Yesterday was my final meeting with my language partner, Melisa, so I wanted to touch upon some of the topics we covered within the past week as well as reflect upon how we wrapped up the semester. In terms of substantive material, I learned a series of conjunctions and connectors that help with sentence construction, from samba ("while") to supaya ("in order to"). Something I immediately noticed upon completing a worksheet that Melisa made that included these terms was the usage of sungguhpan...tetapi... ("although...but") in sentence formation. While Melisa indicated that the tetapi was optional, this structure mimicked that found in Chinese (虽然...可是...), and served as yet another reminder of the numerous grammatical similarities between Malay and Chinese. Malay itself has so many different cultural-linguistic influences, be them loanwords, sentence structure, etc. Another one I recently learned was the word dunia ("world"), which is apparently a Hindi loanword. This has by and large been one of the most fascinating aspects of learning Malay for me.
Moving on to the last meeting, Melisa once again baked food and brought it in to incorporate into the lesson plan. The first food I tried was called Bubur Pulut Hitam, which is a black sticky-rice based congee that is sweet (manis) and mixed/diluted (cair) with coconut milk. After that, I also tried Agar-Agar Pandan, which is a type of gelatin dessert made from agar and coconut milk, having both a sweet (manis) and salty (masin) taste as well as a hard (keras) consistency. Learning words to describe my opinion (pendapat) of these foods or how I felt (rasa) was a really great way to practice my vocabulary and self-expression while also taking part in the preparation of the food and learning in that way as well. Food can be an incredibly insightful window into a culture; I was surprised with how much I learned from Melisa just talking about Pandan leaves, coconut milk, and other otherwise typical ingredients in Malaysian cuisine. I hope that next semester I can continue to learn through cultural activities such as these and to foster a better understanding of my target language and culture.
Following the meeting, Melisa and I recorded our podcast and discussed the general trajectory of the past semester and some things that we could try differently or implement regularly. This was overall a great way to sum up what we had done and to get me to start thinking about learning next semester. There are many new ideas that both of us had for the following semester that drew upon the lessons of the past several months. That said, I realize that it is also important that I continue to practice Malay and keep up with language learning as much as I can over the winter break. This is something we discussed as well, and certainly an area that will for the first time task me with doing this for two languages (Mandarin and Malay) somewhat simultaneously. This past semester has taught me a lot about language learning at an individual level and has given me new ideas for how best to keep this momentum as I progress and take a deeper dive into the language next semester.
Comments
Its interesting that you bring up the word “dunia” because I actually have also heard it being used in arabic to mean the same thing. It might be one of those words that is used in a lot of languages around that part of the world. I bet the physical association with the foods and their words is really enhancing your retention of the vocabulary. Good luck next semester!