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 During Week 5, my language partner, Shir and I worked on reviewing all of our vocabulary that I had learned so far in regards to food and beginning to recognize the words in Hebrew script.    I have always known how to read the Hebrew block letters, but learning and beginning to recognize the script letters is much more difficult since the letters look similar to each other.

     I have been working with the letters for flash cards and I still have difficulty working with script letters.   Shir and I have come up with a list of 60 words that I know.  I am now working on recognizing these words on paper and not just orally.  

   I have learned that even though I can be learning a lot of vocabulary verbally, I still need to work hard on my written vocabulary.   I feel confident that I am learning at a steady pace and that I am retaining the information.  

I thought Pooja’s focus on the Hindi tradition of touching feet as a sign of respect was particularly interesting for two reasons. First, in the Chinese/Laotian/Malaysian cultural household I’ve grown up in, the feet are considered dirty. Setting one’s foot on an eating surface or at an individual’s head level is considered extraordinarily rude. The foot has a connection with the dirty ground, bacteria, and overall poor sanitary conditions. To touch or kiss another’s feet would be considered not as a sign of respect, but one that signifies either humiliation or the imposition of power over another. So when heard Pooja’s presentation of touching feet as one of the highest signs of respect and exaltation, I was intrigued. Second, this drastically different cultural practiced led me to think about greetings in Bosnia. I recently learned that Bosnians engage in 2-3 cheek touches/kisses to greet one another. In contrast to a comparatively conservative Asian culture, I found this very interesting. While Bosnians are considered social, they are also considered sexually and socially conservative. They tend to trust only close friends and family and have a very conservative attitude towards sexual practices, especially foreplay and the romance involved. But they kiss! Interestingly, mainstream Americans seem to possess opposite traits: socially and sexually liberal. Perhaps this is why Americans find kissing or cheek touching inappropriate or uncomfortable? Precisely because kissing is sexually or romantically connected whereas in Bosnian culture sex is quite literally and exclusively, sex (I’ve yet to see BCS movie sex scenes, but this is the impression given to me by my language partner)?

The evidence for my “research” here has been compiled from my experience with Bosnian international students, Bosnian films, and an interview with a Bosnian Serb from Trebinje. For fun, I decided to guess at whether or not Bosnians tended to be more individualist/collectivist, monochronic/polychromic, internal forces/external forces determine destiny, and direct/indirect communication before the interview. I am pleased to report that my hunches were all correct.

As far as formality and informality goes, there are ways of speaking to indicate respect for an elder person. “Kako si” for instance, is used for friends, while one would say “Kako ste” for formal situations. You’d use “ti” for the informal you, and “vi” for formal. In all of my interactions with Bosnian people and Bosnian culture, I’ve yet to hear formal speak. I hear please very rarely, thank you a little more often. For the most part, I’d say the culture is more informal and less inclined to care for appearing polite to each other

Individualist vs. Collectivist

Bosnians place extraordinary importance on the family and the value of friendship and teamwork. One of the very first things my mentor told me was that family was very, very, very important to Bosnians. The “why” question is harder to answer. While this is just a guess from what I’ve learned and observed, family is the one guaranteed trustworthy and safe environment there is. In a country destroyed by war, by their own countrymen, by neighbors, and by external forces, it is no wonder there is a fundamental distrust towards individuals outside the family unit. While this can limit meaningful interactions with the outside world, the love that is displayed within Bosnian families I’ve interacted with and spoken to is unlike familial relationships I’ve seen anywhere else. They tend to be highly passionate, emotional, and loyal talking about one another and in action towards one another. There is also a fierce care and defensiveness towards family members. I’ve never heard serious complaints about Bosnian family members without at least two positive comments to follow up. There seems to be sacred bonds within the Bosnian family.

This collectivist mentality is also on display in team-oriented projects. Two Bosnian friends of mine in fact, had a quarrel about an incident during a business activity. Individual A decided that the group was slacking, and that victory could only be achieved if they took charge for their perceivably incompetent and apathetic members. Individual B was taken aback by such behavior and was appalled that Individual A would do such a thing. For Individual B, you must bring the group up and include the group in all major decisions before engaging in activities. To leave the group and do one’s own thing was seen as selfish.

Monochronic v. Polychronic

Bosnians appreciate timeliness. In my experience, if you ask a Bosnian to meet at five o’clock, you will meet them at five o’clock.

Internal Forces v. External Forces

From my observations, knowing the religiosity and reasoning behind events that either end favorably or unfavorably, Bosnians believe that fortune, luck, and God play the largest role in determining one’s destiny. In the movies I watched especially, one can pick up on the sardonic “damnit this sucks” and that’s it humor. It’s a hysterical form of dark, fatalist humor. To give a more graphic and crude example, Americans will say “fuck, I suck”, or something to that effect. They blame and get angry at themselves as if they’re in control of circumstances. When something goes wrong, a Bosnian will likely say something to the effect of “I might as well let a duck fuck me”. In contrast to the other phrase, this phrase shows that the individual has done all they can, yet fate has decided to be unfavorable towards them. It’s as if nothing they do can make a difference. Americans in sum, will say I deserve this for better or worse. Bosnians are more likely to thank or surrender to higher powers, “i to je to”, and that’s that.

Direct Communication v. Indirect Communication

Bosnians can be incredibly intense in your face people. They are very direct and passionate in conversation. Small talk does not make them more comfortable. In fact, small talk makes them more uncomfortable. They want to deal with issues, especially emotional and social ones, as quickly as possible so that everyone can embrace, increase their understanding, and move on with their lives together in war or peace.

Cultural Post #2

I discussed the BCS writing system briefly in my presentation. Depending on where you are in the country, it is either in Cyrillic or Latin. You’d be safe most anywhere knowing the Latin. While the English alphabet as 26 letters, the Bosnian alphabet has 30.

Bosnian doesn’t have q, w, x, or y. Obviously, Bosnian also has letters that do not exist in the English language: š, ž, nj, lj, Đ, Dž, Ć, Č.

Artifact 1

Email Correspondence

Though the grammar might not be there, it is my very first effort to write in Bosnian. In the first email, I ask her how long she has been learning English (because I have now fully realized the impressiveness of her English speaking abilities), how here love interest is, and how fun, but slow and difficult the process of learning Bosnian well really is! I also ask if she’d be willing to be my pen pal. The second email was her encouragement. She was very supportive of my efforts and seemed impressed with what I’ve been able to do in only 1.5 months. She told an inspirational story of a PhD friend who now speaks Bosnian very well! Here is a rough transcript of our correspondence. The third email thanks her for the encouragement. I’ve edited out some personal things, but this should provide an idea of what I’ve been up to.

From: Justin

To: Friend in Bosnia

slusaj!!! aha!

koliko dugo si naucio engleski?? kako je tvoja dragi?

bosanski je vrlo zabavno, nego tezak. ovo proces je sporo! ne svida mi je sporo. svida mi je brz. znam samo o petso rjeci. jebi moj zivot. smeda govna.

trebam da vjezbatam puno. da li zelis biti moj "prijatelja s kojim se dopisuje" (google translate)?

:)

From: Friend in Bosnia

To: Justin

Justin!

Wow, stvrano si napredovao! Iako učiš Bosanski samo 1.5 mjeseci, dobro ti ide. Ja sam jako ponosna na tebe! :)

I naravno da ću ti biti penpal. 

Moras prihvatiti činjenicu da je proces učenja jezika dug i spor, ali uz upornost i rad bit ćeš u mogućnosti da govoriš Bosanski jako dobro. Ja imam jednu prijateljicu iz Španije koja je u Bosni radila PhD i za 2 godine ona je naučila Bosanski super da govori! Tako ćeš i ti - sigurna sam u to! Ja jako poštujem činjenicu da si ti tako posvećen i da si odlučio da odeš u Bosnu i tamo provedeš neko vrijeme i da naučiš jezik. To je fascinantno!

Kako si ti?

P.S. Vidim da si naučio i neke psovke. Tako treba, samo naprijed!

P.P.S. I hope you'll learn bunch of new words from this email.  

From: Justin

To: Friend in Bosnia

hvala lijepo. ti si ljubazna i iskrena i vrla ohrabrujuća. ja sam zahvalan ti si moj prijatelja.

ja osjecam frustracija zato sto spor proces, nego proslo ja sam citao tvoja pismo, sam srecan! ja nadam ja cu govorim dobro! oni je vazno ja naucim bosanski. ja necu odem Bosna dok ja sam tecno! aha! ja sam rekao moj otac danas o Fulbright u Bosna. dobro je ide.

tvoja engleski je vrlo, vrlo dobro kada ja mislim o to sada. cestitam. tvoja bosanski je dobro isto. cestitam.

ne dragi? eh. nije vazno.

odluku o study abroad?

Goal For the Week:

Noun Cases

~50 Vocab Words

Result:

4/7 Noun Cases

~50 Vocab Words

Method:

While reviewing the nominative and genitive cases from last week, I learned the accusative and vocative cases. It’s going to be a challenge setting all of those endings straight, but I think I’m already beginning to catch on. It’s been really helpful writing this Bosnian friend of mine. I’ve also been exploring the online newspaper titled “Oslobodjenje”: http://www.oslobodjenje.ba/ and flipping through some pages of an academic piece on the Bosnian War and the current state of Bosnian/American relations from the perspective of the current U.S.-Bosnian Ambassador Patrick S. Moon.

Something I have really wanted to improve upon this semester is my knowledge of grammar and parts of speech in Dari. Additionally, I also wanted to practice some more of my writing ability and expand my vocabulary. That said, this past week my fellow Dari learners and I were working on adjectives with our language partner. The following spreadsheet includes 20 Dari adjectives (including their comparative forms) and sentences using each adjective (English translations are also included):

Adjectives in Dari

I am so curious about what young adults do in Afghanistan for fun. It is so hard to find truly fun activities apart from the standard party, go to the mall or movies in the United States alone, so I’m interested in seeing if it’s the same there. I will explore this topic by talking to Mirwais and Susan, my former language partner, and seeing what they do when at home for a good time. As a subtopic, I also want to learn about subcultures in Afghanistan. For example, we have the hood rat subculture, the emo subculture, nerd subculture, etc. So do groupings like this happen in Afghanistan? I will do online research of Afghan pop culture blogs and such to try to map this out. If the subtopic proves to have a lot of supporting information then I may allow it to take precedence in my cultural project. I have a feeling that I will be dependent on interviewing students from Afghanistan to get the most accurate accounts of this. This has all sparked my interest because in the U.S., the media has gotten so many people wrapped up on Afghanistan being a war zone and it is sickening. There is life beyond that and I am only scratching the surface by my personal exploration. I am looking forward to getting the interviews started and learning all that I can for a successful, informative final project. Maybe I can even get some photographs of young adults engaging in this recreation.

To document my learning, my first artifact was a voice recording of me introducing myself using Voki. I chose to record myself saying the greetings, farewells, and introductions because that way I can hear how I sound and figure out if I am pronouncing anything wrong or figure out what needs improvement. For my second artifact, I will be recording myself speaking to a partner to show that I can ask and answer questions about my identity. It will be a dialogue asking questions such as "What is your name?" "How old are you?" "What is your occupation/what do you do?". I will be responding to these questions when my partner asks me and all of this will be recorded to document my learning. My third artifact will be a description of my family members using my family portrait. By doing this, I will be introducing myself and the rest of my family in Korean to show what I have learned so far. This will also be a recording. Lastly, my final artifact will focus on ordering food at a restaurant. I will document this with pictures and recordings of how to do this.

For my learning plan, I have learned a lot of things so far, such as my introduction, asking for directions, or understanding very basic sentences. I guess learning more vocabulary and using them in sentences is not so hard and I can do it easily.

The thing I should pay more attention is the grammar and usage of the verb with gender differences. I would also like to start reading some simple and basic poems, which is one of my goals to learn. Learning days of the week, and numbers are also easy. I am sure by the end of this semester I will be able learn a lot of other words and get into intermediate level of learning Urdu. 

For sixth week I am planning to practice my second artifact with  my language partner, and learn some new vocabs in order to make short sentences. I would also learn the numbers from 50-100, and will try to write and memorize them soon. 

beside this I would also like to watch some youtube videos on how to form some sentences and know the structure of a sentence in Urdu. 

for my first artifact I chose my introduction in Urdu, and I guess since then I have improved so much in making the right sound of the words, pronunciation, and grammer structure. I have learned so many other words, that I can now clearly make small sentences like, what do I study, where do I study, where do I go now, what do I eat etc. 

for my second, artifact, I am planning on recording a conversation with my language partner practicing questions about my daily activities as well as practicing days of the week with some sentences. I feel like I have learned so much since I started but I do not exactly have a count of how many words.

Here is the presentation on culture of Pakistan

.pakistani%20culture.ppt

From not being able to read a single letter of Farsi (I used to joke with my parents that it all looked like squiggles) to being able to read very simple sentences, I feel like I have really come a far way in less than a semester. While I can't read Farsi with anywhere near the fluency I can in English, I feel like a kindergartener again, squinting over letters and piecing together sentences. I am no longer the preschooler who could only see shapes and not recognize letters at all. I have learned, at this point, to read words and sentences, and even a paragraph, although that takes a much longer amount of time. I am able to read the sentences my language partner writes, although slowly.

It is really difficult for me to quantify the number of words that I know. Growing up hearing Farsi but not actually understanding it, I learned many words by osmosis or learned to recognize the sounds of words, without knowing their meanings. Now I am going back and formally learning many of the words that are familiar to me from childhood. If I had to guess, I would say that I know around 200 words in Farsi, not including the cognates from English or French.

For the first two weeks, I plan to review all that I learned in 110 and 111, so that I can build upon that knowledge. I was not able to practice more than a few hours over the summer because of my work schedule and traveling. During the first two weeks, I reviewed the alphabet, numbers, simple phrases for response (yes,no,maybe), verb conjugation in the past tense and I had two homework assignments. The first of the two homework assignments dealt with looking up 10 words, given to us in English, in a Persian dictionary and we had to write out the translations. The second assignment required me to conjugate 10 verbs for the six pronouns. I used the strategy of memorization, flipping through a Persian dictionary and writing skills to accomplish it homework at hand. These strategies were highly effective and I received perfect grades on both assignments. I am especially confident in my writing and speaking ability in regards to verbs,that sort of came naturally with few if any errors generally. I will build on all of this by continuing to expand my vocabulary as I translate words from English to Dari and I will also converse to build on every element of learning the language.

So far I am feeling confident because this is all touching on things I simply needed to be refreshed on.  However; I do find it hard to understand and respond to conversation solely in Dari. This is chiefly because I do not have many words to work with. If I had a better grasp of vocabulary, then sure I could handle fast paced, complex conversations in the classroom. I will attempt to strengthen this by learning more vocabulary.

I am in my third semester of learning Persian or Dari (Afghanistan) in a self-directed environment. In previous semesters, I have learned basic skills such as how to write the alphabet and numbers. This has granted me the ability to be able to write out words and even simple sentences in the language. I also learned basic conversation in Dari, such as the essential exchange of “Hello, How are you?” I also learned how to tell what I like and do not like in the simplest of terms (i.e. I like Farsi). Throughout the journey, I have also engaged in basic level conversations in regards to describing my day, the weather, my family, among other things. This semester, I would really like to focus on extending my vocabulary because I have the knowledge of sentence structure and conversation flow, but no words to use to deliver this. This semester, I hope to learn positive, negative, sympathetic and neutral reactions (i.e. “That’s amazing,” “How horrible,” “That’s tragic,” and “So so”). Also, as I build upon my vocabulary, I would like to learn how to describe myself as well as others and eventually be able to tell that I am Senior, Journalism major hoping to go into a career involving entertainment.  It would be of the utmost importance to learn how to understand simple instructions and know how to ask for directions to places. Then, I have had experience ordering food in a restaurant in my first semester and also this semester, but I would like to learn etiquette vocabulary, so I can be just as polite in Dari as I am in English. Additionally, I need to learn how to ask if items contain meat since I am a vegetarian. Finally, I want to be able to build upon my likes and dislikes. Most importantly, I would like to be able to hold conversations going at a typical pace for Dari native speakers.

Gujarati Learning Plan

I will be using the Hindi alphabet I wrote as an artifact. The Hindi alphabet is divided into three sections: vowels, consonants, and matras.

Knowing the alphabet is the key to knowing the Hindi language. The language is based on phonetics. Each Hindi letter has a sound and these letters/sounds put together create words. The thirty-three consonants have their own unique sounds. These letters can be combined with matras. The matras have their own unique sounds as well. The sounds of matras can be combined with consonants to create variety of sounds. For example, the consonant क can be put together with the matra of उ to create the sound कु. The consonant त combined with the matra of आ creates ता.  कु and ता put together form कुता which means dog.

My artifact consist of four sheets of paper. These pages contain thirty-three consonants out together with ten matras. Writing and practicing this helped me accomplish numerous goals. First and foremost, it made me more familiar with the alphabet. Second, it allowed me to put together consonants and matras together to help me form more sounds. Doing so directly affected my ability to read Hindi and talk in the language.

Doing this artifact brought me one step closer to reaching my learning goal for this semester. 

One of my big goals for this semester is learning how to read and write in Hindi. When I meet with my language partner we primarily focus on these goals. Hindi alphabet is based on phonetics which makes learning new words a little easier. If I have a strong grasp of the vowels, consonants and their combinations with the matras, I can look at a new word and attempt to pronounce it.

For the purpose of this assignment, as I read, I tried to pronounce each alphabet. Since each alphabet has a unique sound associated with it, at the end, I was able to combine various sounds to form proper words. I was able to read and comprehend more than I expected.

It is hard for me to calculate exactly how many words of Hindi I know. Since I went to school in India, I learned elementary Hindi for two years. When I moved to the United States, due to the lack of practice, I forgot all that I had learned.  When I have conversations with my language partner, I can recall a lot of words. As of now, I believe I know approximately 150 words in Hindi.

My goal for this semester is learning how to read, write, understand and speak Hindi at an elementary level. In the span of three weeks, I have learned the alphabet, numbers, days of the week, and how to tell time. I feel as though I do have realistic goals. I am hoping to be able to read basic signs in Hindi and have a legitimate “elementary level” conversation with a native speaker.