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For week 14, we talked about the present continuous tense. Mirwais said there is no distinction between the present and present continuous in Afghan Farsi, while in Iranian Farsi, a speaker might add a word like "allon" or "hala" (which mean "now") to indicate that something is happening in the present continuous tense. We watched another episode of the Afghan drama that we had been viewing. We also took a quiz on what we had learned for the past few weeks, which took up our second meeting of the week.

We also met for one day on the last week, week 15. Here, we reviewed what we had learned in the last semester and what would be on the final. Mirwais also taught us the name for some fruits (meeveh) and vegetables (sabzeh). 

I am attaching my learning plan with the self-evaluation box filled out.

SDLC 110 Learning Plan Farsi Self-Evaluated

Attached below is a copy of my learning plan with the self-assessment column filled:

SDLC 111 Learning Plan (with Self-Assessment)

The picture above is the Hebrew alphabet in Script.  I have been working on learning and becoming proficient at writing the alphabet in Script.  

Below (upside down) is my monologue in Hebrew print and Hebrew script.  I wrote the monologue first in print to stay proficient and print and then in script.  I am still getting some letters confused, but the more I work with script the better I shall become. 

http://youtu.be/DhY0-IIh-Pk

   So what I did was answer a bunch of questions (that give a short biography of myself) and then ask those questions.  

As I have mentioned in previous, I believe that one of the best aspects of the self-directed language courses is that you not only expose yourself to a language but also to the culture and people that speak it. Admittedly, being the son of two Afghans, I already had exposure to Afghan culture and the Dari language well before I stared taking the self-directed Dari course. However, that is not to say that this last semester was not a learning experience, in fact it was a tremendous one. Working with my language partner Mirwais, who is in his mid-20s and came to teach Dari at Richmond--from Afghanistan--as a Fulbright Scholar, offered me perspective on the current state of Afghanistan. Unlike the media, Mirwais was able to offer an unfiltered view of life in Afghanistan and where the nation stands today. 

In addition, I learned a lot more about Afghan culture and society through my own research; my cultural project was especially informative in this regard. For my cultural project, I delved into the topics of Islam, extremism and modernism in Afghanistan. I gained a lot of insight into how Islam grew as a religion in Afghanistan--which took much longer than I would have guessed--and how it has shaped the nation. I also developed an understanding for the contrast between rural and urban parts of Afghanistan; this contrast was evident in modernism and religion. From 1940s to early 70s, Afghanistan was a relatively modern nation and views on Islam were not as strict as they are today. On the other hand, much of Afghanistan's modernism was found in urban areas, as opposed to rural regions. 

This semester, I also examined how Afghanistan moved away from its modern culture. Ultimately, I concluded that war coupled with extremism is what pushed the nation off the bright path it was on during its era of modernity. From the Soviet invasion to multiple, consecutive civil wars, the turmoil-filled situation in Afghanistan allowed the Taliban, an extremist insurgent group, come to power. The Taliban emphasized a strict adherence to Islam and Sharia law that was never present in Afghanistan, and also denounced by Muslim scholars across the world. Unfortunately, the Taliban's terror tactics allowed the group to have a presence that still resonates in Afghanistan today. 

Truthfully, I learned a lot more about Afghan culture and its history during the past several months. I am now better able to understand why Afghan culture is the way it is today and how it has deviated from its past. 

Attached below are a copy of the slides from my cultural project:

From Modernity to Extremism: The Taliban's Affect on Afghanistan

Unfortunately, a PowerPoint was too large to attach, so the file is in PDF format. As a result, you cannot listen to the NPR interview in slide 9 through the PDF, but you can listen to it here. 

Below is a brief synopsis of my project:

Islam has a role in Afghanistan for centuries, with the religion first being introduced in the region the country currently occupies in 642. It several centuries for Islam to fully spread across Afghanistan, where it still remains the predominantly Muslim; in fact, over 99% of the nation identifies as Muslim. Moreover, adding to Islam's influence in the nation, it serves as Afghanistan's state religion.

Jumping ahead to the mid-20th century, Afghanistan, for the time, was a very modern nation. Women were not wearing burqas, education was a possibility for men and women, the nation was not engaged in any wars (foreign or civil) and political freedom was rampant. However, rural areas of the country maintained conservative beliefs relative to the modernity seen in urban areas and cities such as Kabul.

Although it seemed that Afghanistan was on a path to progress, war tarnished everything the country was positioning itself towards. The Soviet's invasion of Afghanistan left the nation in unfavorable state and even after the Soviets' departure, civil warfare soon ensued in Afghanistan.

The turmoil in Afghanistan allowed an extremist insurgent group, the Taliban, to gain power. The Taliban strictly adhered to Sharia law, and used violence and terror to ensure all Afghans adhered. The Taliban's action led to the suppression of women's rights, education and any type of freedom found in the modern world.  

Although the Taliban's reign in government only lasted from 1996 to 2001, the insurgent group still maintains a presence. The next few years will be crucial in determining if the Taliban's presence heightens to its previous level or diminishes. With both new leadership and U.S. troop withdrawal slated for 2014, the next few years will shape Afghanistan path towards its golden age of during the 1940s to 1970s.

The sources for my project were:

Historical Sketch of Buddhism and Islam in Afghanistan [Alexander Berzin] 

Country Profile: Afghanistan [Library of Congress]

Once Upon a Time in Afghanistan... [Foreign Policy]

Afghanistan's Untold Story: Stability, Tourists, Miniskirts [CNN]

Taliban Causes Most Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan, U.N. Says [NYT]

How Anti-Islam Movie Helps the Taliban [The Daily Beast]

Photos Of Afghanistan's Past: Modernity Lost [NPR]

I used 27 words in my project, which were the following:

Susan Jelanizada

Dr. Grove

SDLC 105

Reflection Paper # 3

Learning a new language is one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had, at the same time, it is also one of the most challenging experiences.

I have always been a lover of languages different from my own, and I have been a quick language learner. My purpose in SDLC 105 was to expand on my learning skills of a new language and know more about the culture and traditions of different people around the world specifically my target language “Urdu”. Also, spending some years in Pakistan as an immigrant I never had the chance to learn and know their culture professionally. Therefore my goal in SDLC 105 was to keep and maintain my language skills in Urdu from my past experience, and gain more knowledge about the culture.  More specifically, I wanted to be able to navigate between the past, present, and future tenses with relative ease, learn and understand about Urdu poetry and understand short sentences and conversations well.

            These goals were very realistic and easily attainable for me, because I had past experience with speaking and hearing Urdu language. The course covered material ranging from grammatical constructions and syntactic structures to cultural aspects of the language, such as music, poetry, and regional social norms of Urdu-speaking countries like Pakistan and India.  In the process of taking SDLC 105 I was able to have a structured schedule of language learning.  I can say with confidence that I am now able to navigate with greater ease throughout the various tenses in Urdu, and I learned a tremendous amount of new vocabulary words, I can read and understand short and simple poems and understand conversations very well. 

Another aspect of SDLC 105 I was really pleased with was the cultural presentations.  Through these presentations, I had the opportunity to research and learn more about different cultures and traditions such as Hindi, Gujarati and Bosnian. I was able to learn more about the respective languages and cultures my fellow classmates were learning.  It was very interesting to see the existing patterns inherent in many languages and to see how cultural tendencies tend to overlap throughout many cultures.  I also enjoyed the required readings for the course.  While some of them were a bit technical and hard to understand (i.e. How the Brain Handles Language), I found it very helpful to learn about the theories underlying language studies and about the various strategies for approaching language learning.  The information provided through this texts are not common knowledge and I might not have sought out such information on my own if it were not for this course.            

            Overall, I am extremely pleased with the progress I made in SDLC 105.  I have accomplished the goals I stated in the beginning of this course.  I was able to practice my speaking as much as I wanted with my language partner, and gained more information about the culture that most likely would not have achieved without the structure provided by both SDLC 105 and 110.  In the process, I gained a wealth of knowledge about languages and cultures I previously had very little contact with.  Thank you Dr. Grove and Professor Scinicariello for your assistance in this process.

Please find attached a list of my "I can statements"

Thanks, 

Susan%20Jelanizada-what%20i%20can.docx

Shir and I were not able to meet during Week 13 because I was gone for Thanksgiving Break and with family for the whole week.  I was able to bring my notes and flashcards with me down to Disney and review my vocabulary with my brother.

Week 14:  Shir and I have gotten together many times to review Hebrew.  We are both working on a volunteer project together so as we drive to the various spots for interviews, we speak Hebrew.  In addition, we had a Shakshoukah party this past Friday night with Alex and Amit and a few other friends from Hillel.   While we cooked the Shakshoukah, we spoke in Hebrew and Shir would ask me for the various ingredients in Hebrew.  We had Israeli music in the background and it was a great time to have some hands on cultural experiences in Richmond.  Below are some pictures from our Shakshoukah party :)  

This post covers Weeks 11 and 13, since I do not meet with Mirwais during Week 12 as it was Thanksgiving.I spent some more time working with tenses in Dari. I reviewed my skills with the present tense and move along with other tenses. I worked with tenses in the past, future, past continuous and present continuous forms, in addition to the present. 

1. past - زمان گزشته

2. present - زمان حال

3. future - زمان آینده

4. past continuous - زمان گزشته خارى 

5. present continuous - زمان حال خارى  

Examples for each tense:

1. I ate food. - .من غزا خوردم

2. I am eating food. - .من غزا میخورم

3. I will eat food tomorrow. - .من فردا غزا میخورم

4. I was eating food. - .من غزا میخورم.

5. I am eating now. - .من حال غزا میخقرم

It is interesting to take note that the verb becomes irregular in the past continuous, when it is not irregular in the past. Another aspect of note with the past continuous is that its sentence structure is essentially the same as the present tense.

My final presentation on weddings in Pakistan and the concept of dowry in that culture is attached.

Susan J

Weddings in Pakistan

One of my learning goals for the semester was to get better at reading through material that was not too lengthy or too advanced for me to understand such as short stories, poems and proverbs. Luckily, during my meetings with my Mirwais I was exposed to all three. There was one particular short story that we read earlier in the semester that I had some challenge with. With this artifact I decided to type up the short story (this ended up taking a lot longer than I imagined),  so I could practice my typing skills in Dari, and then translate the story back into English. Here it is:

  در جستجوي دايناسور    

تولد سارا بود و او يك بازي جديد كامپيوتري بنام جستجوي دايناسور را هديه گرفته

است.

سارا به خودش گفت: اين خيلي عالي است، اين همان چيزي است كه مي خواستم.

سارا  تصميم گرفت، بازي جديدش را امتحان كند. او كامپيوتر را روشن كرد و سي دي را داخل آن گذاشت و به صفحه مانيتور نگاه كرد. علامت عجيبي روي صفحه ظاهر شد.     

سارا روي آن علامت كليك كرد و يكدفعه اتفاق عجيبي افتاد. نورررررررر

سارا پرسيد: من كجا هستم؟

پسركي كه كنارش ايستاده بود، گفت: توي بازي جستجوي دايناسور هستي. 

ما بايد استخوانهاي قديمي دايناسور را پيدا كنيم.

سارا يك استخوان طلائي كه در زير بوته ها پنهان بود را برداشت و گفت: يكي اينجاست. 

پسرك فرياد زد: واي، نه. تو نبايد استخوانهاي طلائي را برمي داشتي، حالا بايد مواظب دايناسور باشيم.

ناگهان آنها صدائي را از پشت سرشان شنيدند و زمين زير پايشان به لرزه در آمد. صداي نعره دايناسور آمد.  

سارا و پسرك دويدند اما دايناسور نزديكتر مي شد. آنها پشت يك بوته پنهان شدند.

سارا پرسيد اگر دايناسور ما را بگيرد چه مي شود. پسرك گفت: بايد  بازي را از اول شروع كنيم سارا فرياد زد، نگاه كن ، دايناسور اينجاست. ناگهان او دوباره همان علامت عجيب را كه قبلا روي كامپيوترش بود، را ديد. آنرا لمس كرد و دوباره...

نورررررررر

سارا در خانه اش، كنار كامپيوتر نشسته بود.او به بازي نگاه كرد و گفت: باي باي دايناسور، شايد من بازي ديگري بكنم.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Search of Dinosaurs

It was Sara’s birthday and she received a computer game called Searching for Dinosaurs as a gift.

Sara happily said, “This is excellent, this is what I wanted.”

Sara had the desire to play the game. She turned on the computer and placed the CD in and looked at the monitor. Something then appeared.

Sara clicked on a symbol and suddenly something occurred. Light

Sara asked herself, “Where am I?”

There was a boy next to her, who said, “You are in the game Searching for Dinosaurs.”

We must find the bones of dinosaurs.

Sara found a bone near some bushes, saying, “One is here.”

The boy yelled, “No. You took a gold bone from the dinosaur, now we have to be careful.”

They then heard a noise behind them while the ground was shaking. A dinosaur screamed.

Sarah and the boy ran but the dinosaur was coming closer. They ran into a bush.

Sarah asked if there was a way to escape the dinosaur. The boy answered, “Start the game over, again.” Sarah saw a symbol on the computer from before. She clicked it…

Light

At her house, Sarah was on the computer, looking at the game and said, “Bye, bye dinosaur, maybe I will play another time.”

My previous cultural posts have focused the role of religion in Afghanistan's past. Surely, it is a lot easier to write about the past for numerous reasons; the history has already occurred, I am able to gather stories and input from relatives who grew up and used to live in Afghanistan. However, the future of Afghanistan is pressing issue for the nation that will most likely impact the role of subjects such as  religion, education and government. It will also be interesting to see if Afghanistan continues the progressive trend it once embarked on; more of which can be read in my previous blog post. Therefore, I thought it would be worthwhile to spend time researching and discussing the future outlook for Afghanistan. 

One important situation to keep watch on is the United States' presence in Afghanistan. In recent weeks, the U.S. government has been working on strategies in Afghanistan after 2014; which is when Afghan forces are expected to takeover the U.S.-led effort. Current planning suggests retaining 10,000 U.S. troops within the nation (for reference, there are roughly 66,000 right now); more in regards to the U.S. strategy can be read in this New York Times article. It is difficult to predict what will happen, but it will be interesting to see how security in Afghanistan will be altered when the nation's military takes control of the situation. A tremendous issue for the Afghan military is that it lacks funding and does not have a large number of troops compared with other military forces stationed in the nation, such as the U.S. 

A lot will hinge on the success of Afghan forces after 2014. There is certainly a large amount of speculation over what exactly what might happen. In an article for Foreign Policy, Haseeb Humayoon remarked, "Alarmists about Afghanistan's future paint two likely scenarios: civil war, or the forceful return of the Taliban." Certainly, Humayoon highlights that some question whether the Afghan military will actually be able to keep Afghanistan safe. But one has to questions whether civil war or the Taliban serve a threat to Afghanistan. That said, Afghanistan is nation home to millions that have lived through both a civil war and have seen the rise of the Taliban. It would be shocking to see a population so affected by both experiences able to allow both to occur, yet again. 

Another important factor, also in 2014, is Afghanistan's presidential election; which the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan has set for April 5, 2014. Afghanistan will undergo a change in leadership as Hamid Karzai cannot run for reelection in accords with the nation's constitution. Two major issues of the last election, held in 2009, were security and fraud, and it is still difficult to tell whether those two issues will remain or not after five years time. With a change in military slated and elections upcoming, it will be interesting to see how things play out in Afghanistan in the coming years.

When I saw that this article "Why Bilinguals Are Smarter" on the syllabus, I was more than excited to read it because bilingualism always interested me. I am a psychology major and I am writing a research proposal on the effects of being bilingual versus monolingual. I agree with the article that it is true that being bilingual has many positive effects to the brain and its development. People who know more than one language seem to have a faster processing speed than a person who solely speaks one language. Brain development starts at a young age so learning an additional language can really the development and can improve and help intelligence. I learned to speak English when I came here in the 4th grade. It didn't seem too difficult of a task to learn English because I spent the majority of my time around my peers and teachers at school so I was getting constant re-enforcement. I am very happy to have become bilingual. Sometimes it can be a little frustrating though because the way my brain works is that when I am talking or reading, I translate everything into Mongolian and if I don't know what a certain words means in Mongolian then I can not fully understand the English meaning. This is also a good thing because then I am able to learn both languages more as time passes because I like to know what the word means in both languages. To conclude, knowing another language has definitely been beneficial and I am eager to learn more in my target language. 

Weeks 12 and 13:

For language task 9: I worked on learning how to state daily tasks such as the things I did that day. I started off by learning to ask "What did you do today?" I was able to incorporate time with each activity that I completed. I can now state how to say things like I woke up at 7 am, I ate breakfast, I took a nap, I did homework, I went to class, and etc. I thought it was important to be able to talk about daily activities in order to hold a conversation with another person. Although it may not be much, it is still a good start. To ask what did you do today, it is "Onul muo haetsoyo?"

The structure of constructing these sentences is as follows... Onul + time + ae + activity. To say I woke up at 7 am, I would say "Onul achim ilgob shi ae il o natsoyo". 

More examples: Onul...

shawo haetsoyo - to shower

bab ul mogotsoyo - to eat

yi ppal ul ddakatsoyo - to brush teeth

chingudul yirang shopping haetsoyo - to go shopping with my friends

suk jae haetsoyo - to do homework

nat jam ul jatsoyo - to take a nap

suop dul o gatsoyo - to go to class

jam ul jatsoyo - to go to bed 

The 13th week was during thanksgiving break so we were not able to meet but I reviewed everything I have learned so far.

Attached is my 4th artifact of telling time and being able to write it.

Artifact #4

This week was Thanksgiving, so I did not have my usual weekly meetings with Mirwais. I have attached a picture of my final artifact, which was a personal one, a birthday card to a family member. I wrote it to my khaleh Mozhdeh (my mother's sister). The card says:

Dear Khaleh Mozhdeh,

Happy birthday! I miss you a lot. I hope to see you very soon. I love you. 

Layla

This week, Mirwais taught us the imperfect (past continuous) form of conjugating a verb. It is conjugated exactly the same as the past tense, which is regular, but with the prefix "mi-" added. So if you wanted to say that you lived in a dorm while at college, you would say "man dar khobgah zendegi mikardam." I thought it was interesting how the imperfect is completely regular in Farsi. In the language I had previously studied, French, the imperfect tense (imparfait) can be irregular and frustrating. 

During weeks 9 and 10, I worked with transforming verbs into the present tense. The interesting thing about Dari is that most verbs in the present tense are irregular. For instance, take the verb حوردن (khordan) which means to eat. In the past tense you would only alter the suffix of the verb to match the noun (i.e., I, you, we, s/he, they). So a sentence would like something below: 

I ate good food yesterday. - .نن دروز خوب غزا خوردم. (Maan derose khob reza khordum.)

The ending changes from ن- to م- because the action is performed by the noun I. 

Yet when using the present tense, the verb changes completely because it is irregular:

I am eating good food. - .من خوب غزا مىخورم. (Maan khob reza mekhorum.) 

As you can see above, the prefix -مى is added before the verb and the letter د (which produces a "d" sound) is removed.

I also learned some new vocabulary from a short story that Mirwais asked us to translate into English.

Some of the words I learned were:

university - دانشگل

future - آىنده

village - قرىه

begin - شروع

travel - سفر

slowly - آهسته

This reading was rather intriguing and interested me to find more articles on languages that are currently on the verge of "dying". I remember my ESL teacher in the 4th grade who my family has a close relationship with always told us to preserve our language. No matter what new languages we learn, we must never forget our own. She always told me to do some reading in Mongolian and speak it at home all the time. My little sister was born here so technically she is bilingual but now she has difficulty speaking and understanding Mongolian because she spends the majority of her time in school conversing in English. When she comes home she barely speaks Mongolian and if does it's always really basic conversations. We try to teach her as much as we can but of course it's never enough. One by one we are losing people who speak a native language. This is why it is imperative that we try our best to preserve languages. Languages carry so much history and knowledge therefore it should be kept alive. It's important to not lose our roots and to pass our language on to as many people as possible.

One of the goals in my learning plan was to learn more vocabulary related to what I am studying at school. I am a business administration major with a concentration in finance, and I am also minoring in philosophy. Therefore, I thought it would be nice to highlight some of the new vocabulary I learned. I typed some of the words I have learned below (note that in parenthesis I have attempted to write the words to depict how they would be pronounced).

vocabulary - لوات (loghat)

Business / Finance Vocabulary:

firm / company / business - شرکت (sherkat)

business operation - مامله (mamela)

work - کار (kar)

cash - نقت (nakht)

trade / commerce - تجارت (tejaarat)

exchange - مادله (mobadela)

trader - تاجر (tajer) , سوداگر (sawdager)

transaction - مغامله (momela)

profit - فاىده (fayda)

economy - اقتساد (eqtesad)

purchase - خرىدن (kharidan), مىخرم (mehkharom)

advertisement - اعلان تجارتى (elaneh tejarati)

industry - صنهت (sonat)

income - درامد (daramad)

stockholder - ساحب سهم (saheb sahm)

to acquire - گرفتن (gereftan), میگیرم (meegyrom)

bank - بانک (bahnk)

office - دفتر (daftar)

contract - قرارداد (qarardaad)

commercial - تجارتى (tejaarati)

Philosophy Vocabulary:

philosophy - فلسفه (philosophy)

life - زندگى (zendagi)

thought - فکر (feker)

human - انسان (ensan)

existence - وجود (wojuud)

brain - مگهز (maghaz)

reality - حقیقت (haqiqat)

body - جان (jan)

soul - روح (roh)

wisdom - عقل (aqel)

reason - دلیل (dalil)