Since most languages are at least somewhat interconnected, it can be very beneficial to know a language's history. Languages in the same family often share many roots and cognates, which can give you a big advantage when learning another language within that family. Languages will oftentimes adopt words and sounds from other cultures that it has historically interacted with, whether it be through geographical proximity, colonization, etc. This can give you, as a language learner, an insight into why certain words are borrowed or why the roots of words are similar across languages. Korean has its own Koreanic language family. However, like most languages, it does draw from others. For example, Korean has two forms of counting, the Korean one and the Chinese one. The Chinese one is much simpler to learn, in terms of pronunciation, but Koreans use both number sets just for different purposes. Also, I've learned that a lot of words were adopted in Korean after already being translated into Japanese. This adds an extra element of difficulty in understanding these words because they've been slightly altered along the way. Some words, for example juice, apartment, Spain, France, dragons, and more are pronounced in English, but with a Korean accent. This means that "juice" is spelled in Hangul, and ends up being pronounced "joo-sah."
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A topic that interests me the most, which also combines many elements of Korean culture, is the daily life of a college student or 20-something year old in Korea. I want to know how they perceive school, relationships, popular foods, movies, and music, transportation, social life, etc. This will require special vocabulary knowledge because it will involve learning about specific Korean businesses (such as popular clothing stores, restaurants, etc. for young people). Also, this topic covers a wide range of topics meaning I'll need to learn specific words to talk about transportation, university, pop culture, and more. If I were to go a step further, I could try to learn the very colloquial phrases that young people use, as I assume that exists as it does in the U.S. I've also heard that texting among young adults in Korea is nearly a new language, which is also similar to how some young adults in the U.S. text. I have included these objectives in my learning plan as I give myself a different topic of vocabulary to focus on each week. As there are infinite words to learn about "transportation" or "food," I can focus on ones used in big cities and university campuses, that a 20-something year old would actually want to know when visiting Korea.
In my learning sessions we have focused on the campus life portion of our textbook. It explains how to ask and describe details about certain objects such as food or classes. The lesson provides a vocabulary list including several adjectives, particles to attach to descriptions, food related terms, and filler words such as 'really' or 'and'. Through this, my goal was to be able to talk about my experiences. This lesson covers very basic terminology that can be applied to several every day conversations.
Lena is very helpful in explaining the concepts in the textbook in a more understandable way and providing examples to further our learning. We are continuing to use the textbook she found for us along with additional online resources to supplement the lesson. At the end of each session, we have practice activities from a workbook that correlates with the material we cover in the textbook. I think these methods are very helpful and will continue to be.
In this lesson, I have learned the basic sentence structure to describe things and ask how things are. In expanding on my knowledge of vocabulary, I will be able to build off of this basis.
I am excited because I am able to write a short paragraph describing our campus which is major progress. I think the strategies we are using thus far are effective.
I have learned the names of the books in the Bible. I worked on the names of the twelve disciples of Jesus. Their names were pretty similar to that of English and Korean as they were in the books of the Bible. Names of the disciples of Jesus are attached under the second artifact (including the books of the Bible in Turkish). I think it was really interesting to see some cultural aspects from learning the names of the disciples. I learned that there were lots of Turkish names among the names of the disciples. Some were common/modern and the others were relatively old names. I like how this semester's classes with my language partner is more focused on my learning goals. I think it really helps to have my tutor to guide me how to work on my learning goals like the religious names. Although he is not religious, he reached out to his friend who is a Christian, and asked if he or she knows the best way to learn the religious names.
A learning task I have completed is I have successfully translated a Portuguese interview. I watched a interview with a Portuguese soccer player. I then translated it to English. At first I had a hard time understanding what the player was saying as he spoke white quickly, so I slowed the video down, and listened to each word one by one. After my translation I then compared what I felt was the translation to the subtitles provided by the video.
I think I’ve made good progress in my language learning but I still have a long way to go. I thought I would know more by now but thinking about it, I took Spanish for 4 years consecutively just to be at an intermediate level. When putting that into context with my Amharic studies, I think I am doing fine but I know I will have to continue after this semester for a while more. It’s been rewarding to be able to talk to my dad in his native language and I really hope to get to the point where I can talk to my other family members and grandma. At times, my learning gets overwhelming because there are so many words to learn and they change in different contexts. Also having to learn how to pronounce sounds that don’t exist in English has been a huge hurdle for me in this process. I would say I’m almost over that hurdle but I, of course, have more to improve on.
I think the relationship between understanding culture and language in undeniable. Each culture has different values and beliefs and those are usually reflected in the language. If one does not understand the culture, then the way the people speak and the way they construct sentences probably won’t make sense. I have somewhat of an advantage in the aspect of understanding the target culture because it is what I’ve been around my whole life. I think learning the language that goes with the culture helps me understand more.
To improve communicative competence, I need to learn how to ask and answer questions and how to express my thoughts and feelings. I think in order to have communicative competence, I need to really learn how to speak and listen to Amharic so that I can make the necessary comments to get my point across. To do this I need to practice Amharic and try my best to speak with native speakers so I can immerse myself and learn the most effective ways to communicate. For example, in English, there are ways to communicate that are not the most efficient for getting your point across. I need to make sure that I am learning the most useful language first so that I can say what I am aiming to say. I think the other forms of competence that is most important for me in my studies are sociolinguistic and strategic competence. In order to speak a language and sound somewhat like a native, it is important to know the sociocultural rules that go with the language. Knowing what words and phrases are appropriate versus inappropriate is necessary in order to communicate the language effectively. Nonverbal communication is another essential aspect of being competent in a language. Body language and hand signs that relate to the culture and language can have lots of different meanings. I think this goes back to the relationship between language and culture because the culture shapes the nonverbal communication of the language.
Knowing the history of language can help one understand its origins and make connections to other languages with similar histories. I think when you know where a language originated and how it has mixed and interacted with other languages, some parts of the language are put into context and make more sense. Amharic belongs to the Semitic language family along with Arabic, Tigrinya, and Hebrew. Amharic and Tigrinya has similar sounds to Arabic which makes sense as there was contact between the Middle East and Ethiopia and Eritrea across the Red Sea. In both languages there are a lot of sounds that are produced from the back of the mouth and do not exist in English. This contact has made a lasting impact because along with having similar sounds with Arabic, the Arabic language itself is spoken throughout Ethiopia and Eritrea. Arabic is also the second national language of Eritrea after Tigrinya. Amharic also shows examples of contact with the Italians since the Italians conquered Ethiopia and Eritrea for a long period of time. There are words that clearly show this influence including autobus meaning bus and escribito meaning pen. Although I’m not sure what the history is, some words in Amharic are English words. Some have the same meaning while others do not. For example, soft is used for toilet paper and napkins. Words for technology are usually just the English words such as television and computer.
I think my progress so far is not bad, but it could be better. I find it hard sometimes to keep myself on track outside of my weekly meetings with my language partner. I also think my learning plan did not encompass of all the things that I need to learn in order to communicate. After thinking about what I need to learn and looking at my learning plan, I feel like it only scratches the surface. I definitely need to make my tasks include more topics in order to increase my learning as I finish out the semester. The main activity that I do is speak with my language partner, so I need to start doing more of the activities that I put on my learning plan. I also think I need to find more online resources so that when I am not learning with my language partner, I can learn more on my own. I also think I could start asking my language partner to give me activities to complete between our meetings.
Overall, I think one big area of progress that I’ve made is practicing the sounds that don’t exist in English. The more words I learn, the more prevalent those sounds become so it’s impossible for me to be able to speak Amharic without reproducing those sounds. I do still find myself getting overwhelmed when learning new words and phrases since there is so much to learn. I will, however, finish the semester strong and keep learning as much as I can.
Although Sanskrit is generally written in either Devanagari (the same script that Hindi is written in) or in transliterated roman alphabet, Sanskrit has no official script of its own. It was originally an oral language and thus had no written needs. Its first written evidence comes from the Rigveda from around ~1100-1700 BC. Historically, it has also been written in a number of Brahmic scripts, which is a family of loosely related scripts used across Asia. Here's an example of some, which includes Devanagari:
In this blog post I will discuss formality and informality in Sanskrit.
Sanskrit is a unique language to learn since it is taught in a formal context with very structured grammar. I am not diving into the vernacular of spoken word since my main goal is to understand Sanskrit as it is written traditionally. I have not been able to find a large amount of information on written Sanskrit and the role of honorifics. I have found the role of pronouns very interesting and confusing! Most of the time a pronoun isn't directly needed since it is built into the verb ending as an inflection. Consider the following sentences and the English translation:
gacchaami --> I go.
gacchamah --> We go.
gacchaavah --> The two of us go.
gacchati --> He goes.
etc.
First and second person pronouns do not mark for gender, and an independent third person pronoun doesn't really exist since it is always built into the verb, and also does not account for gender. The words for "that" or "it" are still there though if needed.
There is a kind of polite prounoun/title, "bhavant" which means directly "your honor". It seems like this mostly acts as a 2nd person polite pronoun. It will be interesting to see if I run into any honorifics while furthering my reading skills.
The second aspect of culture I have examined in Brazil is video game culture. Brazil is in a unique situation for video games. Major video game producers, such as Nintendo and Sony, don't see much of a market for their games the country so they don't export their games there. Their are also hold set in place by the Brazilian government which state that certain types of items cannot be purchased if they are not made in Brazil. This was originally set in place to improve the economy, but has backfired interns of the level of technology for video games. As a result of this, many people are still playing games on Atari's and Nintendo 64's. Systems which are centuries old. There are also Frankenstein systems, which are ps3's and xbox's which have been stripped apart for just their internals and repackaged with local casing to be branded as Brazilian made products. These machines however, tend not to be as reliable. The Brazilian market also offers games for these systems which are knock offs, or rebrands of popular games sold around the world.
In my Portuguese classes I have been learning about verb conjugations. More specifically we have examined ar, er, and ir verbs in the tenses of present, past, and future in their different modes. I have found that the conjugations are quite similar to that of Spanish. I have also found that the context in which you use the tenses are the exact same as those in Spanish. My language partner and I have not gone over the irregular verbs such as ir, but we do plan to work on those next week.
Hangul is the name of the Korean writing system and even though other Asian languages like Chinese and Japanese are character sets, Hangul is actually an alphabet. Even though it's not as complicated, in my opinion, as character sets, it has been an extra hurdle to learn the new alphabet before even beginning to learn vocabulary and grammar. The writing system was actually not too hard to learn, but some of the letters don't translate perfectly to English sounds, so it's still a challenge to try to make these new sounds, such as the sound in-between a "g" and a "k" or an "r" and an "l" in English. Also, there is a concept called the last consonant, which is that only a few sounds can be at the end of a word, so some words are spelled differently than they are pronounced, which creates words that may sound the same, but their distinction is in their spelling. Despite these few difficulties, the writing system is pretty straightforward. Each consonant has to be paired with a vowel and words are split up syllable-by-syllable. Obviously there are exceptions to rules in every writing system that just need to be memorized. However, when I thought about it, there are very minimal exceptions in Korean compared to English, and I couldn't imagine the difficulty of learning English and all its grammar exceptions this late in my life, so I appreciate Korean's relatively simply writing system. Also, the grammar is very simple because it's a contextual language, meaning most verbs aren't conjugated, so the subject is just implied. This makes it a lot easier to begin speaking sentences, not having to think about whether I'm talking in the first-, second-, or third-person.
Food is an integral part of any culture and Korean culture is no exception. If you ever go to a Korean restaurant, you will order your entree, likely made up of noodles, meat, and vegetables, and then a bunch of little side dishes will come out as well. There will be kimchi, radishes, vegetables, and more. Rice is also an essential part of Korean cuisine and typically eaten at every meal. Korean food has typical seasonings such as garlic, sesame oil, red pepper powder, scallions, and more. Korean barbecue and kimchi are probably the most well-known Korean dishes in the U.S. Table manners are very important in Korea; you must have good posture, you should not show food in your mouth, and you shouldn't start eating until your elders at the table do so. Although less meat, especially red meat, is eaten in Korea in comparison to the U.S., special diets such as vegetarianism aren't as popular as here. The food preparation style makes pretty healthy food, so obesity is not a huge problem there. If anything, being overweight is a sign of wealth, while in the U.S. it tends to be a sign of lower income, because those with less money may need to sustain themselves more often on cheap fast food. Drinking during a meal, alcoholic or not, isn't as common as it is in the U.S. I notice that my mom never drinks while she's eating, but instead will have her glass of water, milk, tea, or whatever it is, after she's down eating. This is especially the case when eating soup, which is very common in Korean cuisine. Also, like I said that rice is served at every meal, this includes breakfast. Savory foods are eaten for breakfast much more than in Western cultures.
Korean has 19 consonant phonemes, 8 vowel phonemes, and 12 diphthongs. For the most part, the letters in Hangul transfer pretty well to sounds that exist in English. Many of them are pronounced as a sound in-between two English letters, however. For example, there isn't really an "r" sound, but instead something in-between an "r" and an "l," which can be difficult to do. Also, there are a lot of Hangul letters that sound very similar to me, but are very distinguishable for native speakers. For example, there are different characters for a "j," "ch," and a double "j" sound, which are very hard to tell apart. Similarly, there are different characters for "b," "p," and double "b" sounds. This makes it difficult to spell words perfectly, even when you know how they're pronounced. Besides these distinctions, there aren't many sounds that are very difficult to pronounce for an English speaker, which makes learning how to read and speak easier than some other languages. A transcription of the word meaning "to go" is [kada], even though the letter used to spell it in Korean is the one that is supposed to translate as a "g" sound. Another example like this is the word for "fire" which is transcribed as [pul] even though it's spelled with the "b" letter in Korean. If I were to try to write this just by sound, I would probably use the Korean letter that translates as a "p" sound. However, if I were to this, I would accidentally be spelling the word for "grass," not "fire," which are obviously very different. That one is transcribed as [pʰul].
I was able to acquire the knowledge I needed to learn the structure of Korean through my online practice on Duolingo and with my language partner. It was pretty easy to learn the structure; the words are just broken up by syllable. I've been learning along the way about the grammatical structure of Korean, which is different than English. Learning the writing structure was a very important task for me, so I identified the materials I needed to learn this structure right away, because I couldn't move forward at all in my language learning before I knew the alphabet.
For this semester, I really hope to expand on my writing and speaking skills. I want to work on my speaking skills, so that I can become more fluent and confident in having conversations with my family members. I have trouble saying what I really want to say because I don't know how to translate it into Korean, so it can be frustrating not being able to say what's on my mind. I want to work on my writing skills because I think it is one of my weakest areas. I am terrible at spelling and don't really know the more complicated grammatical rules. I hope to accomplish on expanding these skills through workbooks provided by Youngmin and through a lot of practice. I think having constant practice and interactions in speaking and writing in Korean in these weekly meetings will really help me become more comfortable as there aren't many opportunities for me to practice on these things outside of these classes.
For the past two weeks, we continued to learn through the workbooks that Youngmin had provided our class. We have been expanding on grammatical rules. We have been practicing through workbook problems that includes speaking, writing, and reading. Youngmin always provides other supplemental activities to do that correlate with what we are doing for the lesson. We also went over Korean proverbs on top of the grammatical lessons. We learned to interpret what the sayings meant from the literal definitions. We were then assigned to give a presentation on three proverbs that were similar in topic and had to provide the meaning and give examples of the proverbs being used in the right context. We have been working steadily on improving our writing, reading, and speaking skills with a lot fo practice every class and I could slowly see myself becoming more comfortable with my Korean skills. I definitely still need to improve my writing skills because that is my weakest point in those three categories. We had an assignment where we had to provide a summary of a movie that we watched and explain what we liked about it and what resonated with us after it finished. The teacher couldn't even understand what I was trying to say, so I know that this is an area that I really need to work on.
The first artifact was a few sentences I made to describe a story about how Korean culture interprets dreams. I thought I did well on creating clear sentences using the correct grammar to get my points across. I still need to work on perfecting my accent to make it sound less Americanized. I also feel that there are better ways to explain the story, so I need to work on widening my vocabulary and grammatical skills. I hope to accomplish this through more practice in and out of class with the assignments made by Youngmin.
In my conversation I feel that I did a good job with pronunciation, accent, and keeping the conversation flowing. However, I did mess up a few times in the conversation. Most notably I accidentally said I will turn in my test at 5:00pm during the week instead of 5:00pm tomorrow. I feel I could still improve on my conversation skills, and also improve on my responses in context. There are ways in which I could have responded to the questions in shorter sentences, but I chose to respond with long full sentences you would typically see in formal writing.
Turkish Learning plan (Spring 2018)
Learning goal: To be able to communicate with people who I meet for the first time, talk about myself and ask questions. Use travel language to ask directions, order food, do shopping. Besides, acquire basic vocabulary to distinguish cases, tenses and be able to understand simple dialogues and check in/check out from hotels. Read and understand basic texts.
Methods: Watch movies or TV series with subtitles to develop listening skills, talk to my language partner to acquire more speaking and listening skills. Read basic texts, words, expressions in class and online to develop reading skills. Write down what is being learnt in class and chat online for writing skills. Ask questions to the language partner and use the resources below for better learning experience.
Resources:
https://www.learnturkishnow.co.uk/www.learnturkishnow.co.uk/info.php?p=2
https://www.loecsen.com/en/learn-turkish
https://handsonturkish.com/first-steps-turkish/
Global studio resources
Language partner’s help
Other possible resources that may come along the way
1st week- General revision of past semester content, including colors, numbers, greetings, times, family etc.
2nd week- Introduction to future tense, conjugating verbs in future tense & revision of present/present continuous verb conjugations + vocabulary of asking questions (where, how, what, etc. )
3rd week- Cases in the Turkish language- accusative, locative, ablative etc. Making sentences using different cases; using present and future tenses.
4th week- Speaking and writing about spring break plans(future tense). Adding more vocabulary of action verbs, revisit days of the week, months and time vocabulary
5th week- Speak about current situation in Turkey/cultural, religious, political; intro to past tense, conjugation of verbs
6th week- Feelings vocabulary, speaking and writing about winter break, using past tense + adding verbs vocabulary; making sentences about wishes and needs, asking questions.
7th week- Intro to the most famous historical sites of Turkey, share information; animals, fruits. Sentences using present, future and past tense.
8th week- Vocabulary of adjectives, watch a Turkish movie, vocabulary of beach, drinks, making sentences, complete some paper exercises upon the request of the language partner.
9th week- Ordering in a restaurant. Use excuse me, please, thanks, ask where is the bathroom. More food and drinks vocabulary.
10th week- Describing the room, saying how many chairs, tables, doors there are. Asking where other things are.
11th week- Ask where the shops are, where the cookies/ ice cream /other things are. Ask how much they cost and say if it’s cheap or expensive. Express emotions vocabulary( fantastic! Worried, sad etc. )
12th week- Revise what have been learnt so far. Ask questions, make sure to remember transition words(because, therefore, but etc.), common expressions(bless you, happy birthday, congratulations etc. )
13th week- Read a short story, write down unfamiliar words. Vocabulary of places and times(here, there, today, tomorrow, etc.)
14th- Revise hobbies, and dialogues about myself, the other person, ask questions and understand the answers(where one studies, lives, what time it is, where is the mosque, etc.) Complete paper exercises and speak about ways to use and maintain the language skills in the future.
- Use all the online resources above to learn new grammar skills and vocabulary. Create quiz sets on quizlet.
- Complete the Reflections and Journals
- Watch Turkish movies with subtitles.
- Ask questions to the language partner.
I attached my learning plan for the Spring 2018 semester for studying Sanskrit. Learning%20Plan%20Sanskrit%20Spring%202018.doc
