I really really want to a Senegalese restaurant sometime soon, but Richmond doesn't have any. In the meantime, I'll be putting my own cooking skills to test! I found the recipe for Theiboudienne online. This may or may not work. I haven't tried to do yet but I'll add a link below to the recipe that I've found online.
Johnnette Johnson's Posts (18)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eAoQIXVi6c
This song is called Birima, another by Youssou Ndour. I've learned the important of oral traditions and storytelling in Francophone Africa through my French classes. The storyteller is often called the griot. This video allowed me to see what a modern-day griot looks like. NDour is telling a story about the beloved Birima and his selflessness. He also uses traditional instruments and sounds to accommodate his lyrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QETFUmBwKoA
Rama introduced me to Youssou N'Dour at the beginning of the semester. Though I cannot give direct translations of all of the lines YET, the message throughout the video and the song have become clear to me. Mbeugeul is All means loves and compassion for all. Both in a relationship sense and in a familial sense, the song traces this idea of love and what it can do for people.
Muusaa: Asalaa maalekum.
Lauren: Maalekum salaam Peace be upon you
M: Nanga def? How are you doing?
L: Maangi fi rekk I’m fine.
M: Naka waa kër gi? How is the family?
L: Nungi fii They are fine.
M: Noo tudd? What’s your name?
L: Lauren laa tudd, yow nag? My name is Lauren, and you?
M: Muusaa laa tudd, Noo sant? My name is Muusaa. What’s your last name?
L: Becker laa sant. My last name is Becker.
M: man, Jòop la. Foo jóge? Me, it is Diop. Where are you from?
L: Maryland laa jóge. I come from Maryland.
M: Foo dëkk léegi? Where do you live now?
L: Cees laa dëkk léegi. I live in Thies now.
M: Americain nga? Are you American?
L: Waaw, americain laa. Yes, I’m American
M: Looy liggéey? What is your profession?
L : Wolonteer u Corps de la Paix laa. I’m a PeaceCorps Volunteer.
M: Ci ban program ngay liggéey? In which program do you work?
L: Ci mbay laay liggeey. I work in agriculture
M: Am nga jëkkër? Do you have a husband? (Are you married?)
L: Déedéet, amuma jëkkër, Yow nag, am nga jabar? No, I don’t have a husband And you, do you have a wife? (Are you married?), .
M: man itam, amuma jabar. Me neither, I don’t have a wife.
L: Jërëjëf, kon ba benneen yoon Thank you, so see you next time.
M: waaw, ba benneen Yes, see you next.
This dialogue is from an open-source Wolof text. I can proudly say that I understood and can read mostly all of the wolof text! My language partner and I discussed the translations.
Reflect on your learning experiences this semester. (a) What insights have you gained about yourself as a language learner and cultural explorer? What did you find difficult? What have you enjoyed? How will you continue your learning? (b) Which readings and learning activities did you find most useful? What
I’ve prided myself for being a language learner and cultural explorer for most of my academic career. Still, I continue to learn new things about myself every semester. After my semester’s pursuit of Wolof, I know for sure that I have very high expectations for myself. I’m constantly reaching to do my best but biting off more than I can handle. Crafting my own course –deciding the skills necessary to accomplish a goal and following through with the agenda– is something I want to carry with me (and use) in the future. My only problem was not narrowing down my agenda to a couple essential tasks. I can now say that I understand the struggle that professors go through when crafting a syllabus and the corresponding course. There are just so many interesting topics and inquiries that lead me to a plethora of potential course materials. Due to this excitement, I put a lot on myself and eventually got overwhelmed. I enjoyed being able to follow my own agenda and come out on the other side with some of the knowledge that I aimed for. The difficulty here, though, was overcommitting.
My intense curiosity is the foundation for another difficulty I’ve encountered this semester –staying on my agenda track. During the sessions with my language partner and in my own research, I easily get sidetracked due to my inquiries. The material in front of me usually leads to other questions that could perhaps get me off-topic and onto a different road of material. You may have witnessed this in SDLC 105 (: I do think my curiosity and critical thinking skills have propelled my academic career in many ways, I must find the balance. In the future, I’ll continue to allow my inquisitive nature to lurk, but I’ll proactively steer the conversation thread back to the original agenda.
Related to this critical thinking and curiosity piece, I tend to connect ideas and concepts. A couple weeks ago I took the Clifton Strengths assessment to narrow my top five strengths. Two of them were Ideation and Connectedness. These themes became essential for me during SDLC 105 and SDLC 110 1) when I sought to understand and grapple with Senegalese culture and 2) when I sought to connect ideas from SCLC 105 to SDLC 110. The main thing that I enjoyed about SDLC 105 was learning about everyone’s target cultures. If we had a world map and pinned everyone’s corresponding locations, we’d find that everyone had their own nooks and crannies of the world to study. I found lots of connections to Senegalese culture by listening to my peers as they discovered ideals, morals, and traditions reflected in their target cultures.
One of my favorite readings/activities from SDLC 105 the discussion of Hofstede cultural dimensions. I wish we could’ve delved in other philosophical thought to have a more holistic view of this study, but I found in very useful grapple with Senegalese culture using the various dimensions. This discussion also hit on a very important point: cultures are never “this or that”. It’s much more complicated than the simplicity that most outsiders project onto other cultures and people. The reading challenged me to find the balance between learning more about the overarching culture but also realizing that there will be diversity. Overall, this unconventional course has stimulated my thinking in ways that I hadn’t been exposed to before. Thank you for this opportunity!
Reflect on your experiences of (trying to) read and write in your target language. Are you bilingual? If so, would you agree with the arguments made in the two readings on bilingualism.
My personal mission concerning Wolof was more to be able to speak and understand; however, due to the use of PowerPoints as a source of content, I’ve learned to read everything that I can say and understand. Bilingualism, though, comes in many different forms depending on the situation at hand. Say for instance that my interactions in Senegal were limited to a certain context or event like a football game. If I learned all phrases and cues surrounding this instance, I’d feel like a fluent speaker in that moment. However, when taken out of that context and into the grander scheme of things, it’s easier to the sum of the language’s weight. I prefer the limiting method just because I get overwhelmed very easily.
Moment of fluency or small successes will occur whether it’s reading and understanding a portion of a newspaper or ordering food without reverting to a more comfortable language. True bilingualism is much harder to capture, though. English is my first language, but there are still words that I need to look up and certain phrases that I still don’t feel comfortable using. Ultimately, I think it’s up to us as the learner to claim our strengths.
How many new words have you learned in your target language? How did you learn them? Do you have realistic goals for your acquisition of vocabulary?
At this point, I’ve learned about 35-40 words in my target language. I’ve learned them by using the Slides constructed by my language partner and attempting to make the vocabulary applicable to my own life. I honestly don’t believe that I’ve had realistic goals for my vocab acquisition. I planned to learn double or triple the amount of words that I have, but I failed to realize how difficult it is to learn a language in a completely different language family and to learn it without traditional instruction.
How do languages go extinct? Respond to the reading, reflecting on what happens when a language dies. How can linguists help preserve a language? Can a language ever be brought back to life?
Languages are linked directly to the people who speak them. Therefore, when the people of a language are dying and there is not readily accessible documentation of the language, the language begins to die. Languages die when the inheritants of said language and culture are not able to continue that language’s legacy. The hierarchical linguistic remnants of colonization is the prime example.
Linguists can help preserve a language through documentation. This way, the people of that culture can pick up the language again and so that non-natives to that language may indulge their interests. Furthermore, linguists can help marginalized populations fight to preserve their linguistic heritage. Language is identity and culture. No one should be forced to give that up.
Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language. To what family does your language belong? What sounds, words, or structures exemplify periods of contact with other cultures?
Knowing the language’s history helps to understand certain influences that pop up throughout a language. I’d go further to say that knowing that culture’s history will help contextualize the language. For instance, the periods of English and French colonization in Senegalese history helps to deconstruct the English and French presence in Dakar Wolof.
“The Wolof spoken in Dakar, Senegal's capital, is particularly noted for its high level of French loans or derivative words and is readily distinguishable from the Wolof spoken in other parts of Senegal. The influence of English on the Wolof of the Gambia, a former English colony, has also been studied.” http://www.everyculture.com/wc/Rwanda-to-Syria/Wolof.html#ixzz5DP1qQBUL
Wolof belongs to the Niger-Congo language family. Before the 15th century, the Wolof people began documenting their language using the Arabic alphabet; however, during colonization, the Latin alphabet took precedence. In this way, many or actually most consonants in Wolof are pronounced as they are in English. Other phrases and words are borrowed from French like the time and number systems.
Complete Reflection Paper #2 (500 words) and Post to Your Blog in the Ning
Reflect on your language learning so far. How would you describe the relationship between understanding the target culture and target language. What do you need to improve your communicative competence? What other kinds of competence from the readings by H.D. Brown do you need to consider to make tangible advances in your linguistic abilities?
When studying a language, the attached culture becomes just as evident. In fact, the culture is a type of language that communicates a society’s social norms. Untranslatable phrases and meanings help to illustrate the cultural barriers that divide different languages. Therefore, to truly understand my target language I must think outside of my own cultural entrapments. I must reconfigure the ways I understand certain concepts to properly engage with my target language. A small example is the use of articles in French. I’m not saying I force myself to understand the philosophical underpinnings of French article usage, but I certainly have to be conscious of this concept when I’m writing.
This relationship also goes the other way around. From sentence structure down to philosophical semantics, the language quickly becomes the culture’s proxy. Certain phrases and structures in the target language serve as windows into the culture. It’s then my job to ask appropriate questions to be sure that I thoroughly understand the concept at hand. As I described in an earlier journal, Senegalese culture exhibits such communal tendencies that the literal translation of “How is your mother?” from Wolof to English is “Where is your mother?” This one example along with several others speak to the intrinsic nature of language and culture. There no way you can understand one without at least partially understanding the other.
Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language. To what family does your language belong? What sounds, words, or structures exemplify periods of contact with other cultures?
Understanding the history of a language means to understand where certain roots and constructions of from. When you’re able to identify a root, it’s easier to recognize it when it appears again and again. Language is essentially repetition, so once you’re able to hone down on the pattern you’ve learned the language.
My target language, Wolof, belongs to the Niger-Congo language family. Certain sounds in Wolof illustrate the Arabic and French influences on the culture. Many French words are used or manipulated in Wolof. French is so heavily a part of Wolof that some conversations seem to switch between the languages, weaving them together.
How do languages go extinct? Respond to the reading, reflecting on what happens when a language dies. How can linguists help preserve a language? Can a language ever be brought back to life?
Languages often die by the hands of other languages that have more power, referred in Kirk Johnson’s article as “linguistic sweepstake winners.” These languages like French, English, Mandarin, Spanish, etc often push out smaller languages through education, religion, and federal policy.
Linguists can help to preserve languages by educating local populations of the value of all languages –both to the speakers and nonspeakers. Linguists must communicate the fact that these languages are valid. They have their own ways of understanding and interpreting life that may by drastically different from English language and culture, for example. Nevertheless, those languages matter. Secondly, linguists help by documenting the languages that are going extinct. The objective is to preserve them so that in the case of a language revival, the appropriate materials would be available. With the right materials and atmosphere, I think a language can definitely be brought back to life. However, the possibility becomes scarce where cultural oppression is the maximized and intercultural understanding is minimized.
Do some preliminary research on what most interests you about the target culture, and describe how this topic relates to language. Do you need any special vocabulary or linguistic knowledge to engage this topic? If so, have you included objectives in your learning plan to engage this topic?
As I mentioned in my presentation, nonverbal language is a huge interest to me. Another topic that interests me, other than food, is bargaining. A UR alumna who attended the same program in Dakar admits that even on her more recent visits to Senegal, her use of Wolof to buy products has proved to be the most effective method of bargaining and purchasing. She says that using French indicates that you’re more of a tourist and that you’re more liable to buy the relatively expensive product. This preference also shows a connection that Senegalese people have to Wolof over their connection to French, the language of the colonizer.
I will need to know terms related to money and how to count in Wolof if applicable. One related objective in my learning plan is “I can ask and understand how much something costs.” This concept is important to me, because I know I will like to explore Dakar on my own sometimes. Therefore, I won’t always be able to reply on members of my host family to help me out. Even then, it is important for me to have that lingual foundation to learn from those around me.
Describe the phonetic inventory of your target language. Are there sounds in your language that don't exist in English? Provide several phonetic transcriptions of important words.
Though many sounds in Wolof are pronounced as they are written, some sounds in the language diverge greatly from the way they are pronounced. For instance, the ‘x’ is pronounced as a ‘h’ sound and written phonetically as [x~X]. Many sounds in Wolof do not exist in English, but the different sounds are produced by the same mechanisms of manipulation. See five transcriptions here: dafa [dafa], mbeugel [mboegɛl], seed [sɛd:], ngelow [ɳgoelɔw], ndox [ndox~X].
What do you need to know about the structure of your target language? How will you acquire the knowledge you need? Have you identified resources and textbooks to promote your task-based objectives? Why or why not?
As far as structure goes, it would be appropriate to understand some basic elements of Wolof’s syntax. I’ll need to understand how to manipulate some grammar, especially the differences between “I am,” “We are,” and “They are.” Because I am still finalizing my learning plan, I haven’t solidly identified all the resources I’ll need. However, I’m beginning to find YouTube very beneficial (I’m listening to a Senegalese artist on YouTube as I type). I’ve also identified a Senegalese filmmaker who’s produced many films and set the precedence for filmmaking in Senegal: Ousmane Sembène. I’ll definitely be utilizing his work. I’ve also run across an Intro to Dakar Wolof book published by the Peace Corps that I may make use of.
How would you qualify or describe different aspects of your target culture? Reflect and your own experiences and expectations of the culture in question. How does your culture reflect various qualitative Hofstede dimensions of culture explored in class, e.g., body language, how people talk about time, etc. Also, have you ever experienced culture shock? If so, describe.
As it relates to one of the Hofstede’s qualitative dimensions, Senegalese culture leans more towards the community than the individual. I’ve come to this conclusion by making sense of certain social norms and expectation revealed by Wolof. For instance, to ask about someone’s livelihood, the direct translation to English asks about their location. Because everyone sees everyone daily, there’s no need to ask, “How are you?”. The communities are so close-knit that the question is used only to express concern. The cue “congcong” to enter a home is another testimony to the culture’s communal aura. Rather than knocking at someone’s door and waiting, many Senegalese people enter the homes of their neighbors with a “congcong” to announce their arrival. Everyone is always welcome.
My latest time experiencing culture shock was in a Buddhist temple. I was invited in by a Vietnamese community sharing lunch. Though they meant well with reassuring smiles and the great food, I felt excluded because I didn’t understand their conversations. All I could do was laugh when they laughed and ask for a translation later.
How have you organized your self-directed learning plan, and what have you learned so far? How will your studies allow you investigate your target language and culture more deeply? What first prompted your interest, and motivated you to start learning?
After receiving feedback from your classmates and Dr. Marsh-Soloway, what changes do you anticipate making?
As I’m finishing up my learning plan, I’ve become very appreciative of the “task-based” learning method. This way of organizing allows me to focus on specifically what I think is practical and necessary for my future endeavors in the target language. I know I want to live with a host family during my time in Dakar, Senegal. Therefore, I’m focusing interpersonal communication, interpretive listening, and presentational speaking. I think it would be to my greatest advantage to be able to understand and verbally communicate basic phrases in Wolof. In this way, my studies will provide me with the tools to have a more meaningful experience will I’m abroad.
Additionally, I plan on adding more resources to my plan. I want to peruse my options in terms of multimedia available such as movies and TV series.
Reflect on the readings. What parts of the brain are most important for the production and comprehension of speech? How do you conceptualize or process meaning? Do these readings bring to mind any questions or motivations that could help promote your foreign-language abilities, retention, and recollection?
Language is loosely tied to several (if not all) regions of the brain including Wernicke’s area, Heschl’s gyri, Broca’s area, and Exner’s centre. These areas are related to speech production, encoding of speech, auditory reception, and motor control of writing. Reading Crystal D.’s work made me quickly realize how interdependent our brains are when it comes to language. The conceptualization of a message is the first thing that happens before speech production. All the steps that occur between conceptualization and speech production occur in Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas. Our environments and norms, however, also inform how we internalize meanings and messages. As Crystal says, “different languages talk about the world in different way.” As we learn more languages, we expand our repertoire of senses and references begin to mean more than one thing. I think being conscious of this concept will both help me understand what learning another language means and facilitate the process.
