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In the reading and my point of view, most languages go extinct because their speakers are absorbed by a dominant language or cultural group. Colonial power may change the dominant language in the area thus make the original language go extinct. There are political as well as financial reasons behind language extinction. Just like the introduction of a new language, trade and exploration bring culture and ways of living to various places, and political power, including war, changes the local culture substantially. In my research online, I found out that Hebrew was the only language ever to be revived from extinction. There are 7,000 languages spoken in the world, and half are seen as at high risk of dying out in the coming century. Therefore, there is a very small possibility that a language could revive from dead.

Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases not mutually intelligible, language varieties, forming the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The similarities in pronunciation resemble the Korean language, and the written language shows contacts with the Japanese language. Since the pronunciation is similar between Korean and Chinese, it makes it easier for me to memorize Korean vocabulary since I could partially guess the meaning of the words. The Korean language develops their own written form in the 15^th century, King Sejong the Great personally developed an alphabetic featural writing system known today as Hangul. The written language highly related to the pronunciation which makes the language unique.

Last week my language tutor (Atul) and I went to an Indian grocery store together. I recognized some of the foods from my visits to India, but many more were new! He took me first to the snacks aisle, and showed me his favorite kinds of “biscuits”. Indian biscuits are like British biscuits: small, crispy, slightly-sweet cookies that are meant to be enjoyed with hot tea. He then showed me the savory snacks that his city is famous for. They had so many different kinds!! Most of them were some variant of crispy little pieces of grain- or potato-dough, at varying levels of spiciness, and are generally called “chaat” चाट meaning “snacks”. I also noted with amusement that they had a “diet” version which was more like puffed rice than a delicious fried snack.

Next we looked at the spices – oh, India and its beloved spices! I picked up some powdered turmeric (a recent health fad in America) and fennel seeds. Fennel seeds are used in India with large pieces of white sugar as an after-meal mouth freshener. It can also contain brightly-colored pieces of confection or confection-covered fennel. I think it is called Mukhwas in Hindi. I first experienced fennel seed mouth freshener at a small café overlooking a lake in the foothills of the Himalayas, and when I tasted a little bit of the fennel after I got home from the store this week, I was instantly transported back to that beautiful place.

Next we looked at the cooking supplies and I bought some of that food known all around the world – 3-minute noodles! My favorite brand of Indian noodles is called Maggi, and I bought those and also a new kind that had noodles made of oats. Atul and I also looked at the refrigerated section, and I bought a huge 5-pound bucket of Desi-style plain whole-milk yogurt! Because it is such an everyday item in Indian kitchens, it is much cheaper at the Indian store than at an American grocery store, and it is also so much more delicious and natural without the gelatin/pectin that American brands add to thicken it up.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time. It was good to see Indian foods from the perspective of someone outside the Dehli/UP area, since Atul is from Rajistan. Attached is a picture of most of the food I bought! As you can see, my kitty was also interested - she is a great student of Indian culture. ;-)

I started learning to write in Hindi my first week of learning. Actually, the first few weeks were dedicated almost completely to the writing. I much prefer to write Hindi freehand rather than typing because, although I have never tried it, I have heard that the Hindi keyboard is difficult to use, and furthermore that it is difficult to use an English keyboard as a make-do Hindi keyboard. I think it must be because all Hindi consonants have an inherent assumed schwa vowel after them, so if you need to express two consonants together, you have to write a “half consonant” joined to the subsequent “full consonant”. In this way, Hindi combines letters together to form conjunct characters. I am assuming that to inform a computer that you want, for example, a combined H+Ra rather than a separated Ha+Ra, it must take extra steps. For this reason, most internet casual communication in Hindi is written in the English script. However, for my purposes, I am still learning the script since most Hindi textbooks are written in Hindi script with no transliteration.

I have started to see some syntactical and morphological patterns in Hindi. I know that all verbs have suffixes that determine number, gender, and formality. For example

Kharna - to eat

Kharti - I [fem.] eat

Kharta - I [masc.] eat

Kharte - You [formal, nongendered] eat

etc.

Fun side note: Kharna is also the noun for food so “Main kharna kharti hun” Means “I eat food” and “Kharna kharna” means “to eat food”.

Hindi also has some surprising syntax rules. The language really loves to express relationships between things, and there are some common little prepositions that signify those relationships. So I can’t just say, I am behind the table, I have to say something like “I (in relationship to the table) am behind. In Hindi that would be “Main table ke peeche hun.” Similarly, to express that I am American I say “Main America se hun.” which literally means “I America from am.”

Knowing about these grammar rules definitely does give me some clues when I try to read a script. From verb endings and pronouns alone I can figure out that in “vah mujhe kitaab deti hai", it is a single female doing the action [deti hai], and the I am the object of that action [mujhe]. The sentence means “she gives me the book”.

For my second cultural post, I would love to talk about my involvement with Bollywood Jhatkas, the Bollywood fusion dance group on campus!

Bollywood is a well-known phenomenon of Indian culture. Although I used to dislike Bollywood movies (and music and dance) because I thought it was excessively overdramatic and unrealistic, I am coming around to an appreciation for it. I still think it is unrealistic, but now I think it is fun also. For the past couple of months, I have been to weekly dance practices with Bollywood Jhatkas and we have performed three times already! The first performance was at Celebration of dance, the second was at an international night at a local elementary school, and the third was at the Richmond Fire, Flour, and Fork festival as part of their world food and culture event.

Here is a picture of of our ending pose from the Celebration of Dance performance! I am second "guy" from the left [we had an uneven number of guys and girls so I offered to dance the guy's part]. And if anyone is interested - please come to our Spring Showcase next semester!

This past week I had goals of learning a handful a new verbs and listening to Mango lessons 7-10. I did meet with Atul and he started explaining some more verbs to me. Hindi verbs do not always match one-to-one with English, so it is a little more complicated than simply memorizing new words for equivalent meanings. I also listening to Mango lessons 7-10 as planned. They are teaching me more useful language as the lessons get into more conversational skills. I am progressing past having my default conversation as "Namaste, mera naam Kelly. Aap kese hain? Aa mosem bahut achha hai. Namaste." ("Hello, my name is Kelly. How are you? The weather is very nice today. Goodbye.")

I also had a specific goal this week to start to formulate sentences describing the locations of items. With Atul's help, I was able to describe items in my room. I still need lots of practice to be able to use the language competently, but it is nice to be able to form some simple sentences. Hindi syntax is very different from English, so it takes some getting use to (and some deciphering). For example, instead of saying "My book is above the bed." I might say "mera kitaab mera bed se uper hai" which would translate to something like "My book, my bed, in relationship to, above, is."

In this coming week, I have the following goals:

• Complete Mango lessons 11-20
• Start using verbs to describe my daily life and/or what people are doing (present simple and present continuous tenses) For example, "Every day I wake up. I drive to school. I study psychology and languages. I eat --- for lunch. I go to work. I go to sleep." and/or "I am studying now. He is drinking water. Are you drinking water? What are you eating? What are you doing? Why are you doing that?"
• Make a memrise account with vocabulary words
• Evaluate my skills and goals on a competency framework

Last week we started focusing on more specific vocabulary. We talked about Korean food and different dishes. I think planning out specific topics that I want to learn about each week has really helped. Since we were only taking about food, I was able to successfully learn the difference between different dishes. If I learn about food items separately, it can get confusing because a lot of them don't have literal translations in English; for example, a lot of the dishes would just translate to noodles -- but because we went over all the different types and used pictures, now I can differentiate on my own. My language partner and I are also planning to go to a traditional Korean restaurant, with other native speakers, to observe and learn about the cultural significance of the different types of food. I'm also looking forward to seeing the different dining etiquettes in Korean societies -- which is something my language partner and I talked about last week.

    The learning activity that I planned was to teach someone the different levels of education in Korean. This was fairly easy because of the connection between beginning, middle, and end that related to the different types of education. For example, beginning in Korean is “cho,” which relates to elementary school because it is the “beginning school.” Therefore, elementary school in Korean is “cho-dong hak-gyo.” The person that I taught was able to make this connection pretty easily and apply this concept to the other types of schools.

    A challenge we ran into was when we were trying to understand the term “college” because it was “dae hak-gyo,” but the prefix is not one of the terms that means beginning, middle, and end. Therefore, this was a little harder to remember, but we were still able to do it! We may have run into some obstacles during this activity, but overall, it was pretty simple to understand because of the connections between the prefixes. This was interesting to learn because the prefixes also helped me to learn these terms, so I am glad that I was able to apply this concept to help someone else learn these words, too!

    One of my goals in my Interpersonal Communication section is to learn about the cultural aspects of South Korea’s bird, tree, flower, animal, and etc. I wanted to learn about these items because I am aware of these types of symbols that are relevant to the U.S., which is why I was curious to see what these were for South Korea.

    Here are some of the symbols of South Korea. The national tree is the pine tree, which in Korean is “so-namu,” and the second part is tree in Korean. The national flower is the “moo-goong-hwa,” which is a Hibiscus syriacus aka the Korean rose. The official bird is the magpie, while the national animal itself is a little complicated. There is a myth and a longer story that is associated with the national animal, which I can expand on through a future cultural post!

    In comparison, the national tree, flower, and bird of the U.S. is the oak tree, rose, and bald eagle, respectively. The most similar symbol is the national flower because it seems to both be in the category of roses, which is really interesting to learn! The other two symbols are not that similar because there are two completely different types of trees and birds. Overall, it was really cool to look at these similarities and differences between the symbols!

     My learning activity is to teach someone the different types of educational backgrounds because since I am in college right now, these terms relate to our current university career and how to identify them in Korean.

     I will first introduce the topic of beginning, middle, and end because these words have similar prefixes to the different types of education. Then, I will discuss the levels of education, such as elementary, middle, and high school. Then, we will review the connections between the two before we try to apply these concepts by identifying which education level applies to us and close family/friends.

Languages go extinct when a more dominant language entire a language group and start taking over little by little in a long process. When a language dies, no one in the entire planet grew up with the language as a first language. As popular languages such as Spanish and English grow more and more, we see the death or the process of death of a language. As people try to learn the dominant language to communicate with the rest of the world and for convenience, the original language is in the process of dying as people are speaking less and less. When a language dies, not only does the language die, but the culture within the language also dies. Things like proverbs, jokes, slangs, sayings, etc. They all disappear when a language dies. Languages can be preserved in many different ways. Couple ways is to make songs and dances to preserve the language and the culture. Other ways can be recordings or dictionaries made by the linguists to preserve the language. Dead languages can be brought back to life just like how Siletz clawed back to life. Through songs, dances, and other methods of preserving the language, languages can be brought back to life once it dies.

In the cases like the Siletz, with very few remaining people who actually understand their native language, the threat of a language going extinct is real in ways that I could never have imagined with my target language Korean. According to the New York Times article, the current status of the Siletz language was not a sudden extinction, but rather a long process of systemic discrimination that discouraged the use of it. The U.S. government forced the Siletz out of their land, "lumping" them together with various other Native American tribes that spoke a variety of different languages, which not only caused these other tribes' languages to go extinct, but negatively effected the Siletz language itself. The government gave overwhelming pressure to children of the Siletz tribe by forcing them to go to schools that, in the process of trying to "assimilate" them, essentially banned the use of the Siletz language. Over generations, this kind of pressure gradually resulted in fewer people who could speak the language and thus pass it down, until the current situation with the Siletz tribe became reality; of the five people who can speak the language, not one of them grew up with it as a first language. The NYT article showed how crucial of a role a linguist plays in preserving a language like Siletz through this example and various others. The online dictionary that is mentioned several times throughout the article was a vital part of preventing extinction for the Siletz language, and its creation was largely due to a linguist who helped the Siletz tribe. By introducing this technology, and helping to spread awareness about it to other regions of the world, people were able to take interest in the language and it created some social power to then implement other strategies for keeping the language alive (e.g. classes in the language at school). While the process of preventing extinction is possible, albeit difficult, the process of "reviving" a dead language is essentially impossible. The fact that a language died means that its use was no longer necessary for any group of people, and thus the complete resurrection of it in a part of society is impossible; there would simply be no incentive for people to want to go through such an arduous process. 

Languages go extinct when the language is no longer passed down by native speakers. Sometimes this is because of globalization and cross-cultural interactions, and sometimes its simply because a small population speak the language and as a result they adapt to using dominant languages that help communicate with the larger population. Dr. Harrison talks about this when we mentions that about 80% of international business uses only three major languages. One of the ways we can prevent languages from going extinct is by recording audio dictionaries -- this helps to achieve the language and pass it down so that future generations have the opportunity to study the language. It is, however, very difficult to revive a dead language. The basic argument behind this being that the language went extinct in the first place because people stopped studying and using the language for a reason -- where it be convenience or displacement. Therefore, in order to revive a language, the certain portion of the population would have to start using a language that no one else understands and lack practical use.

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Languages go extinct when people cease to speak it in daily life whether by the replacement or domination of another more universal language or in combination with the lack of rising generations learning and speaking the language. In the interview with David Harrison, we learned of one of the endangered Native American languages to actually be one of the more common languages. This particular language had previously driven out other Native American languages when several Native American tribes were forced to live in the same space by colonists and due to the advantage of their larger quantity of people that language became the main way of communication between the people. We see languages go extinct due to the convenience of being able to communicate with more people, becoming more obsolete in the fast paced modern world. More universal languages as well as the reluctance or indifference of the next generations to preserve the language and teach it to the next generations also contribute to dying languages. This indifference is aided by social constructs such as school for Native Americans that were intended to stamp out their Native American ways. 

Although universal languages provide more convenience, the death of a language results in the death of a culture full of different perspectives of the world and different ways to describe it. We lose one more way to connect with people on a different level. To prevent this from happening, linguists can help preserve a language by documenting and recording the language. Although, the oral speakers of a language may one day die the written and verbal transcripts can be kept to teach later generations who may revive it. Linguists can also encourage oral speakers of a language to teach the younger generations as well as share the database of language over the internet to those across the world to learn as well. 

In conclusion, although a 'dead' language may never regain the life it once had, there are certainly some parts of it that can be revived through the teaching and sharing of it to the younger generation everywhere. 

Languages go extinct when there aren’t enough people speaking the language to pass it down to their descendents. Then, nobody speaks the language and that language essentially becomes dead, and the culture, such as songs and dances, dies with the language. It’s interesting to see that the elders’ children did not end up inheriting the siletz language, which was the prime example of how the siletz language was at risk of becoming extinct. Linguists can help preserve the language by creating the certain language’s dictionary and spreading the existence of the language throughout the world, such as advertising through the internet, for public exposure.

I believe dead languages can come back to life as long as there are resources about the language and a group that is determined to learn, spread, and pass down the language. Resources, such as songs, dances, stories, and dictionaries, can help the learner know about that language and its culture, which is an important aspect.

How do languages go extinct? Respond to the readings, and reflect on what happens when a language dies? How can linguists help preserve a language? Can a ‘dead’ language ever be brought back to life?

According to David Harrison, there are about 7000 languages, and half is expected to go extinct at a rate of one language every two weeks. Because 80% of the world's population speaks the major languages, which consist of about 84 languages, there are thousands of languages that are on the verge of becoming extinct. There are many reasons why a language can go extinct. One is because the speakers of a certain language are taken in by a dominant language or group. When there are no speakers left, the language is essentially dead. Passing down an obscure language to the next generations becomes difficult and unpredictable especially since children may choose to stick with another language. When a language dies, some aspects of a culture is lost. It is unfortunate to see a language that has ties to one's cultural identity, past, etc. die.

It is possible to help preserve a dying language and even resurrect a dead language. With the help of linguists, an American Indian tribe whose language, Siletz Dee-ni only had 5 speakers left, was able to create a dictionary that helped record and preserve the language. Now, it is being taught until sixth grade at a public charter school in Siletz. 

    One of my learning goals of interpretive listening is to be able to watch and understand a movie in Korean without using subtitles. In order to work on this goal, my learning partner and I watched the Korean movie Along With the Gods 2. I chose this movie because I watched the first movie without subtitles and did fairly well in understanding the story. Therefore, I wanted to challenge myself again by watching part 2 without using subtitles, too.

    This movie is a little difficult to understand fully even with subtitles because it uses vocabulary that is not commonly used. However, I was able to remember the terminology used in the first movie, which allowed me to make connections. I also learned even more vocabulary through the second movie. I also increased my understanding of the topic because of my prior knowledge of watching part 1 of this movie. Overall, this was an interesting movie and it helped me to increase my listening comprehension skills.

    In the future, I can practice this goal by watching more videos and/or movies in Korean without subtitles!

In a world where English is ever-prevalent all over the world – on the internet, on television, in books, in airports, virtually anywhere and everywhere – it is no surprise that less prominent languages can die out under its shadow. Languages spoken by indigenous groups with a very small community of speakers face huge risk of extinction. First and foremost, the amount of people you can speak to and utilize that language with is greatly diminished. If you are forced to use English the majority of the time and rarely get the chance to use your other native language, it will be very hard being immersed in it. In cases like the article mentioned in which Native American children were forced into public schools that “aimed to stamp out native ways and tongues,” generations of Natives are taught to never learn their mother tongue and have incredibly restricted usage.

But there are other factors as well. As discussed by David Harrison, many of these languages’ speakers are elderly. The younger population have not inherited the language from their elders, and the last speakers of the language face the risk of passing away without the language not being passed on.  Even in the case of linguists who want to document these languages so that they do not become extinct, it is difficult being able to communicate with elderly people because of issues with geriatric health, like deafness or hardness of hearing. Without being able to communicate with these speakers, you cannot retrieve the knowledge they can potentially impart. The language is not transmitted and dies out. In addition, younger generations may be impacted by low self-esteem as Harrison also mentioned, thinking English may be a superior language or that their parents’ native language is unworthy of being learned. This again is also connected to what Native American children experienced in their public schools, with their native tongues being forcibly ignored and stamped out.

Linguists can help preserve a language the same way Bud Lane is doing with his online Siletz Dee-ni Talking Dictionary and David Harrison did in his recordings of native languages in Siberia and other indigenous cultures as well. It is important for pieces of language to persevere so they can be picked up again. It is through this record that a dead language can be revived again.

Based upon the readings, it seems as if languages go extinct for two primary reasons. First, as the NYT article notes, many local native languages are under threat because of globalization. The article identifies English, Spanish, and Mandarin as “winners” of this global movement because of their prevalence across knowledge. I would agree with this statement because English is a very prominent language in conducting cross-cultural business. Based on my own experience in business, I’ve observed that firms often seek to hire people who are familiar with either Spanish or Mandarin. As business and communication technology becomes globalized, rather than each culture learning multiple new languages, people come together to seemingly “agree” to learn one dominant language (ex. English). On a smaller scale, it is practical to assume that if smaller, local communities want to trade with larger neighboring powers, they need to learn the languages of the dominant culture. For example, in the case of Malta, a majority of the people communicate in Italian because of the proximity to Sicily, Italy. In addition, English is even considered an official language of the country.

A second reason that languages go extinct is that cultures of people go extinct. For example, this is occurring in the United States with Native American languages. As a result of Native American’s losing dominance over the New World, much of their language has been lost and continues to become critically endangered. The US was once considered the home base of their language, but it has dwindled in correlation with the population of Native Americans. Based on an article I found on National Geographic, Recording a Dying Language (June 2017), 130 of their languages are considered “at risk” and 74 are “critically endangered.”

The extinction of language is very significant because it carries along with it the extinction of a culture. Through language, we are able to learn more about the values, practices, and histories of the community that speaks the language. Languages reflect unique ways of perceiving the world around us and influence the way we interpret reality in the present. For example, many languages refer to colors and emotions in unique ways. The lack, or specificity, of describing these aspects could say a lot about a culture. Another prominent feature that differentiates the English language from many others is the insistent gendering of nouns and adjectives. All of these small subtleties are very important in interpreting the social/cultural nuances that differentiate cultures.

After watching the video and reading the article, I noticed that creating digital dictionaries with auditory clips for endangered languages is an extremely important method for preservation. The video notes that many nearly extinct languages exist only orally. In transcribing the language and providing it to people digitally, linguists create a permanent record and allow more people to have access to the information. I assume it is very unusual and challenging for “dead” languages to be revived, unless there is a specific reason for doing so. Although there have been instances in which a language is revived, I think the majority of languages will remain dormant if they go extinct. As discussed at the beginning of this post, globalization is an extremely prominent, inevitable force blending together cultures of people and their languages.

In relation to my study of Maltese, I think this discussion topic is extremely relevant. Although Maltese is the language that reflects the culture of Malta, English and Italian are prominently spoken throughout the country. Most notably, tourism in Malta has facilitated the use of the two alternative languages, in place of the traditional Malti. I chose to study the Maltese language, Malti, because I think it is extremely unique and reflective of Malta’s complex history and rich cultural tradition. If it were to die off, I think it would be extremely unfortunate because this language, in particular, reflects the development of a very unique society.