This week in our meeting with Maya, DC and I went over directions as planned in the previous meeting. We also however learned man other vocabulary words. We're focusing on key words that we all think will be useful when trying to make simple conversations in Hebrew. Once again this week the pronunciations of the words was a key factor in learning words. After reading this weeks reading for 105 i learned that pronunciations of certain sounds that are made in languages can be integral to that language. I discovered that the sound described in the book as Glottal, or when "we make the vocal folds come together to cause a closure or friction" (pp. 60). This is the sound i believe most closely matches the sound you need to make when producing certain Hebrew words. Also in the reading was discussion of tone of voice in language which is definitely an integral part of speaking a language. This, however is not something we have covered yet in the meetings with Maya. I also think this is the most difficult part of a language to learn, especially since the tone of voice for certain languages can change from region to region in areas that speak the same language.
An interesting thing that happened in our meeting with maya was that we at one point had a question that Maya did not know the answer to. So she decided to call her Mom and ask her how to say what we didn't know. Maya's mother lived in Israel and speaks Hebrew fluently. Next week we decided to discuss numbers and the calendar.
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