This past week I had a review session with Maya. The entire goal out of the review was to make sure that I knew how to properly pronounce every word that I would later be using in the Voki's I completed. My first voice recording was a minute long introductory conversation between a man and a woman. I had the fantastic time of playing both sexes although my voice could not hit the higher octave of my female character Lisa. In the conversation Dan met Lisa and they began a casual conversation in which Dan finds out it is Lisa's birthday. Dan is an American in Isreal and is new to Hebrew so the conversation is relatively elementary. In the second Voki recording I recorded myself doing the Hebrew alphabet, since I know that is one of the set in stone goals of an introductory Hebrew learner. In my third Voki, I did a combination of counting, months, and days of the week. I counted to 20, and then listed the 12 months, and 7 days of the week. The difference between Hebrew and English is that the week starts on a Monday in Israel, where as it starts on a Sunday in America. So I would consider this week as very successful since I was able to get three voki's complete. Now I just have to be able to figure out how to get those voki's posted on to my wiki page.
From the How Language Works book, I learned on reading and writing in a foreign language. Although I love to view the English language as the model language for every other language, I must have a broadened perspective on languages in that English came around much later than other languages and is not emulated by everyone. Language as in written language did not come about for a thousand years after versions of language were conveyed through pictures etched in stone. Then in BCE, closer to AD pictures started shifting in to letters and the written language of letters and alphabets began to be formed today. In these alphabets it is important to note that the amount of letters in an alphabet is a great predictor as to how hard it is to understand the language. For instance one of the most elementary languages is from the Solomon Islands where it is only eleven letters long. On the other hand a more difficult language is Khmer and it has 74 letters in its alphabet. The English language has 26 letters in its alphabet.
Another cool thing about writing is that nobody has the same writing style. It can be eerily similar, but never exact. Every person has a different slant, spacing, size, etc in their writing.
When reading it is important to note the direction in which one is to read. English is left to right, top to bottom. Hebrew it is right to left top to bottom and some other languages are bottom to top. A beginner in a language should be mindful of where to start their reading.
At a young age in America a child learns how to read and write. When beginning I would argue that reading is with the ear, because you have to first start by sounding out the words, before you can start smoothly reading the words. The text debates whether reading is with the eye or ear and I would argue that it starts off with the ear and then as we become well versed in that language moves in to the eye. As a child it is also imperative to have guidance and encouragement from someone to keep pursuing the mastery of the cognitive, motor, and linguistic skills.
The final part I really pulled from the text is how quickly one can lose their written or reading ability. There are several diseases out there that can rob someone of this knowledge. At an old age it could be an accident or a stroke that blocks that part of the brain from working. At a young age a common learning disability is dyslexia. My girlfriend actually suffered from dyslexia, but she has been able to overcome that to be a person much smarter than myself. In fact she can read and write faster than I can and she has to see the letters and shape them in to real words, where as I already see the words in the correct letter shape and it still takes me longer. Overall, I learned that reading and writing is a gift that we should be grateful to have and something we should continue to work on to become experts in several languages.
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