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This week I began to practice with adverbs in Farsi as well as Modern Hebrew.
Farsi has an interesting treatment of describing places. Every word shares the common root of jal, meaning place. Words such as anjal, enjal, and kejal describe here, there and where. Location adverbs serve the speaker a great deal in describing surroundings and needs when otherwise lacking in vocabulary.
Prepositions were another objective of this week. In describing family and friends, the Modern Hebrew preposition mi has many functions.
When combined with where (eyfo) it can asks about where something originates.
Ex. mi eyfo at?=Where are you from? (male)
When used as a prefix on nouns it can note the meaning ‘with’, such as;
mi dod Joe=With Uncle Joe.
This powerpoint focuses on the economic implications of blepharoplasty as a Korean service.
Drinking in Korea requires serious etiquette and stamina. Drinking in Korea isn't the same as it is here in America. There, drinking is a type social bonding that most Koreans are accustomed to. There are also rules to keep in mind in order to avoid offending anyone.
1. Never poor your own drink. Pouring another person's drink is a sign of respect and is a gesture that encompasses ideas of affection and friendship. Pouring your own drink seems like a rejection of this concept and can be seen as indifference or rudeness.
2. If an elder pours you a drink, drink it. This has to do with the age hierarchy. Whatever an elder wants you to do, do it.
3. Make sure your companions' glasses are never empty. Pour for others.
4. While someone is pouring a drink for you, make sure to hold the cup out with one hand and to hold your wrist with the other. You can also hold the cup with two hands. Do the same when pouring an elder a drink.
5. Turn your back to anyone of higher rank or older age as you drink.
5. Don't be the person who parades through the streets screaming after drinking. Keep it together.
People will also encounter many stops throughout the night. Like I said, drinking = social bonding. There will be many stops during this time of bonding. First, is usually dinner and soju (it's one of Korea's most popular alcohol beverages). Stop two might be at a Hof, a Korean bar where people order snacks with their beer. The highlight of the night might be stop three which is usually at a noraebang (karaoke room). To wrap up the night, those who are left will move to a nightclub or disco place. Koreans party hard.
“On October 14, 2009 President Obama signed an executive order that restores the White House Initiative and President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to address issues concerning the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.” (WHIAAPI)
This weekend, I had the privilege of attending the Southeast Regional Action Summit hosted by Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Students across the country were in attendance to listen to keynote speaker, Chris Lu, Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary, and WHIAAPI Co-chair. Other speakers also contributed, such as WHIAAPI Executive Director Kiran Ahuja, and Hines Ward, the WHIAAPI commissioner. For those of you who aren’t versed in long and confusing acronyms, WHIAAPI refers to White House Initiative on Asian American and Pacific Islanders.
The topics that drew us in for this summit was, simply put, to talk about resources and initiatives related to AAPI community members. They offered information on the foreclosure crisis, and John Trasvina, the Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing in the U.S. Department for Housing and Urban Development, spoke to us about how to avoid foreclosure and preventing loan modification fraud, among other common issues. Later, Shyam Reddy, Region IV Administrator, U.S. General Services Administration and Cassius Butts, Regional IV Administrator, U.S. Small Business Administration, spoke on the topic of growing small business with a concentration on exporting and building capital. A topic that hit home for many in attendance was elaborated upon by Andrew Strait, Public Advocate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Seema Nanda, Deputy Special Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice. They spoke about immigration and and refugee communities, and were accompanied by immigration rights officials and organizations. Additionally, Dr. Arlene M. Lester, Captain, U.S. Public Health Service, Regional Minority Health Consultant, Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services talked about mental and physical health and resources available pertaining to maintaining a healthy life.
Students and administrators were urged to Tweet, blog, and submit questions to WHIAAPI throughout the day, and their efforts to promote open dialogue were well-received. Many critical questions, as well as compelling stories, were shared and answered throughout the day, and insights were revealed by students and White House officials alike. I was overwhelmed by the impressive rhetoric and thoughts that were raised, and I had a feeling of community and familiarity with a sea of people who seemed passionate and involved in issues that affected not just themselves, but the AAPI community at large.
In week five I set out to combine the personal pronouns and verbs I’ve learned to form an array of simple sentences that will (hopefully) open the door for conversational competency. At times, Modern Hebrew's personal pronouns can be confusing. To give the most obvious, and frequently commented on example according to my instructor;
“he”=she (fem. sing.) and
“who”=he (masc. sing.)
Once you turn off the English speaker distortion goggles, this doesn’t become a challenge. However, personal pronouns, and the verbs they connect to, do morph based on gender. For example:
ata ohev gvina=I (male) like cheese, while:
at ohevit gevina=I (female) like cheese
This doesn’t provide an immediate challenge. However, it will be something to keep in mind when forming basic sentences.
Evaluation of Artifact 1:
I think I did a pretty good job! I created a video of myself talking, greeting an invisible person, introducing myself, asking who they were, then telling them about who I am. There were certainly a couple words I stumbled over, but I showed Anna the video and she said she could understand everything I was attempting to say! For me, to have a native speaker be able to understand what I'm trying to say is the greatest accomplishment when it comes to learning a foreign language. It gives me confidence going forward as I try to learn new aspects of Norwegian. Certainly what I said was not flawless, but for a novice with no experience with germanic languages (outside of English), I feel pretty good at where I am at.
Assessment of Goals + Reflection:
I feel that I accomplished all of my goals. I'm certainly able to express greetings, farewells, and introductions both orally and written. If a random Norwegian came up to me right now and introduced themselves I think I would be prepared to reply to them. Again, my pronunciation is still not perfect, nor do I think it ever will be. I find myself adding a French accent to certain words or letters. My brain has certainly created a binary of expressing and understanding English and expressing and understanding French. When I try to do a foreign accent my mind just reverts to the latter section. Adding a new section for Norwegian with a significantly different accent is still quite difficult for me. Anna says my accent is cute, but I'm annoyed when I can't say the word entirely correct. But I feel, at least for the basics, I've done as well as I can for now.
Ancient Hebrew in a Modern Context
In order to prove that learning Hebrew is not useless (not that anyone would argue such), one need look no further than The Economist. A Hebrew word appears in the title of the recent article “Shares and shibboleths”. A shibboleth (שבלת) is literally translated as meaning the part of a plant containing grains. However, its adoption into modern English stems from the biblical story recorded in the Book of Judges. In the story, shibboleth is used as a sort of passcode to differentiate between locals (people with the familiar pronunciation) and outsiders.
Pretty cool stuff. I’ve posted the link to the original article as well as a link to a Wikipedia explanation.
original article:
http://www.economist.com/node/21550273
Wikipedia on shibboleth:
Korean is a language where formality and informality have a significant distinction. These very distinctions are evident in several places within the culture. For one, the Korean language itself has levels of formality. There's informal language that is used between friends and when talking to someone younger than you. There is a formal level that is used when speaking with elders and a super formal level as well.
However, language isn't the only way Koreans express formality and informality. Gestures are extremely important. For example, it is extremely rude to hand something to an elder with one hand. The appropriate way to hand something over is by holding it with both hands or by supporting your right hand with your left.
There's also other formal and informal distinctions present in dining etiquette. If you are drinking (I'm talking alcohol here) with someone who is older than you, you need to be the one to pour their drink for them. It's unacceptable for someone to pour their own drink. When clinking glasses before drinking the alcohol, it is important to remember that your glass should not be higher than the older person's glass when the glasses touch. Also, the younger person must turn away from the older person when they drink their alcohol.
As you can see, distinctions between formality and informality are in different aspects of Korean culture.
With increased confidence in reading simple words, I set out to increase my vocabulary. I study foods, numbers and simple inanimate objects (table, window, etc.). The numbering system in Farsi is fairly straightforward, and at times similarly sounding to English or French. For example, 1-2-3 would be Romanized as roughly yek-do-sey. With Farsi, while the unfamiliar Arabic script can be intimidating, I’m finding there are many places in which the Indo-European nature of Farsi leads to beneficial familiarity.
During week three I continue to study the Hebrew and Persian alphabet. While I am beginning to recognize each character in isolation, the sounds represented by letters strung together still has the power to perplex me at times. Farsi utilizes a cursive script that can make deciphering individual letters difficult (especially when handwritten). To combat this I am taking extra strides to ensure I have a firm grasp of each letter's specific sound and stroke order in isolation, before venturing to form words. The relatively clean, non-cursive script of Modern Hebrew (excluding colloquial short-hand alphabet which I’m skipping for now) makes deciphering the alphabetic components of words easy. The challenge that remains is learning the elusive system to placing vowels.
What surprised me about the Korean writing system was that it is really different from the Japanese writing system. Hangeul, the Korean writing system, doesn't use characters like Japanese hiragana, katakana and kanji (I've studied Japanese before and am familiar with its writing system). Hangeul includes a set of 'symbols' that represents a specific sound. These symbols are combined to make a syllable or character. In Japanese, each symbol represents a syllable, so I thought Hangeul was unique in that aspect. For me, Hangeul is harder to read and write because figuring out how to combine the pieces to make a part of the word is a huge extra step that slows me down. Still, I prefer Hangeul more than Japanese because I absolutely hated learning kanji (Chinese characters).
One thing I've heard several times about learning Hangeul (and other writing systems as well) is to not translate the written Korean words into romanized letters. People might feel that this is helpful when learning, but I think it actually isn't the proper way of learning another written language. Since I'm learning Korean, a language that is completely different from English, it's natural to want to learn this way, but it doesn't help you to understand the written language if you're only translating back and forth.
Sometimes Korean isn't pronounced the way it is written. Some letter sounds alternate depending on the word. It's hard to distinguish 'p' and 'b' sometimes because it sounds the same. That's why translating the written language is bad. For example, Busan (a South Korean city) is actually pronounced like "Pusan," the 'b' actually makes a soft 'p' sound. However, it depends sometimes. The word "babo" (it means idiot) is actually pronounced "pabo." In this case, the first 'b' makes a soft 'p' sound, but the second 'b' is just pronounced as a 'b.' Inconvenient, no?
I begin meeting with my language partners during week two. In order to gain a foothold in both languages, I set learning the writing systems as an immediate goal. Learning a writing system involves multiple parts including, but not limited to:
-Ability to recognize each letter in isolation
-Ability to recreate the sound signified by each letter, set in isolation
-Understanding of how letters are pronounced when strung together to form words
-Being aware of letters that can form multiple sounds
-Understanding when and where consonants are signified
The last point presents a challenge for learners of Farsi and Hebrew. With limited representation of vowel sounds, both alphabet systems require intuition and recognition of patterns to decipher when vowels are pronounced. Luckily, both alphabets have systems consisting of dots and lines to represent vowels to newcomers to the language. While these systems help, it is yet another item on a hefty list of things to learn.
As week 3 comes to a close, I feel I'm really plunging myself into the Norwegian language. I practiced greetings, farewells, and Introductions with Anna. The words are easy enough to memorize, but saying them out loud is where I am finding the most problems. A lot of the words look like their equivalent in English, but the pronunciation is completely different! It's very frustrating at times. But Anna is patient with me and repeats the words for me multiple times. I try to practice by myself using google translator and other websites that say the words in the proper accent, repeating the words over and over until I sound like the person announcing. I'm glad I've made at least some progress in Norwegian! I need to build on this momentum as I enter the coming weeks.
Goals for Weeks 4 & 5:
-Practice written and oral skills of introductions, greetings, and farewells.
-Be able to introduce myself properly, describing who I am (name, age, etc), where I'm from, and what languages I speak. Also work on introducing other people ("This is...").
-Master the pronunciation of greetings and farewells (with Anna, and using google translator). Be able to write these as well.
-Create first artifact: A monologue of me fulfilling the tasks above.
-Critique artifact--Did I sound Norwegian? Was my speech fluid? Was what I said grammatically correct?
I want to study the Korean language for several reasons. I've always been interested in different Asian languages and cultures. For that reason, I will be study abroad all next year in South Korea so that I can truly immerse myself in its cultural environment. As a student studying journalism and anthropology, I think studying abroad for a good period of time is necessary (plus anthropology majors are required to study abroad for at least six weeks). I am also planning to spend time doing research for my senior thesis that I will have to do for anthropology once I return to the University of Richmond. Since I will be studying abroad in South Korea, I thought knowing basic Korean was a must.
I hope to accomplish a basic understanding of the language before I head off abroad. I would really like to improve my speaking and communication skills more than anything. Secondly, I would like to be able to read and write well. I'm looking forward to expanding my vocabulary and working on pronunciation. I will continue taking Korean classes once abroad in order to complete my COM2 requirement this way. My future goal is fluency. I'd love to be fluent in this language because I'm passionate and have a naturally curiosity to understand everything about it.
I am also considering teaching English in South Korea for a year or two after I graduate. Knowing the language will be a huge advantage if I do end up teaching there.
