mean something like brother of the wound and was later shortened and converted to a noun. But certainly Frater can be taken as a cognate for English brother due to its phonological similarity. Another question which relates to languages, in this case language reconstruction. Is Korea not also a language that can be listed under our language or in the case of this video under the heading of Nostratic? Well, you are absolutely right. In fact, in our virtual sessions, we presented this tree diagram to indicate that Korean is an independent language and we do the same in the language index that we developed within the clarity research infrastructure. In the video, however, we only listed language families and not individual languages. But you are certainly right. Korean is often mentioned under the heading of Nostratic. The next problem concerns the present day English item Spanglish. The idea that is proposed here is that the Vila nasal Spang that occurs in the first syllable of Spanglish is a result of the coda of Spannish, the first syllable, and an assimilation process from the Vila nasal of Glish, the second syllable of English. And if we have to answer this question, well, we can clearly say this is a correct analysis. Let me explain this. Using, for example, the syllabification principles of the Longman pronunciation dictionary, we have to present Spanish and English, the two components of Spanglish, like this. So this is the LPD representation of the two words, and here the nasal is clearly part of the first syllable. So the LPD does not even claim ambicillabicity, that is a segment belonging to two syllables, but clearly says that the nasal is part of syllable one. So it seems reasonable to combine syllable one of Spanish and syllable two of English to form Spanglish. And in order to convert the alveolar nasal into the final Vila nasal, we need an assimilation process, regressive assimilation, where the Vila nasal influences the alveolar, where the Vila plosive influences the alveolar nasal to become a Vila nasal. This analysis, though, depends on our acceptance of the syllable structure of Spannish. And furthermore, this analysis makes Spanglish more an abbreviated compound than a blend. Let's now turn to the status of English. It should be noted that public school is misleading, as in Britain it refers to private boarding schools. Well, we mentioned public school in the context of RP. Well, in this case, we can only thank you for pointing that out. It is, in fact, these private boarding schools, which I was referring to. But I see, I see now that this may cause a bit of confusion for those outside of the United Kingdom. So perhaps here we will add a speech bubble to the video English and England receive pronunciation. Well, and what about the status of British English or the phonological dialect of British English? Well, here is a question. What kind of accent would be preferable? So far as I understand this question, I think this user is asking which phonological dialect one should use as a guide when learning or speaking British English. Estuary English is arguably one of the more neutral or standard dialects of British English and therefore would be more preferable in many situations than, for example, Cockney. However, as a standard for teaching and learning British English as a second language, received pronunciation is still the phonological reference dialect. Let's now turn to some more general aspects. The first concerns our application in the massive open online course contest in Germany. You know, there was a competition here to get financial support for the development of a massive open online course, a so-called MOOC. We took part with our proposal teaching English as a foreign language part one pronunciation. And the support we received by you, by our YouTube channel community, and by the subscribers and by the viewers has been overwhelmingly positive. I have no idea whether we have any chance in that competition, but I'm sure with our experience in online teaching and our long tradition in developing online materials for linguistics, we would be able to create and deliver a MOOC which you will definitely like. So, thanks once more for your support and I will keep you in touch. Continuing with the topic MOOC, Massive Open Online Courses. When are you going to offer the Massive Open Online Course, Phonetics, Phonology and Transcription again? Well, as you know, we have just finished our first MOOC and it was a huge success. We had 420 participants, more than 100 participants received the Statement of Accomplishment, more than 200 the Statement of Participation. And what was most exciting was the massive use of the class-related forum. So, after a short period of self-evaluation, we will now permanently offer MOOCs via the Virtual Linguistics Campus and the Phonetics, Phonology and Transcription course will always be among them. So, stay tuned for the next VLC Massive Open Online Course period. You will find all the details on the VLC homepage. The next general question is very interesting. Someone wants to know what kind of job opportunities linguists have? Well, those who have studied linguistics are sought in a variety of fields. Some of the more common career paths include teaching languages, working on linguistic research and field work, working at a university and working as a translator or interpreter. More recently, linguists have been in high demand for technology companies working on natural language processing and artificial intelligence or for website development. Additionally, linguists may work in publishing or journalism as language consultants for law or medicine or therapists for those with communication disorders. There are numerous resources online with more information about career prospects for linguists, including this one here. So, try this link and you will find more information. Well, and here is the question I already announced. Is it possible to copy the transcripts of your e-lectures? So, this content here that I create while recording an e-lecture? Well, of course it is and it is extremely simple. The first step is you log in to the virtual linguistics campus. If you kind of do this, you first of all create your account, which is of course free, but we need your data in order to give you access to our courses. But it doesn't cost anything. So, once you have logged in, you will immediately see your personalized VLC site, where a number of options are displayed immediately, options available to all community members. And one of them is of course the VLC e-lecture library. And a click on this link leads you to this website. Now, here we are on the virtual linguistics campus and you see in the box that is on top, you see all the playlists we have created in our YouTube channel. And once you select any of these playlists, you will see the e-lectures that are associated with this playlist in the box below. And in the bottom box, you will find the interactive whiteboard nodes, which you can load via mouse click. So, here we are. And that is of course ready for printout. These are PDF documents which are available for printout. That's it. Well, this is simple, I think. So, this provides you with all the information you need about our e-lectures. Okay, does that solve all your problems? I hope so, at least for some of them and for another month. As usual, in our Questions of the Month videos, let me finally thank all our subscribers and viewers. We are overwhelmed with comments like these which are especially motivating. Thank you. Your videos were very helpful to me. Keep on. Took 16 out of 20 in my midterm exam because of your help. Well, if you can increase your grade, that's of course really rewarding. And we are very grateful that we can help you in such an enormous way. Or here is another comment which I remember. Someone said, thank you for your e-lectures. They're very helpful and informative. I wish I could attend your university in Germany. Well, you can. You can join us in our MA programs. We have a master linguistics and web technology. We have an online MA program which you can study from anywhere in the world. Web development for linguistics. We have a BA program, Anglophone Studies. And of course we educate teachers of teaching English for teaching English as a second language. And all the linguistic components are supported via the Virtual Linguistics Campus and our e-lectures. Last but not least, I would like to thank my team. They permanently supply me with ideas and comments. And what's more important with images and other multimedia elements that I can use in my presentations. Okay, so I'll see you again in the next question of the month video or in any of our e-lectures. We will continue trying hard to produce top class videos on linguistics. So again, thanks to all of you.