Annie Learning Journal 2

[Annie Hankin]

In my previous blog post, I mentioned vocabulary lists that I had obtained from the live online lessons I found. I have gotten through about half of the vocabulary lists, which was about 2.5 pages. The vocabulary lists are not written in Yiddish, but written as English pronunciations of the Yiddish words. When Yiddish is written using the English alphabet, it's called transliteration. Therefore, I am currently learning the transliteration of the vocabulary. In the live online lessons that occur every other week, they teach through old songs and stories as well as cover basic phrases where we, the students, listen and repeat while the instructor also explains the history and purpose behind each song or story. The Yiddish lesson book has lessons which I am completing. Right now I’m still trying to learn the alphabet, which is quite hard since I literally have to learn a new alphabet and memorize their sounds. The letters are also quite similar, which is making it more difficult to learn. I believe I have learned about 60% of the alphabet. There is writing practice which helps. I think I’ll move forward with learning transliterations of Yiddish since I will be able to get started on my learning path faster. I have not been able to find other resources yet, but I will try to find more interactive ones. So far, my strategies have worked and learned so far with the online lessons. I recently found the language on duolingo, so that may be a more helpful interactive tool to learn and practice in my spare time if I don’t have the book with me. I do think that the book is quite boring which makes it difficult to be consistent with my learning. I personally learn best with someone teaching me and following a class structure, so I believe that I would be learning it faster if there were a class. As I learn more about the history of the jewish people, I become more interested in their story and each family’s journey to this day despite all of the history they have faced and are still facing. It's fascinating the strong resilience they have demonstrated. I am not currently experimenting with new strategies and have stayed steady with my book and remote live lessons and have so far been a little slow but successful in my learning. Due to this slow pace, I will have to revise my goals of learning the language and how much I will want to be able to maintain after ending the course.