ObjectivesOccupationsOrdinal NumbersPlurals3 more verbs5 adjectivesEvaluationsBe able to ask classmates and language instructor what their parent's or sibling's occupations areBe able to ask what day is the first day of the month, the second, the third etc up to 7Be able to ask for multiple pieces of fruit in order to demonstrate that I know the pluralsBe able to incorporate the newly learned verbs and adjectives into a conversation with a student asking who they are and what they have done that day.
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Last week I felt like I accomplished all of my goals set forth and I am progressing at a good pace. I feel like at this point I could carry on a basic introductory conversation with people on the street and understand basic words and phrases used during a conversation or a news broadcast. However, I am realizing that while I'm learning a lot of vocabulary I also need to work more on the grammar, learning how to construct sentences and learning more verbs so I can carry on more conversations.Probably the best part of the past week was when Mona brought her mom to class because I learned a lot about what life was like in Iran along with culture and history, particularly about the Iranian Revolution. Mona's mother also asked us questions in Farsi or held simple dialogues with Mona, which made me realize how much Farsi I could actually understand even if I may not have been able to respond to everything in perfect Farsi. I really like how Mona brings in other Farsi speakers into class because its nice to hear the different ways (accent and and speed) they speak and write. It is also helpful for learning more about the culture and different people's views of what life is like in Iran. This week I have to do my first artifact so I am hoping that my dialogue conversation will flow smoothly and I can demonstrate how much I have learned.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on February 25, 2009 at 3:26pm
This past week I was working heavily with verbs & the perfect tense. I found when reading 'De Telegraaf' and similar sources, that the biggest inhibiting factor to my overall understanding was verb comprehension. As it was the point in my book that they were teaching perfect tense & past participles (which Jan says constitutes the majority of completed action statements in Dutch), I decided to use an auxiliary source for important Dutch verbs in order to boost my overall understanding. I learned about 40 verbs all together that will come up frequently. I also learned their stems, and how to conjugate them. My book hadn't really gone over verbs in much detail, so the benefits on my overall comprehension of Dutch has been very noticeable already.In terms of the questions from the reading:1. Something that is true for all natural languages i.e. all languages have nouns & verbs2. Verbs3. Since there is a lot of variation to the amount & usage of verbs across different languages4. Development of nasal vowels5. Infants fist sounds will be the most common sounds in their native language6. analytic - little inflection; synthetic - much inflection; agglutinative - elements arranged loosely together7. VO places verb before object, whereas OV places object before verb8. Because they link clauses9. They are placed in a contrasting arrangement10. The consistent ordering of words in a particular fashion11.12. Each language requires that the markers be place in a particular way in accordance with clause order13. VSO, OSV, & SVO14. They are effected by nominal modifiers15. In both, relative clauses are formed with implied relative pronouns16. The genitive typically appeared before the noun much more frequently17. They fall after the noun, unless they're being modified by an adverbial expression18. It's mainly noticeable in the structure of folk talesREVIEW PROBLEM #1This seems to be relatively in line with their respective language groupings. Being analytic, English has little inflection, and that is certainly visible in the formation of it's past participle in this example. Meanwhile, Greek is synthetic which means that it has much inflection. Again, this is evident in the forms that it takes in conjugation, which are generally much more complex than in the examples from English & Japanese. Finally, Japanese is agglutinative, which means elements loosely arranged together. This is viewable in the simple examples provided in the question, and my Japanese-speaking friends offered a few more examples to emphasize this point.
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Posted by Will Cragin on February 24, 2009 at 7:08pm
Week 4 Review - This past week I succeeded in reaching most of my goals. However, I did not learn numbers 20-100. I did however learn 5 new verbs, 5 new adjectives, fruits, and continued to review the alphabet. The highlight of the week was when Mona's mom came into class on Tuesday. She is a professor and was informative in answering our questions about Iran. She spoke at length about the Iranian revolution, what the anniversary means for Iranians, and how most Iranians view Americans and our policies to Iran. It was quite fascinating and gave me good insight into false notions of Iranian society that are widespread throughout American media.Resources - BBC Farsi, Farsi Textbook, Class notes, handouts, EasyPersian, language partner for speaking practice.Week 5 goals - This week I would like to continue to review the alphabet, learn basic clothes, weather, a few more verbs in present tense, possessives, and basic sentence structure. I am also going to be looking into a potential trip to Iran in May with our drill instructor, which hopefully will give me more motivation to study Farsi. I will also continue to listen to BBC Farsi and attempt to read sentences of articles to gauge my progress in reading Farsi script.Resources - BBC Farsi, Farsi Textbook, Class notes, handouts, EasyPersian, language partner for speaking practice.
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 24, 2009 at 2:34pm
This past week I feel like I made a lot of progress in understanding the way the Persian language works. I've started to get a much better handle on how to say more complicated sentences with multiple verbs and phrases. There are some similarities to Spanish (like the use of que vs. keh, which conveniently both sound and are used almost the same) that have helped a lot. This has helped a lot as I now feel that I am much more able to explain things that I would want to say in normal conversation. It has been hard to find much information about a lot of this in the resources I have been using, though there is some. Because of this, I have been having to do a lot of experimentation and trying to determine the way certain types of sentences are constructed from things that I read. I've found that I often make mistakes, but that I am at least able to say things in a way that would be understood even though it is wrong.One thing I've noticed is that a lot of the things I try to say should be said in the subjunctive mood instead of the way I would usually say them. I remember learning the subjunctive in Spanish, but I don't remember how it is really used. I think it is similar to Farsi, so I'm planning to review it's use in Spanish hoping that it will help me learn it's proper usage in Farsi. Overall I think I made a lot of progress in what I'm able to say, even though a lot of it is not exactly the correct way to say it. Having made significant progress in what I'm able to say, I want to work on listening comprehension a lot more. It still takes me too long to think sentence structure too to be able to follow much when listening, so I need to continue to focus on this.This week's goals:1. Try to learn when the subjunctive should be used- review Spanish subjunctive to hopefully remember when it is used and try to relate it to Farsi- try to identify it's use in things that I read to determine in what circumstances it should be used- practice using it in contexts where I know it should be used2. Learn vocab relating to government and politics- I've learned some from reading news, but I usually look it up but don't necessarily remember it- read news articles and try to pick out vocabulary for government positions, offices, titles, etc.- make a list of vocab encountered and study it3. Work on prepositions relating timing/order of events (i.e. during, then, after, sometimes, etc.)- practice using them to relate events to become more familiar and comfortable with their usage- describe events that happen during the day and future plans- try to incorporate them into the artifact I am working on writing a description of my family and life4. Improve listening comprehension- use Rosetta Stone more at the higher levels to reduce the time delay between hearing something and figuring out what it means- try to find a relatively short interview to listen to extensively; this has been somewhat tedious and frustrating, so I have usually just been listening and picking up on as much as possible but it would be more productive to pause and repeat each sentence to try to understand as much as I can
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 24, 2009 at 12:28pm
Problems for Review:The fact that English uses 3 words to express "I have seen" indicates that it is an analytic language. The only inflection used is the -n added to see. Greek seems to repeat the root of the verb to indicate the perfect tense and use a suffix to indicate the subject in both dedorka and bebeka. Japanese doesn't seem to differentiate between the simple past tense and the present perfect, with mimashita meaning both have seen and saw (like in question #4). There also seems to be no indication of the subject, like in English, so it is not as synthetic as Greek is.Think about the languages you know and the language you are studying in MLC 110 and answer the following: (a) How would these languages, particularly the language your are studying, be described in linguistic terms? (b) What characteristics of the language you are studying are the most important for you to know about? (c) What characteristics of the language will you focus on to meet your own goals?(a) Morphologically, Persian is a very synthetic language. It is also a SOV language. I have read that in colloquial spoken Persian it is not uncommon for word order to be rearranged and sentences to take a SVO form. Adjectives follow nouns while it seems to use prepositions rather than adpositions, which is uncommon for OV languages. Spanish is much more similar to English, but it also has some similarities to Persian in noun-adjective relationships and the ways that phrases are linked together.(b) Syntax is probably the most important aspect of Persian for me to learn about. I've gotten much better at it, but I am still pretty slow at discerning the meaning of a spoken sentence even if I know all the words in it. Suffixes are also a really important part of the language. Words can often have multiple suffixes attached to them, which makes it important to understand both their meaning and to recognize their presence to identify the root word.(c) I am going to focus a lot on the way that compound sentences and verbs are structured and linked together. I've found that their are a lot of similarities to Spanish, and also English, in this regard but I still haven't learned most of the little nuances.
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I finished my first artifact and have proofed it. I am going to finish my second artifact which is weather report in Farsi. I will be recording myself giving a weekly weather report. This artifact will address the spoken section of my learning plan.
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Posted by Becky Walker on February 23, 2009 at 3:29pm
The incorporation of the Modern Persian CDs has been useful, as I get to select the content as opposed to only guessing at the BBC content through the few English sounding words. The CDs are also in shorter segments, which allows me to repeat them as I wish--sometimes aiming for understanding, while others attempting to recreate the sentence on my own while properly pronouncing it.Though I learned how to form the present progressive, I still have to figure out when it is used. It seems that it can be used in lieu of the future tense on occasion, while replacing the present in others. This is something that I need to further investigate.Reviewing the first few weeks was also helpful, as it reminded me that I am building on what I already know, as opposed to moving past it. I am now trying to include a review in all of my future objectives.Overall, this week I didn't try to tackle all too much material, as I was focusing on fully understanding everything that I had learned while finding ways to combine them--I now practice using the numbers by counting off my exercises in farsi while I am at the gym.
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Posted by Becky Walker on February 22, 2009 at 2:37pm
1. Farsi is considered a subject-object-verb language. It contains 6 vowels, and the 23 consonants include the labial (m, p, v, f, b), alveolar (n, t, d, s, z, rr, r, l) , postaveolar (ch, jh), palatal (j), velar (n, k, g, x, y), uvular (g), and glottal sounds (h). Farsi has few prefixes, but relies heavily on suffixes.Spanish is also considered a SOV language, which has helped my understanding of Farsi, as I can relate it to another language in which I have already begun learning. However, Spanish appears to have a more flexible concept of the SOV structure than Farsi, as subjects are not always necessary in Spanish. Spanish is synthetic as it uses inflection to indicate both number and gender for nouns and adjectives.2. I am studying syntax and word order in hopes of understanding how the language itself is structured. This will allow me to aurally understand the language when I can anticipate what types of words fall where within a sentence.3. I will focus on learning the proper suffixes that change adjectives to nouns, or other cross-grouping suffixes in order to expand upon my vocabulary and description abilities. Also, prefixes and suffixes will allow me to conjugate verbs in a variety of tenses as well.Problems for Review:Japanese is considered to be agglutinative as it combines multiple morphemes in order to form words. The example given displays this. It take the root “mi” which is a morpheme, adds a polite suffix “mash” and adds “i” on the end to indicate tense. Though some of these morphemes can stand alone in Japanese, such as mi, it needs a root to indicate its meaning, as mi can represent numerous things. Ikimashita follows this pattern as well, with ‘mash’, ‘i' and ‘ta’ all being included. The only aspect of the word that changes is the root, which is now iki. If ikimashita were to be a in the simple past as opposed to a more complex version of the past, ikimashita nad mimashita would not bear the same resemblance.Greek on the other hand is considered a synthetic language. Greek has variations in sound depending on the combination of letters in a word, and words in a sentence. In the example given, the ending ‘a’ indicates the inflection as the verb determines the subject (first person singular). Bébēka follows the same pattern—a duplicated form of the root, with the suffix indicating the subject.
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1. Languages I am currently studying in linguistic terms.Farsi:Morphological – agglutinative – uses sufficesVerbs express tense and they also refer back to the subject and quantitySyntactic Structure – OV, SOV – prepositional phrases are normally positioned before the VerbRussian: Morphological – syntheticSyntactic Structure – the sentence structure is not highly dependent on word order2. Important Characteristic:Persian makes extensive use of word building and combining affixes, stems, nouns and adjectives.For verbs, knowing the suffixes that refer back to the pronoun or person the sentence is about.There are 6 vowels, which are written into the words; are shown as symbols either about or below the consonant.3. I will focus on the formation of words using the symbols to indicate vowel sounds, so as to improve my reading and comprehension of the words.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on February 21, 2009 at 1:57pm
This post is delayed by 3 days, but I will just write as though I did it mid-week. In terms of the two artifacts that I would like to be evaluated upon, I think that a one-page or so autobiography would be a good additional item to the Dutch EU proficiency exam (which I need to know how to retrieve). I was also considering maybe recording a conversation between Jan & myself, but I think it may be too soon for me to do unscripted. I think that writing about myself, and simply displaying the vocabulary, grammar, etc... that I have learned would provide a more fair assessment of my progress at this point. I would turn that in first, and then take the Dutch proficiency test the next day. I am not entirely sure what it is (and again I need to know how to acquire it), but I would imagine/hope that I do reasonably well for someone at the beginner level.I accomplished all of my specific goals for this week that I outlined in my previous learning plan. During my lengthy car-ride to & back from Florida I was able to get through: specifics of the royalty, yes/no questions, rhetorical questions, months/dates/holidays, & both congratulatory & telephone conversation phrases. I was also able to read a couple of magazines (one sort of a political commentary i.e. Newsweek & the other about soccer), and discern many of the main points from the articles--particularly the soccer ones. This upcoming week, I have been/will continue to work on the perfect tense (I have...), which my book devotes a lot of pages to, and Jan agrees is very important. In addition, we both agreed that it would be a good idea to work through the verb list in the back of my book and identify & remember the important ones on my own. I will learn their meanings & their stems, which will be very useful to learn in tandem with the perfect tense--which connotes much of completed action dialogue according to Jan. Hopefully learning a lot of the fundamental verbs will allow me to have better general understanding, as well as helping me write a mini-autobiography.Aside from that, my pronunciation is developing well. My voice thankfully recovered from bronchitis, and I can again make the important g/ch sound. I typically now only have a couple errors in the sample dialogues that I do with Jan. My speech is still somewhat slow, but presumably speed will continue to develop with time. I would imagine that at the end of the semester I will be able to record an unscripted dialogue with Jan as a final artifact.
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Goals:Format and sentence structuringVocabulary buildingPractice speaking formal Farsi.Resources:Ministry of Finance documentsBusiness articles on BBC website.Language partner
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Posted by Chelsie Darner on February 18, 2009 at 10:00pm
I was trying to find listening that I could actually understand and this little song that I uploaded in my music section just deals with the color blue and simple objects.The second is the persian version of "if you're happy and you know it.'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8_N5r5fbUchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOf8zE54Ebc
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 18, 2009 at 12:53pm
Last week I didn't end up getting to learn much new vocabulary. I have started to get a much better handle on the use of prepositions, but I still have a lot to learn. Instead I focused mostly on learning a few new tenses (present/past progressive, subjunctive, present perfect). Conjugation is surprisingly easy, but I still have a difficult time thinking of how to say most things quickly. While I have learned a considerable number of tenses, I am not yet very familiar with them. As a result I think this week I am going to focus primarily on practicing what I have already learned. Even some of the vocab that I've learned I know but still have to think about much to hard too recall in order for it to be very useful practically. One way that I am going to practice this is by writing up a summary of my family and my life as one of my artifacts. Talking about things that occurred at different times and in different situations should be a good way to practice getting used to using various tenses to describe events. Another thing I've started doing recently is practicing changing the sentence structure of things that I say in English throughout the day. I don't have the vocab or language skills to say many things yet, but I find that it is a good idea to think about the way the sentence would be structured in Farsi but using English words, since in most cases I still don't know enough to actually say what I want to. Even when I do know how to say something it takes me a little bit to think through the proper way to say it, so practicing syntax and grammar in this way should be a good way to get used to thinking in Farsi once I develop enough language skills to say more things in the actual language.
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 18, 2009 at 11:26am
The first artifact I'm going to make is a summary of my family, where I live, what I study, etc. I'll write it down and scan it and post it to my blog. I'll also record myself reading it using some program and post that also. The second artifact I'll create is a translation, as best as I am able, of a news article from the BBC, probably about the war in Afghanistan. I'm sure there will be a lot of things that I'll have to look up, so I'll indicate the things that I don't really know but was able to figure out in some way.
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 18, 2009 at 11:15am
Interpretive- understand and follow introductions and basic formalities- be able to follow the main point in conversations about familiar topics- be able to infer the general meaning of things that I don't understand when repeated slowly given the context- understand texts about familiar subjects; be able to look up and learn words and sentence structures I don't understandInterpersonal- be comfortable asking people to repeat themselves slowly or to explain themselves in a different way- be able to respond appropriately to questions or in common interactive situationsPresentational- be able to explain myself in most situations after thinking through what I am trying to say- develop a sufficient accent to be understood when speaking without significant difficulty by the listener- be able to write using a variety of tenses about a variety of situationsLong Term- gain enough understanding of the language to easily continue to improve vocabulary and understanding- develop familiarity with tenses to the point that I don't have to put substantial thought into conjugation in various situations- eventually be able to find a way of expressing most things in normal conversation, even if it requires finding a different way of saying something roughly equivalent to what I actually mean
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Posted by Becky Walker on February 17, 2009 at 10:36pm
As I am not particularly technologically friendly, I will be using audacity as my means of recording and uploading my artifacts. This works well, as my main focus within learning Farsi is the oral component. The first artifact that I intend to upload is an introduction of myself, this will include: a greeting, my name, my age, where I live, who I am, as well as a brief description of what I am not (in order to use other adjectives).The second artifact that I will be using is a description my family. This will cover the following learning objectives that I have been working on: family members, numbers, conjugations of the verbs to be and to have, plurals, and the proper use of adjectives. My intention for selecting family as my second artifact is that family is very important in Middle Eastern countries, and a common topic of discussion. I want to be able to not only identify members of my family by their proper title, but describe them as well. This will be more comprehensive than my first, thus the reason it will be my second uploaded artifact.
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