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Over the course of this last semester I have enjoyed the opportunity to study the Hebrew Language. Going in to this MLC 105/110 course I did not a single Hebrew word except shalom. However, even with shalom I did not know what it meant in English, just that it was used in movies like “Wedding Crashers.” My beginning style made it hard at first trying to speak the language. In Hebrew there are many sounds one has to produce that do not have sounds of the equivalent in English. This makes it hard to understand without the help of a native speaker to explain it to you. That is where my excellent tutor Maya Tatro came in to play.

            Maya is a second year here at UR who has a strong background of the Hebrew language. Anything my fellow learning partner JT and I asked of her she could answer. If she for some reason could not answer it then we would call her mom who was a fluent speaker that loved talking to novice learners like ourselves. Before we started our language learning I first drew up a list of goals I wanted to accomplish. As the semester winds down I am proud to say that I was able to accomplish my goals. I can say months and days of the year, count, introduce myself, talk about weather, hello/goodbye, family members, etc.

When we were learning the only thing I was worried about was how to say the words, not necessarily how to write them. I just wanted to be able to communicate with somebody who spoke Hebrew to me, so if you were to ask me how to spell any word or to provide the correct calligraphy writing for any word, I would not be able to do it. However, if you were to ask me how do you say awesome in Hebrew I would tell you it sounds like sababa!

Attending the classes for MLC 105 was also helpful. Within that class there were at least 5 different groups of people that were studying entirely different cultures and languages. It was interesting to hear other people’s opinions of what language and the culture they are studying really means on an individual level. I know we liked to complain about the book and how it really did not do much for us, but the book was somewhat helpful if you really read in to it. By understanding the nature of the language and how language is developed it is much easier to understand the background of Hebrew since it is an ancient language.

Another part of the class that I liked was the culture projects at the end of the semester. I know I already touched on how much I enjoyed certain presentations in an earlier blog post, but I wanted to make sure I briefly touched on the benefits of watching other culture projects. Sure I loved the food that people brought in, but I also loved watching people come out of their own shells and confidently talk about their specific culture project from the baths, to the Israeli army, to tea, to the difference in Thai city and country folk.

I loved this course and there would not be many things I would change about it. One recommendation is maybe make it more online like a lot more Rosetta Stone than tutors. Without a set time to meet every week with your tutor it can be extremely difficult to meet and learn. Just even in a group of three people, Maya plus JT and myself found it very difficult to find a time where everybody could meet. I still think I was successful in my interactions with Maya and she did a great job, but had I the option to meet twice a week instead of once a week, perhaps I would have learned even more about the Hebrew language. In only getting to meet once a week we really had to cram two different days of information in to one. This learning style works for me, because I am like a typical college student that can cram for anything with a little bit of caffeine and a library open 24/7. It also helps that I lived with my language partner. JT and I were at the same level of language competence so if there was something I didn't understand I could just talk to JT and hopefully we could figure it out without having to call and bother Maya. Most semesters you may not find the scheduling conflicts that our group had experienced but perhaps the set time designated towards meeting with a tutor would allow for avoiding these conflicts. At the same time meeting with Maya was by far the most helpful part about the semester. She could explain everything on a personal basis and could also find anything for you in Hebrew whether it was stupid Hebrew videos on YouTube or great Hebrew websites informing one of the culture and language. 

All in all this was an awesome (sababa) class. I would certainly recommend it to anybody interested in broadening his or her horizons. Dr. Grove and Dr. Scinicariello were great teachers that were respectful of student’s times and flexible with our busy schedules that many seniors are experiencing now as we look for jobs. Thanks for the class it was a pleasure having you both as teachers. 

This past week was my last meeting with my tutor Maya. This week instead of really studying Hebrew we went over my presentation for my culture project and made sure everything was perfect. She helped me implement new words that were more easily relatable with the subject matter I was talking about. Besides placing the words in she helped me go through my presentation and was my receptive audience. Then she gave recommendations as to what else I should add and take out of my presentation. For instance, I was only planning on speaking of the good things about Birthright, but Maya mentioned there are many critics. I had not even thought about that. By adding the negatives about my topic of interest, people were better able to understand and get a feel for everything that Birthright stands for. It has been very fun working with Maya this semester as my tutor. She was flexible enough with my demanding schedule to allow for me to meet at least once a week to learn Hebrew. 

First I will discuss my friends' experience with Hebrew school, then the intended approach for a modern Jewish boy/girl.

My friend started his Hebrew school when he was 12 years old. Beforehand, he had been tutored at home. He did not actually have his bar mitzvah until he was 15. He and his friends called it "Sunday school," even though he had his on Saturday at his synagogue. The main things taught at Hebrew school are the teachings of the Torah and the societal implications of Judaism. As you grow older, you learn about Israeli politics and the Arab-Israeli relations. When my friend had his bar mitzvah, he he read the parashah, a portion of the Torah read weekly at Jewish services. As he got older, he participated in tzedakah (giving back). This was the word they use for giving back to the community, an important aspect of growing up Jewish. He also was a part of teen youth groups, which would talk about being Jewish in daily life and doing community service together. Because he didn't start until he was older, he participated in the buddy system only as the older buddy. Jewish youth will help each other by having the older boys and girl assist in teaching the younger kids.

The traditional Jewish child will start going to Hebrew school when they are in Kindergarten. Hebrew school is typically taught on Sundays and on Tuesday or Wednesday evening. It is meant to culminate at confirmation, a practice occurring only in the reformed and conservative movements, and not in the Jewish Orthodox movement. Those who study in the Orthodox tradition go through daily teachings of more in depth learning of the Torah in order to become a rabbi.

I discussed the modern day Passover with my friend who is Jewish, and the first thing he brought up to me was the fact that one of the main concerns of Passover is getting drunk. The actual drinking of lots of wine on the seder is now a common tradition for all Jews during Passover. This stems from  the 5 blessings of the wine, where each blessing means each person must drink a whole glass of wine. There is lots of singing during Passover, especially during the seder, when the poems of the Haggadah (the Jewish text which sets forth the order of the seder) are sung. One of the songs is the Dayenu, which means "that will be enough." It is about being thankful to God for all of the gifts he gave to the Jewish people, such as taking them out of slavery. Here are some traditions of the Passover seder:

Recognition of the 7 plagues: a drop of wine is spilled for each plague that was brought upon Egypt.

Dipping bitter herbs (moror) into salt water: the bitter herbs are representative of the bitterness of the lifestyle for Jews in Egypt, and the salt water represents the tears of those who suffered.

Eating charoset: Its color and texture are meant to recall the mortar with which the Israelites bonded bricks when they were enslaved in Egypt as mentioned in the Talmud.

Presence of the lamb shank: recognized the lamb that was sacrificed for Jews to avoid the final plague. The put blood on their doors so that their first born would not be killed.

Other than that, the main dietary traditions of passover include not eating leavened bread, gluten, or corn. Most Jews to not follow the latter two, but still avoid yeast. Common dishes include brisket, matzah ball soup, and kuggel. They also like to eat macaroons and chocolate strawberries as a dessert.

As Maya and I were discussing her trip to Israel as her Birthright, we started talking about the Kibbutz. She had lived in one for a while, but grew tired of it. A Kibbutz (gathering, clustering) is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Nowadays, these utopian communities are more industrial and create technology. The main purpose of the Kibbutz is that it is self-sustaining. Everything consumed by each Kibbutznik (member of the Kibbutz) is created by another member, and there is joint ownership of all property. It is a complete self sustaining economy, and usually does not contain more than a couple hundred people. Maya explained to me that instead of families eating on their own schedule, there is a community 'dining hall' where everybody chips in on the meal. Some people cook, some set up, others clean afterwards. The idea is that everyone works together for the better of the group.

There is an elected administrator to the Kibbutz, who is elected every 2-3 years. This person assigns positions for varying lengths of time, along with creating a rotation for members to do communal work such as kitchen and dining hall duties. In general, everything is organized and only works because there are principles to the Kibbutz that include its democratic nature, spirit of volunteerism, and commitment to idealism as motivation to the members. Nowadays, 40% of those who grow up in a Kibbutz return after their military service, and the majority of those in the Kibbutz are those who had grown up there, not those who grew up outside of that lifestyle, but chose it.

I love the Bangladeshi people.  One of my favorite things about them is their hospitality to foreigners.  I think they really show up Americans in this regard.  When I was in Bangladesh, I was very willingly welcomed in people's home I did not know very well just because I was a foreigner.  And not only was I welcomed, I was fed with their very best--some things that they would not even eat by themselves. Also they would always tell me that if I ever needed anything that I could call them. 

I think in America we tend to not trust foreigners, somehow believing them to be illegal or thinking that they are trying to use us (even though we would never articulate this sentiment).  Regardless of the reason, we do not feel it necessary to improve the lives of the innocent foreigners in the US who do not speak the language and simply need people to look out for them.  This convicts me even writing this.  I hope to learn from the Bangladeshi example and treat foreigners here how I have been treated. 

I have only experienced Bangladesh during rainy season.  It felt like it rained at least every other day and sometimes the rainfall was torrential.  I remember looking out the window during class and seeing the entire street below covered in a couple of feet of water, but by the time I left class to return home, the water had cleared.  According to Banglapedia, the country ranges from an average of 59 inches to 118 inches a year .  Also only 4% of the rain occurs during the winter months making the spring and summer's rain seem more dramatic.  Because of this, all rickshaws are equipped with a plastic covering for all their passengers and it is essential to always carry an umbrella. 

The climate itself is very humid.  So much so that walking with class papers outside for more than five minutes left them completely limp.  Also, whenever I went running, the air was so thick that I could not run at near my normal pace in the United States.  The heat, although not usually terribly hot, was felt much more because of the humidity. 

So if anyone was ever to visit this country, prepare to be hot, sticky, and wet!

Artifact%20%234.mp3

Family

Father

Mother

Son

Daughter

Children

Dog

Horse

Fish

Cat

Bird

Little Dog

Big Dog

Dress Shirt

Pants

T-Shirt

Hat

Shoes

Artifact%20%233.mp3

How is the Weather?

Today is Sunny

Roday is Windy

Today is Rainy

Today is Cloudy

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Greeting

My name is Dylan

What is your name

How are you

I am good

Goodbye

It's so strange to look back at this past summer and see how far I've come in my Farsi-learning.  I reached all of my language goals so that makes me feel very satisfied, but at the same time I personally saw myself coming a lot farther than I was able to.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, Rosetta Stone turned out to be a little disappointing for me.  I discussed this with other Farsi students who agreed and who had also hoped to get through a lot more of the Rosetta Stone lessons than they were able to.  I was hoping to at least complete all of Level 1 for Farsi, and had even hoped to begin Level 2.  However, I only made it through about half of Level 1, completing 2.5 of the lessons provided.  Since I've been studying French and Spanish throughout college, I've gotten used to those languages coming pretty easy for me, and so Farsi was also frustrating because I was starting from scratch once again. 

The alphabet proved to be more difficult to learn than I'd expected.  I sort of just thought that most of the letters would have English equivalents and that there would be one letter to correspond to each sound, however, because of Arabic influences there are sometimes many ways to write one sound, such as the four different "s" and "z"'s.  This made learning to spell quite difficult because although I could recognize the sound, I wouldn't be positive of which letter I should use, and it became more about memorization than about pronunciation.  Additionally, the Farsi alphabet does not contain vowels, so I wasn't able to simply look at a word and know how to pronounce it, instead I would need a native speaker to pronounce the word for me or I would have to look it up in a dictionary that included phonetic pronunciations.

What I've really enjoyed about this class has been the cultural aspect that comes along with learning.  Not only did I learn to say the different names for rooms in houses, but I also learned about the style of homes, problems facing modern-day Kabul, and how houses can be representations of family-life and structure. 

I really would like to continue learning Farsi.  I think that this language will be very useful in my future career, and after putting in a semester of work, I would really hate to just see those skills lost.  With language-learning, practice really is necessary, so I know I will have to continue to make myself work to study Farsi.  I plan on making my own calendar, similar to the learning plan that I've used this semester so that I can hold myself accountable for future learning. 

All in all, this has been a very positive experience.  I didn't learn as much grammar as I would have liked, and I'm not really able to just form sentences or describe my actions, I am however able to talk about my family, my house, tell the time, and have introductory conversations.  I definitely have a great basis to continue working with and I think that now that I have some basic knowledge of Farsi, with the help of native speakers, it will be a lot easier to continue with my self-directed language learning. 

Working with my language partner Prayas has been the most rewarding and effective component of my language learning this semester.  During many of our meetings, we used my Hindi notebook from India and did grammar drills.  This helped me to become more confident in using the different tenses in Hindi.  Each day, we focused on a particular grammatical area.  For example, we did drills using past, simple past, habitual past, future, and present tenses separately.  In addition, we practiced using other sentence constructions such as, “I can” or “I want to” statements.  We also worked on my vocabulary and pronunciation skills.  More recently, we have switched to just engaging in conversation.  This is much more realistic, way harder, but a lot more fun as well.  We have talked about topics including daily routine, things I did in India, what life is like in Nepal because Prayas is from there, and plans for the days ahead.  I like the conversation learning because it is a challenge for me to see how much of what Prayas says that I can understand, and an additional challenge to develop an appropriate response.  From listening ot Prayas speak, I have picked up on some new vocabulary I wouldn’t necessarily have thought to look up directly.  I’ve found that I have a habit of sticking with just one tense when conversing.  It is important that I listen closely for changes in tense in conversation.  Overall, meetings with Prayas have been great.  He has been an awesome resource throughout the semester for my language learning.

This is a video that I had a friend film where I write out the Farsi alphabet, while saying the letters' Farsi names. 

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

Clothing.mov

This is a movie that I made where I say the number, type, and color of different items of clothing. 

For this learning activity, I decided that it would be easiest to just work on pronunciation and to ignore spelling.  The alphabet took a while for me to learn, and I figured that for someone only learning a few phrases, knowing how to spell them wasn't really necessary.  I would teach someone to say "Hi. How are you? I'm fine thank you.  And you?" 

To begin teaching this I would start by teaching the word for hello "Salaam".  The other person would repeat the word after me a few times.  Then, I would change the subject and we would talk about something else for a little while until I again asked them to say hello and they would repeat "Salaam". 

Next, I would teach "How are you?", which in Farsi is "Chetoree".  Similar to how I taught "Salaam", I would take "Salaam" and then wait for them to ask me "Chetoree".  We would take turns saying the two phrases so that the other person got comfortable with them.  Next, I would teach "I am fine, thank you.  And you?"  which in Farsi is "Khoobam, merci.  Va shoma?".  We would go over the conversation many times.  The "Kh" sound is difficult to pronounce at first so we would spend a little longer trying to get the sound right, which needs to be pronounced from the throat.  We would practice this conversation many times, taking turns starting it so that both parts could be learned.

I tried this method with my boyfriend, and he actually seemed to pick up pretty fast.  The problem seemed to be though, that he had simply memorized the order of the phrases and so if I switched up the order a little, he wouldn't know what to respond with.  I found that this could be fixed by spending more time on each phrase so that he could truly understand the meaning of it, and not just the order. 

This will be my final and last reflection on my time with Umur learning Turkish.  First of all, I was very lucky to have him as a language partner since he was extremely helpful in helping me not only learn the language but understand the language.  He significantly aided me in my presentation and even gave me places to go and visit when I go to Turkey! Antalya here I come!!!  In addition to Umur, my friend Semih was helpful as well.  He was very happy that I was learning Turkish so whenever I would see him we would at least attempt to converse a little! 

In my opinion, learning the language in this manner, and on my own terms was much more fun than learning it in class. I was able to do activities on my own time while actually enjoying the language rather than stressing about it.  Not having tests or other examination made me enjoy Turkish rather than dread it.  Overall it was a fun class and made the semester much more enjoyable.   

Unfortunately I was not in class the day that we did the learning activity with Japanese but I've got an idea of how I would create my own way to learn a language.

I think the concept of picture/word recognition that Rosetta Stone uses is great.  Start off by taking picture of things around the house, at school, at work etc and find out what these things are called in your target language.  This way every time you see the dining room table you'll be prompted automatically by yourself to try and remember what it's called in the other language.  This is good for absolute beginners but if you want to move up in your skills I really don't think that Rosetta Stone's way of teaching grammar is the best.

Conjugations and grammatical rules need to be learned straight up. Use flash cards or whatever but simply by looking at a sentence over and over again in a different language is not going to teach you different cases, tenses etc.  I think the best way to learn these is through writing and repetition, which should then be followed by listening and then speaking.  There is no point in pushing speaking to the forefront.  Most people consider speaking the most important part of learning a foreign language, and it is.  However, it is also the last skill to be acquired when learning that language therefore, there is no point in focusing just on speech.  In the beginning, pronunciation is important and should be practiced but if writing and listening are studied intensely, then speaking will be more natural. 

This is the method that I have used to learn the languages that I know. When I sat down in my first class as a an exchange student at my high school in Germany I simply pulled out the dictionary (call me a nerd) and started reading it. I did this for about a month straight because once my vocabulary was strong enough, I was able to pick up parts of conversations and if you can get a few words from a conversation and understand body language, then you can pretty much get the gist of what's being talked about.  Finally came speech, but that only came after months of writing down new words every day, memorizing them and listening to conversations.  Everyone's method is different, but this is the one that works for me.