Artifact 4 - Thank you note

[Barbara Mayumi de Faria Fujita]

English:

Thank you for an awesome semester!

I hope you had a great experience at UR...

Wishing you all the best :)

We should meet up if/when I go to Barcelona

Catalan:

Gràcies per un increïble semestre!

Espero que tinguis una gran experiència a UR ...

Desitjant-vos tot el millor :)

Hem de trobar-nos si / quan vaig a Barcelona

[Michael Marsh-Soloway]

It's fantastic that you were able to use a thank you note to Marc as a cultural artifact! Always good to kill two birds with one stone. Just out of curiosity, why did you opt to include the translation? I suspect that you included it for the benefit of other students on the Ning, but did you find that switching between Catalan and English advanced or detracted from your overall acquisition efforts? Moving forward, you may benefit from the immersive techniques of Benny Lewis, or a learning style that affirms the Platonic relationship of sense and reference to help you start thinking in Catalan without translating everything through the imperfect intermediary filter of English. Great job, and I hope you get to reconnect with Marc in Barcelona!

[Jessica Crouser]

This note really shows what an interesting language Catalan is. I read the first two lines and could understand them from knowing Spanish, but I got completely lost in the last two lines. Certain words are essentially the same in Catalan and Castilian, but then it is obvious how different they are in certain phrases. It's great that Catalan has persisted in Spain even though Catalonia's residents have to learn Castilian and probably English as well. When I was in Barcelona, nearly every menu or big sign was written in all three translations. Do you think you will try to learn Castilian next?

[Taiyaba Ali]

It is so interesting reading this note! It looks like a mix of French and Spanish into one language. This reminds me of how hard it is learning Portuguese because how similar and it is to Spanish. I imagine its even harder for a native speaker to discern Catalan when its similar to both Portuguese and Spanish, yet it is neither. Did you find it harder or easier to understand words/speak in Catalan due to your knowledge of Portuguese? Do you think that you could pass living in Barcelona with the knowledge you already had from knowing Portuguese? Or do you think there are more differences then meets the eye?