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This article provided me with a lot of insight about the logistics of language.

In my target language of Hindi, I would like to reach the Cognitive/Academic Language Proficiency. “CALP is that dimension of proficiency in which the learner manipulates or reflects upon the surface features of language outside of the immediate interpersonal context” (219).

Language competence consists of organizational and pragmatic competence. Grammatical and textual competence form organizational competence. Illocutionary and sociolinguistics competence compose pragmatic competence.

As far as learning Hindi goes, I would like to focus on pragmatic competence more than organizational competence. Within illocutionary competence, I will focus on learning ideational, manipulative, heuristic, and imaginative functions (219). Sociolinguistic competence consists of sensitivity to dialect or variety, sensitivity to register, sensitivity to naturalness, and cultural references and figures of speech (219). 

I found the readings for this week very fascinating. The article that sparked the most interest in me was “How the brain handles language”. The part that I found the most interesting was about tongue slips. I always thought they happened when people were too excited or under a lot of stress. I always had tongue slips towards the end of the day when I was very tired. Reading that there is an actual scientific reason for it was enlightening. Grammatical construction of words causes tongue slips. 

Growing up in India, I was familiar with the language itself; however, I knew nothing about the history of the language. In order to make it easier to remember, I divided my research into three categories: basics, script, and history.

Basics

Hindi is the third most spoken language in the world, after English and Mandarin. There are approximately 500 to 600 million Hindi speakers around the globe. The language is a direct descendant of Sanskrit. Hindi consists of 11 vowels and 33 consonants. The pronunciation of Hindi is very similar to Urdu. The language closely related to Bengali, Punjabi and Gujarati.

Script

Hindi uses the Devanagari script. The pronunciation of the letters is always the same. For example, हिन्दी is always going to be pronounced Hindi. नाम is always going to be pronounced naam. This format is unlike English and the use of silent letters i.e. the word psychology where the p is silent. The Devanagari script consists of “hanging from a line” system. There is always a line drawn above the letters and the letters are “hanging from the line”. For example, पूजा, हिन्दी, etc. This script does not have capital letters. Also, in Hindi a period or a full stop is not a dot at the end. A vertical line at the end of the sentence implies a period. मेरा नाम पूजा हैI

History

Hindi is a direct descendant of Sanskrit. Sanskrit was the language used in the Hindu scriptures. It is a very proper and appropriate language. Hindi is essentially a colloquial version of Sanskrit. Over the years Hindi was heavily influenced by Persian, Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Portuguese, and English. Turks controlled the regions of Punjab and Gangetic plains during the early years of Indian history. This population spoke Persian. They needed a means of communication with the native Indian population. Therefore, they merged Persian and Arabic words with Sanskrit into order to form Hindi. The language was then spread throughout India as the rulers of various dynasties expanded their rule over the nation. Hindi became the official language of India during the British colonial rule. 

Here is my presentation on history of Urdu

   History of Urdu

Goal: Vocabulary

This week, I focused heavily on vocabulary. My language partners and I met twice and their main focus was to teach me whatever vocabulary words I felt I use on a day to day basis.

To start some were:

love: prem

friend: mithra

sun: suriya

book: chopadi

water: pani

student: shickshack

grade: marks

dance: naach

dinner: jumvanu

sky: aakash

dream: supahna

color: rung

grass: ghass

clouds: vahdera

thank you: abharr

In addition to these words, there were many words that don't have Gujarati translations, like success, exercise, pencil, pen, and bottle. My language partners said that in this case, I should just add a Gujarati accent. That is the most effective way to use them in a sentence.

I focused on learning words that I could use in basic sentences. For example: I am drinking water.

(Hu pani piu che)

I am started to formulate sentences without the help of my language partners based solely on the vocab that I am learning from them and books that I have.

I was able to formulate and say that I loved my mom over the phone (Hu tane prem karu chu)

She didn't know what I said, but that wasn't the point. The sentences that I am making are correct and I am able to remember the structure which makes it even easier to learn more. My confidence in this recent learning process is what helps me to learn even more!

For BCS, I’ve found that the language is inextricably connected to its history and national identity. Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin are now considered different languages, despite their near identical alphabet, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The reason, according South Slavic language expert Ronelle Alexander, is symbolic. Each country believes that language is the foundational claim to cultural distinctiveness and authenticity.

In the 9^th century, the Slavic language was spoken, but not written. A Christian Moravian prince named Rastislav wanted to convert the people of the Balkans in the native language. He requested liturgical books for missionaries to use. That language is called glagolitic, which was in Cyrillic.

A Serbian linguist named Vuk Karadzic sought to reform the language because he felt the language inaccessible to the common man. In a time in which Serbia was trying to break from Ottoman rule, he sought to base the written language on the spoken language expressed in folk poetry and famous epic songs of a heroic past (382). “Write as you speak” (Pisi kao sto govoris) was his motto. This became the foundation for BCS. In agreement with Croatians, who used Latin a Latin alphabet, the language of Bosnia was officially called Serbo-Croatian.

As time when on, Croatians, Serbians, and Bosnians grew apart. Croats were Catholics, Serbians were Orthodox, and Bosnians were Muslim. Serbian was closely tied to the Cyrillic alphabet, which has historical connections to the Christian Orthodoxy. Croats were closely tied to the Latin, which has historical connections to Catholicism.

Bosnian was created, and more recently Montenegrin, in the midst of war and nationalistic fervor in the 1990s. Bosnians wanted to feel closer to their Islamic roots. So the adopted some Turkish words here and there.

If one is truly interested in learning Croatian, Serbian, or Bosnian, these slight differences are important. Only an understanding of Bosnia’s tumultuous history can help one truly be able to make distinctions between the near identical languages. For my purposes, and for the majority of native speakers, it seems that they couldn’t care less for what the language is called. This concern occupies politicians. Nevertheless, it is an advantage on applications to know that you know 4-5 languages when you only studied one!

Goal for the Week:

Recover

Experiment with the Croatian textbook.

Result:

Done

Two Chapters from the textbook.

Method:

I’ve found the first chapter of the elementary Croatian textbook to be a fantastic resource. It’s really helpful to be able to listen to native speakers talk about simple subjects, but at a very high speed. There is a sense, especially in the beginning, that you are struggling to keep up and end up falling out of the conversation. Familiarity with vocabulary is clearly only the first step. After working through the conversations, I did the exercises. These included English-Bosnian and Bosnian-English translations and fill in the blank present tense conjugation. It was basic, but really reinforced what I was learning. For instance, I knew the verb “govoriti” (to speak) well. I knew how to ask questions (Da li… or verb li…). But after listening and speaking the thing so many times it’s become more “automatic” in my head.

Shir and I have been doing a lot of stuff lately for Hebrew.   

Week 6:  We spent one week working on verb conjugations in the present tense for all the noun forms. (to want, to go, to do, to eat, to drink, to read, to ask for, to speak, and to try).  I am working on these verbs and writing them in cursive.  

Week 7:   The first day during the week we met and walked around the lake together and talked about our colors.  The next day we met outside the commons and spoke Hebrew together.  This was the first time that we really had a good conversation.  I was able to begin to initiate questions and focus on the Hebrew.   I learned the verbs (to walk, run, camp, jump, bike, and hike)  Also I learned about the significance of a hypostrophe in Hebrew.  

     A hypostrophe in Hebrew is significant because when it is seen near a Tzadik (Tz sound), the sound becomes CH (as in church).   When seen next to a gimel (G sound as in golf), the sound become J (as in joke).  This is necessary for words that are not originally from Hebrew or have a Hebrew equivalent word.  Similar to in English when we say the word Quesadilla, Hebrew will spell out the words to sound similar to how it is pronounced.  

Week 8:  Shir and I met at a park for 2 hours  - We began to read Harry Potter (first two paragraphs).  There were many new vocabulary words in the book (I only knew about 4 words in the entire 2 paragraphs).  Shir was patient with me and worked on teaching me how to try and infer what some words mean from the context of the paragraph.  We also talked about the importance of learning to read using primary books and not more advanced Children's books such as Harry Potter.   Another interesting fact that we came across while reading Harry Potter was that pronouns such as the Dursley's or the name of the company that Mr. Dursley works at, the words all contain vowels.  They are to help the reader pronounce the words correctly, because they are not natural Hebrew pronunciations.  

After reading Communicative competence I learned that it , refers to a learner’s L2 ability. It refers to a learner’s ability of using grammatical rules, forming correct utterances, and knowing how to use these utterances appropriately. 

When I read the communicative competence I really was amazed how Hymes discussed the ethnographic-oriented exploration of communicative competence that included “communicative form and function” in relation to each other. 

however, I noticed that Chomsky’s view of linguistic competence was not intended to inform pedagogy, but serve as part of developing a theory of the linguistic system itself, idealized as the abstract language knowledge of the monolingual adult native speaker, and different from how they happen to use and experience language. Hymes, rather than Chomsky, had developed a theory of education and learning

Knowing the history of a language is very important in learning it, here is a brief history of Urdu:

Upon the conquest of the lands past the Indus, the Muslim armies gathered and prepared for their battles.  The strength of the communication between them could be the determinant of their fate.  Thus was laid the foundations of the Urdu language.  It began with Muhammad bin Qasim, the Arab who entered what is now Pakistan proclaiming the message of the One God and his final messenger in the 700’s CE.  For the next thousand years many Arab, Persian, and Turkish armies conquered the region; some for worldly gains and others who sought benefit in the life to come.  A language that constituted all languages that came into power came to be known as ‘Urdu’, meaning camp, referring to history of the language how it came to existence through the army camps or as Rekhta (ریختہ), meaning molded or mixed. 

In this week I learned how to ask someone about the time, and also how to answer. I also practiced teaching a word to the class (sdlc-105) the week before fall break. learning about time and knowing the significance of time in urdu speaking culture was very interesting. 

In Week Seven I learned the following:

 1-Where are you from? ( and the answer)

 2-Where do you live?

 3-What did you eat?

 4-Where are you going now?

 5-What are you studying?

 6 Where is your family?

and some other questions about daily activities. I think I am improving a lot since my second artifact was much better than the first one. 

 My second Artifact is a conversation with my language partner talking about my identity and daily activities:

here is the link:

20121010%20200945.m4a

Goal: Question words, additional vocab

This week, I meet with my language partners twice. We focused heavily on specific words that would help me improve my sentence structure.  

These words were

who: korn

what: shu

where: kya

whe: kyare

why: kem

how: kavreethe

I felt that learning these words would significantly help me to spark conversation with native speakers.  These words in combination with basic sentence structure that I learned last week, added to my speaking abilities.

For example, I can now ask someone:

Where are you going? Tu kya jai che?

What are you going to buy? Tu shu leva jai che?

Who are you going with? Koni sathe jai che?

When are you going? Tu kyare jyais?

How will you go? Kavreethe jyais?

Why are you going? Tu kem jai che?

Additionally, I am proud to say that I can respond promptly to all of these questions.

I am working on learning more essential vocabulary as well so that I can build onto responses and questions.

Goal for the week:

Finish Noun Cases

Learn a number of vocabulary words

Result:

Done with Noun Cases!

Learned a few vocabulary words

Method:

Practicing grammar and thinking about grammar is not very fun. I realize that I need to lighten up and have more fun learning this language so that I’ll spend more time not only learning, but enjoying myself. I have found that this last week was the least fun, and the least productive. As a person whose productivity and ambition is strongly correlated to my feelings about the material, I have just realized the importance of fun to balance my seriousness. A professor has given me an elementary Croatain book and accompanying DVD with dialogues and classical music. They are fantastic. The recordings are of native speakers who speak very quickly.

I was light on the vocabulary this week, but would write down and look up random words I thought might be useful to know.

This is my combined reflection for weeks 6 and 7:

My goals for these two weeks were to complete language tasks three and four as stated on the calendar. By the end of week seven, I should be able to ask and answer questions about identity like where are you from, what do you do, and what are you studying? etc. Also, I need to be able to talk about my family members and identify each member. This fits into my learning plan because these are also stated in my learning plan as part of my goals. 

I met with my partner and we wrote out a script together that included and questions and answers and then we practiced saying it. After I learned the new vocabulary and prononciation of the words, we took turns in asking and answering questions so that way I have experience in both. For example, to ask "what is your name?" I would say "이름이 뭐예요?" (Irumun muo yae yo?) When we learned about the family members, I first learned to identify each person like mother, father, brother, sister and so on. Then we pretended that we were looking at family picture and tried to write a sentence describing each person. We said simple things like talking as if we were pointing at the picture and said "This is my mother and her name is ____. We are from Mongolia" etc.

This repetition and the explanation of the structure helped a lot in making these tasks easier to learn which made these lessons more efficient. Writing it out in Korean also helped me build more onto my reading skills. I was forced to read the sentences in order to get the pronunciation correct and then I was able to translate the sentences with her assistance. Overall, these past two weeks have been very effective in completing my goals from the learning plan.

Artifact #2. Asking and answering questions about identity

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1dS4xTRbXhs   (answering)

Goal: Learn verb tenses

This week, I meet with my language partners twice. Both meetings focused heavily on learning basic verb tenses and phrases. I was excited to learn how to say basic sentences that describe my day to day life. 

To start, I became familiar with the most commonly used structure. (PERSON + NOUN + VERB)

So for example, if I wanted to say (I am eating)I would say: Hu cow chu

Hu means (I)

cow means (to eat: I form)

chu means is

This basic structure helped me to learn even more sentences.

Then I focused on breaking down the verb tenses.

Cow may mean to eat in the I form.

But cai means to eat in the you form.

Caye means to eat in the we form. 

The basic endings then are ow, ai, aye. This is very similar to my spanish learning

Also, the endings of chu would change to (che) for you, (cho) for you formal, and (chiye) for we.

It is something that must be memorized, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly.

As a result here are some example sentences:

Hu cow chu: I'm eating

Tu cai che: You're eating

Tume cow cho: You're eating (formal)

Hume caye chiye: We're eating

Hu bhunu chu: I'm studying

Thu bhune che: You're studying

Tume bhunu cho: You're studying (formal)

Hume bhunye chiye: We're studying

I was so excited to learn this. Now the process is getting it down by memory.

I will use various artifacts to document my learning. I have already uploaded an artifact that documents my writing ability in the Persian alphabet, by writing all of the 32 letters in their 4 forms. For the rest of my artifacts, I will use Vokis to record my voice, as they seem to fit the prompts well (introducing yourself, greetings, answering questions, etc). For the last artifact, the one of my choice, I will create a birthday card for a relative, most likely my aunt. My mother and I make birthday cards a lot for our relatives and she always writes them in Farsi and I sign my name. For once, I'd like to be able to write one myself!

I think it is detrimental to use artifacts as a measurement or assessment. Personally, I find the mandatory imposition of these write-ups and articles rather tedious and inhibiting to the entire language-learning process. They distract from language-learning tasks and ultimately suck the life out of what is advertised as a self-directed, self-motivated process. It seems wasteful and nonsensical to actually aim to create artifacts for the sake of creating artifacts when the ultimate goal is to learn the language as an independent, self-directed learner. I believe the productions of “artifacts” are a natural result of hard work and genuine investment in language-learning. You completely engross yourself in the experience. As a student here, you read, you write sentences, you practice, you conduct research, you go to restaurants, you meet people, you speak with natives, and you investigate and learn what you want to learn. A child learning a language at home or a student abroad has dozens of “artifacts” a day. The notion of having to document and write about these events every single week to prove that you’ve done something to the instructor is drudgery and belittling. Independent learning is a natural, exhilarating, exciting, and beautiful process for those who are truly passionate about learning, about discovering creative ways that they learn and can learn.

These requirements undermine the very meaning of an “independent, self-directed” learner. These requirements seem to presume an underlying, fundamental distrust of the “independent, self-directed” learner. Why else would there be weekly assignments, posts, and tasks to keep students focused? I think it is sad and very inhibiting for those who truly try to be independent learners, but instead, find themselves having to invest unnecessary mental energy, time, and added stress to showing that you’ve done something, of explaining what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. I cannot express my disenchantment with these assignments enough. Honestly, I find myself feeling mentally and physically sicker when I have to force myself to complete these things each week. I find them to be a complete waste of time for motivated students attempting to maximize their learning. While it is true that the program might have had a history of lazy individuals who believed that taking this class would entail no work and an easy A, fine, spoon-feed them. Badger them. For those who intend to get something done, it is my sincere hope that this program will, in the future, identify those students and treat as they are: independent, self-directed learners. I signed up for this course thinking that I’d be free from the restrictions of the classroom environment reporting to an instructor every day, answering to a textbook, and learning in cookie cutter fashion. Unfortunately I feel that the major difference is that the mandatory meeting time has been reduced to one class per week.

To the assignment: What artifacts will you use to document your learning? I will pay as little attention to artifacts as possible. I’ve already begun to feel the negative effects of diverting my attention from the fun I was having actually learning the language in my own way. I do not plan to use them as tools or assessments. Nor will I plan to create certain artifacts for the sake of creating artifacts. Rather, I will continue as I did before, learning as much as I can and having as much as I can and posting these artifacts that I happen to produce as a product of the natural process to, and only to, satisfy the requirements of this course despite the indigestion I feel while bringing myself up to do them.

When I was talking to Dr. Grove, we discussed the importance of artifacts and it truly struck me how I can really use the artifacts.   Me making flashcards is one form of an artifact, but another really great way I can document my learning is by creating short videos of myself saying every word that I have learned.  This will not only work on my visual comprehension of my vocabulary, but it will also work on my pronounciation.  This way I can track my progress for my recognition of the vocabulary that I am learning.   I am going to try and begin this method, this week.