The readings were more complex than I thought-there were many parts that I had to reread to understand. Perhaps because I've never read anything of this sort, where language is analyzed in this manner. Firstly, I strongly agreed with the idea that the specifics of language such as sense and reference will never be holistic in its understanding if it is studied merely through one lens. We touched on this idea in class-the idea that language is the gateway for widening someone's perspective of the world. This weekend, my friend and I were also discussing how many of the problems in our homeland Ethiopia are rooted in the fact that for a country with 100-plus languages, many people can only speak one. The country is rampant with ethnic conflict and a big reason in my opinion is because a different language is seen as a threat rather than a means to understand one another. The friend I was speaking with studied abroad in Morocco and she was in awe of the fact that a majority of the people, little children included, were polyglots who spoke the main languages of the country. She noted that this was probably a large reason why the country doesn't have divisions amongst the people-because they seek to understand each other. The more biologically oriented reading discussed the connection between language/speech and the brain. According to the reading, both the right and left side of the brain is instrumental in the production and comprehension of speech. Like many parts of the body, each hemisphere in the brain has a primary function that it is responsible for in regard to speech. I was surprised to read about the connection between our dominant hand and which part of the brain we use more for language. The information in the article about meaning will definitely be an important source for my language-learning journey. It emphasized the importance of vocabulary/words in language but also how words will seldom have value if they are not combined with other words through the construction of a sentence. When learning Afaan Oromo I will spend time learning words in the language to increase the number of things I can say/understand, but I now know I can't stop there. The task of learning words in Afaan Oromo should be accompanied by studying/seeing how these words are often used in relation to each other.
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