Blogs

• Respond to the reading, reflecting on what is lost when languages die.  (You might want to watch the interview with David Harrison posted to the front page of the Ning.) 

Language is filled with a lot of history and culture. So, when a language dies it not only loses the physical language but also the human heritage aspect. We lose a community of people who could communicate exclusively and uniquely with each other. In addition, many reasons languages are created because only their language can communicate something specific to their unique culture. For example, many countries have their own sayings and only can be fully understood if you spoke the language and are from the culture. Therefore, it is important to keep all the different languages alive because without it we would not be diverse and would lose valuable years of history. 

I really couldn't say how many new words I have learned, but the vast majority of them have been to do with grammar rather than actual vocabulary. That said, I've learned to count to 100, can list all of the colors of the rainbow, and can talk about my family too. I've written down a lot of vocabulary words, but it is still taking me a lot of time to learn all of them. I'm hoping that my Culture Project can help me with this, because as Basque surnames always mean a certain place, there are a lot of good vocabulary words within them. The words I did learn, I learnt through a lot of repetition, and quizzing on the part of Amaia. I think that I have met my goals for the most part, but there is definitely still a lot of vocabulary I want to learn. That said, I am glad that I got a lot of grammatical rules out of the way, because knowing those, I can continue learning vocabulary by myself next semester and be able to move on. I would say that I still have goals to continue increasing my vocabulary more than my grammar, and be able to know a lot more adjectives and nouns, which I think is definitely a reachable goal.

I thought that the reading was interesting, both because I am familiar with the Athabaskan languages as a Washington native, and also because I started learning Basque in order to try to help preserve it. Although I now know that Basque as a language is not in decline, it meant a lot to me when I began learning it to know that I was helping to carry on the legacy of my family. I really appreciate what these people are doing in Oregon especially, because although it is unlikely that after these five speakers are gone, the language will continue to survive, they are trying to preserve it at the very least. As an archaeology student and archivist, I can really appreciate that as well. When languages die, so does a large part of a group's cultural history, so I think that it's really great that the language can be immortalized in the internet.

Knowing a language's history can help a person understand it, because there are certain historical and cultural factors that help people understand language better. An example of this is my class on the history of English in terms of Greek and Latin. By knowing the history of words, I can understand how they are put together, and therefore better understand what they mean. This class has even helped my understanding of French, because the Greek and Latin roots are much the same as those found in English. This can help be applied to Basque too, because understanding how loan words entered the Basque language, as well as which ones, can be great for better speaking Basque. By knowing that things introduced by the Romans were given Latin-based words in Basque, like "oliba" for olive, you can start to predict what certain things might mean, before technically knowing the words for them.

Some may be wondering what history has to do with language. When we typically think of history, we think of dates, facts, and events that we have memorized in a set timeline. Learning about the history of a language however is different. The history of languages gives us valuable information about the origin of the language and the characters, which can provide us with more insight to be more mindful in studying, so that we can easily grasp concepts and patterns. For example, the Korean language has originated from Chinese characters. Hangul was established in the 15^th century, but before that, Korean was written in hanja, and Chinese characters made up the written form of the Korean language. For Chinese learners, this may be helpful because although they may not recognized the blocked characters and the new writing system, they may be able to easily catch certain sounds that have the same meaning in Chinese. 

• Third Artifact:  Introduce yourself and your family

I will read a passage in Indonesian and translate it instead since I introduced myself and my family in my second artifact.

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My goals for week 10 were:

From Bahasa Indonesia bagi Pentur Asing Tingkat-A1: Unit 5 Jalan-Jalan (touring/visiting)

• to learn the names of animals, "things," and public buildings that are "near" to my everyday life
• to learn how to give and ask for information about animals, "things," and public buildings, i.e., train stations, markets, shopping centers, etc. 
• to have a conversation about my favorite places to visit on holidays
• to identify the rooms within a house and basic house goods 

Culture

From Jobless Vloggers

• to understand the context in which recent uprisings in Jakarta occurred 
• to understand the broad opinions about these uprisings
• to read the economist about current geopolitics concerning Indonesia

Review

With my language learning partner

• to have a comprehensive conversation covering the topics that I have learned

Accomplishing these goals:

I worked on Unit 5 "Jalan-Jalan," sourced from Indonesia's Ministry of education and culture. I worked on my listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills via the activities within this chapter. The listening and speaking parts were completed with my language learning partner. Moreover, I watched videos that covered the recent protests taking place on the streets of Jakarta as well as listened to the commentary of people voicing their opinions on how these protests reflect the current nature of Islam in Indonesia and where the country is heading next. I also read about Indonesia's stance on the South China Sea conundrum. Lastly, I spent two hours with my language learning partner working on my speaking and listening skills as well as talking about Islam's presence in Indonesia's society. 

Listening back to my artifact, I realized that my tone is very unnatural and my accent is nowhere as good as native speakers. However, the words and the sentence flowed well and sounded somewhat natural. Although the beginning of the artifact started well, I could not find a way to bridge the introductions with the farewells. I believe that this will become better as my vocabulary and my fluency of the language increases. 

For my week 4 and 5 goals, I believe that I achieved them to a working knowledge. These goals were a little bit advanced for me, especially week 5's goals. However, with the help of Minkyung, I got it straight and learned how to be humble, something of significant importance in the Korean culture. The online lectures helped in a way, but were too formalized. It was difficult to tie everything into a natural and flowing conversation. Since the video only shows a certain scenarios, it was hard for me to learn when to use the words and sentences.

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Family values and respect in the family is extremely important in the Korean culture. Sons and daughters usually speak in "Nopinmal" (a style of speaking directed to people with higher respect-level) to their parents although some do not. Also, the father of any family is more respected than the mother, although this has been changing more recently. For example, when I eat with my grandparents, no one eats until our grandfather takes the first bite of his dish. Also, in Korea, divorces are very frowned-upon compared to America. I don't know any Korean friends whose parents are divorced but a lot of my non-Korean friends' parents are separated. Up until the 1970's, most Korean marriages were arranged and Koreans have a unique style of wedding called the traditional Korean wedding. Koreans who get married these days usually take part in both the typical wedding ceremony and the traditional Korean wedding. Lastly, in the Korean family household, the first son is usually more valued than the other children. I know this from experience because I am a first child. 

There are not too many differences with attitudes about time in Korea compared to that of America or any other country. One difference is counting one's age in Korea. When you are born in Korea, you are one years old instead of starting at zero. That is why I am one year older in Korea compared to my age in America. Specifically with time, Koreans do not have any special sayings like "quarter to ten" or "one and a half hours". There is simply just one way of saying the current time, how much time is left, what time to meet, etc. For dates, Koreans use the format of DD/MM/YYYY unlike America. Additionally, there are two different calendars in Korea. One is not used by millenials at all but for everyone older, they use that calendar to refer to their birthdays. For example, my father's birth date is 6/22 in the common calendar. But his birth date in the old calendar is some date in April and that is when my family celebrates his birthdate. 

For my culture project, I am going to do it on the history of the Korean presidency. Due to the recent US elections with two very controversial candidates, I gained an interest in politics. Also, the current Korean president is mixed up with a lot of controversies and this sparked my interest in Korean politics as well. I want to explore the history of the Korean presidency and how the nation was ruled after it became an independent country after Japan's control. I'm going to research the history of each president in Korea since Rhee Syng-man all the way up to the current president, Park Geun Hye. I want to learn which presidents did what, who was popular/unpopular, and how they came to power, etc. Knowing how your home country was/is being run is important to know, just as how I should be interested in the presidency of the country that I am living in right now.

The Korean writing system is very unique and is not similar to any other language in the world or even in Asia. It is a language with very few number of alphabets and when you ask a lot of Koreans, they will say that a particular Korean word looks like how it sounds like. There are exactly 14 consonants and 10 vowels. These consonants and vowels can be combined to form different words.

Additionally, the Korean writing system is interesting in the fact that one letter (that contains at least one consonant and a vowel) has one syllable. Unlike English, where one word can have multiple syllables, Korean words can only have one syllable. Also, the Korean writing system is fairly new as it was invented by King Sejong in the 1400's. Even though I mentioned that the Korean language is not similar to other languages, it has a lot of derivations from the Chinese language and some Japanese words as well.

My understanding of the Korean language vastly improved the past couple of weeks. Thanks to my self-directed language 110 teacher, Minkyung, I was able to learn more on not just the Korean language itself but the culture as well. I consider myself an Americanized Korean now and I have almost no knowledge of the current state of Korea in terms of culture, politics, new vocabulary, entertainment, etc. Studying with my 110 professor has helped me keep track and “catch up to date” about Korea. For example, I learned a lot about the Korean educational system. I learned that in Korea, students have to basically decide their major in high school and when applying to colleges, they can only take the “Korean SATs” once. Aside from that, Korean students study extremely hard in high school and receive much more freedom in college. Additionally, I learned that Koreans are even more self-insecure about their image than I originally thought they were. Not only does your physical appearance matter when applying to jobs, students have fun insulting each other about each other’s appearances a lot. This explains the high rate of plastic surgery in Korea, especially among the females. Another important subject area that I gained a lot of knowledge in is Korean politics. Korea is going through an extremely difficult and strange scandal right now with their current president, Park Geun Hye. It was revealed that she was taking part of giving highly classified information to a close friend of hers who was found to be a Shaman. Although this is an extremely unique and serious case, there have been numerous political scandals and stories of corruption in the Korean government in the past.

Regarding my learning process of the Korean language, I believe I got better at grammar and spelling, areas that I lacked in before. Twice a week, I meet with my 110 professor and do grammar exercises and even spelling-bees that improve my writing skills. In addition, I have learned so many new words that I have never known before. I came to America after only finishing the second grade in Korea. This means my level of Korean is that of a second-grader. I learned a lot of difficult vocabulary and even “trendy” words that are used commonly in Korea at the moment. These “trendy” words are usually abbreviations of two to as many as five words that are used to describe an individual, situation, or anything for that matter. I greatly improved in my communicative competence as I practice having conversations with my fellow classmate, Jin. I also noticed that I call my parents a lot more often to utilize the skills that I have learned in Korean. In order to further improve my communicative competence, I am going to speak in Korean a lot more often with my Korean friends I have in school and in church. I will also continue to keep up with current events, especially the stories unfolding in the government regarding the president which interests me. 

For the past few months, I learned a lot of new words in Korean. I especially focused on learning new trendy words that a lot of the youth and young adults use in Korea. Unlike in America, where "trendy" words can be seen as slangs, in Korea, these words are utilized in so many ways and are sometimes preferred over other words that may describe the same meaning. 

I learned these words through researching online and looking at forums on popular Korean websites. Because I can read Korean, I know when I see a strange word that I have never seen before. When this happens, I look for the definition or meaning of the "trendy vocab". One goal that I have in learning these words is to use them when I study abroad in Korea next semester. This way, I can understand what the Korean natives are talking about and relate to the context of their conversations.

Languages usually "die" when countries conquer other countries. Additionally, languages can go extinct when a prominent language is simply more useful than a particular country's original language (for example, Mandarin and English is used globally now). One country that continues to preserve its original language is Korea.

Korea has been victim to multiple invasions by neighboring countries for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. In fact, the Chinese language has a huge influence on the Korean language but after King Sejong created the Korean alphabet, it started to sway away from Chinese origins of writing. And in the 1900's, Korea was invaded by Japan, a country that was trying to turn Korea into a Japanese speaking nation. Even my grandparents have Japanese names and were taught Japanese in elementary school until they surrendered in WWII. Although Mandarin has been increasing its influence all over the globe, I don't believe that the Korean language will "die" anytime soon.

The Korean language has a very interesting history behind it. Although Koreans spoke in Korean for a long time, the writings were in Chinese characters. For example, this is similar to a hypothetical case of English speaking countries writing in another language, yet speaking in English. The Korean alphabet was created by King Sejong in 1444. Since then, there have been a lot of improvements and it is known as one of the easiest languages to learn.

Knowing this history of the relationship of the Chinese characters in the Korean language can help anyone learn Korean faster. There are a lot of difficult vocabulary words that are based off of Chinese words. These words are called "han-ja". Knowing some of these Chinese characters will help understand these words better. 

Although I am not an international student, I experienced a culture shock when my family and I first immigrated to the United States from South Korea. The biggest culture shock for me was getting used to a new language and food. Even though my parents cooked a lot of Korean food at home, in school, I had to get used to new "American" foods like traditional American breakfast and strange dishes like mozzarella sticks. Food is a huge part of any culture and getting used to American food was not easy in the beginning.

Before coming to the US, I did not know a lot of English. I took English in an academy my parents put me through but nothing stuck with me when I immigrated to the states. I had to learn a whole new language just by going through the motions in elementary school and every day life. Thankfully, the elementary school I attended had a great ESL program and there were a lot of Korean-Americans who helped me get to the place I am now.

Turkish words is quite different English one, and Korean of course. When I memorize some English words and Chinese words, I used some relatedness to make my memorize easy. But Turkish, I cannot find any common things with Korean or English, so I just got the words and kept forgetting about it. I just learned about basic expression and number or color things it is quite confusing sometimes. So I just used media to improve my memorizing skills. In youtube there are bunch or videos teaching and repeating some basic Turkish things. Actually I think that is for baby, but still it works good on me. When I memorize English words in high school, I tried to use all of my sense organ. So I keep saying the word, write down the word, and seeing the word at the same time. And I made my own test for words and tried to answer that. If I got wrong, I just focused on the wrong one. By doing this, I could prolong my memory of the words. The best way is just to use and speak more. Although it is quite hard, I will just keep practicing. It will be helpful. 

Language is major part of a country's culture. I think if a country loose their language they are also loosing their big parts of culture. According to video, a lot of languages disappear right now. There are rare people use that language so that's the major reason language disappear. Because of using another language with their original language, they just get used to use another languages like English, sometimes, they are forgetting their original language slowly. Using language like English is more convenient and they think they do not have to use the language any more. I think the starting point of language extinction is using their original language with another more international languages. Luckily or not, Korea is using official language Korean, and everybody just used that when they first learn how to speak. In Korea history Japan force for Korean people not to use Korean and to speak Japanese, but they failed. If they made it Korea still could be one of Japan's colony.