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If I were given a grant for a linguistic study of Greek, my first purchase would be a plane ticket. Once in Greece, I would go to Greek archaeologists and classical historians and talk to them to learn about ancient and classical Greece as much as I could. I would be interested to learn what the major differences are between classical and modern Greek, and what brought about these changes. In a nutshell, the modern version is simpler, using fewer types of accents and fewer cases than its ancestor. One hypothesis might be that the nation has developed a higher-context form of communication, so that the specificity and tedium of classical Greek would be made obsolete. Of course, to work on such a hypothesis, I would need to acquaint myself very familiarly with the culture of both modern and classical Greece. The studies of semantics and the branching out of languages could play an especially strong role in this study, as well as the readings on how a language dies. The research would raise the question of whether classical Greek is a dead language or preserved in the continuance of modern Greek. While I would find the research opportunity fascinating, I would likely cause more questions to be asked than answered.
I prefer to write in Greek by hand, since it comes more naturally to me. Although most of the letters are on the same key in the keyboard as their closest approximations, there are some which do not agree at all. For instance, the w key types a ς (sigma), and the q key types a semicolon, which is used as a question mark. I have started to get the hang of indirect discourse, and realize that the formulae for complex and compound sentences are the same as in English. The agreement rules make sense, and usually make endings match, so they remove much of the ambiguity found in some English phrases, and have a set of accenting rues to further clarify.
For instance:
Μπορώ να έχω έναν κατάλογο; May I have a menu? (Literally, “ ‘Can I’ ‘to’ ‘I have’ ‘a’ ‘menu’?”)
The omegas match to indicate the first person, and the -αν and -ο endings indicate a match between the article and the noun.
Even when the endings do not match by letter, there are very specific rules for what cases and tenses merit which endings.
Languages often go extinct when nobody is taught them as a first language anymore. In the case of Siletz Dee-ni, the language was discouraged and actively stamped out by the conquering American government. Schools and reservations were established to minimize its influence on the continent, and it fell to only five known people who still understand it. When a language dies, even if we still have some writings, then we lose any chance to fully appreciate the peoples which spoke it and the depth of their culture, and we can only learn about it from archaeology and hypothesis, rather than from conversations. I don’t believe that a dead language can ever really eb brought back to life. While a people may begin to speak it again, the chain of tradition has been broken, and it will be almost as though they began to speak an entirely new language.
Greek pretty much has its own branch in the Indo-European language family tree. In the Hellenic arm, there are several iterations of the same language, going down to Modern Greek. Other than a few English and Turkish words, it is fairly purebred in its sounds, and structures. Greeks are a proud people, and their language reflects that pride, to maintain a pure language, passed down almost without blemish from the time of the classical epics. Since then, they have dropped the use of the many different types of accents, making a much simpler language which is easier to learn and read.
It seems that every week we change the learning plan just a little bit, but I can’t imagine that at the end of the semester it will resemble the plan we made at the beginning of the semester. I originally imagined it as similar to a grade school primer, but instead it looks more like a crash course in history and modern culture, with relevant vocabulary sprinkled around. I can’t imagine how frustrated I would be if my professors were so free-spirited about changing their lesson plans. I appreciate their reliability, but enjoy my freedom to pursue such various topics. I always thought it a bit cliché to say that understanding a language is necessary to understand a culture, and vice versa, but now I am beginning to buy into it heavily. The link is strong, and cannot be overstated. I need to work up the courage to speak Greek to become more competent, because even though I know a decent number of words, I am shy to use them, knowing that I will tumble, but also knowing I should just do it anyway.
Since I will be in Greece over winter break, I realized that it would behoove me to research some vocabulary and customs about Christmas and New Year’s Day in Greece. Many of the words can be fairly reasonably translated to English and readily understood, but there are some traditions that are unique to Greece, which nonother language has a word for. The only way to define these in another language is just to describe them. For instance, βασιλόπιτα is a traditional cake made on New Year’s Eve, made with oranges in the batter, and frosted with powdered sugar. A coin is hidden in the cake, and the owner of the coin’s slice is blessed for the year. There is no English word that encapsulates all of this, so I can only know it as βασιλόπιτα. I have adjusted my learning plan to account for a few sessions about the holidays and traditions.
It would appear that there are a great many sounds in Greek that are not pronounced in English, and vice versa. For example, there is a difference between the standard sound for “z” and “ζ”, which I cannot describe nor even well discern. One buzzes slightly more, if that can be understood about two letters whose primary sound is a buzz. To my ear, they sound identical, but evidently, the difference can distinguish a native speaker from someone who speaks it fluently, but as a second language to English. The standard phonetic transcription alphabet does not even account for such small variations. None of the sounds are drastically different, but I will have to practice individual letters at length to familiarize myself with the tiny differences.
Greek is a very structured language, as many if not all inflected languages are. While English tends to drift between rules borrowed largely from Latin, Greek, and Germanic languages, Greek follows a long but largely consistent set of rules for phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics. The endings of words fall into a few small categories, and very consistent rules for accenting apply. Each letter and diphthong has a single sound. However, although the words is very regular and orderly, Smaragda asserts that I can never know and appreciate the language without immersion. It is not enough to visit Greece, but to live like a Greek and to speak the language in the context of the country will help me learn it as a way of life. By doing so, I will be able to think like a Greek, and use the language to understand a whole world that has been entirely insulated from my own. With this in mind, we have tailored my learning plan to be fitting for a person out and about in the streets of Athens or in the olive groves by the sea, instead of for a tourist.
I enjoy learning languages because it gives me the ability to connect at least two people from various cultures together using a mutual platform that we call language. Being able to successfully acquire a different perspective from your own is incredibly rewarding and leads to becoming a more open-minded and holistic person. I also enjoy being able to partake in a rich cultural experience through language. Delicious food, beautiful, unique traditional cultural practices, history of places in Korea are all immersed and part of the culture, and I have so much to learn through the people whom I will be interacting with.
However, not all parts of language learning are glamorous, and each person may have their own weaknesses when learning a language. The parts I disliked about the language learning experience were being able to consistently find a language partner to practice with who can learn with me along my level. Though my parents are readily available, the conversations I have with them are limited to certain topics and I realize that I have some fundamental foundations that I’m missing as a beginner when I’m learning and using Korean. I also found it difficult to keep myself accountable and practicing often to keep my language skills fresh, especially on a college campus when I’m inundated with information with little time for personal language development. I also don’t enjoy the intensely structured format of most language classes. Though I understand the organized, standardized language learning is difficult to administer, I never felt like I was able to successfully be a natural speaker and language user in Korean and Spanish.
I am predominately a visual learner, followed by tactile and auditory learning. According to the Multiple Intelligences Survey, I have a good sense of self, strong in logic and math, and have solid kinesthetic abilities. Using the FIRE model, I would identify myself as an insightful and rational person and learner. I learn best using logical learning and critical thinking, but I will also provide necessary criticism if it will help progress the goal.
Language learning activities that I found helpful are to keep a log of words and vocabulary that I don’t know and practice saying and writing it down several times to recall from memory instead of just recognition. Another is mnemonic devices to link words that I’m trying to study with wild, imaginative associations to help me remember the words. This will help me as a visual learner. I also understand that watching Korean television shows and news can help with enunciations and intonations in a language in order to sound more like a native than a bumbling beginner. Immediate application and practice of grammar lessons would also be helpful in a guided classroom practice setting, where I can practice with my language partners. I would like to expand my learning activities by asking my classmates and language partners about potential creatives ways to learn. A possible way is practice vocabulary recall by quizzing each other on words outside of class, or spontaneously having a conversation in Korean.
There are many areas of the brain involved in the process of speaking, reading, writing, listening. Based on what Paul Pierre Broca and Carl Wernicke's found, specific areas of the cortex are related to certain kinds of linguistic ability. Wernicke’s area is essential for comprehension of speech and production.
Besides the biological structures which make us understood, delivered and connected, meaning takes an important role. Meaning should be distinguished by reference and sense that analysis the difference between the meaning of a word within a language and outside the language. It becomes more important when we want to know the meaning of a word in another language or translate some words from our native language to a foreign language.
Getting to know more about terminology, vocabulary can all be classified by the basic units of semantic analysis. The relationships of words can also be used in other language learning process such as Korean. Korean did borrow many Chinese words in the past, and they wrote in adapted Chinese characters came into use. Under this conditions, it may be easier for me to learn Korean and understand the meaning of it.
After reading the article, I was really surprised to realize that human is really a magical creation. Every part of our bodies is carefully designed. Before doing the reading, I only knew that right hemisphere and left hemisphere of our brains are responsible for different things. For example, right hemisphere is for listening. And I have no idea about what kind of hard and complicate work that our brains need to do in order to learn language.
I am really impressive about the area in front of the fissure of Rolando which was mentioned in the chapter. It is responsible for motor functioning. In short, it helps people learn speaking and writing during the process of study. At the same time, Wernicke’s area, the upper back area of the temporal lobe is in charge of handling the comprehension of speech.
In conclusion, learning a language is harder than people assume. Reading these chapters make me want to keep studying different kinds of language. And I believe after finding out similarities and interesting differences between those languages, I will be able to enjoy the process of learning and speak various languages fluently.
I think that one’s language learning ability is heavily, but not solely dependent on biological functions. Broca’s area (located in the frontal lobe), Wernicke’s area (located in the temporal and parietal lobes), and other parts of the brain are extremely important in one’s linguistic ability. However, language is so complex that aspects of it are not purely biological. There are parts that were developed for social reasons. For example, I never would have thought to distinguish the different meanings of the word “mean.” These clarifications came about because people created different uses of the word. Clarifying these differences is important because it helps us answer the question, “What is meaning?” Furthermore, parts of language are cultural. I appreciate Crystal’s statement that “it is only when we study or learn a foreign language, and realize that other people see things differently, that we become aware of how arbitrary the relationship is between words and entities or concepts” (188). The same word that has a positive connotation in one language can have a negative connotation in another. The differences in connotations can reveal a cultural attitude towards certain objects and ideas. All in all, language is based on biological, social, and cultural components.
Overall, I learned a lot about the human brain, the functions of words and sentences, and differences in languages from these readings. Crystal mentioned the differences in familial titles between English and Pitjanjatjara. This reminded me of how in Korean, there are different titles for brothers and sisters depending on the gender and age of the speaker. This reveals an importance of gender and age that is emphasized in Korean, but not American culture. The discussion about collocations was also interesting because it was the first time I had seen the term. It seems like the only way to become familiar with them is to practice the foreign language a lot. Collocations appear to be learned only through living alongside native speakers. However, it may be beneficial to study collocations in order to become more comfortable conversing with native speakers.
The readings offered very interesting facts about how language is learned, processed and understood. It helped me to understand some of the underlying phenomenon associated with language learning. However, it did not offer any insights that will help me with my language learning in itself. Knowing which part of the brain processes the corresponding information and learning does not help me to improve this learning since I cannot directly control the different parts of my brain. Though, it is interesting and important to know that meaning is embedded in the context of a sentence when learning a language. Without a whole sentence, a word can have so many different meanings that it is impossible to determine the intended meaning.
I do not think that language is a purely biological phenomenon. It is much easier to learn a language while being in a social context with cultural connections. This enhances learning for many people and gives more touch points to learn the language, particularly colloquial terms and expressions.
The left hemisphere is most important for the production and comprehension of speech in 95% of right-handed people, while left handed-people are not as homogenous in the usage of brain hemispheres for language processing. The temporal lobe contains areas that are important in auditory reception and comprehension of speech. The frontal lobe is responsible for encoding speech.
My only open question is: From your experience, what is the best way to understand collocations in a foreign language?
In the reading assigned this week, written by David Crystal, we learned about how our brain functions in relation to language. I found this text to be very informative and interesting to read. I took a course on the neuroscience of photography two semesters ago, so I had an understanding of Crystal's points because in the class we learned about the different parts of the brain and their functions. In the reading, I found that the idea of tongue slips to be very interesting. I never knew that they were intentional and were caused due to the brain's ability to process conversations ahead of time. Also, I agree with the claim that it is important to learn multiple languages because different languages have different meanings to describe words. Like the example they gave in the paper to describe distant relatives, I noticed that the English language is limited but in Korean, it is not. Therefore, I hope that as I learn more about the Korean language, I will not only expand my knowledge of Korean but also my knowledge of the English language.
Communication is a complex process that requires many areas of the brain to work in concert. It first requires sensing visual and auditory cues and relaying information to the brain where the signals are processed in the parietal lobe. Comprehension occurs through top-down processing in Wernicke’s area, which relies on our prior experiences to analyze emotion and understand semantics of speech through context. Following the reception of this information, we formulate a response and use our motor skills controlled by the frontal lobe to dictate our muscle movements when speaking and writing. However, the reading about brain localization and dominance left me with unanswered questions. What is the significance of determining which hemisphere is dominant in certain tasks? Does having a different blueprint for language dominance in the brain impact the way we process language and how we communicate (or is knowing which hemisphere is dominant in language processing just beneficial for neurosurgeons to keep in mind while operating to avoid damaging our ability to communicate)? Although greatly simplified, this model demonstrates how regions of the brain are interconnected and enable us to perform the many steps essential for communicating.
Language would not exist without the aforementioned biological mechanisms in our brain. However, there are non-biological factors that come to mind that also influence our ability to develop language. A need for communication drives the emergence of language, which stems from our social nature and innate desire to group with other humans. Language provided the means for humans to work together to create and discover.
It is interesting how, depending on the language, there are more “precise” words to describe a reference (for example, many languages distinguish between paternal grandfather and maternal grandfather, but in English we have no such word). Each language also has its own synonyms that describe a particular ‘sense,’ which seems superfluous. However, words often conjure slightly different images relative to their synonyms, which exemplifies how different synonyms and words really are from each other in the meanings they evoke. These differences contribute to the colorful variation of words that are difficult to translate. When studying foreign languages, it is essential to embrace each language’s own idiosyncrasies rather than directly translating a foreign language word-for-word into a native language. Translation often degrades meaning.
From reading the article about meaning, I learned that words by themselves provide an incomplete picture of their actual meaning, especially if they are polysemic. Thus, in my pursuits to learn Turkish, it is important to couple learning new vocabulary with examples to see how these words are used in context. Exposure to variations in how a word might be used in a sentence will also establish a feel for the word’s collocations, which will be useful when trying to use that word in speaking and writing.
