105: Learning journal #1

[Dejing Huang]

The three chapters from Crystal, D’s book remind me that languages are different in many ways. The same onomatopoeia may have different meanings in different languages. When learning a new language, we cannot just assume the native speakers can understand us just because we are imitating the sound. For example, we use “wang” in Chinese. Naturally I would expect people to understand me because I am simply imitating the sound, but in fact, people use “woof” in English. The two words and sounds are so different that no one would be able to guess they refer to the same sound. Another thing that I think important is the distinguishing between naturalist view and conventionalist view. I definitely agree with the latter one. During my study of a foreign language, I tend to focus on the sound, the listening and speaking part. It is not a problem if I am just trying to speak a language. But when I want to become a higher level learner in the target language, vocabulary becomes really important. My target language this time is Korean. As far as I know, Korean is not like English in the way that the spelling of the word is not so related with the sound. Simply focus on listening and speaking would make me an illiterate person to Korean people. That is definitely not my goal of learning, so I really have to keep in mind that I should spend more time on vocabularies during my study.