Khatira Darvesh's Posts (19)
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For my final artifact I have recorded a short monologue about my favorite Hindi movie. artifact%204.mp3
This is a short monologue about my Christmas break plans. artifact%203.mp3
Here I am learning to conjugate verbs (feminine and masculine) and use them in a sentence (present and future tenses)
For my first artifact I posted a picture of the me beginning to learn how to start a conversation.
At the beginning of the semester my goal was to learn five words a day which sounded reasonable and very doable to me at the time. Soon I realized that it was not as easy as it seemed. Not having enough time to practice was one of the issues but also remembering the old ones while learning new ones was also a problem. Since most of the words are not used in daily conversations, practicing them is not possible, and trying to simply memorize them only worked for a short term. I would remember them for a couple of days but since I didn’t use them I would eventually forget them. At this point I have realized that my goals are pretty unrealistic so I have switched to learning fewer vocabulary words and also learning words that I would use in daily conversations.
I think the small cultural presentations are a great idea for us to not just learn more about the culture of our target language but also about the cultures and languages that our classmates have picked. Learning about the Swedish Fika gave me a tiny glimpse into the Swedish culture, traditions, and language. The presentations are like windows from which we can view life in a different country and learn something new that we wouldn’t have bothered to otherwise. The presentations were not only interesting but they also expanded my horizons: before learning about Fika I would have never even thought about Sweden. The country was simply a dot in the map but after learning something about their culture I have a tiny piece of information that I can associate it with.
Body language plays a tremendous role in Indian culture to supplement the spoken Hindi. In a highly gendered society it is better to avoid confrontations and misunderstanding by simple body language. For example a female will need to avoid eye contact in order to not draw attention to herself. Men for their part don't shake hands or touch women in public. Any pointing of the finger during a greeting should be avoided because of its accusatory connotation. They point with their chin to avoid offending anyone. These are just some basic signs and gestures that would help a non-native Indian to avoid confrontations while interacting with the natives.
While learning a particular language by memorizing the grammar rules and the word in a dictionary will help you speak in that language it will not help you communicate with the people who use that language. What makes language learning more effective is having some kind of ‘cultural competence’. What I mean is learning the culture and history of the people and the country. Their worldview, opinions and ideologies play a big role in understanding their language. Although one might know the meaning of every single word in a spoken sentence, the meaning of that sentence could completely escape him/her due to lack of cultural and historical context.
Until watching the Culture Shock video I didn’t know that such a phenomenon existed. I have definitely experienced it more times than I could count but I didn’t know that it had a name and that it happened to everyone else as well. Living in the United States for the past seven years, I had forgotten about my experience arriving into a completely different country and culture with a foreign language. Being depressed, losing weight, and becoming more of an introvert, missing ‘home’ to a point where I craved hearing spoken Russian; I never attributed them to culture shock. I blamed it on not learning English while I lived in Uzbekistan. The first month before school started, everything was new, shiny and exciting. But that didn’t last long; once I started interacting or the lack of interaction with my peers in school quickly turned everything to dull, gray and confusing. Being forced to navigate through a new culture and language with no outside help or support affected my health and well-being.
Now that I think about it my parents didn’t help me deal with it in a healthier way. From day one, my siblings and I were not allowed to speak in Russian, read in Russian or listen to Russian music. They wanted us to learn English, and having no other options and losing that connection to ‘home’ that was built through Russian language, I became obsessed with learning English as fast as possible, to a point that I almost forgot Russian completely. My siblings did; they only speak in English now and some Farsi. Fortunately for me I have regained most of the Russian that I lost but that connection is not as strong as it was before. Now that I am getting ready to go to Poland for study abroad in three months, I can’t help being a little nervous. A completely different culture and a language that I know nothing about, the idea that I might experience culture shock again, is putting my nerves on edge. But this time I am more prepared for it. I feel like understanding culture shock and almost expecting it to happen will help me deal with it better. Poland will definitely be a challenge but one that I am ready for. I have learned a lot from my experiences and I am ready to tackle culture shock once again.
English language started spreading with the onset of colonization by Great Britain. In recent years it has become the global language that everyone has to know to get anywhere. Most countries have made a mandatory language to be thought in their schools. United States becoming a super power in the world has helped raise the importance of English language as the language of business and success not just in the Global North but also the Global South. The focus to learn English has had a great impact on indigenous languages. It has marginalized them to the point of extinction because they are ‘not important’ or ‘needed’ to succeed in the world. Just the fact that only five people speak a language that once was so widely spoken across North America explains the significance of English as a means to success. I think its great that they are trying to revive an almost dead language by using modern technology. Using the Internet to reach the modern youth in order to promote an ancient language and show that although English is important, not forgetting the existence of the old languages is also very important.
Learning the history of a language can help us better understand and learn the target language. A language is not a constant and stagnant entity. It changes over time, taking different forms. Through interaction with other cultures and languages, that language adopts words, expressions, and even grammar to enrich and transform that language. It evolves with each generation according to the needs of the society and culture. This transformation is clearly seen in Hindi language. Originating from Sanskrit, earliest form of religious texts, it has evolved to reflect todays’ generation of a more globalized youth. Over the years Hindi has been most heavily influenced by Urdu, Persian, and in recent years English as it has become the global language. Due to colonization of India by Great Britain, Hindi has adopted a lot of English words and phrases into their language. But more importantly the younger generation has started using English and Hindi interchangeably by methods of code switching. For example phrases such as ‘aram karna’ (take a rest) became ‘rest karna’—taking an English word and a Hindi word to get the same message across to someone who also speak both languages. So in this case knowing the history of what other languages have come in contact with Hindi and how it has changed the Hindi language gives the learner a better understanding of the language.
To me bilingualism has always been a means of communicating with more than one culture and people. I always took it as a challenge to learn a new language and it made me proud to be able to master that language. I thought it was really interesting that the article pointed out that in a bilingual brain the languages are never turned off. They are all active at the same time and that person has to navigate which language to use in which situation. I have always had a problem with this, especially while writing; I would ‘forget’ words in the language that I was using while I knew the same word in another language. This could be problematic especially when I am tired and my brain isn’t working fast enough so that sometimes I unintentionally speak in another language to someone who doesn’t understand that language. I have always seen this as a negative aspect of being bilingual because I have to always navigate through all the languages in my head. It becomes a task of its own just to sorte out the languages and utter a coherent sentence. But that was always a small price to pay for being able to communicate to different people and form intimate relationships with people of that culture that could not have been possible if I didn’t speak that language. While I always valued and was proud of the fact that I am a bilingual/multilingual, reading this article gave me a different perspective on bilingualism. It is interesting to know that speaking in multiple languages works as an exercise for the brain and makes that person smarter.
In the Figuring Foreigners Out, the author talks about the two ends of how different cultures identify themselves, communicate and perceive things. While discussing these two opposite poles, Storti repeatedly mentions how individuals in these cultures are more likely to identify with the pole that their culture identifies with. To me this statement seems like a generalization. Storti does not take into consideration the fact that cultures are more permeable and malleable due to increased mobility. He only accounts for those individuals who are born and raised in their country surrounded by their culture which influences how they identify themselves and perceive the world around them.
With the globalization more and more people are likely to live in different countries throughout their lives and experience different cultures. The contact with other cultures changes and enriches one’s self-identity and perception, so that they no longer believe in the same things as their collective culture does. More and more people identify as multi-cultural not because their ancestors are from different countries but because they have absorbed aspects of different cultures in order to form a unique identity just for themselves. These people don’t identify with a specific cultural group or country. They belong to neither of the cultures but at the same time to some extinct they can identify with all of them. I am one of those people. Throughout my 19 years I have lived in 5 different countries absorbing aspects of each culture and forming my own identity. I don’t identify with the collective Afghani culture but at the same time I am not completely American or Uzbeki. I am somewhere in between were the Storti’s statement does not apply.
“It is the interaction between words and sentence structure which actually conveys our ‘sense of sense’.” When it comes to learning a new language, vocabulary is essential to a successful learning experience. If you don’t know the words then you are not able to communicate, but at the same time if you only learn vocabulary, you wouldn't be able to convey your message to the listener. One has to learn the word in the context that it is used. What I mean by that is not just memorize all the words in the dictionary but learn how to use them in different situations. For that one has to learn basic grammar of the desired language and the culture in which it is used. Different cultures have different words that have specific meanings in that culture that is completely different from the meaning that you would find in a dictionary.
Throughout my learning experience I never used a dictionary or any kind of translator device. In my experience most words in addition to having a literal meaning, also has a cultural meaning. For example I learned the meaning of ‘cool’ when I came to the US. Before moving here to me it just meant cold and I was really confused when people used it to express acceptance or approval. Only later I learned what it meant by listening to others use it. In my opinion the quickest way to be able to communicate in another language is to learn the basic vocabulary but also learn how to use it properly within that cultural context.
