February 2nd 111 Reflection:
This week I was able to talk to my language partner to solidify my weekly meetings with him. They will occur on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Class meetings will start tomorrow. I l plan to structure my main study time for the class around the class meeting with practices on Friday as well. We talked briefly about covering grammar concepts using the aid of a workbook of Ge’ez. This will probably make my class more structured. Last semester I thought I would need a workbook of sorts but my teacher just provided the concepts each class and assigned homework based off of it.
The first assignment I got which is kind of a pre-assignment is to familiarize myself with the special letters of the Ge’ez alphabet which aren’t commonly used. And often when they are seen they are mistaken for the more common variations of the letter. For example, one letter is like the slight vowel difference between kit and quit. It doesn’t necessarily make the meaning different nowadays since many people don’t familiarize themselves with them, but they used to hold more phonemic value before. This kind of shows the slow evolution of language and its phonemes.
My language partner gives the following description:
Labialized Consonants
Four consonants, ቀ, ኀ, ከ, and ገ, also have labialized forms, indicated in transliteration
with a superscript “w.” The difference in pronunciation is similar to the difference
between “kit” and “quit.” These labialized forms are present in every order except the
second and seventh orders. The forms follow these patterns:
My language partner had initially made a facebook post about tutoring in Ge’ez for the purposes of a phD study that he is doing. This week I am interested in hearing more about it. A part of that conversation, I want to touch on what his goals are for me this semester as well. Knowing a clear goal of my instructor for my studies really helped me keep in mind what kind of expectations I should have and where I should put more effort in last semester. It also showed me how invested my teacher was last semester in my learning. The main goal last semester was to learn the parts of a sentence and create simple new ideas in Ge’ez through them. I think that will be similar for the most part. Last semester there was also a heavy use of Amharic which there will not be this semester. I don’t think this change will necessarily enhance or decrease my learning. I think having a younger language partner will also shift the dynamics of the weekly meetings a bit as well. In my culture, we learn to honor elders and clergy to the highest degree so I feel like at times that made me not open up as much though that got a little better throughout the semester. I am also doing it in 2 sessions a week now instead of one. That will probably push me to be more proactive throughout the week in preparation for my meetings. We will see how it goes this week!
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