How have you started writing in the target language? Do you prefer to type or write free hand? Have you started to see patterns emerge in the structures between words, clauses, and sentences? What is the relationship between simple and complex sentences? How does your knowledge of parts of speech, government, and agreement affect your ability to communicate in written contexts? Provide a sample of several short meaningful writing exercises from your target language.
I prefer to write free hand in Ge’ez because it is quite complicated on the keyboard that I use. It is probably because I haven’t gotten used to it. I also like to write free hand because I have developed my own unique handwriting that I quite like.
Simple sentences in Ge’ez can be one word, for example: he ate is bel’a with stress on the ‘a’. More complex sentences have words with a couple of morphemes like as-tedalo-ku-ke, which alone means I got ready for you. The sentence structure for complete sentences in Ge’ez is generally similar to the English with the subject + verb + object formulation. Being able to identify the parts of speech plays a huge part in interpreting readings in Ge’ez for me at this stage of my understanding of the language because it is another clue to the context of the sentence and overall meaning in addition to the semantics of the words which I can gage with the lexical morphemes.
Some examples from my recent homework assignment are:
Kahin qedese be’ilete Senbet. The priest did liturgy on Sunday.
Ikuy bi’isi qetele insisa. The evil man killed animals.
We’iton gebra hibst. They made bread,
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