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Discussion Post #9

If I receive a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of my target language and culture, I would love to look at the different dialects and how they are changing. In class, we talked about how the accent in Iowa is one of the most basic accents, and some areas are losing their accent, and it is turning into a basic “Iowa accent”. I know that dialects and accents are not the same thing, but I would like to see if there is a similar pattern as the accents in the USA. My first plan of action would be to visit all the different areas that have different dialects. I would talk to the people in the area and try to see the difference in the dialects. I would also like to see the different dialects connected to different cultures in Korea. For example, Seoul has a specific dialect in the city and that dialect is different from a dialect in the country. My next plan of action would be to talk to the younger people in each of the areas with different dialects, along with talking to the…

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Discussion Post #10

I would love to receive a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Bahasa Indonesia and Indonesian culture. If I were to receive such a grant, I would first plan to live in Indonesia for as long as possible. Total immersion would aid my linguistic development and cultural knowledge. I would likely try to stay in Surakarta since I have been there before and know people there who have helped me with my past research. Surakarta would also be a good place to start my research, as many Indonesians living there speak Javanese. Javanese and Indonesian are distinct, but you can understand either if you can speak one or the other. I would use my grant to study Islam's influence on Indonesian culture and Arabic's influence on the Indonesian language. Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation by population, and Islam is a key part of Indonesian culture. Arabic has also influenced Bahasa Indonesia, with many Arabic loanwords and spellings. I would like to explore Islamic/Arab influence in the…

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1 Reply · Reply by Luke Orris 9 hours ago

Discussion Post #8

Unfortunately, languages have gone extinct, and there are fears that half of the world’s seven thousand languages could go extinct in the next one hundred years. Elders almost exclusively speak many indigenous and at-risk languages. In these cases, languages are at risk of dying when the elders pass away. When new generations stop learning a language, that language is more likely to go extinct. People may stop learning indigenous languages due to factors such as a more popular language dominating their area, and/or colonialism. For example, colonial forces tried to wipe out Gaelic and many Native American languages forcibly. Many languages at risk of extinction have not been written down, and we “do not know what we’re losing” when they are lost. Generational knowledge is erased when languages die. The idea of a language dying saddens me, and I sincerely hope that revitalization efforts work and are met with open arms. Although my target language is Indonesian, Gaelic and its history…

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Discussion Post for Tuesday, March 31

As a beginning language learner, I would be curious to compare learning styles and strategies across English and Mandarin. I would try to study language learning for children growing up speaking only English and only Mandarin, and then compare language learners who were native speakers of one language and beginning to study the other. To simplify this process, I would focus on school programs and compare children and college students to understand prevalent educational strategies, although a similar study on self-teaching in the future could also be beneficial. This would also allow me to control for age (I would set different age ranges to group the data I collected and compare experiences across time). One aspect I would be curious about would be which elements of language learners seem to grasp more instinctively or easily (for example, in English, the order of types of adjectives is something people generally assume but cannot necessarily explain), and I would want to contrast…

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