Charlie Fisher replied to Elizabeth Jonas's discussion Reflective Essay #2
"The nasalization of vowels are so hard--- I agree! Recently I have been questioning if I am making the sounds correctly. When I listen to Brazilian funk songs, I always repeat the nasal sounds out loud when I hear them. I think that this is when…"
Dec 14, 2025
Charlie Fisher replied to Elizabeth Jonas's discussion Discussion Post #7
"I so agree on how culture can affect language patterns! I think that European Portuguese is harder to understand than Brazilian Portuguese. At least in my experiences with Brazilian Portuguese, the language feels more informal. I wonder if the…"
Dec 14, 2025
Ariana Kamiya replied to Elizabeth Jonas's discussion Discussion Post #5
"Hi Libby, your plan and motivations here are so thoughtful, and it is very clear that your strong Spanish background is going to help you, especially since Portuguese and Spanish share a lot of grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure. The way…"
Dec 13, 2025
Ariana Kamiya replied to Elizabeth Jonas's discussion Discussion Post #1
"Hi Libby, I think you are absolutely right to be skeptical of strong claims about handedness and language. Handedness explaining only a small portion of the variation in which hemisphere handles language. Your explanation of Broca’s and Wernicke’s…"
Dec 13, 2025
Ariana Kamiya replied to Elizabeth Jonas's discussion Discussion Post #9
"Hi Libby, I agree that languages really are at the heart of everything you are describing here, and the different ways of seeing parts of the world disappear with it is very sad, especially Indigenous ecological knowledge and oral traditions. Your…"
Dec 13, 2025
Ariana Kamiya replied to Elizabeth Jonas's discussion Discussion Post #8
"Hi Libby, I like that you are approaching learning the language very thoughtfully. I agree that writing free hand helps retain more information than typing. I also like your attention to the grammar structure and patterns and how it shows similarity…"
Dec 13, 2025
Ariana Kamiya replied to Elizabeth Jonas's discussion Discussion Post #10
"Hi Libby, I think your hypothetical research idea is really compelling. It was fascinating to listen to you talk about this in your final presentation too. And its great that you were able to connect culture, history, and syntax rather than just…"
Dec 13, 2025
Elizabeth Jonas posted a discussion
This semester has been wonderful in learning about the functions of language and how to apply effective studying tactics to learn any language quicker and more efficiently. I have learned that languages have patterns, and there are ways to sort of…
Dec 11, 2025
Elizabeth Jonas posted discussions
Dec 5, 2025
Elizabeth Jonas posted a discussion
Portuguese belongs to the Romance language family along with languages like Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and French. There are lots of similarities with the Spanish language as seen in verb conjugations ( yo + verb uses o ending, eu + verb also uses…
Nov 30, 2025
Elizabeth Jonas posted a discussion
One part that interests me about Portuguese is mainly the fact that it is very comparable to Spanish. I feel like that also means it will be easier to learn than other languages because of my strong base in Spanish, and, hopefully, I'll be able to…
Nov 9, 2025
Elizabeth Jonas posted a discussion
Spelling is the written form of a word while sound is a spoken component to a word. This is also an important distinction since the sound and spelling of a word might not necessarily match up. (The word enough, for example). You can't rely on the…
Nov 3, 2025
Elizabeth Jonas posted a discussion
I couldn't access the diagram, but based on other research and inference, combining different disciplinary perspectives to formulate a more holistic understanding of my target language would undoubtedly help in studying language. By combining…
Oct 20, 2025
Elizabeth Jonas posted a discussion
Figuring Foreigners Out details Individualist vs. Collectivist societies. This means societies where the focus is put on personal gain and growth vs. doing things at the benefit of your entire community. It also then goes on to talk about Non-Verbal…
Oct 6, 2025
Elizabeth Jonas posted a discussion
My learning plan consists of starting by listening. (I understand this is late, I apologize, but part of this was listening to the podcast you sent me). Listening even to Portuguese or Brazilian radio through RadioGarden to familarize myself with…
Sep 30, 2025
Elizabeth Jonas posted a discussion
I am slightly confused on how handedness affects the brain hemispheres with respect to language. I'd like to read more into that. I could be wrong, but I feel like that has more to do with corellation rather than causation. I know the text states…
Sep 21, 2025
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Discussion Post #3

While studying the Korean constants, I noticed that it has a constant phonology because the “j” and the “ch” sound similar. As well as the vowels “yeo” and “eo” sound the same. Different disciplines can be useful to see a holistic understanding because they can interconnect with different perspectives to learn a language with all available perspectives. In Korean, in psychology, they perceived the Subject, then the Object, and lastly the Verb. For computational Phonology the sounds that Koreans hear know what each mean while for me, I still have trouble differentiating the sounds. I prefer the disciplinary approach of stylistics literature for korean because it is easy for me to read the words out loud while practicing the pronunciation, and when I practice a simple sentences I have an image of the words written. If I were able to read fluently, it would be great to view the perspective of authors because they can influence the population, so understanding the source may have a better…

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Discussion 3 Spring 2026

Chinese primarily follows the same subject-verb-object structure as English, but I am still learning the different ways in which words can be arranged. For example, in some cases, I can signify having completed an action by adding the word “le” after the verb (and sometimes the rest of the sentence), but I don’t know if this applies to all cases of the past tense. One of the other concepts I am coming to understand is the way characters are combined to create new words with complex senses. The words for “stairs” come from the characters for “building” and “ladder”, and a part of the character for ladder means “wood”, as it was used in early building structures. Tracking ideas like this might relate broadly to the “language”, “anthropology”, and “sociology” areas of Aitchison’s linguistics. As a beginner, I will probably focus mostly on applied linguistics, but I am also interested in literature, philosophy, and psychology, so I hope to consider and learn more about how Mandarin has…

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Discussion #3 (Spring 2026)

Russian has several structures within the language including but not limited to phonetics, phonology, grammar, semantics, and physical forms. Currently, I am working on looking at Russian from several perspectives. While I most rely on the basics found within semantics, grammar, and the “medium of linguistic transition” which consists of phonology and phonetics (Crystal), I also look into how learning Russian affects my brain– psychological linguistics– and how Russian can be used in a broader setting– anthropological linguistics. These various perspectives allow me to explore my target language through multiple lenses and gain even more motivation and personal achievement from my studies. Since I am a beginner in the language, I naturally lean toward the most simple (to me) approaches. Mostly, I am studying vocabulary and syntax, which are levels of semantics and grammar respectively. Through the readings though, I am expanding my directory of how to approach language learning. I…

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Discussion Post #2

The main ideas behind the pieces that we read are that our languages differ in more ways than just our words. Yes, if we do not know someone’s language, it may be difficult to talk to them, but it is also difficult to fully communicate with someone when you do not understand the cultural norms. Figuring Foreigners Out was particularly interesting because it mentioned cultural tendencies that I have not necessarily thought of. The main points that the reading looked at were individualists vs. collectivists, non-verbal behaviors, monochronic vs. polychronic time, internal vs. external control, and indirect/high context vs. direct/low context. Regarding Hofstede Dimensions, it focused on individualism, power distance and hierarchies, masculinity, avoidance of uncertainty, flexibility with traditions, and indulgence vs. restraint. I really enjoyed learning about all of these and would love to return to reflect on them if I can go to Korea in the future.In regard to agreeing with these…

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