The past two weeks or so have been a continuation of some previous themes and topics of the semester (e.g. affixes) as well as new ones as well. This semester, Melisa has incorporated more review of previous lessons, which has been useful in helping me remember and practice what I have learned to ensure that I understand and am comfortable using it. I am certainly getting more accustomed to expressing myself in Malay during our class sessions and indicating to Melisa what I am and am not understanding, how I am feeling about certain concepts or grammatical points, and various other wants or needs that emerge. An example: Melisa might ask me 'Apa khabar?' ('how are you?') and instead of responding the typical 'Khabar baik' ('I'm well'), I now am able to say something like 'Khabar baik, tetapi hari ini saya sedikit mengantuk dan perlukan kopi' ('I'm well, but today I am a little sleepy and need coffee'). This is, of course, a somewhat specific example, but the point remains that I can express myself more closely to how I might in English (or Chinese for that matter).
One of the areas where Melisa and I have spent the most time reviewing in class is on the use of question words. Interrogative words are interesting in Malay because they can be placed in different parts of the sentence in certain instance, just as in English. Those which are placed at the beginning of the sentence must have the suffix -kah attached to them as a matter of proper form. This means that 'Berapa' (how many) becomes 'Bereapakah', 'Apa' (what) becomes 'Apakah', 'di mana' (where) becomes 'di manakah', etc. This is a really interesting grammatical rule and is something, along with every affix, that makes Malay unique.
In addition to forming sentences and asking and answering questions using these question words and the proper grammatical structure, Melisa and I have began reviewing numbers. Though I learned this early-on last semester, it is important to continue to practice and be comfortable using them. I realized that I often think of numbers in Mandarin Chinese instinctually and need to constantly remind myself which numbers mean what in Malay (the structure itself, e.g. that 2-10-3 means 23, is similar in Malay and Chinese, which does not always help). This is in addition to other time words such as days of the week, months, and expressions for the past, present, and future. Malay does not have special conjugations for tense, so it is imperative that I am comfortable expressing these words in conversation because they will come up often and certainly be useful to know and recognize right away. This includes telling the time and reading these numbers out loud, since the time is read in the equivalent sequence of 'o'clock-->xx:xx-->time of day'.
The last major grammatical point that we have been working on is the precise difference in usage between 'ialah' and 'adalah'. Though both mean 'is' and I have been using and recognizing both before this lesson, I had never understood the precise difference between the two words, and Melisa helped me understand what they mean and when to use them in different contexts. This is one of the major advantages of having a language partner who is an L1 speaker of the target language. With Spring Break coming up, I am going to have to focus on studying Malay even more independently and will have to remain as disciplined, straightforward, and consistent as possible in my approach.
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