How have you started writing in the target language? Do you prefer to type or write free hand? Have you started to see patterns emerge in the structures between words, clauses, and sentences? What is the relationship between simple and complex sentences? How does your knowledge of parts of speech, government, and agreement affect your ability to communicate in written contexts? Provide a sample of several short meaningful writing exercises from your target language.
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For my target language, Italian, I have started writing by typing on computer. Since Italian was the descendent of Vulgar Latin and belongs to the Indo-European language, it early writing form follows the Classical Latin from Tuscan and Florentine. I have noticed quite a few interesting patterns such as the fact that Italian only has 21 letters excluding J, K, W, X, and Y, and that Italian loves using double consonants, or diphthongs. One's knowledge of speech and agreement directly affect the accuracy and effectiveness during conversations. For me, I have always thought gender and case agreement was difficult when I was learning Latin. Although Latin does not necessarily require speaking from which instant reaction and correct subject and verb agreement are expected, it is still time-consuming having to compose the correct form in agreement. The same goes with article and noun agreement. These affect my ability to write greatly since during tests, time is very limited.
Examples that show gender agreement as well as subject and verb agreement.
Le ragazze, Le ragazze hanno.
I have started writing in my target language with very basic phrases. I am still not very good at forming sentences on my own, so as I learn phrases verbally I practice writing them down. I prefer jotting down these phrases and important words free hand in a notebook. I have tried typing out longer sentences, but I find it a lot more difficult to form complex sentences. I am slowly trying to pick up parts of speech and agreement, but it has proven to be a very slow process. I do find myself noticing patterns between words, clauses, and sentences when trying to read Dutch, but I cannot effectively translate those patterns to writing my own sentences yet.
hoe gaat het met je? is an example of a phrase I have practiced: how are you?
I would respond to myself by writing
Alles is goed, dank u : all is well, thank you (lots of cognates!)
Writing in my target language is easy because I am accustomed to writing Arabic. But, I am used to the common words and patterns of Modern Standard Arabic; therefore, it feels weird to me to write certain Moroccan Arabic words because they would be gibberish in MSA. I prefer to write than to type because Arabic is naturally cursive, which benefits handwriting.
Truthfully, I still have not explored Moroccan Arabic enough to see patterns in the language (especially since the language makes use of French, Arabic, Spanish, and Amazigh words so frequently). To that end, I also do not know if Moroccan Arabic primarily uses simple or complex simple structures.
Moroccan Arabic primarily models its parts of speech and grammar on MSA. Therefore, I am able to follow Moroccan Arabic conversation (typically using a verb-subject-object format) even if I do not understand the words. Similarly, in written contexts, I can generally diagram Moroccan sentences, marking the subjects, objects, and verbs.
The exercises in my textbook are all based around conversation (since Moroccan Arabic is primarily an oral language), so the writing exercises primarily help with introducing and having a simple conversation. Here’s an example:
Fatima: s-salamu عalaykum.
Me: wa عalaykum s-salam.
Fatima: smн li, weš nta fransawi?
Me: lla, ana mirikani.
Fatima: mnin f mirikan?
Me: mn mdint New Orleans f wilayat Louisiana. u nti?
Fatima: mn Rabat.
Me: šнal f عmrk?
Fatima: tnayn u عšrin عam. u nta?
Me: wahid u عšrin عam.
Fatima: weš nta mzuwj wlla mazal?
Me: mazal. u nti?
Fatima: lla, baqiya. weš nta turist?
Me: lla, ana tlmeed.
Fatima: bslama.
Me: n-šufk mn bعd.
Hi Cutty,
It always amazes me when I meet someone that knows how to write in two or more languages! My native langauge is Cantonese, and while I am between the intermediate/advance level in speaking, I am barely a beginner in writing Chinese characters. Interestingly, Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciation is drastically different from each other. However, Cantonese and Mandarin speakers can somewhat understand the same piece of writing because the characters are mostly the same for both with the exception of a handful of words.
Korean’s writing system is much like that of Chinese where the writing is based on a character/syllable system rather than letters and words. However, Korean characters are much simpler than Chinese characters, which help new language learners like me to easily remember how to read, write, and speak. This is perhaps one of the most incentivizing reasons to learn a new language in particular, Korean, because there is an alphabet system and writing is simpler than other languages. Like English, if I am not familiar with the character, I can sound out the symbols while in Chinese, I can’t.
I prefer writing in Korean because I have control over the character and helps me remember the pronunciation of the character. Typing in Korean is slower because on my laptop, each of the letter keys are assigned to a hangul symbol but there is no relationship between the “S” key to the “S” sound in hangul. This is for all the hangul symbols in Korean. Therefore, I constantly have to actively search for the consonant/vowel that I want to use. My Korean handwriting resemble that of a five-year-old learning how to write, but nevertheless, when I write in Korean, it thrills me! Being able to write in a completely different language makes me feel like I have a special ability. In comparison to Chinese, the characters are quite complex and I didn’t have a strong foundation when I was young, so I never improved on writing in Chinese.
Korean grammar follows the SOV (subject – object- verb) format. I thought it would be difficult to learn because Chinese and English follow the SVO (subject-verb-object) format. Simple and complex sentences follow either SOV or SVO agreement, but the difference between simple and complex sentences is the additional “fluff” such as adverbs, adjectives, conjugation, etc. These are parts of speech that make a sentence different from one another, but the general idea or the main structure follows either SOV or SVO. I never had a good grasp on English grammar even though I grew up in the States for seventeen years so jargon to describe parts of speech is vaguely familiar and unfamiliar to me. However, I think the naming confuses me rather than what the uses or purpose of the part of the speech is.
SVO Korean Example.pdf
No, I have not started writing in my target language yet. Moreover, to start with the learning of a language I clearly prefer by hand since for me is much easier to interiorize the orthography and the vocabulary by doing it with my own hand rather than typing, which I think for me is not as helpful.
What I have seen is that my native language is going to help me a lot in the learning of Portuguese. Coming from the same family helps a lot to understand the structure and the grammatical compositions.
The easiest thing for me right now is to understand written Portuguese. I am not at all able to write yet, or perhaps but with lots of spelling errors.
An easy written exercise could be the one I did on last days´ presentation with Panopto. It was based on the formation of plural forms, and it helps to acquire vocabulary and to understand the grammatical formation of the plurals, mainly based on the termination of the word.
For example if I am given the word `professor´, which means `teacher´, I would have to remember that those words ending in r-s-z are added `es´ at the end of the word to make the plural, `proffesor-es´.
Hi Pablo,
I definitely agree that writing by hand is my preference too over using a keyboard! With Korean, it helps me remember how the character is written and the pronunciation of the character. Typing in Korean is a bit difficult for me because I have to actively search for the characters on an English keyboard, so it is much slower. Interestingly, I know how to write more Korean than I do with Mandarin/Cantonese, which is my native language!