Blogs

My first artifact is a letter to my mom wishing her happy birthday and letting her know how much she means to me and my siblings. I did something like this last year, but this letter's more complex in writing structure than the last since it uses more conjuncts. 

Things I want to work on:

-Fluidity of my handwriting

-Writing longer sentences and more complex structures than this, maybe I should start working on essays or short stories on my own?

Things I got better at:

-The placement of the vowels and knowing where to put them, for example the ekar (া) I used to put it in the wrong spots when they wouldn't be needed for the word

-Basic conjuncts such as the (ক্ত্) the k + t

Artifact 1:

Artifact 2:

In this artifact, I typed Bangla over skype with Sabrina. Since her keyboard wasn't working, she answered me over the webcam while I typed in Bangla. 

হেল Hello

11:35 PM

ঐটা কি টিখ Is this right?

11:37 PM

?

11:37 PM

বাঙলাদেশ Bangladesh (I was testing the keyboard by writing random things at this point)

11:38 PM

ঠ

11:39 PM

ঢ

সালাম সাবরিনা Salam, Sabrina 

11:43 PM

তুমি কেমন আছ? How are you?

11:45 PM

কিনতু তুমি ঐমনি ঔনেক পাগল Why are you very crazy? (She had said she was)

11:47 PM

েমনি (I was trying to correct a misspelled word in the sentence from here to down there)

11:48 PM

এমনি 

11:48 PM

অমনি

11:48 PM

আনেক

11:49 PM

অমনি (The word was very)

11:49 PM

অনেক (Finally fixed!)

11:49 PM

ছয়রে বশে অমার পাসা বেতা কোরে The chair I'm sitting on is hurting my butt

11:51 PM

কাতের চআইর It's a wooden chair

11:51 PM

অঅঅঅআ (Aaaaa)

11:52 PM

আমার (It entered this before I was ready for it to be sent)

11:52 PM

আমার অনেক কাজ আচে আর আমি কোরতে চায় না. আরবির পরোজেকত, একতা কলাসের জন্‌(রোপালা) I have a lot of homework and I don't want to do it. I have an Arabic project and I have to present it

11:59 PM

Friday on Skype

আছে I have it (I was responding to something she asked)

0:00 AM

করতে চাই.  I want to do it. 

This is the skype conversation from another day, there was more to it, but it got lost in the skype chat box. I'm just going to use it as part of this one artifact. I was on skype with my niece and we were talking about her. 

From this chat session, I've learned that I have a lot of spelling errors for simple words. Since I speak Bangla colloquially, it's easier for me to mess up the correct form of a verb because I think I know it, but my slurs and fast speech leaves out certain letters, but I'm not always aware of it. In English, it'd be the equivalent of situations in which one says things like "don't worry 'bout it" when it's actually "don't worry about it". They're minor differences, but it's not something that I can get away with in writing. I need to work on articulating the sounds more when writing, and even in normal speech. 

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Pakistani Marriage Customs

Pakistan has a great culture with rich customs. A Pakistani wedding is a great feast of fun, wearing fancy cloths,  merriments, and celebrations. It is celebrated with great fervor. A Pakistani wedding is followed by several pre-wedding customs and rituals. There are two important occasions that need to be done before marriage and they are as follows: 

Mangni is the engagement ceremony that marks the formal engagement of couple. The small ceremony takes place in the presence of a few important members of would-be bride & groom’s family. Prayer and blessings for the couple are recited and the wedding date is decided in Mangni.

Mayun is custom of the bride entering into the state of seclusion eight to fifteen days before the wedding. She’s made free of all the chores and errands around the house. The bride and groom are not allowed to see each other after the Mayun; bride is not allowed to leave her house. The beautification rituals begin during this time.

The following video is showing a beautiful and common wedding ceremony in Pakistan. :) 

http://youtu.be/WBxeGPaxIg0

The Culture Shock movie was very interesting. My first thought was that it's old and maybe a little outdated. I think it's time to make a new video to keep up with the times. While watching the movie, I couldn't help comparing what was being said to my own experience abroad. I found that there were many similarities that I could relate to. What the international students were feeling in the movie is being felt by countless international students around the world. They are never alone. It's really awesome that there was faculty and offices they could go to for support.

Unlike U of R, the academic curriculum at my abroad institution was much more relaxed. The classes were large. The personal relationship between a student and a professor was seriously lacking. Some professors only care about the money and don't feel a responsibility to the students in ensuring that they obtain a quality education. I didn't like how unenthusiastic the professors were.Contrary to what the students said about UR's academics, homework wasn't required so much abroad. Basically, either you can do the homework or you don't. The professors don't really care. I thought it was a bit odd when I first arrived in Australia, because I'm so used to passing something in and doing activities that help to solidify the knowledge I obtain. The amount of assignments for a class was both a blessing and a curse. I liked how I didn't have to do much work and get more freedom to explore and travel. However it put a ton of pressure on the few assignments there were. If I don't get a stellar grade, I'm basically screwed.

Australians' accents were a little tough to understand when I first got there. The easygoing and laid-back feel of the country fit nicely with my attitude in life when it doesn't involve school. I really enjoyed just relaxing and having a good time in Australia. However, if I was to go to Korea, it would be a whole different story. I probably wouldn't have felt as comfortable as I did in Australia. One reason is that the language isn't English or a language that I am somewhat familiar with making living in Korea more difficult.

I was actually surprised at how good the international students English were, some of them I didn't even think they were international at all. And so I commend them for their English.

In the last two weeks, i have read few short stories and tried to understand it without using a dictionary or any other kind of help. Then i wrote in short sentences the summery of the stories and checked them with my language partner. We also practiced in in speaking and i tried to say the sentences that i wrote. I found out that it is really helpful if i write things down and then practice them in sayings. It helps my speaking. Talking to myself or practicing with myself does not help me very much. I have talked to my language partner to spend our sessions more on talking rather than anything doing anything else. I am looking forward to this strategy and hoping that my language partner can help more with my speaking. We will be spending our sessions practice my speaking in this and next week. I hope i can get a good result from it. 

I was really interested to know some about village life and city life in Pakistan. I did some reserach as well as talked to my language partner to get some more information. So i have written a piece mostly about village in Pakistan.

Village life : 

Pakistan is predominantly a land of villages. A major portion of Pakistani Population resides in villages because agriculture is the main occupation of the Pakistani people. Today, there are more than a thousand villages in Pakistan. A Pakistani village reflects the real picture of Pakistan. A Pakistani village, as a matter of fact, is the very epitome of Pakistan's progress after the attainment of Independence . The Government of free Pakistan paid much attention to the lifting of the standard of Pakistani villagers.

A Pakistani village is still confronted with various problems ranging from the lack of education to improper sanitation. No doubt, during the last many years. much has been done to uplift Pakistani villagers, the majority of them are still afflicted by the evils like ignorance and illiteracy. A Pakistani villager is a rough diamond. He still sticks to the old superstition. customs and conventions which have become obsolete and outworn in the modern age of science and technology.

A Pakistani village, in the truest sense, is still made of mud with thatched roof and kucha compounds having unmetalled roads leading to and coming from the village. Its surroundings are green because of the crops and other vegetation. The streets are usual!) narrow and dirty with the open drainage system which gives out foul
smell. During rainy season, the entire village, because of its insanitary conditions, gives out a very foul smell.
Outside the village, there is a pond where cattle take water.

There are some big shady trees on the outskirts of the village, where village people, farmers and others, take rest during their leisure. Under these shady trees, they hold discussion, smoke and enjoy tit¬bits and talks. Some take their lunch under these trees.

Outside the village, there is also a well from where villagers draw water for drinking. The scene at the village well both in the morning and evening. A Pakistani village lacks all amenities like police station, a post office, a health centre, and a rural dispensary. 

Fatima Al-Bassam
SDLC 105
April 1^st, 2014

Reflection Paper

As a senior looking for classes to take, finding a course that would both interest me and challenge me was a bit difficult. As I was looking through the lists of possible electives I can take, it occurred to me that I can finally learn Urdu. Urdu has always been on top of my list. My father and aunts were born in India and spent a big part of their childhood there. Consequently, Indian culture has been a big part of my childhood and I grew up listening to my father occasionally having whole conversations in Urdu. 

Given my background, I was very excited to start my learning journey this semester. I developed a learning plan for myself and found various materials both online and in the Global Studio to help me reach my goals. The first few weeks went as smoothly as possible. Everything went according to plan and I was always on top of everything. However, as soon as my workload for my other classes started to increase, my motivation to learn Urdu started to decrease.

Looking back, I might have been a bit too optimistic about my learning journey. I never expected it to be this difficult. Learning a whole language on my own is something completely new to me. Though I already speak three languages, Arabic, English and Spanish, all of them were acquired in a conventional setting.  Motivating myself to sit down and spend some time on something that does not have a deadline while I had a lot of other pending work was a struggle I did not foresee.

I went through periods of standstill in my journey. These periods increased during the height of my workload, midterm week. Right before Spring Break, I decided that I have to change my way of learning. I was not happy with where I was. I have had some accomplishments of course. By that time, I could read and write easily in Urdu, ask questions about a person’s day and identity and have a very basic conversation, but these were not enough.

When I met with Dr. Sharon that week, I mentioned how difficult it was to motivate myself to learn while there's so much to do for my other classes. Her suggestions were extremely helpful. So far, I've been incorporating them into my learning plan. One of the most helpful ones was to schedule 15 minutes of learning Urdu in between my other work. This serves as a nice break from my normal business school workload and a way to motivate myself to learn more Urdu. I also increased my revision of past lessons and started incorporating Urdu into my everyday life. One thing that has helped me to learn more is listening to Urdu radio while I work on other things.

I hope to continue my work and reach some more goals till the end of this semester. This has been a challenging and interesting experience so far.  I’m glad I chose this as my last elective of my college career. 

Reflection%20Paper%202.docx

This week I discovered the beauty of "Speaking Swedish with Confidence". I am nearly half way through the CD and it has been a huge help. I haven't had the time to go over and memorize the new words and grammar and pronunciation tips I have learned but just knowing them is a big help. The CD is kind of annoying to listen to sometimes but I think having concrete rules is something that helps me a lot. To be honest I kind of feel way too overwhelmed with the video translations, listening to the CD and then on top of that trying to memorize the rules. Im not awful at learning languages but nor am I a prodigy. I think I need to break things down into smaller sections and not try to do everything at once. Like watch on clip, listen to two conversation and memorize 10 words or something like that. Because at the rate im going at it feels like I am doing the work but not getting anything out of it. I felt a lot like that last semester with the vocab. but when I broke it down, things got easier. So I will try that. I am still trying to come up with some sort of cultural project, I have spoken about it with everyone and their mother but nothing really seems to click. I think I am going to put some more thought into and if I can't figure out something go with some previous ideas. Although one I think that could kind of be cool is comparing Swedish to the nordic languages. Like Swedish to danish. Because I know there are some words in Swedish that mean one thing but in Danish mean another. But I am not quite sure how that would translate into a cultural project, I feel like its more a language project. hmm I still have to to decide.

ReflectionPaper2.docx

Reflection Paper 2

Turkey is very famous for hookah also known as shisha/nargila in Turkish. Even though hookah is thought to have originated in India, it is mostly smoked in Turkey. First time I tried hookah in my life was when I went to Turkey in 2010 to visit my friend. I was so surprised to see that almost every single bar/restaurant/coffee shop offered hookah. People have hookah in their homes and apartments and it is a common thing to smoke for both genders. Initially I thought that only guys would smoke it, but I was honestly surprised that women in Turkey smoke it as much. I went out with my Turkish friend that I was visiting and we ordered hookah. At first I was a little bit afraid of smoking it because I had never smoked it again and I did not know what to expect. When smoking hookah, you can choose any flavor you want, you can choose apple, strawberry or any other fruit or even a combination of fruits. I remember we ordered apple flavor. I thought it was going to be strong and that it is similar to cigarettes, but I was pleasantly surprised when I tried it. It was so smooth and light and relaxing. Then I realized why Turkish people like it so much. It is very relaxing, and Turkish people usually drink tea or coffee while smoking hookah and also play a very famous game Havla. People usually smoke it at night. They spend so much time smoking it, they sit for hours and hours talking to their friends and playing games. It is not like in the US where you can be at one place for a bit and then have to leave, these places in Turkey let you stay there for hours even if you get only one drink per night. When you get hookah you can smoke it for hours because the flavor does not vanish so quickly. It is also very cheap to smoke hookah in Turkey, it is more expensive here in Richmond. I was in Turkey during Ramadan, Muslim’s holy month when people are not allowed to eat/drink/smoke anything from the sunrise to sunset. That is why people did not smoke during the day, but as soon as the sun went down, and people had dinner they would start smoking hookah. I tried hookah in Bursa and I asked my friend if hookah is popular in all parts of Turkey or only in Bursa, she told me that it is really popular throughout the entire country, and especially in Istanbul and Bursa. Maybe because those cities are so crowded so it seems that people there actually smoke the most. Then I tried hookah when I went back home and when I came to Richmond, but I can tell that hookah differs, and that I tried the best hookah in Bursa. I do not know if they have specific flavors in Turkey, or is it because I tried it for the first time but I remember that that time, I tried the best hookah ever. I only regret not drinking Turkish tea at the same time to completely emerge myself in Turkish culture, I am not actually a big fan of Turkish tea because I find it too sweet, but to my mind hookah is one of the best things I tried in Turkey and I am looking forward to trying it again when I visit Turkey again. 

To my mind Turkish culture is one of the most interesting cultures in the world. Not only do they have wonderful food, amazing tea, hookah bars that they are proud of, they are also very creative. One of the recent news that hit the world was the tunnel created by Turks that links two continents Asia and Europe. Because of its specific location, basically the country is located on two continents; Turkey has access to the sea, and different countries on both continents.  Every day, about 2 million residents cross between the two continents. There is a ferry that transports people and their cars and buses back and forth but it takes a lot of time so it is not efficient. What Turkey did was it created a 8.5 miles long underwater tunnel that passes under the Bosphorus Strait. This tunnel links the two continents and now it takes only 4 minutes to get from one continent to another. They called this tunnel Marmaray Project because of the Sea of Marmara  and word “Ray” which means “rail” in Turkish. It is basically a rail under the water that links two continents. This is a huge project for not only Turkey but all people and businesses that need to make crossing between the continents. This project will improve economy of Turkey and bring profits while at the same time decrease costs. People will not have to waste their time waiting for ferry to transport them from one continent to another and spend a lot of time traveling, in only 4 minutes, people will be able to reach another continent. This sounds like science fiction to me, creating such a huge tunnel underwater and connecting two continents.

Also what is interesting is while digging the sea, this project uncovered about 40 thousand artifacts about Turkey’s history that goes back 8,500 years and this was very helpful for archaeologists and because of these findings, the project was unfortunately delayed for four years.

Turkish culture is such that they constantly improve and Turkish people are very determinant and efficient in their work. This project was very expensive but in the long run, Turkey is going to benefit from this project. This project connects people, nations and countries and will definitely bring financial capital to Turkey.

I am looking forward to hearing about new plans that Turkey plans to undertake that will help people improve their lives, save their time that they can utilize in better ways.  

The last two weeks have been very hard for me and I feel like I am going through the same difficulties that I went through when I was learning “-mis, -mus” tense. Namely, these two weeks my plan is to learn how to report to someone what another person told you, for example how to say “the doctor told Mike to exercise more regularly”. Changing from the original sentence to reporting sentence in Turkish can be extremely challenging and Miss Hanife noticed that I have difficulties with this tense. So we spend one entire session working just on this tense, making up examples and practicing it as much as possible. At first I thought that I was never going to understand it and I was so frustrated why I cannot understand it. However, by the end of our session, I felt more comfortable and thought that I should just pay extra attention to specific parts of the sentence and thus I will be able to correctly form sentences.

We also focused on reading and pronunciation. I feel comfortable reading in Turkish even though if I do not understand all the vocabulary in the text. Miss Hanife says that my pronunciation is correct but I have some difficulties pronouncing two Turkish letters. I can pronounce them correctly when I read them individually, but sometimes when both of those letters are in the same word then I get confused and even I can tell that I do not pronounce them correctly.

We also work on another grammar and that is learning how to say how two actions happened at the same time or one immediately after another, for example “My sister took her coat and left house”. Basically both sentences happened one after another and in Turkish there is a specific tense for such actions. There are so many tenses in Turkish that I get confused when I want to form a sentence because it takes me a lot of time in my head to figure out which form and tense I need to use for a sentence and which endings I need to add to a verb/noun if I want to use that tense. That is why I find it much easier to understand what other people are saying in Turkish rather than me having to speak in Turkish.

Once in every two weeks, Miss Hanife and I have one session in which we read, listen to Turkish songs, read poems etc,.  I have an electronic book with short Turkish stories that I read on my own and there are questions after each story that I answer and in case I do not understand something I can always ask Miss Hanife to explain it to me further in details during our sessions.

I am happy with our sessions and my improvement in Turkish. I believe that I have improved a lot since the beginning of the semester and that is not only what I say but for example Miss Hanife was very surprised when she found out that I could understand her explaining something very difficult in Turkish. I understood the main idea of her story, not necessarily every word. Also, my Turkish friends keep telling me that my Turkish is improving and they are going to have a Turkish dinner and they invited me to come as well, that night we will be speaking in Turkish only and as my friend said “No English at all.” Looking forward to improving my Turkish even more. 

These two weeks Ms. Hanife and I have worked on a lot of different things. First of all what I found interesting was learning how to use “neither/nor” in a sentence. In Turkish we say “ne…ne”, then either/or we say ya…ya. Then we can also use “maybe…maybe” in Turkish and that is “belki…belki”. I found this particularly important because I remember when I talked to my Turkish friend I wanted to form a sentence that would include neither/nor but I could not because I did not have this knowledge. That is why I was so excited when I learned this material. We started working on gerunds. This is very important in Turkish and in any other language. For example we use it when we want to say “Learning Turkish is fun” that is when we need this gerund structure. Forming gerunds is not particularly hard but it can get confusing when we want to say negative form, at least I get confused. First time I got introduced to this tense I thought it was going to be super easy but in fact I realized that it actually has its complications (just like any other Turkish tense and form). Still, considering that we are covering such important and complex material motivates me even more to work hard.

These two weeks we also did readings, listened to some Turkish songs and read poems. I had to find a Turkish poem read it at home and during our session. I am not very interested in poems and to my mind it is hard for me to understand poems because they are very deep and complex, and that is why Ms. Hanife has a lot of understanding and we try to find easy poems.

I also read several stories in Turkish from the electronic book that Ms. Hanife gave to me just so that I can practice my Turkish. In my free time I like to watch Turkish TV shows and my favorite is Dudaktan Kalbe. Even though I watch it on youtube and I could not find the subtitles, I can tell that I understand a lot of what actors say. My problem with Turkish is that I cannot express myself in Turkish, I can understand a lot of things but when it comes to me speaking I find it difficult and it takes me a lot of time to form a sentence, mostly because I am exposed to so many tenses that I try to be so careful when forming a sentence and adding ending to verbs and nouns. I however believe that further communication with Ms. Hanife and my other Turkish friends will help me overcome this obstacle and I will be able to speak in Turkish faster and use better grammar in forming my sentences. 

These two weeks I focused a lot on understanding –mis, -mus grammar. I find it extremely hard, and so far it is the hardest concept to understand. Even though I believe I understand most of it, I am still not 100% comfortable with this tense. It is hard because in Turkish language you can add so many suffixes to a verb that give a completely different meaning to the sentence, for example if you add “yor” to mis, mus tense it means that you are combining present continuous tense and reporting tense. Then, if you add “acak. Ecek” that means that you are combining future tense with reporting. It is interesting because you can play with tenses in Turkish language and every time get a different meaning and that is why foreign students find this language confusing. It is not like in English, you have one form for a tense and it is straightforward, you know exactly what you need to use. In Turkish, you can use several tenses, combine them by adding endings to the verb and get an interesting and confusing combination. Also these two weeks we worked on present simple tense. After the reporting tense, everything seems to easy to me. We already covered some present simple tense last semester, so it was easy for me to comprehend this material completely. This time we covered details, worked on both positive and negative statements as well as forming questions. It is basically same as in English, you use present simple when you do a specific action repeatedly.

My Turkish friends told me that my Turkish is improving significantly and that I must visit them in Turkey and Cyprus. I definitely plan on visiting Turkey again, as I find that country fascinating.

As I will talk in my culture post, Turkey has built a multi billion dollar underwater tunnel that links Europe and Asia and this is a huge thing in the world now. The project is called Turkey’s Marmaray project because of the Sea of Marmara and “Ray” means rail in Turkish. I talked to Ms. Hanife about this project and she is also excited because now two continents are basically connected which makes the life for people there easier because about 2 million residents make the crossing between the continents daily. The tunnel is 13.6 km (8.5 miles) long. I will talk about this more in my cultural post.

Overall I am happy with my current progress, and Ms. Hanife is very helpful and patient with me. There are topics that I have difficulties with more than others, so we both focus a lot on the things that I do not comprehend immediately, and I work a lot on my own on things that I find easier.

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This is my artifact 2. This was a huge assignment and Ms. Hanife checked my work. This assignment contained all reading/writing/ vocabulary and grammar. To my mind it was very hard but according to Ms. Hanife I did a great job. There are some corrections, and a few things that Ms. Hanife advised me to pay special attention to. I am happy with my work done, and I hope that my future works will be even better and more correct.  

Lejla%20singing%20Turkish%20song%20.mp3

This is me singing a Turkish song, here is the link of the original song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhMgxJA2ZJY Also the singer is originally from Bosnia, but she got married to a Turkish singer and she lives in Turkey now.