During week seven my instructor provided me with a very useful pack on ‘cohesive devices’ in Farsi.
Cohesive devices, such as conjunctions and adverbs, can link clauses and ideas together and creates greater fluency in speaking and writing. While my ability to converse and write in Farsi is still greatly limited by my knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, going through the packet of cohesive devices gave me not only useful speaking tools, but insight into how the language works.
To give a brief example, take the sentence “I’m not satisfied with my current situation.” In isolation, the sentence could come off as a bit blunt. Adding the word ‘actually’ or waukan to the beginning of the sentence adds fluidity to the statement and facilitates its connection to previous dialogue.
In regards to my study of Modern Hebrew, I am beginning to apply knowledge of the alphabet and basic vocabulary to reading short passages. Outside of children’s literature, Modern Hebrew is seldom written with indication to the placement of vowel sounds. For this reason I am focusing on reading sentences without the addition of vowels. By sticking to short passages consisting of mostly familiar vocabulary, I hope to gain a foothold into reading comprehension.
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