Blogs

Since language is more than a tool for communication, the death of language can mean the loss of culture, history, and even an ethnicity. The language always ties to the culture, and it might be the most stable element of the culture. For instance, Korean food can adapt to American taste, but the language cannot blend with English. Also, languages represent history and might be the only source to delve into history. Many tribes do not have their own texts. In this case, word of mouth becomes the only way to tell history; therefore, the death of a tribe language can mean the loss of historical records. Most importantly, the disappearance of a language can lead to the “extinction” of an ethnicity or a tribe. According to the article, years ago, Siletz prevailed over other tribes; however, currently, there are only a few people speaking the language. As the article states that school is the enemy of tribal languages, I noticed that this fact is especially true in China. The government encourages mandarin, so there is decreasing number of people speaking dialects or tribal languages. Ethnic minorities in cities speak mandarin most of the time, thus they have already “become” Han people with an ethnic minority title rather than true ethnic minorities. 

"The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life)."

I am impressed with this article but not at all surprised. I think it is a special talent to be able to communicate with people and those who master languages without a doubt use a different part of the brain to recall and respond immediately and innately if they are truly bilingual.

I am interested in how they define bilingualism though, because there are so many ways that you can measure someone's language abilities, but I think that immersion or households that speak two languages are the only ways to truly be able to consider oneself bilingual because there is a tick in your brain that people who are bilingual just don't have. When you are learning a language, usually you start off learning through translation. Eventually, you begin to learn in the target language, but there is still an element of translation so that the learner has something to relate it to. Learning from 0 and having tow different definitions of a concept in different languages is a unique ability that not many can grasp. That is how I define bilingualism.

• Create a learning activity to teach someone else something you have learned in your language; outline this activity in your learning journal; teach someone using this activity; reflect upon the effectiveness of the activity

• Learning Journal 8:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals

I decided to teach my friends how to say basic formal phrases in Korean. When we went to a Korean restaurant, they were very curious about how to say restaurant phrases such as “thank you” and “please” among many other phrases. They also attempted to learn the names of the Korean dishes on the menu. Due to our servers being older than us, I made sure to teach them the formal form rather than the informal. We went through the process of saying every syllable multiple times until they were able to repeat the phrases without my help. When we were paying, they attempted to say “thank you” without my help, and many of them succeeded. Though it was a simple activity, it was challenging for my friends because they never had any experience with the language before. Since I grew up hearing and speaking the language, pronouncing the words were not difficult. However, I came to realize that my friends were not able to say many of the sounds in Korean due to them not existing in the English language. I think that overall it was a successful lesson. Though small, they were exposed to the Korean language through trying the food while also attempting to pronounce many of the words. It was interesting to see them excited when they were able to pronounce the words without my help. Learning to connect with others, even though many of them only knew one word, seemed to be eye-opening and fun for them.

Post Learning Journal #6 on Your Blog in the Ning

• Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language

Knowing a language’s history can help you learn the language because it helps to give context in why some words exist. Knowing Korean history is important to the understanding of how many Korean words formed, allowing the learner to understand the trend of how the Korean language is growing. By understanding the history of how Korean was in the past, the learner is able to have a better idea of where our language is heading to in the future. Historically, after the two Koreas split after World War 2, the two countries became isolated from each other, preventing any potential communications between one another.

Due to North Korea’s distaste for the United States, North Koreans did not incorporate any English into their language. Rather, they chose to incorporate words from Russian. South Korea, on the other hand, was allies with the United States. Due to the exchanges between the two countries, South Korea began to incorporate many English words into their language. This pattern radically changed the two countries over the next several decades, to the point where North and South Koreans were unable to communicate even though they once began with the same language. Looking specifically at South Korean, this trend of incorporating English into our language and our solid relationship with the United States projects for more English to be incorporated into the language. By understanding this osmosis of words between the languages, the Korean learner is able to be more open-minded to seeing English words in Korean language.

Personally, I was incredibly interested in Turkish culture and history. Sezgi introduced us to a Turkish TV show that I will continue to watch (with English subtitles) because it is so historically accurate and shows the importance of family power, struggle, and wealth in the Ottoman Empire, along with the Empire's clashes with the Papacy of Vatican City.

• Learning Journal 10:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

• Learned how to make nouns plural. (Because of vowel harmony, put lar after a, ı, o, and u and put ler after e, i,  ö, and ü.)
• Learned about seasons in Sezqi's class.
• Learned vocabularies like spring, summer, fall, winter, and moths (January to December).
• It was interesting that the direct translation of spring in Turkish is "first spring" and that of fall is "last spring".
• March, and August in Turkish sound similar to English.

Third Artifact: Vocaroo_s0bnr889xN5x.mp3 Transcript: Transcript3 

"Anjing Yang Nakal"

Hari ini saya membaca sebuah cerita. Ada seekor anjing di sebuah desa. Anjing itu sangat nakal dan jelek. Jadi, masternya mengikat dia dengan tali dan balok kayu. Tapi, di cerita itu, tidak diceritakan kenapa anjing itu nakal. Terus, waktu anjing lain melihat dia, mereka tidak suka dengan dia. Pasan moral dari ceritanya adalah "Terkenal karena kebaikkan berbeda dengan terkenal karena kejahatan."

Translation: "Bad Dog"

I read a story today. There was a dog in a village. The dog was very bad and evil. So, the master tied the dog to the ground with a chain and wooden block. But, the story did not say why the dog was bad. When other dogs see the bad dog, they don't like him. The story's message is there is a difference for attaining fame through good behavior versus bad behavior.

Clearly, I have written a crude summary of the story. Nevertheless, I thought the story was particularly interesting and pertinent to my cultural posts. First, in Indonesian fable stories, dogs are used as a "platform" to deliver the message, which highlights their value (or lack thereof) in the society. Moreover, the "master" (when translated into English -- a pejorative term in Indonesian I am told) chained the dog to the ground and placed a wooden block around its neck to ensure it won't move around. This, I believe, condones such treatment of animals in general and dogs in particular. 

In other words, the short story not only highlights the subtle ways in which dogs are portrayed in society -- their value, dignity, and so on; it opens a window on how dogs are viewed, and through the repetitive discourse relayed through children's stories, these views are embedded into successive generations.

• Learning Journal 8:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

• For this week, I prepared materials to teach in 110 class. 
• I and Tenaya decided to give a lesson about weather in Turkish. 
• We reviewed how to talk about weather (asking questions about weather, and answering them) and days.
• We printed out pictures that show weather.
• We developed ideas on how to teach beginners in Turkish effectively.
• We practiced teaching the class with the materials we prepared. 

• Learning Journal 9:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

• Learn about vocabularies that are related to sports. 
• Make PowerPoint slides about soccer.
• Watch a soccer game in Turkish.

• I used UTalk Challenge application to learn about sports in Turkish. I learned how to say and write soccer, soccer ball, referee, team, goal, Olympics, and other sports names (or words related to other sports like basketball). 
• I took notes and I reviewed the words few days later from the day I learned them.
• I made PowerPoint about soccer. Here is the ppt: Soccer.pptx
• I watched a soccer game in Turkish.

• Learning Journal 6:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

• Learn about weather (like how to say degrees)
• Learn about days
• I accomplished these goals by attending Turkish class with Sezgi that we learned vocabularies on weather and days. I can say "How's the weather on Monday(through Sunday)", "Its raining", "It's sunny", "It's cold", "It's hot", "It's cloudy" and "How's the weather on Monday night" in Turkish. I learned how to read and write "today". "yesterday", and "tomorrow".
• I also learned conjunctions like "and" and "but". 
• I reviewed the materials and prepared for the Turkish lesson in SDLC 110.

• Learning Journal 7:  Reflect upon your progress to date, consider the effectiveness of your learning plan and activities, and discuss what changes--if any--you will make to finish the semester.

I think I need to work on Mango Language more often. I think balancing more between Sezqi's class and self-studying outside of the class is necessary at this point. I accomplished seven goals out of ten on my learning plan. I think that is a good progress and I think I should keep going. I think I need to review what I have learned and spend more time during the weekends reviewing. 

I will go to a Turkish restaurant to order food in Turkish and I will learn how to shop in Turkish using Mango Language. 

I recorded myself asking and answering about weather and what day it is. 

Second Artifact: Weather forecast in Turkish. WeatherForecast Transcript: WeatherForecast_Transcript

For this week, I learned the sentence of asking "do you like xxx?" and to answer yes/no.  We practiced a dialogue during learning sessions where we insert the words we learned previously to the question and fully answered them. Minkyung helped to correct our pronunciations.  We also learned a set of words about vegetables, including eggplant, tomato, potato, celery, lettuce and more. There are some words that sound very similar in English, for example, tomato.  This is because some of the vegetables were not orginally from South Korea and were introduced to Korea later.  Some other vegitables have simlilar sound as Chinese words.  

I also watched a video regarding how to ask for price in Korean.  The video created a scene so audience can feel involved in learning the conversations.  I am still not familiarize with numbers but I learned how to ask for price.   

My goal for this week is to know how to buy tickets in Korean. The reason why I chose for this topic is because that I had many experiences of buying tickets during the time I stayed in Korea. It is not very hard, but still have some details that I have to learn about, such as the words for student tickets, discount tickets, and the opening time or the closing time, etc. Thus, I looked up those words I need to learn if I want to buy a ticket in the dictionary. Then, I designed a simple dialogue by myself. The simple dialogue is like:

Hi, here is my student ID card.

Can I get a student ticket please? Thank you.

Also, when is the closing time of this museum?

Except this one, I also write another dialogue under the situation that they don't want to admit my student id card since I am not a student there. So, I will add some conversations like " how can I get a discount", etc.

Knowing the history can improve the language learning in several ways. At first, history creates words, especially those proverbs, idioms, and analogy. For instance, an idiom might come from a historical story. In this case, knowing the story helps to better understand and memorize the idiom. Plus, for Korean, the history of the language ties to the history of the country. Hence, figuring out how the language has changed over centuries helps knowing the structure of the language. In addition, history promotes the culture formation, and culture deeply influences the language. Thus, knowing the history helps me learn the language from the cultural perspective. For example, in all ages, Confucius has been playing an important role in the Korean culture. Therefore, knowing this fact allows me to understand the use of honorific and the implicit way of talking. Furthermore, history is fun, and it is like telling stories. Knowing the history can increase my interest in learning Korean. Also, I can talk about Korean history and culture with Koreans to practice the language.

This week we learned the names of animals and foods. It was very interesting to see how many of these words are similar to Chinese. We learned how to say animals like: ostrich (ta zho), tiger (ho rang i), cat (ko yang yi), fox (yo yul). For the food, I knew many of them from eating them before. It was interesting to see both the word and learn how to read it and practice writing it out.

I would say that my vocabulary is somewhere around 200 right now. I have learned much of my vocabulary through apps and by asking Sezgi what words mean when she says ones that I am not familiar with.

Something that she does that frustrated me at first, but I have grown to appreciate is that she does not merely translate the word. She tries to use it in other ways or show me what it means in order for me to create an association rather than a definition.

I think I do have realistic goals because even though I am not moving incredibly quickly with my vocabulary, I am learning how to make use of the words that I do know and I believe that I am learning relevant words.

Family Introduction

We are learning about food. In fact, we had a meeting outside of class in which Sezgi went out of her way to make us Turkish coffee, bring us Turkish delights, and do a fortune-telling session. It was so cool to learn about how this custom is so important to daily ritual and how frequently it is used in both casual and professional settings.

I am able to introduce my family and talk about my house.

I personally am not bilingual, but it would make sense that in certain ways bilinguals are smarter than those who only speak one language. The ability to think and express those thoughts in multiple languages seems like a skill that would translate to other tasks, such as multitasking, especially if one has the ability to code switch well between languages. I think saying that bilinguals are smarter in general does not paint an accurate picture, but there is obviously evidence that the ability to speak multiple languages translates to other tasks as well. 

One of my learning tasks was to text in Korean more and to get more familiar with conversational texting styles. I also wanted to practice my spelling and grammar by texting as much as I could with my family and friends. Below are screenshots of my conversation with my new friends, Yugi and Dali. I asked them how long they have been learning Korean and what parts of Korea they have visited.