What is your interest in 'your' language the culture(s) where it is used? What do you hope to learn this semester? this year? in the future?
You need to be a member of The SDLAP Ning to add comments!
This reply was deleted.
What is your interest in 'your' language the culture(s) where it is used? What do you hope to learn this semester? this year? in the future?
You need to be a member of The SDLAP Ning to add comments!
Replies
A large number of my friends speak Urdu here, and the language has many similarities to Nepali (the language of my home country). Though Nepal and Pakistan are near each other geographically and there are many cultural similarities, there are also many differences. Nepal is predominantly a Hindu and Buddhist country while Muslims make up the vast majority of people in Pakistan. I am interested in learning Urdu and about the Pakistani culture as it is interesting for me to see how religion and history affects the cultural differences for these two cultures with many (other) similarities.
Beyond this, Hindi and Urdu are essentially the same language (albeit some Arabic words mixed into Urdu, and an Arabic alphabet.) I enjoy watching Bollywood movies and the language will be useful if I return to Nepal, visit friends in India or Pakistan etc.
I hope to learn basic grammar and essential vocabulary this semester. A strong foundation will help me learn more Urdu in the future through conversations/watching movies etc. Though I am not expecting to become fluent in Urdu, I would like to eventually become comfortable making small-talk and continuing a conversation.
Cultural post#1
I become interested in Korean because of one of my Korean friend in my high school, and she came to Beijing since her junior high school. We had a lot of fun together at that time; She told me a lot of Korean culture and interesting things in Korea. We both like Korean dressing fashion and drama so much. After two years of college life, I found that the ability to speak different language could give someone more opportunities and different aspects to understand the others. For the goal of learning Korean, I want to handle the novice conversation and talked simple and fluent sentence with Korean. China is near Korea, but I have never been there yet. I am thinking that this summer I can have a trip to Korea, and experience Korean culture by myself.
Even though I grow up in China knowing Korea is a neighboring country, I never get to know what Korea looks like, except its drama and pop songs. Until last semester, I took a course called Politics of Asia where I read about the ancient history of Korea and the development Korea has had in recent decades. I am amazed and have a lot of respect on how Korea has grown to become a developed country. Therefore, I would like to learn the Korean language this semester so that in the future I can get to know more about Korea.
At the end of this semester, I would like to be able to communicate with a Korean for at least five minutes. I would like to master the basic daily conversations, such as be able to ask a location of a cinema or shopping mall, ask and talk about identities, discuss food, tell and ask telephone numbers, discuss color and clothing, as well as being able to write simple sentences and emails.
I have an interest in Hindi because as a first-generation Indian, most of my family back home can speak Hindi fluently. While I can communicate with them fine in Tamil (a different Indian language), it would be great to communicate with my friends and family in Hindi and be more in tune with my culture and heritage. I plan to accomplish a basic understanding of Hindi and its vocabulary by the end of this semester and I think it will give me a good basis to be fluent in the future.
I became interested in learning Urdu once I suddenly became surrounded by friends, of which are fluent speakers here at U of R. Hearing them converse was what first interested me in this language. I constantly found myself asking them, "What are you saying" or "how do you say [ ]?" knowing that there was no official Urdu class offered at this University. Once I found that this course existed, I immediately became interested in the possibility of finally being able to achieve a goal: Finally being able to understand what they are talking about! I want to be able to have simple conversations with a native speaker and have them properly understand me. I enjoy the challenge of having to learn another language that is completely different than that of my native languages. This means that I will have to make different sounds, as well as try to hear the differences in sounds of 'my new language'. I have discovered that I am a K/V learner, meaning that I have to be verbal and act in order to learn. I think that this is perfect for language because it is essentially the basis of all language. I will have to speak and engage in the act of creating dialogue in order to achieve my goal. For this reason, I am concentrating in only learning how to have a novice conversation and not how to read/write in Urdu. I think that I can expand my learning activities by continuing to surround myself by native speakers and this time, engaging them in conversation as well.
Mehaba (that means hello in Turkish)
I lived in Turkey as a child for 4 years. My first memories are from there. I hope to get to visit as an adult and thought I would learn basic Turkish in preparation (although I have yet to schedule the trip!). I hope to learn enough basic Turkish so that I can read signs, communicate basics ideas, and hopefully understand when someone is talking to me (knowing I am a novice speaker). I am not sure what I will learn after this semester.
I am also excited about taking this class because it will give me a small window into being a student at UR (I am a professor in the Biology department here).