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http://koreanjournal.tumblr.com/post/8567002790/three-bears-song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slWkYjjgyT4
Topic: Family Members/Vocabs in the Song
Family Members
Grandpa (dad side/mom side) Halabuji/Wae halabuji
Grandma (dad side/momside) Halmoni/Wae halmoni
Mom/Dad (formal) Omoni/Ahboji
Me Na
For girls,
Older sister/brother Unni/Oppa
For guys,
Older sister/brother Nuna/Hyung
For girls/guys,
Younger sister/brother Yeo dongsang/Nam dongsang
Three Bears
곰 세 마리 가 (gom se mari ga) bear three is
한 집에 있어 (han jibe isseo) one household there is
아빠 곰, 엄마 곰, 애기 곰 (appa gom, umma gom, aegi gom)
아빠 곰은 뚱뚱해 (appa gomeun ddoongddoonghae) chubby
엄마 곰은 날씬해 (umma gomeun nalsshinhae) slim
애기 곰은 너무 귀여워 (aegi gomeun neomu gwiyeowo) very cute
으쓱 으쓱 잘 한다 (eusseuk eusseuk jal handa) *shoulder* doing well
At this point in my learning process, I have completed my syllabus created at the beginning of the semester. However, looking back on my first few weeks of material, I have forgotten a lot of it. Although I may still remember most of the vocabulary due to my flash cards, I have forgotten a lot of the sentence structures, important questions to know, appropriate responses, etc.
Although I elaborated on this more in my Reflection Paper 2, I have decided that the remaining weeks of the semester should be focused on reviewing the material I have already learned and learning vocabulary related to my Cultural Project. I hope to use the remaining peer tutor meeting to go over the conversations we've had throughout the semester, after I go over my notes beforehand. I also plan to look up more music-related vocabulary to use in my Cultural Project.
First, you need to know numbers 1-12:
1. ek 2. do 3. teen 4. char 5. panch 6. che 7. sat 8. aat 9. nau 10. dus 11. gyarah 12. barah
Then, you need to know a few vocabulary words:
o'clock: bujah (singular) or bujeh (plural)
is/are: hai/haiN
To tell time on the hour, all you need to do is use this sentence formation:
(number) + bujah/bujeh + hai/haiN
** If you are saying, "It is one o'clock," the sentence is singluar, so you use "bujah" and "hai".
** If you are saying it is any other time, the sentence is plural, so you use "bujeh" and "haiN".
Ex) It is one o'clock. Ek bujah hai.
It is three o'clock. Teen bujeh haiN.
To tell the time on the half hour:
1:30 and 2:30 have their own words. 1:30 is "ded" and 2:30 is "dhaii".
Ex) It is 1:30. Ded bujeh haiN.
It is 2:30. Dhai bujeh haiN.
All other half hours are constructed by adding the word "saadheh" before the number.
Saadheh + (hour) + haiN
Ex) It is 4:30. Saadheh char bujeh haiN.
It is 7:30. Saadheh sat bujeh haiN.
Quarter past: "Savaah"
Quarter to: "Pauneh"
Ex) It is 7:45. Pauneh aat bujeh haiN. (It is quarter to 8.)
It is 2:15. Savaah do bujeh haiN. (It is quarter past 2.)
Between weeks 1-8, my language partner and I focused on the language tasks. For the first couple of weeks, we focused on introductions, greetings, classroom phrases, family words, and an introduction to numbers (how to count, time, and dates).We have been focusing on phrases rather than vocabulary. He often speaks to me in Korean and uses gestures at the same time. I usually have no clue what he is saying, but I guess until I am right. Then we take turns repeating the phrase or sentence multiple times in order to reinforce everything. We try to focus on only a handful of phrases each time because it is a lot to remember. So with every new week, we briefly bring up the old phrases and then continue learning. In order to supplement this learning, Alvin recommended that I watch "Secret Garden" which is a very famous Korean drama that he says usually pragmatic Korean. Thus, I typically watch one episode a week, since each episode lasts about one and a half hours long. I have still been finding the Korean grammar a bit confusing because I have previous knowledge of Chinese and Japanese to try to help my learning. However, this is actually hindering my progress. For example, Chinese phrases questions in the same way each time by having "ma" at the end. However, in Korean there is not a concrete pattern for this. Many questions end with "yo", however phrases and non-questions can also end in this manner. Thus, I am having a bit of trouble distinguishing that difference. Besides this, I have also noticed that problem as I am learning numbers. Korean has two number systems where one set is used for things such as telling time in hours, counting, and dates, while the other set is used for telling the time in minutes and seconds and also math-related aspects such as adding and subtracting. My previous knowledge of languages does not follow this, but it is simply going to take some practice getting used to. I learned the numbers in Japanese previously, through songs, so I am trying to incorporate that learning style as I perfect the Korean number system. Other than these challenges, I enjoy the learning method thus far and think that it is working well for me. Also, the dramas are pretty interesting!
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1q8rYaaa85D
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1eHHIllFjwd
Me answering questions regarding who I am, my name, age, where I'm from , and my family.
Also I ask and answer questions regarding location, where I currently am, how to get to a hotel, and regarding the bus.
The articles had many similar concepts including the role of executive functions and potential benefits of knowing more than one language. I found the articles interesting because many people believe that bilinguals are smarter, but the articles sort of refute this belief. They claim that being bilingual actually is a disadvantage when learning new vocabulary because bilinguals tend to analyze the new words in both languages. This makes a lot of sense to me, but I wonder how being left or right-dominated hemisphere brained, plays a role in bilingual processing. The pattern recognition aspect of various language learners makes a lot of sense considering the analytic aspect of knowing two languages. One of the articles talked about how bilinguals have a heightened sense of their environment because they are processing things in both languages. Thus, being conscious of the things of around you can be very advantageous in everyday situations such as crossing streets or even reading emotions of others.
Besides this, the practical aspect of being bilingual are easily distinguishable. You are able to communicate and better understand people from different cultures that speak your languages. Knowing more than one language is also a very marketable skill. Businesses are becoming more and more global and clients in one country are often finding themselves dealing with clients in another country. Thus, being able to communicate and understanding proper etiquette can create a lot of value for a company. All in all, it seems that bilinguals are not inherently smarter, but there are added benefits to knowing a second language.
Overall, I have not been focusing much on specific vocabulary, but instead on phrases. My thought process is that phrases will simply come in more handy and is definitely more applicable. Honestly, I know quite a few phrases at this point, but if you were to ask me about specific vocabulary in those phrases, I would struggle to figure out the definition. Thus far, I've focused on first learning phrases and then breaking it down in order to understand the vocabulary. From this method, I am able to deduce several meanings simply from looking at the sentence structure. For example, I may recognize from the phrase that the phrase is asking a question and may be able to recognize one or two words from it. Thus, I can get a general idea of what it is asking by using knowledge of other languages. It is all systematic. Since we have a little more than three weeks left in the semester, I am hoping to simply reinforce my language skills at this point to truly perfect my comprehension.
The content of this artifact is a map tracing a journey from my apartment in Carytown to the Richmond International Raceway.The goal of this task is to enhance my overall interpretive listening skills and develop the vocabulary surrounding relative and compass directions. This skill achieves this goal by giving me a set of instructions in Bhasa Indonesia once when I start and then once again if I was to get lost. I must then use these directions until I reach my destination or start again with a different destination if I were to get lost a second time. The skill to understand directions is an important part of a “survival language.” Furthermore, this task is doubly important to me because relative and compass directions and an overall developed vocabulary about spatial information is critical when surfing.
For the successful attempt when the destination was the Richmond International Raceway, I provide the audio files and a document containing the transcript of the two set of instructions that I received in Bhasa Indonsia. The transcript of the correctly interpreted instructions in English, along with a map tracing the journey at a smaller scale is included where necessary on the map using the tag feature of ThingLink. Upon seeing it, one learns that this journey is a little longer than 5 miles and is set in Richmond, VA. The red line represents the journey made using the first set of instructions. Once it became clear that I had taken a wrong turn somewhere on the highway, I took the first exit off the highway and asked for the second set of instructions. The blue line represents the successful journey made using the second set of instructions.
I evaluate this task to be successful at accomplishing its objective in two different ways. Firstly, in the repeated process of trying to reach my destination I picked up phrases such as utara laut (northwest), putar balik (U-turn or turn around completely) and tempat tujuan (destination). The examples of the vocabulary that I picked up pertain to spatial awareness and goes further than relative and compass directions. Secondly, I managed to complete the journey without expressing myself to the person giving the directions. This lack of communication that did not give me the chance to say “Please speak slowly” or “Can you repeat that” made the task more challenging.
Overall, I think my language learning has been successful and I have been able to reach reasonable expectations. At first, I was a bit discouraged because I was not able to remember everything I had learned in India as fast as I wanted to, but once I realized that learning Hindi in America would be a bigger challenge because I was not constantly surrounded by it, I developed a more reasonable plan for myself and have been able to stick to it pretty well. The syllabus that I created on my blog at the beginning of the semester only planned out my first 8 weeks because I wanted to reevaluate my plan for the remaining weeks after mastering those tasks. I am glad I did this because, after getting through those 8 weeks, I feel like I need to spend some time reviewing old material before moving on. I also would like to spend some time learning about music vocabulary for my Culture Project.
I think the most effective resources I have used so far are Mango, flashcards (mostly my own, but also on interactive sites), my old notebook from Hindi class last year, and the GoogleDoc Sanya and I created to keep in touch throughout the week. I generally put questions on the GoogleDoc or formulate my artifacts there, then Sanya can see them to give me advice. I think that in the remaining weeks of the semester, I need to focus most on forcing myself to attempt to speak only in Hindi with Sanya. I find myself always reverting back to English when we meet, but I'd like to really try to use Hindi only for the rest of the semester. I also need to find more ways to incorporate all of the tasks I have learned so far into new conversations because often, Sanya and I have conversations only pertaining to the task for that week, which allows me to easily forget the material from previous weeks. Although I have all my vocabulary from the semester in a deck of flashcards, reviewing these doesn't allow me to keep up my ability to converse about these topics.
Learning about Indian culture as I try to learn Hindi as well has made this process a lot more interesting. Learning about culture has influenced the tasks that I wish to master in Hindi as well as the way I think about learning the language overall. I think this will be the most essential way to improve my communicative competence beyond just memorization of key words, grammar structures, and phrases. Sanya has already told me many times, "We don't actually say it like that," when I come up with a phrase during a conversation that is too complex or uses archaic vocabulary. In a few limited contexts, I would say that I have a "discourse competence" of Hindi because I can create many sentences and react to questions or comments from other people about certain topics. In an even more limited sense, I would say that I have some "sociolinguistic competence" from everyday phrases that I used a lot in India, such as introductions and common questions that I would find myself saying without even thinking first. I hope to master more tasks on this level before the semester ends.
The reading was very interesting in the fact that a language was kept alive by basically four native speakers. I thought the entire process made a lot of sense of how it trickled down in order for the language to stay alive. However, when a language is lost, a large part of the culture goes with it. For example, the person in the reading talked about how many of the words in his language are not like any other words in any other language and instead he compared it to "spitting". This motion of creating these unique sounds is tied to the culture and would be lost if the language died. Also the fact that the language had been preserved in "song for their native dance" tells us that that the language is very prominent among the the arts as well. Basically, the language can be expressed through song and reflected through dance. This is something that is once again very unique to that culture.
Linguist David Harrison explained in the video that preserving languages is the biggest challenge to preserving history because languages are extremely complex systems that hold tons of information about the culture, history, traditions, and knowledge of a particular group. For example, Harrison talked about "folk taxonomy," which is when different cultures form certain vocabulary that other languages do not have based on their unique environment and needs. Groups of people in cold climates may have many words to describe different types of snow, but people in tropical regions may not have originally had any word for snow at all. These intricacies of language tell us about the situations people had to deal with, the things they were skilled at, and their histories.
Also, many historical information is stored by people through writings and literature in their language, so if the language dies, historians will not be able to interpret the texts. For instance, the Vedas are ancient Hindu scriptures written in Sanskrit that describe in detail almost every aspect of daily life in the Indus Valley Civilization. If Sanskrit had been lost, not only would that history be lost, but the origins of the Hindu religion, Indian philosophy, Indian medicine, and much more would also be lost.
On a much more personal level, Bud Lane from the article "Tribe Revives Language on Verge of Extinction" most likely lost any other speakers with which to speak his language, Siletz. Until he began the movement to revive the native language, he could no longer honor his culture and older tribe members by using the language they taught him.
During these last two weeks I had focused on trying to write and type a larger amount of text, as opposed to just medium length sentences. As mentioned in my previous bi-weekly reports, I wanted to be able to take my newly strengthened ability to write moderately long sentences and push myself towards writing short paragraphs. Much of my ability to do this was reliant upon me working with my language partner to get a better understanding of what to write about and also to have someone check my work. While I felt comfortable writing long sentences, I was almost certain - which was the right sentiment in hindsight - that I would make a few mistakes in writing paragraphs. The task I used to begin writing short paragraphs was based off of a reading assignment .
