It's hard to believe that two weeks have already gone by this semester! I'm excited to be back and to catch up with my language partner, Melisa, and to be speaking Malay again. Over the break, I realized how hard it was for me to keep up my speaking, and that really showed in the lessons over this past week; I was certainly rusty. That said, our meetings last week were productive and already off to a very strong start. I'll detail some of the concepts we reviewed below. We also agreed to meet for slightly longer each lesson (75 minutes) with a third, optional class time slot; this seems like a promising idea.
Among the first things we touched upon after getting back was a quick review of some of the most major lessons and concepts I covered last semester. This included quick and simple self-introductions to speaking about family, emotions, activities, likes/dislikes, and so on. This was in itself quite useful, as I got to speak again and review pronunciation of some more difficult words that I admittedly did not emphasize too strongly over the winter break. I even learned how to properly format and address a letter in Malay, which is always an interesting cultural insight. At the end of the first lesson, I wrote several (5-7) sentences incorporating some of last semester's vocabulary and grammar, and then we went over it together. As part of my homework assignment, I revised and added to this paragraph before the next class. The focus here was not on perfection or the like, but rather getting re-acclimated to Malay sentence structure.
The following class, we took a deep-dive of sorts into a very important topic that has since the start of last semester been a little difficult for me to fully comprehend: affixes (or, more specifically, prefixes). We focused primarily on the -me and -mem prefixes before non-transitive verbs, which both indicate that the subject is doing something or performing an action of some sort; in other words, the function of each is the same, but, depending on the spelling of the root word, one should be used over another. After reviewing how these prefixes fit in with over fifteen words, I finally started to fully grasp what they are and why they are used, which was great progress for the first week. For some words, the entire root will change with the addition of these prefixes, which is something that for the most part must just be memorized; every language has these, and it is important to approach them with an open mind rather than begrudgingly.
I am hopeful for this semester and excited to make language gains in Malay. Melisa and I both indicated interest in changing some approaches to our meetings and seeing how that goes. Though this is a somewhat vague goal, I would like to take a formal test (e.g. OPI or ILR) at the end of the semester and achieve an 'intermediate' proficiency in Malay if possible. I am also looking forward to having discussions with the other student learning Malay this semester, Mehreen, which will add a sense of community to the SDLC Malay group at UR!
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