Blogs

I thought the article for this week, "Why Bilinguals are Smarter," was fascinating. I really wish someone had shown this to my parents eighteen years ago! My parents subscribed to the view stated at the beginning of the article, that "a second language [is] an interference, cognitively speaking, that hinder[s] a child’s academic and intellectual development." According to the research in the article, this is actually the opposite of the truth. My parents thought that since I would be growing up in an English-speaking country, it made more sense for me to grow up speaking English perfectly rather than both English and Farsi but not as well. Of course, now they've heard all of the academic opinions on the benefits of bilingualism, and regret not teaching me their native language as a child. By the time they decided to start teaching me, I was in elementary school and resentful of all things Iranian, and refused to learn. I'm glad that I've decided to go back and learn Farsi -- maybe I'll still be able to reap some of the benefits! 

I definitely think that being multilingual, or even just knowing parts of other languages, can help one be more mentally aware of other viewpoints. The more we are exposed to, the more we can learn.

This week we worked on asking and answering questions. We learned question words like "chee" (what), chera (why), chand (how many), kee (who), and digar (else). Using these words, Mirwais taught us how to ask questions, like "what do you like to do?", and "how much was your car?" He had us practice dialogues with each other, seeing how long we could ask each other questions and answer them. 

We also watched another episode of the Afghan drama "Raaz Hai een Khana" (Secrets in the House) and I tried to see if I could understand it. While I couldn't understand everything, I did get the main idea of what was happening.

Weeks 10 and 11:

Going along with the goals on my learning plan and the language tasks stated on the SDLC 110 Calendar, I learned about food and different phrases involving food. The word food in Korean is "umshik". I learned phrases such as "Did you eat yet?""What do you want to eat?" and "I want to eat ____." In addition, I learned simple words like breakfast (achim), lunch (jomshim) and dinner (jonyok). Along with Brigid's reenforcement of new words and phrases, I used an app on my iPad called "Learn Korean" which helped teach me how to pronounce each word dealing with different types of food. It has the English and Korean version of each word and when I click on the word it speaks it to me.

As for language task 8, I chose to watch a scene from my favorite Korean drama called "Dream high" and try to understand more of what was being said. Brigid and I chose a scene where these two girls are auditioning to get into a prestigious art school. Both girls sang a song together and my job was to try to understand the song. To prepare for this, I read the lyrics of the song and translated words that I was not familiar with. We found the video on youtube and watched the clip together. This was rather a difficult task because the song lyrics were hard to understand and keep up with but it was still a good experience. This helped to realize what I needed to work on. When they were singing it just seemed like all the words were blending in together which made it harder for to distinguish what the words were. One important phrase I learned from this song was to say "I have a dream" and "I believe in that dream". I thought these two phrases were useful to know in the future: "Nan kikum yi yitseo yo" and "Ge kkum ul midoyo." 

Overall, in the past two weeks along with the help of my partner and language learning apps, I completed these two language tasks.

Attached is a screen shot of the app I was using just to give you an idea of what I was talking about and my third artifact of introduction of myself and my family. I wrote out a description of each family member in Korean to show my progress learning how to write.

Artifact #3

To reflect on culture shock, I will talk about my experience of coming to America in November 2001 right after the devastating 9/11 event occurred. As you all know, I am from Mongolia and I came to the U.S when I was 11. Before this, I have never been out of the country or been exposed to anyone of a different race. Coming to America and transitioning was definitely a challenge. I did not speak the language so I could not communicate with anyone other than my parents. I remember one specific thing that everybody I walked past kept either waving at me or greeting me. I thought this was the weirdest thing because we all know to not talk to a stranger. I thought to myself, I do not know these people so why are they saying hello to me? Also, people holding the door open for others was also a shock to me. I guess in Mongolia, everybody minded their own and went about their business without having a care for the people surrounding them. This took a lot of getting used to but it was very manageable. Once I started school here in the 4th grade, it was an even bigger culture shock because everybody looked different and dressed differently. Teachers were very trustworthy, kind, and caring. Schooling in Mongolia was not like that so this caught me really off guard. In the end, I came to appreciate everything this country had to offer me. My life would have been very different if I had not immigrated here. 

Considering the focus of my cultural project is on religion in Afghanistan, I thought it would be interesting to explore secularism or at least an era when the role of Islam was not overwhelming (i.e., during the Taliban regime). Moreover, I also wanted to examine the country's past modernity; that is not to say that there is no semblance of modernity in Afghanistan today, but still is in somewhat of  a rebuilding state. I also think what drew to learning more about Afghan modernity were the stories I heard from my parents who had grown up in the nation during the 1950s, '60s and '70s. From my perspective, I feel that the media often portrays Afghans as living a backwards society; however, such is not the case and certainly was not when my parents grew up in the nation.

I think one of aspect of Afghanistan's history that has not been fully understood is the role and rights of women in the nation. People assume that the religious beliefs present within Afghanistan having been holding women back for centuries. On the other hand, there was a time when women in Afghanistan had close to, if not the same, opportunities as men. For instance, in recent times, most people see photographs of Afghan women fully covered in burqas or chadris, as pictured here. From my perspective, it seems that most people assume something like the chadri is something that supports the notion that Afghanistan is a nation composed of extremist Muslims; which could not be further from the truth. In fact, the chadri was not worn until the Taliban gained prominence in Afghanistan. Women were forced to wear the chadri by the Taliban and they obliged, since fighting back likely lead to death. Interestingly, in the '50, '60, '70s and even the '80s, it would be close to impossible to find a woman wearing a chadri, especially in major cities such as Kabul. It was not uncommon to see women in modern, Western-like, clothing, as seen in this picture.

Another subject that is often frustrating to hear regards education in Afghanistan. Many people assume that Islam forbids or limits educational opportunities, yet it is the actions of extremist groups (e.g., the Taliban) that create such horrendous conditions. Women in Afghanistan not only had the opportunity to go to school, but many often went on to pursue higher education; like my mother and other family members. In an article for Foreign Policy, Mohammad Qayoumi, who grew up in Afghanistan during the '50s and '60s, noted, "A half-century ago, Afghan women pursued careers in medicine; men and women mingled casually at movie theaters and university campuses in Kabul." Certainly, women and men once had the same opportunities for an education, as seen in this photo of a science class that shows men and women sitting beside one another working in a lab. 

Of course, this is all not to say that Islam did not have an influence in Afghanistan during some its more progressive times. Islam has had a role in the nation for centuries, and only recently has that role drastically shaped the nation's health and modernity.

I think it's really important to keep native languages alive, to preserve the cultural connections to the past. I had a conversation with my mother recently about how the older generations should teach the younger generations the native language. She doesn't think it's important -- she believes that it's better for the younger generation to assimilate into the majority culture. I disagree with her though, and this article demonstrates why. For history's sake, it's important to maintain language. Certain aspects of culture and tradition can only be kept alive through language, since culture and language are so closely entwined. The Siletz people, through their dictionary, are keeping the heritage of their ancestors alive, even when they have been threatened with oblivion so many times before. I really liked the story about the linguistics graduate student who is picking up Siletz. It shows that the language and culture of a group, no matter how small, can be shared with others and enrich their lives, even if they aren't connected to that culture through ethnic heritage, and demonstrates why keeping more languages alive enriches the world as well.

Language and culture are inextricably intertwined – language does not exist by itself in a vacuum. Learning a language involves learning a culture as well, because by interacting with speakers of a certain language, one is interacting with members of a certain culture as well. For me, the culture of Iran, where my target language is primarily spoken, is familiar, if not well understood. By learning Persian, I hope to become more comfortable with the culture I grew up with.

Though I was raised by Iranian parents, my lack of proficiency in the Persian language prevented me from fully embracing and understanding my family’s culture. As a native English speaker, I was always much more comfortable with Western culture and preferred it to Iranian culture because I lacked the language skills to understand the culture I was raised in. Through my studies of French at school, I often felt that I would feel more comfortable living in France than Iran, despite my ethnicity and heritage. My French language skills gave me the power to understand a culture that I had no other connection to better than the one generations of my family had been immersed in.

It is possible to learn language without learning the culture, but outside the classroom, understanding culture is necessary to apply the language skills learned. Culture is what, in my experience, makes language three-dimensional. Conversely, it is impossible to learn about a region’s culture without learning at least some of its language. In describing a cultural phenomenon, it is necessary to use some words from the language spoken in that culture. For example, Iranians celebrate the Iranian New Year, or Norooz. Norooz cannot be effectively explained without using words in Persian to describe its customs and traditions, such as the haft sin table setting that contains seven items all starting with the letter ‘s’ to symbolize the new year. Something global can be described in multiple languages, but something specific to a certain culture requires the native language to explain it.

Through studying Persian, I have come to feel less culturally ignorant than before. The culture that was supposed to be my own, although it did not feel like it before, has become less foreign to me. Even though I am still learning the basics of my target language, I feel more connected to my relatives and the culture they are a part of. The power language has to connect people and facilitate communication is evident when examined through the lens of culture, and has personally enlightened me. 

This week, we learned how to conjugate verbs in the present tense. The present tense is very irregular in Farsi -- the stem of the verbs changes, unlike in the past tense. To conjugate a verb in the present tense, the same system of removing the "-an" from the infinitive and putting a suffix depending on the subject is used. However, the stem that the suffix is attached to is not the same as the infinitive. For the verb "raftan," the stem changes to "mirav-". (All verbs in the present tense have the suffix -mi attached). For the verb "sohbat kardan," the stem changes to "mikon-". For the verb "didan," the stem changes to "mibin-". This makes the present tense very difficult, as all these stems must be memorized, and thus we spent a lot of time on it. 

We also learned the future tense at the same time. The future tense is the same as the present tense, but words like "tomorrow" (farda) or "future" (ayndah) may be used to indicate the speaker is talking about the future.

I recorded a third Voki artifact, introducing my family. My dialogue translates as, "I'm going to talk about my family. My father's name is Masoud. My mother's name is Jaleh. My father is 57 years old and my mother is 56 years old. My father is an engineer and my mother is a homemaker. They live in New Jersey. They are from Iran. My father is from the city of Shiraz and my mother is from the city of Abadan. I have two aunts (mother's sisters). Their names are Jila and Mozhdeh. I have one uncle (mother's brother). His name is Amir. I have two aunts (father's sisters). Their names are Shahlah and Soraya. I have one uncle (father's brother). His name is Saeid. They are all from Iran, but they live in Iran, Sweden, America, and England."

The learning activities for weeks 7 and 8 were quite different. The tasks for both weeks were split between learning terms in regards to family and asking questions in Dari. 

There are a few interesting things about familial terms in Dari. For instance the word for uncle differs if that uncle is maternal or paternal. Likewise, there are multiple terms for the word cousin (that are also differentiated by gender), there is one term for each of the following: cousin (paternal uncle), cousin (maternal uncle), cousin (paternal aunt) and cousin (maternal aunt). Additionally, there is no distinction between the words niece and nephew, but there is a distinction if the niece or nephew is your brother's or sister's child. 

Below are some words related to family:

father - پدر

mother - مادر

brother - برادر

sister - خواهر

uncle (paternal) - کاکا

uncle (maternal) - ماما

aunt (paternal) - عمه

aunt (maternal) - خاله

cousin (male / paternal uncle) - پسر کاکا

cousin (female / paternal uncle) - دختر کاکا

cousin (male / maternal uncle) - پسر ماما

cousin (female / maternal uncle) - دختر ماما

cousin (male / paternal aunt) - پسر عمه

cousin (female / paternal aunt) - دختر عمه

cousin (male / maternal aunt) - پسر خاله

cousin (female / maternal aunt) - دختر خاله

grandfather - پدر کلان

grandmother - مادر کلان

grandchild - نراسه

As I mentioned before, some of the two weeks was spent on asking questions in Dari. Below are a list of common terms used in asking questions:

Why . . . ? - چدا 

What kind / type . . . ? - چى نرع

What else . . . ? - دىگر چى

How much / many . . . ? - چند

Who . . . ? - کى

After creating my learning activity, I decided to put it to use and have someone attempt to learn the personal pronouns in Dari. I used the activity with a friend who is learning Arabic since the Dari alphabet is quite similar to the one for Arabic. He remarked that it was not too difficult; although it was troublesome writing personal pronouns he knew in Arabic in a different language that had a similar alphabet. In hindsight, I think the activity was effective for someone who knows the alphabet. The only realistic thing I would expect someone to be able to do from the activity, without knowing the language, is be able to pronounce the words. However, I do think I could have created a more difficult activity for someone who is just beginning to learn Dari or may already know a little bit of Arabic. 

Although I wasn't able to view the "Culture Shock" video, due to technical difficulties, I still wanted to write about the experience of culture shock and how it has impacted my life. When I was in second grade, my parents and I moved from Wollongong, Australia, to Tucson, Arizona. Though Australia and the United States are very similar countries, there was still a significant enough difference for me to experience culture shock as a young child.

I remember some traumatic (for a seven-year-old) events happening when I first started school in America. In elementary school, the teacher would write sentences that were grammatically incorrect on the board and we would have to correct the grammar by going up to the board. On the first day I started school, I volunteered to correct the sentence at the board. I vividly remember telling my teacher that the sentence needed a "full stop" at the end. The teacher shook her head and replied that a period was necessary. Having no idea what a period once, I indignantly repeated that, no, the sentence needed a full stop, but the teacher said I was wrong. Frustrated over the communication barrier and convinced that I was right, I went back to my seat almost in tears. Other second-grade tragedies included failing a spelling test that included words like "favorite" and "color," which I knew were spelled with a "u," struggling with slang like being asked to "scoot over," and being teased on the playground for my weird accent, which I eventually lost to blend in with my classmates. 

Though these experiences upset me as a child, in retrospect they were mostly harmless, and insignificant compared to the culture shock that others face. First, even though I was in a new country, my new peers spoke basically the same language, minus pronunciation and some vocabulary. I was also only seven years old, and had plenty of time to adapt to my new country. I didn't have to struggle to learn a new language or a radically different culture, but even then I had some trouble at first. I can hardly imagine the hardships someone must encounter coming from a completely different country, not speaking the language or knowing the culture at all, and usually alone, like my mom when she left Iran and went to England at eighteen by herself, barely speaking English. I have so much respect and awe for people like her (and the people in the video, even though I could not view it) for being able to accomplish so much.

Creating a learning activity to teach somebody anything in Dari is pretty difficult considering the complexity of language. Therefore, I thought it was probably best to work with something that is a little easy to learn--assuming you already know the alphabet. That said, I chose to create a learning activity using the personal pronouns. 

من = I

• من sounds like maan
• Composed of two characters: م (meem) and ن (noon)
• Join both characters together, remember from right-to-left, to form من

تو = you (singular/informal)

• تو sounds like tu (almost like the number two or you in Spanish)
• Composed of two characters: ت (te) and و (wow)
• Join both characters together to form تو

شما = you (plural/formal)

• شما sounds like shehma
• Composed of three characters: ش (sheen), م (meem) and ا (alef)
• Join the characters together to form شما

او = (s)he/it

• او sounds like oh
• Composed of two characters: ا (alef) and و (wow)
• Join both characters together to form او

آنها = they

• آنها sounds like aanha
• Composed of four characters: آ (alef), ن (noon), ه (hey) and ا (alef)
• Join the characters together to form آنها

ما = we

• ما sounds like maa
• Composed of two characters: م (meem) and ا (alef)
• Join the characters together to form ما

This week's reading on "cultural competence" was very informative. Being cognizant of the differences between cultures is key to succeeding in today's globalizing society, and key to assimilating into the target language's culture. By being stereotypical Americans who are ignorant of other's cultures, we insult other people, making them feel as if we perceive our culture as superior. Part of learning a language is learning the social cues, norms, and behaviors that are inherent in the culture, so that we can function properly in society -- there is more to it than memorizing grammatical structures and vocabulary. This goes beyond the classroom and into the real world of Iran, where colloquial Persian is spoke and a person speaking the formal Persian learned in school would be laughed at. Sociolinguistic competence is hard to achieve, even in a native language -- the lack of politeness seen every day in society is an example of this. So being able to achieve it in the second language takes a lot of time and effort, but is ultimately very rewarding for the learner. Being able to integrate into the new society is a fulfilling experience. The better we can understand a new society and culture, the more we can appreciate and better understand our first. 

Weeks 8 and 9:

I completed tasks 5 and 6 which were to learn to tell/ask about time and to learn the numbers and dates. I had already introduced myself to numbers previously so I reviewed those numbers. There are different ways to say the numbers for the hour and the minutes. She said the numbers out loud first and I had to repeat them after her. Then I learned the structure of telling time. The structure: AM (ojeon)/PM (ohoo), hour #  + (shi), and minutes # + (poon). For example, 3:43am would be read as ojeon sae shi sa shib sam poon. This task can be combined with task 6 of learning the numbers because now I can count from 1-99. Learning the structure of telling time was pretty simple once I memorized the numbers. I also learned how to ask about time which is "Jigum myot shi aeyo?". Now I know how to tell someone what time it is and ask a person what time it is. As for telling what day it is,  Brigid and I learned how to write it and say it. I am familiar with the alphabet so I can slowly but effectively put the letters together and read. After you state what day it is, you always add "yo-il" at the end of each day. To ask what day it is.. you can say "O nul un myot il yi aeyo?"

[The days of the week = Wol, hwa, soo, mok, kum, tto, il]

Months: il wol, yi wol, sam wol, sa wol, o wol, yook wol, chil wol, pal wol, gu wol, shib wol, shibil wol, shib yi wol.

Learning activity: Since I just learned how to tell time, I decided to teach my roommate how to say the time in Korean. In order to do this, I created a worksheet with a big clock drawn on it with the pronunciations of the numbers for the hours 1-12 written around the circle. I also wrote the numbers for the minutes 1-10 on the bottom. Once you know how to say 1-10 you can figure out how to say 11-60 pretty easily. I also wrote the format/structure for telling time as I mentioned above. I gave her an example of a time and told her the time according to the format I've provided for her. She said it was fairly easy as long as she was pronouncing it correctly. I gave her a couple of different times varying between am/pm and low/high minutes but she was able to successfully put the numbers and words together to give me the correct time. I would say this was a pretty effective lesson because I taught someone else what I am learning which re-enforced my skills of telling the time. My teacher from middle school once told me that teaching someone else is an effective way to teach yourself. 

Because of the Muslim holiday Eid, my meetings with my language partner were canceled. So this week, I focused more on teaching myself using the website www.easypersian.com. I worked on using the word “ra,” which signifies whether something is an object in a sentence. Mirwais had mentioned “ra” a few times but it had always confused me, so using the website was a good way to clarify its meaning and solidify my use of it. I also learned how to say something is “mine” or “his”, like “my pencil” or “his book”.

The chapter on communicative competence had many new information that is useful to a new language learner like everyone in this class. I think it's good to know that we need basic language skills in order to interact with others in social situations and face to face communications. The cognitive academic language proficiency or (CALP) refers to formal academic learning which is used to discuss the language proficiency levels of students who are in the process of acquiring a new language. This seems to fit us very well because what we are all trying to do is teach ourselves a new language with the help of a partner to re-enforce some things. I'm sure all of us took on this class to become somewhat proficient in the languages that we chose to teach ourselves. The four subcategories of communicative competence also are very helpful to understand how to efficiently communicate with others. These four are grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competence. This is important because we must be able to use grammatically correct forms of words, construct full meaningful sentences/phrases, use appropriate social meaning, and to manipulate language to meet communicative goals. Overall, this read was informative and definitely helpful in our language learning process.

I truly believe that I have been making progress in my speaking, reading and writing ability in Dari. When I think back to my language ability Dari when I first started taking the language last spring semester compared to where I am now, there is a tremendous difference. That said, I have always felt that my speaking ability is significantly better than my ability to read and write in Dari; probably since I have spent some time informally speaking the language before actually taking a course in it. As a result, I wanted to spend this semester with a little more added focus on reading and writing. Ironically, while I do feel my reading and writing have improved, I believe that my attempts at getting better at reading and writing have made my speaking ability even better. I assume that this is due to the fact that I usually read aloud whatever I am writing or reading; thus, improving my speaking ability given the constant practice. In regard to my learning plan, I think I should be able to cover a lot of what I had set forth for myself. Honestly, I believe that the only reason I will be accomplish most my learning goals is because I have made them realistic and did not try to add anything I thought was unreasonable. However, looking back at my learning plan, I think given the amount of things that I have listed I might not be able to cover all of goals I had in mind. I do not think this will be too large of an issued, but I do want to make sure that I still keep up with all of the reading and writing related activities in my learning plan as those are the two areas I know I need the most improvement in.

History of the Persian Language

History presentation notes

Attached is my second cultural presentation on the history of the Persian language, and my notes for the presentation.

The beginning of this week was a much-needed fall break! I got to go home and see my parents for the first time since move-in. As native Farsi speakers from Iran, they were really impressed with how much I had learned in a few short weeks. We practiced speaking in Farsi often while I was home for the weekend. My dad showed me an online Iranian newspaper and had me read the headlines to him, something I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do at the start of the semester. My parents gave me some children’s books and a small Farsi textbook that I will definitely take advantage of.

This week, my language partner taught us some common prepositions in Farsi, like the words for on, below, outside, inside, etc. For homework, we had to write simple sentences using the prepositions we had learned, one for each preposition.

We also continued reading and translating the short story “The Search for the Dinosaurs”. We practiced dictation or transcribing – the other students in the class would read a word from the text, and we would have to write it in Farsi on the whiteboard.

We watched a short Afghan cartoon about a man who drove recklessly, to practice our listening and comprehension skills. I definitely had trouble understanding most of what was going on, but I was able to get the general idea of the cartoon, which was good. 

While I am still utilizing the learning plan, I tend to focus more on what Mirwais is teaching us at the time. Since he is a certified Persian instructor, not the typical contemporary college student that other language partners are, I trust what he is teaching us. I will still use the learning plan for my personal goals, however. I am tending to use Rosetta Stone less, so I'm revising my goal to just finishing the first two lessons of the first unit for this semester. I am still using easypersian.com, but only to clarify any questions I have about the grammar Mirwais is teaching. For the rest of the semester, I'm going to keep focusing on what Mirwais is teaching in class, and mastering those topics.

By doing the presentation on the history of the Persian language, I feel that I have learned a lot and also was able to teach the people in my class as well. Most people think that Persian is a distant Middle Eastern language, closely related to Arabic, but this is actually very inaccurate. Persian is an Indo-European language, and is actually much more closely related to English than to Arabic, despite sharing the same script. It is part of the westernmost branch of the Indo-European language family, along with languages like Sanskrit. 

I talked with my dad after doing the presentation and shared with him what I had learned. It was really interesting to see how it had all been taught in schools in Iran to him -- the way the Persian language was able to still persist in the face of the Muslim conquest of Iran, all because of an epic book, the Shahnameh. This fact is a source of national pride to Iranians, showing how knowing the history of a language can help understand its culture. 

Throughout Persian's history, it has been known in the Middle East as the language of literature and culture, and its poetry is another source of national pride. Persian's history in literature is still celebrated today across Iran, and famous Iranian poets like Rumi and Hafez are still studied in schools and read in homes across the country. 

By learning the history of the Iranian language, I can see how it has evolved over time, to the different dialects spoken by my language partner Mirwais from Afghanistan and my parents from Iran.