I vividly remember sitting in the living room with my cousins, laughing over Hebrew. “Just try it, say it,” they all laughed. I felt a rumbling in the back of my throat, trying to create that “chah” sound. My cousins all around started to make the no
Read more…Israel is the only Jewish country in the world, and because of that, so much of its culture and national identity are connected to the Jewish religion. For many residents in Israel, being Jewish shapes public life, holidays, and even the weekly sched
Read more…There are many sounds in Chinese that are not used the same way, or don’t exist, as in American English. The most noticeable difference is in the tones used — I am learning to adjust my intonation to communicate the words I learn, as different tones
Read more…My target language, Catalan, fits well within Aitchison’s model of layered linguistic organization, from phonology and grammar to broader linguistic and other dimensions. At the grammatical level, its rich verbal morphology and SVO syntax structure s
Read more…One of the main beginner pieces I learned was that Korean has the Subject-Object-Verb structure for a sentence. Although I am still on the beginner parts of learning Korean and have not done too much work with sentences, I know that this may cause me
Read more…What kinds of structures do you observe in your language of study?
In Mandarin, I've observed basic syntactic structure. It follows SVO word order. I've also noticed morphological/grammatical words that modify sentences. Ma at the end of a sentence tu
Read more…In my study of Korean, I observe a highly systematic and multi-layered set of language structures that closely align with the diagram presented on page 9 of Aitchison’s linguistics, which conceptualizes language as an interconnected system composed
Overall, I predominantly agree with the assessments presented in Figuring Foreigners Out and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, particularly their analyses of individualism versus collectivism, high- versus low-context communication, and cultural attitu
Read more…My goal is to improve my proficiency in Korean while deepening my understanding of Korean culture. I focus on task-based learning activities that combine language practice in writing (grammar), allowing me to actively use Korean in real-life contexts
Read more…The readings on language learning and the relationship between language and the brain prompted me to reconsider the complexity of language acquisition and the factors that shape how languages are learned and used. Rather than presenting language as a
Read more…Over the past week, my Korean language learning has focused on understanding phonological sound change rules and the different uses of Korean particles (agglutinative markers). Specifically, I studied common sound changes such as liaison, tense conso
Read more…In ASL, two levels of the four-level langauge model are observable (ie. phonetics, phonology, grammar, and semantics) which are grammar and semantics. Though, I think phonology may be present in the language as well except, instead of particular soun
Read more…The diagram of Aitchison’s linguistics starts from pragmatics, which means using language contextually. This can also look like social rules or phrases that shape a language’s meaning and culture, beyond just the words themselves. For Hebrew, I think
Read more…While studying the Korean constants, I noticed that it has a constant phonology because the “j” and the “ch” sound similar. As well as the vowels “yeo” and “eo” sound the same. Different disciplines can be useful to see a holistic understanding becau
Read more…Chinese primarily follows the same subject-verb-object structure as English, but I am still learning the different ways in which words can be arranged. For example, in some cases, I can signify having completed an action by adding the word “le” after
Read more…Russian has several structures within the language including but not limited to phonetics, phonology, grammar, semantics, and physical forms.
Currently, I am working on looking at Russian from several perspectives. While I most rely on the basics fou
Read more…The main ideas behind the pieces that we read are that our languages differ in more ways than just our words. Yes, if we do not know someone’s language, it may be difficult to talk to them, but it is also difficult to fully communicate with someone w
Read more…I predominantly agree with the assessments in Figuring Foreigners Out in terms of the points it makes around key cultural differences being rooted in individualistic vs collectivist values, differences in nonverbal communication norms and assignments
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