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   How have you started writing in the target language? Do you prefer to type or write free hand? Have you started to see patterns emerge in the structures between words, clauses, and sentences? What is the relationship between simple and complex sentences? How does your knowledge of parts of speech, government, and agreement affect your ability to communicate in written contexts? Provide a sample of several short meaningful writing exercises from your target language.

    Since my first Korean class, I started to write in Korean because if you want to know how to pronounce the word in Korean, it is essential for you to know about how to write it. At first, I just write some simple words on the blackboard and now I can write simple sentence in Korean. For me, I am not that good at writing right now so I prefer to write with my hand so I can remember the words and the characters more clearly. On the other hand, if I type Korean a lot, I will really heavily on autocorrect instead of trying to find mistakes by myself. Then I will never realize that I did something wrong.

    I have started to see patterns emerge in the structures between words, clauses, and sentences since I started to write lone sentence. For example, in the class, as the practice, we will write down sentences such as I just went to the dining hall to have dinner, what did you do? This sentence might be really easy for us to write in English, but it is really hard for me to write it in Korean since there is pass-tense and it is long. It is hard for me to figure out how to combine these words in one sentence in right sequence.

The most I have written in my target language so far are a few words or some very simple sentences, like “My name is Feli”. I am still in the process of learning  new vocabulary and grammatical rules that then allow me to form proper spoken or written sentences. We read a lot of sentences and say them, but I do not form those myself yet. I prefer to write words and sentences by hand because it helps me to better remember the spelling. However, I have a Korean keyboard on my phone to help me to write words and sentences for online assignments, like this one, and to be exposed to the language more in my daily life.

There are some important structures in Hangul, for example the usage of imnida, 입니다, and imniga, 입니까, after almost every sentence or question. Furthermore, there is a number of different particles that are used to make a noun function as a subject or an object. We practice the usage of those particles a lot with the help of pre-written sentences where we have to select the correct particle based on the meaning of the sentence and the ending of the word. Korean also uses a very different sentence structure than German and English do. Instead of saying “I am from Germany”, in Korean you say “I am German person” (저는 독일 사람 입니다). Similarly, asking “Where are you from?” is “What country person?” (어느 나라 사람 입니까). “Are you a student? - Yes, I am a student.” in Korean is “Student? - Yes, student.” (학생 입니까? - 네, 학생 입니다.)

Korean has a lot of different levels of politeness. It is important to be aware of whom one is speaking to and how polite to be. I have mainly learned the very formal version of Korean words and sentences. I believe that one utilizes the most formal version of Korean in proper written context. Therefore, it is important to know this form and to be able to properly use it in written and spoken context.

Some of the writing exercise we have done in class are the following:

1. Build the sentence based on these words  빌리 (Feli) 대학생 (university student)

빌리씨는 대학생 입니다.  (Feli is a university student.)

2. Select the right particle.

저는의사 (이, 가) 아닙니다. (I am a doctor.)

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In my experience, writing Turkish has not been too difficult since Modern Turkish uses the Latin alphabet. There are only a few letters that are different, but none of them are completely different from anything I already know. Letters such as Ç, Ş, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ü, are simply modified from Latin letters that are already familiar to me. In terms of typing, I do not have much of an issue typing it on my phone since it is not very different from an English keyboard, but I have a much more difficult time on my computer since I do not know where placements of Ç, Ş, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ü are. 

From I understand about Turkish language, Turkish language is flexible in terms of word order, but sentences are most commonly written in subject-object-verb order. One of the most interesting parts about Turkish is the agglutination (gluing together) in their language. These suffixes / word endings add to a word's original meaning or it's grammatical function. We do have these things in English, but in a simpler sense. For example we have -ment as a suffix, where we can modify words such as argue, embarrass, establish, etc. 

The most common example I have found online is:

ev -  house

and once you add on "de" - which you end up with "evde", which means in the house. 

once you add "ki" which is that, - "evdeki", we specify that we talking about "in that house"

I think I also appreciate that Turkish language expresses meaning in less words, even if the words might be much longer. 

English uses more smaller words to give meaning, but using multiple suffixes in Turkish can be used to express the same meaning. 

An example I found is:

English – “You are coming from the store.” - 6 words 

Turkish – “Dükkandan geliyorsun.” - 2 words

Also, Turkish has a different subordinate clause order where the most important part of the sentence at the end of the sentence, which is different from English. 

In English, we say, "I went to the library after dinner", but in Turkish, their order would be translated into "After dinner, I went to the library" - Yemek yedikten sonra, kütüphaneye çıktım. In Turkish, the final verb also determines the tense, mood, and point of view. 

The example I just used - Yemek yedikten sonra, kütüphaneye çıktım - after dinner, I went to the library

If I want to say, "after dinner, he went to the library", I would add "he" and change the final verb from çıktım to çıktı (which changes the grammar of the verb, out). The sentence does not change besides the ending verb and the subject, which may also change the tense of the sentence too.

O, yemek yedikten sonra kütüphaneye çıktı - after dinner, he went to the library

Onlar, yemek yedikten sonra kütüphaneye çıkacaklar - after dinner, they will go to the library

While I have not yet started writing in Turkish, I am very grateful that Modern Turkish has transitioned to the use of the Latin alphabet. While this makes some words slightly unwieldy, it makes both typing and writing extremely easy. I believe writing would be especially simple, as many of the letters are the exact same as in English, and those that are different are just variations of English letters (with umlauts or other accent markings). However, if I wanted to type in Turkish I would have to become accustomed to another keyboard layout to include the different letters.

Forming sentences with Turkish, however, is much more difficult. Because Turkish is agglutinative, meaning a single word can express multiple ideas through the addition of morphemes onto that word, both creating the words themselves and then combining them into sentences can be challenging to a new speaker. The basic Turkish word order is subject, object, and then verb, with suffixes added on to the nouns and verbs to express who is doing things to verbs or who is owning a noun. For example, in Turkish, “Iyi” means “good” and “Iyiyim” means “I’m fine”. The added “-im” indicates ownership of the “good”, translating to “I am well”. Because in English, all parts of speech are separate (even when one typical part of speech is being used as another in the case of participles and gerunds), assigning a specific suffix that indicates a part of speech to a noun or verb in Turkish can seem strange and may hinder the ability to communicate in written contexts.

Clauses in Turkish are much different than in English. For example, whereas in English the tense of the verb can change inside a clause, in Turkish the verb always stays the same. If I wanted to say, “I see the man who is running”, the verb in that sentence is “koşan” meaning literally “who is run”. The complete sentence would be “Koşan adamı görüyorum”. However, if I wanted to say, “I will see the man who will run”, in Turkish, this is “Koşan adamı göreceğim”. The relative verb “koşan” stays the same, and an ending is added to the main verb in the sentence to indicative future tense for both verbs. The same occurs for the past tense. “I saw the man who ran” becomes “Koşan adamı gördüm”, with “koşan” once again staying constant as “who is run”.

Growing up in the US, I always thought the Vietnamese flag was yellow with three horizontal red stripes. It wasn't until much later that I realized that that was actually the flag of Việt Nam Cộng Hoà, or the flag of the Republic of Vietnam. This flag is still widely used amongst Vietnamese people who fled the country after the Viet Minh won the war. The flag became symbolic of democracy and freedom.

The official flag though, is red with a star in the middle. The red represents the blood of the people, the yellow is the skin color of the people, and each point of the star represents a different class. The five classes are intellectuals, farmers, workers, business people, and military personnel. While what flag is used does not seem important to me,  this is a huge contentious point for the older generation who lived through the war. To some people, this flag represents the loss of their country. I vaguely recall being chastise once by a friend's grandpa for wearing a t-shirt bearing the Viet Minh flag on it when I was a kid (it was a souvenir gift from a friend who went to Vietnam on vacation). This is something to think about when conversing with Vietnamese people either living in Vietnam or abroad. After all, the war was only approximately 40 years ago.

https://www.saigonbao.com/co-vang.htm

https://baotiengdan.com/2018/04/09/lich-su-la-co-vang/

http://www.dcvonline.net/2017/07/24/la-co-viet-nam-cong-hoa-van-tung-bay/

https://vinhdanhcovang.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/y-nghia-c%E1%BB%A7a-la-c%E1%BB%9D-vang-ba-s%E1%BB%8Dc-d%E1%BB%8F-va-bai-%E2%80%9Cti%E1%BA%BFng-g%E1%BB%8Di-cong-dan%E2%80%9D/

http://aocodosaovanghcm.com/y-nghia-va-lich-su-la-co-do-sao-vang.html

https://thoi-nay.com/tnm/y-nghia-la-co-vang-co-quoc-gia-viet-nam/

While listening to the song Vô Thường by Karik and Orange, I remembered a conversation I once had with my sophomore year roommate. This roommate once walked past me as I was watching an Asian tv series with subtitles on. Being curious, she stopped and watched with me for a bit. Her comment afterwards was that she couldn't get into the show because "nobody talks like that in real life." At the time I was really confused as to what she meant because of course people talk like that; if they didn't, why would anyone watch the show? But while I was listening to this song and thinking about the words they used, I could sort of understand what she meant. A lot of Vietnamese literature, music, and even just regular daily conversations can be really poetic for lack of a better description. In this song, the lyricist chose to use more archaic sounding words. For example, "Từ bằng hữu, đến nhân tình," which can be translated to "from friends to lovers," except in super old historical terms. To a native listener, this choice added depth to the lyric's message—sounding incredibly beautiful and not at all odd. However, in English it would be like if you were listening to a pop song and the lyrics were Prince Henry's monologue from Shakespeare. I'm exaggerating a little, but you get the point. Even daily dialogue in Vietnamese can be like this. This is partly because of how many reduplicative words there are in common language use. Reduplicative words are usually used to (de)emphasize the adjective or to support the root words' meaning. An example of this is "lặng lẽ," (meaning quiet to the point of forsaken loneliness) which was also used in the song.

I personally really like this song because of how elegantly the lyricists combined historical and modern words to convey a bone-deep loneliness. However, this also makes it harder for the song's message to be conveyed in other languages.

I watched ANTV- Truyền hình Công an Nhân dân 24 Hours News for March 28, 2019, a popular Vietnamese news channel. Most of the news reported was about Hà Nội, Vietnam's capital. One of the news reporting was about a drug dealer that pleaded guilty on charges of handling and distribution of cocaine. What I found interesting about this piece of news was the word choice of the anchor when describing the drug addicts. In Vietnamese, we use different words when counting different objects. For example, when counting animals you always put the word "con" in front of whatever animal you are talking about. In this scenario, the word "con" is equivalent to "the." For counting objects, the word changes depending on what you are counting. We can use cái for tables, chairs, TV, refrigerator, and so on, but not for books, candy, boxes, and so on. For people, no word is needed; you only need to use the word for people. When the anchor was talking about the drug addicts, she used the word "con," that is normally used for animals. This suggests that drug users are like animals, in a lowly position, and not worthy of being considered human. I think this could be telling on the attitude of Vietnam on drug users as a whole.

Another thing I noticed was that a lot of the news had to do with major traffic accidents. This slightly surprised me as this is supposed to be 24 hours news so theoretically, all of these traffic accidents happened in one day. While I knew that traffic accidents are common, I was still surprised by the frequency that they seem to be occurring.

Lastly, I also found it fascinating that the police investigations seem to be recorded. I'm not sure if that is the news channel doing a BBC documentary style thing where they have actors reenacting a scene or if they actually got footage of the interrogations done by the police. Either way, both seem kind of strange to me.

For writing practice, my language partner and I have only tried dictation. This is done by writing free hand. When I make notes though, I prefer to type. This is because it helps me remember where the accent marks are better as the keys used are different from normal so I think harder about how the word is spelt. Other short meaningful writing exercises I could do in my target language is writing based on a prompt (ex. Write on the topic of food), creative writing (ex. Write a short story about a puppy), and writing in different dialects.

As to patterns, I haven't consciously thought about it because I'm not learning the language from scratch. However, through the teaching presentation I realized that in Vietnamese, adjectives always go after the noun unlike in English. For example, it would be "table large," rather than "large table." Other than that, I've also noticed that time indicators like 3 O'clock or "yesterday," go at the front of the sentence. It could go at the end, but it sounds less correct to do so. For simple and complex sentences, they work in a similar way to English. I haven't noticed any difference there.

My knowledge of Vietnamese grammar is actually really small. My language partner and I haven't focused on this because I know what sounds correct (but not the reason why) so there's no problem when communicating both orally and in written form. I do think though, that my lack of knowledge in this area, limits the type of writing I can do. For example, I can write in an informal manner, but probably not in an academic setting. If I ever need to write at a higher level in Vietnamese, it's a good idea to study Vietnamese grammar.

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Desi SpiderMan is a low-budget Indian film about an Indian Spiderman! It contains every essential element of a stereotypical Indian film - romance, fighting, comedy, damsel in distress, washing laundry, more fighting, and (most importantly) Bollywood-style music and dancing scenes!

The internet is not at all sure about the origin of this film. There are some rumors floating around that this is the brainchild of a man whose dream was to make a movie with all of his meager savings, and this (comedically low-budget) film is the result. The other and more likely explanation is that this film was meant to be a spoof of Indian film and culture. Either way, it is a very funny and silly film, enjoyed by Indians and non-Indians alike.

Below I have attached a dance video clip from the movie. In this, the woman sings "Spiderman, Spiderman, tune churaya mere dil ka chain . . . " which means "Spiderman, Spiderman, you have stolen the peace of my heart".

Also, fun fact. This was filmed in the city where my fiancé lives, and very close to where I am moving in June.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3sqEhA_wys

After having learned how to use verbs in Turkish, I learned how to use two verbs in a sentence (Ex: "She likes to walk in the park"), especially for the verbs used to say "like" or "hate," which are irregular. I also learned new vocabulary about family and family members. At first it was difficult for me to keep track of all of the different words for different family members, as in Turkish there are different names for family on your mother's side versus your father's side. Corresponding words between sides of the family are not similar either (for example, your aunt on your mother's side is called "teyze" but on your dad's side she is called "hala," which are very different words from each other). I also learned the suffixes for saying possessions and practiced talking to Merve about my family using possessions. These suffixes also apply to cases where nouns are used as adjectives (ex: electrical engineer, Turkish coffee, etc.). To reinforce this new material, I've been trying to write in a journal about my day in Turkish!

The extinction of a language occurs when that language is no longer spoken by individuals (however few) on this planet. An example of this was referenced in the reading, as at one point Siletz Dee-ni had only five speakers remaining, and each of these speakers only knew Siletz as a secondary language. While to some extent, documentation, such as digital collections and dictionaries, can preserve a language and provide the opportunity for others to learn such a language, if nobody speaks or learns to speak a language, this language becomes extinct, with the documentation only serving as a memorial to that language. Yet this documentation can also be the key to this language's resurrection, much in the same way that the Siletz Dee-ni online dictionary has resurrected a nearly-extinct language throughout many parts of the US.

When a language dies, all the rich knowledge accompanying that language is lost to humanity. With over 7000 languages throughout the world (and half destined to die within a century), it becomes imperative that such languages are documented and preserved. These languages not only provide rich linguistic knowledge, but also scientific knowledge as well. While almost 80% of the world's wildlife has not yet been "discovered" by the western world, many near-dead languages have superior knowledge of these "undiscovered" species. To allow such languages to die would decrease the collective knowledge of the world, causing us to take a metaphorical step backwards for the sake of "westernization". 

David Harrison spoke about the efforts to preserve languages, ranging from creating online dictionaries to recording current speakers to spending time living with a culture in order to acquire their language from the ground up (as Harrison himself did). These are all efforts to document an entire language, and while somewhat effective, will take manpower that linguists currently do not possess to save many of the currently dying languages. Thus, at the end of his interview, Harrison gives a call to action, stating that he is always hiring linguists for this sort of work. 

During the past two weeks, I have made a lot of progress in my learning. We have read the longest block of sentences so far and have incorporated many descriptive words, like big, small, many, few, good, and bad. This is a very important component of language learning because it allows for more accurate descriptions and conversations. Furthermore, I learned sino-Korean numbers. I am very excited about this because even though it is a fairly basic aspect of every language, it is also a very important one that is used in all different kinds of contexts.

However, I am a little disappointed with my ability to write. We had a quiz during the first week after spring break and I felt very prepared for it. I was also able to read and understand everything on it, but when it came to writing I realized how insecure I was. This triggered me to practice my writing even more, to put a heavier emphasis on it, and to revise my strategy for learning how to write in Korean. Even though it helps me to write down the romanized version of a word in order to understand and say it, I will have to be better at actually writing the word. Especially because some Hangul characters are not fully pronounced or sound different in certain contexts, I have to practice writing the Hangul version more to be secure in this aspect of my learning. Even though taking the quiz and realizing the difficulty of writing was frustrating, I am very glad that the quiz clearly showed me my abilities and made me realize the area that needs further work.

This week I did not meet with my language partner because of scheduling difficulties. Instead I spent a lot of time on Duolingo, finding Hindi Discovery Channel videos to watch, and practicing Hindi with my fiance.

Interpersonal communication progress is slow, but it is going. I seem to progress faster when I talk with my fiance because, besides just giving me extra practice, I am more comfortable with him than anyone else, and so I am more willing to take language risks. This week I was able to speak 95% Hindi (very context heavy) for probably 20-30 minutes. I was able to tell him a short story that happened that day, tell him about an app that I want to get on my phone, and talk with him about various snack foods.

I met this week's Duolingo goal! I have also returned to Mango lessons after a couple weeks off, and they seem much easier now! I do Duolingo lessons in bed first thing in the morning and last thing at night - it has replaced my social media habit and I am much happier for it. I attached a screenshot of my current Duolingo tree.

My goals for this week:

Duolingo: get the next five lessons up to level 2

Mango: complete chapter 7 (transportation and payment)

Interpersonal communication: I'm not sure what goal. It may come to me.

Other: check out at least one Hindi Discovery Channel video

When a language is only used in a small population of speakers such as in a tribe or a village, it is more likely to go extinct. Since the endangered languages are not widely used and people in the tribe do not travel across the country to communicate and propagate the language; As a result, when the population of the tribe becomes smaller, the language teeters on the brink of oblivion. If a language has died, there are no people whose primary linguistic system and tool of thought is this language, which means the dying of the knowledge written and the record of that language. Linguists help to write the dictionary by talking to the elder and listening to old recordings made by anthropologists in earlier years. A ‘dead’ language could be brought back to life, and Siletz is an example mentioned in our article.

Except for creating the dictionary, an endangered language can also be introduced to younger high school students in school as a foreign language. I remembered the Chinese government issued a similar policy as well in Shanghai recently because they found that teenagers can only understand the dialect but can hardly speak it. People around the world realized the value and importance of endangered languages so that they paid more effort into saving them.

     Languages go extinct when there aren’t enough people speaking the language to pass it down. And at the time that nobody speaks that language, the language becomes dead and its cultural related things also become dead with the language. According to David Harrison's interview, the rate of languages go extinct is about one language every two weeks. And there are about 3500 languages is expected to go extinct. 80% of the world's population speaks the major languages, for example English, Spanish and Mandarin, there are thousands of languages that are on the edge of becoming extinct. A language can be dead because of different types of reason. One of those reasons is because the speakers of a certain language are taken in by a dominant language or group. When there are no speakers left, the language is dead. Passing down a language to the next generations becomes difficult especially since children may choose to stick with another language. It is really sad to see a language disappear from this world because it is not only a way to express but also culture.

    It is possible to help preserve a dying language and even resurrect a dead language. With the help of linguists, an American Indian tribe whose language, Siletz Dee-ni only had 5 speakers left, was able to create a dictionary that helped record and preserve the language because linguists are helping find new people to learn this language. Now, it is being taught until sixth grade at a public charter school in Siletz. However, in the hurly-burly of modern communications, keeping a language alive goes far beyond a simple count of how many people can conjugate its verbs. There is still a long way to go.

Tết (Lunar New Year) is a major holiday in Vietnam. It's an extremely important holiday where almost everyone returns to their hometown to reunite with their extended family. My friend from Vietnam said that during this time, Sài Gòn is a dead city. The population crazily plummets and even the air quality improves because everyone left the city to return to their hometown. Being in the US and in college, I cannot return home for tết and so missed out on a lot of good food that is only available during the holiday. When I visited Boston during Spring Break, my sister and I tried making Bánh tét a Southern Vietnamese dish that one must eat during New Years. We miserably failed and ended up just going to a bakery to buy one. The process of making it though, I think taught me a lot. It was extremely time consuming and difficult to make. The reason why it's a dish associated with New Years is because the women in the family would gather around to make it together as a bonding activity during the holiday. Making it made me better appreciate the effort that goes into the food that I've always had readily available during New Years.

I recently watched a hài kịch that aired during Tết 2019 (Lunar New Year). Hài Kịch are Vietnamese comedy skits usually performed in front of a live audience intermittently during a long musical concert and is immensely popular among the older generation. One of the comedians in this skit is named Hoài Linh.  He is a famous veteran in the field. I remember watching his skit's with my family when I was still in elementary school. Watching these skits is a favorite family activity in Vietnam especially during large family gatherings where there is a wide age range. It reminds me a lot of SNL, but more family-friendly.