Reflection Paper # 2
Maddie Philips
Since starting my language learning journey, I’ve learned so much about Basque that I was surprised to not have known before. I’ve even been able to teach my parents things about Basque culture, so I am really grateful to my language partner Amaia for being so open and willing to talk about what living in the Basque Country is like for her, as well as the cultural differences between the Basques in Spain and the Basques who live in France, which I was more familiar with. I’ve also been able to learn much more about the Basque language and how it’s used, including how to introduce yourself or talk about your family. This is particularly important because Basque culture is very focused on where people come from, particularly geographically, so that is one of the first things that Amaia taught me. For example, I learned that the French Basque country is called Iparralde in Basque, which I had not known before. That makes it a lot easier to talk about myself from a Basque perspective, because Iparralde, population wise, makes up only about a tenth of the Basque country. Because of that, by being able to make the distinction of coming from that area, people are better able to understand my own culture.
I’ve also found it funny coming from Iparralde that I’ve been able to teach Amaia new words, like “ttinka” for hug, “otto” for uncle, and “erreximenta” for jam, which are all words from a dialect of Basque that Amaia is not familiar with. Because of my own knowledge, my relationship with Amaia has become better, because I can truly show my own interest in the language by being able to teach her something too. As far as understanding the target culture, as much as I knew before, I’ve learned so much more. I had no idea that there were people who even had Basque as a first language, so Amaia has really opened up a world to me that I hadn’t realized existed. Ironically, a big part of the reason that I wanted to learn Basque was because I thought that it was a dying language, so to hear that it isn’t not only makes me feel a lot better, but also increases my desire to learn it, because now I have someone to speak it with.
As far as communicative competence goes, I definitely have a long way to go. My comprehension has gotten much, much better, but my speaking and writing skills are still lacking. Because of that, those are what I’m going to focus on this semester, and instead of trying to move forward, I’m going to try to review what I’ve already learned. Of course I want to continue working on my Basque and learning new tenses and ways to say things, but I think it’s more important that I focus on perfecting what I’ve already accomplished. This is a problem that I’ve had with every language that I’ve learned, and with French especially, I really regret that I can’t write a sentence without an error, even though I can understand and communicate with great fluency, comprehension wise.
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