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Culture Post #3

Religions and Relationships.

Indian people highly value relationships both communal and romantic.

In my earlier post, I discussed the importance of religion and respect for one another’s faith in India. Respect is a huge part of the Indian national identity and it is resonated in the Hindi language. I this post I would like to shed light on the interaction between the importance of respect and the firm differences between faiths. I will be focusing on Hinduism and Islam.

Various parts of India still practice the tradition of arrange marriage. For the younger generation, this means that dating is prohibited. However, like any other teenagers, teens in India break the norms and pursue their love interest. These relationships are complicated when one person is of Hindu faith while the other is of Muslim faith.

Hindus respect Islam as a religion and Muslims respect Hinduism. The heart of the issue lies in the people who practice these religions. The conflict between the Hindus and the Muslims of India has been a prevalent issue for years now and it is not one that will be resolved easily. 

Culture Post #5

In this post, I would like to describe my vision for the cultural presentation. Over the course of the semester, my language partner and I have had great discussions about the Indian culture and what exactly it means to be an Indian.

We touched on some great topics in our “culture talks”: a woman’s role on a macro-level (the Indian society) and on a micro-level (at home), the difference between the urban Indian and the countryside, and religion.

For my project, I would like to focus my attention on religion and how that plays a role in the larger Indian culture. My presentation will begin with a brief history of Hinduism. Then, I will focus on the role religion plays in today’s modern society. Here, I would like to highlight the conflict between the followers of Hinduism and the followers of Islam.

My plans may change depending on what my research reveals but, for the time being, the purpose of my presentation will be to shed light on the history of Hinduism, the role of religion toady and the religious conflict and whether they are truly religious or simply conflicts between people.

Culture Post #1

Over the course of the last semester, I faced a huge cultural challenge: What is the Indian culture?

India is a vast country with various ethnic groups that have their own unique culture. The nation is composed of 28 states and almost every state is a home to a unique ethnic group that has their own language, different food, and special customs. I come from the state of Gujarat and, therefore, am classified as Gujarati. I know the Gujarati language and I am accustomed to Gujarati food. On the other hand, my language partner is of Sindhi background and she is used to her own special culture.

So with so many states, so many ethnicities, and so many customs, how do the Indian people find a common ground?

Indian people are aware of the differences amongst them. Instead of tearing them apart, these differences bring the Indian population together. Societies in Indian have some to respect each other’s believes and they join forces in order to create the larger Indian community. The Hindi language and the Hindu religion serve as a combining force for people. Hindi is the national language of India and it serves as a means of communication for over 1 billion people. Hindi is a powerful language and, this is one of the reasons for why I wanted to learn the language. The next combining force is religion. Majority of the Indian population is Hindu. This joins people in a spiritual bond.

This semester I would like to dig deeper into the Indian society and how different groups of people play a unique role in it. I would specifically like to focus on gender, socioeconomic status, relationships and religion. 

Culture Post #2

Religion and Respect.

Majority of the Indian population is of Hindu faith. Christianity and Islam are the minority religions in India. In this discussion, I will put forth the Hindu perspective.

In one of “culture talk” conversations, my language partner and I discussed the importance of religion and how that affects the larger society. Hinduism is a polytheistic religion that believes in the existence and worshipping of multiple gods and goddesses. While majority of the Indian population is Hindu, different groups of people approach Hinduism in various manners. In this way, Hinduism is like any other major religion of the word were some practitioners are more conservative and traditional in their approach while others are more liberal and modern.

For an average Indian, religion is not crucial in their day to day life. Yet, religion makes up a large part of the Indian identity. The Indian government identifies a various religious holidays based on Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. This is an act of respect. Respect is a big part of the Indian culture. One does not have to be affiliated with any particular religion in order to appreciate and respect that particular faith.

As an Indian, when I hear the term “religion”, I automatically think of the tiff between Hinduism and Islam. The tensions between the groups that practice each religion trace back to numerous decades. The conflict is extremely overt and visible in the Indian society even today. When people gather to talk about the issue, the religions themselves are not targeted (and this is primarily because of the notion of respect that is engrained in the Indian society.) Instead, the people are opposed to “the other” group of people that practice the religion. 

In my next culture post, I would like to pursue this topic further and inspect how religion plays a role in the relationships that people share with one another. 

Earlier I wrote a little about what my learning plan was.

These were my specific goals:

-Learning how to speak formally so that I can understand things like the news.

-Learning how to write in Bengali script 

-Learning how to read in Bengali

-Broaden my vocabulary 

-Learn how to tell time 

-Learn how to say the days of the week

-Learn numbers

I'm not sure about the order in which I'd approach these in relation to each other- whether I should alternate between the them or work on one, master it, and then move on to the next. I think I want to alternate so that I get an all around experience and get ahead by multitasking. 

When it comes to learning how to speak formally and understanding formal Bengali (shuddo bangla, as it is referred to) I think I need to expose myself to watching others speak it more often. I should watch episodes of the news and maybe movies in which they speak in formal Bengali as opposed to colloquial. 

For Bengali script, I should familiarize myself with the letters in the alphabet, the shortened forms for the vowels, and then learn how to connect the letters to each other. 

After learning the letters and how they connect, I can work on reading them by memorizing the sounds that they make. This part should be the easiest because I can already speak the language. 

In order to broaden my vocabulary, I want to eliminate my usage of English words when I talk in Bengali. I can keep a list of the English words I use instead of a Bengali one because I don't know it, and then ask my language partner what the equivalent is. I could get a dictionary, however I can only do that once I master reading in Bengali because the name for the words in most Bengali dictionaries are in Bangla. 

Numbers, time, and days of the week are all memorization.

I read news in Yahoo! Hong Kong website almost every week. I understand almost 80 percent of traditional Chinese characters but cannot write even one of them. The reason that Chinese people are using two different forms of written text was that the Chinese government believed that simplifying the writing method would encourage more people to become literate and the government decided to use Simplified Chinese in the 1950s. People in mainland China adopted it but the other Chinese speaking areas kept the traditional one till now. Basically, writing Simplified Chinese is much easier than writing traditional Chinese. Following is a comparison of the word “frighten” in both Simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese.

Traditional Chinese: 驚嚇

Simplified Chinese: 惊吓

Although Cantonese is only a dialect of southern part in China, its history was actually 1,200 years longer than official Chinese language Mandarin and it is spoken by more than 100 million people. Cantonese is a colloquial language and usually written in traditional Chinese characters. The grammar and structure of Cantonese are very similar to Mandarin but the pronunciation is completely different. 

My favorite singer Eason Chan comes from Hong Kong. Therefore almost all of his songs are sung in Cantonese. And I have learned a lot of Cantonese through the lyrics.

Language can represent the culture. So that one interesting part of learning a new language is to understand its culture background. And it is very important to understand its culture background when learning a new language. For example, now I am studying the traditional Chinese which is the writing language of Cantonese, and I found that all the traditional Chinese characters are meaningful and beautiful, such as the character “誌”. It means “magazines or journals” and it is actually composed by three individual characters which are “言”, “士” and “心”; and each of them has meaning by itself. “言” means “speak”, “士” was a specific way to address nobles (usually well educated people) a hundred years ago and “心” means “heart”. When the three characters were put together, it means “well educated people who follow their hearts speak out their opinions”. What a interesting explanation!

In chapter How Brain Handles Language, I found it was very interesting that the left hemisphere is usually dominant for language in right-handed people, but right hemisphere is not always dominant for language in left-hander. The reason I thought it was interesting is that I was a left-handed kid before age six. However, in China, left-handed people are usually found it difficult to live due to the fact that most of common tools are designed for right-handed people, so a lot of parents force their left-handed children to convert to right-handed. And so did my parents. Thus, I am both a right-handed person and a left-handed person. In the essay, Crystal mentioned that different hemispheres were specialized in different areas which might all be involved in language study. So, whether people like me, who are both left-hander and right-hander, have advantage in learning language? 

My third artifact was reading from a Bengali alphabet book. It's meant for elementary level kids. I read the text/caption underneath the letters. I did this for the first 11 letters. 

My second artifact is a card that I made for my parents who are literate in Bengali. The first picture is the front of the card and the second is the inside.

The front says says:

ammu ar abbur jonno, tumra amar dui murgheer pakhi jeeja (for mom and dad, you two are my chicken birds, ziza)

(Ziza is the name they call me by)

The inside: 

Amu tumi khali taka chao, abu tumi amur che bhalo, kintu tumader dui jonnoke bhalobashi (mom you only want money, dad you are better than mom, but I love both of you).

As you can see from the translations, I tried to make it funny for them. Hopefully they will enjoy it! :)

This is my first artifact; the vowels and alphabet of Bengali. Right beside the letter, in green, I wrote the sounds that the letters make so I won't talk about that here. In truth, I still get a lot of the letters mixed up because they look similar, but have different sounds. 

soccer%20artifact.mp3

Families in Pakistan are closer than families in America, mainly because most people live with their parents after growing up. The son is the one who lives with the parents; the wife marrying into the family moves, so it is patriarchal.  Parents have great influence over the choices and actions of the children, in contrast to America where children are increasingly "independent". An example of this would be the parents say on what the child majors on in their studies.

The father, or rather the oldest male in the family makes the final decisions for the family, referred to as the head of the household. This is similar to how Christian families function, with men serving their wife and children by leading.

For an adult child to go against the express command of the father would be a serious act.  In some instances the father may disown the son—but this may be reconciled after the passing of time.

This is my power point presentation: 

Turkish%20presentation%20Final.pptx  

Sources (also included in the presentation): 

http://www.tedaproject.com/EN/dosya/2-5977/h/turkishcoffeeculture.pdf

http://www.turkishculture.org/lifestyles/turkish-culture-portal/coffee-fortune-telling-205.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=E4GLlsXkFIw

http://www.turkishcoffeeworld.com/History_of_Coffee_s/60.htm

http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/2004/05/history-of-turkish-coffee.html

http://www.mehmetefendi.bg/en/article/5-9/gledane-kafe.html

http://www.turkishculture.org/culinary-arts/turkish-coffee-52.htm

http://www.ineedcoffee.com/09/traditional-turkish-coffee/

http://howto.yellow.co.nz/food-drink/non-alcoholic-drinks-and-beverages/how-to-make-turkish-coffee/

http://www.helloturkey.net/kahve.html

http://www.allaboutturkey.com/kahve.htm

http://turkishfood.about.com/od/BeveragesSpirits/a/Turkish-Tea-And-Coffee-Culture.htm

Summary: 

In my presentation I talked about Turkish coffee because Turkish coffee has been an integral part of Turkish culture ever since it was first brought to Turkey. In my presentation I talked about how Turkish coffee was extremely popular in the past and that at one point in time (1656) even banned and all the coffee houses were shut down. As I explained in the presentation this happened because the Ottoman rulers felt threatened by frequent gatherings in the coffee houses because they believed that men were gathering to question their rules/policies and doctrines and that they could possibly break out a war. 

Then I talked about marriage customs, and how men would judge women's efficiency through their skill of preparing coffee. Also, I explained that when a woman prepares coffee to a prospective husband, if she sweetens it a lot then she wants to get married to him, if she puts no sugar in coffee it means "No, thank you!" And in the end I talked about fortune telling which is a very popular thing in the Turkish culture, where either friends or fortune tellers read any objects or shapes that formed from coffee ground from the bottom of a turkish coffee cup as a way to predict your future and dreams. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffS7Ckfndog&feature=youtu.be 

Sixth Bi-weekly Post

1. 1.       Write a small story in Hindi
   1. Write a full page in Hindi
   2. “Culture Talk”

                    i.      Ask questions about Indian culture and have a cultural conversation utilizing basic Hindi words

1. 2.       Revision/ Culture Project
   1. “Culture Talk”

                  i.      Ask questions about Indian culture and have a cultural conversation utilizing basic Hindi words

As I approach the end of the semester, I have realized that some of my goals are extremely ambitious.

Overall, I am very pleased with my progress. I have learned how to better understand Hindi and talk more fluently. Now, I can recognize the Hindi alphabet and write with ease. I have been gradually making progress with reading the language as well. I can write basic sentences but I have not reached a point where I can write a short story. I can, however, develop simple sentences describing myself! I am hoping to highlight this during my final evaluation.

Over the course of this semester, Sanya and I have compared and contrasted the different Indian backgrounds that we come from. These “cultural talks” have been extremely useful to me as I have embarked on my journey about gaining an in-depth understanding of what it means to be an Indian. Learning how to read and write Hindi have enabled me to better understand some parts of the broader Indian culture. One of the primary examples of this was the concept of respecting elders in the Indian society. The Hindi language emphasizes the notion of respect by having numerous words designed in a hierarchy. Learning aspects such as this is a validation of a sort for me as I continue to pursue the Hindi language further.

I have made tremendous progress over the course of this semester. I have learned by doing and I have learned from my mistakes. Some of my goals were more realistic than others. Here on out, I know how to approach a language and what method works best for me. 

Fifth Bi-weekly Post

1. 1.       Translation sentences (English to Hindi)
   1. Sanya will give me sentences in English which I will have to comprehend and then translate them in Hindi 
   2. Learn 10 new words
   3. “Culture Talk”

                    i.      Ask questions about Indian culture and have a cultural conversation utilizing basic Hindi words

1. 2.       Write a paragraph in Hindi
   1. Write a paragraph in Hindi using simple sentences.
   2. “Culture Talk”

                    i.      Ask questions about Indian culture and have a cultural conversation utilizing basic Hindi words

In the last two meeting, I focused on changing my thinking processing from English to Hindi. As I have dwelled further into the language, I have constantly found myself caught in translation. My brain received the information in Hindi and it translated that in English in order to comprehend. From here, it was processed further as my thoughts developed in English and I translated them to Hindi, thus, communicating with my language partner.

Over the course of last two weeks, I received the information in English. I was asked to write in Hindi. Utilizing this method, my brain was challenged to start thinking in Hindi. Overall, the change occurred a lot faster that Sanya and I had expected. I was starting to grasp the concept and, soon, I was able to write sentences!

During this meeting, my language partner and I discussed how I would like to shape the final evaluation for the Self-Directed program. My monologue will be composed of me describing my academic life at the University of Richmond. The dialogue with my language partner will be composed of chatting about the Indian communal life. This dialogue will primarily revolve around social constructs such as daily lifestyle and holidays. I will read a short story that Sanya will write for me. My language partner will also instruct me and I will be writing words that I have learned over the course of the semester. 

Fourth Bi-weekly Post

1. 1.       Reading a simple short story
   1. Sanya will assign me a short story on Thursday. I will read this on my own and I should be able to fluently read this story to Sanya during our next meeting
   2. Learn 10 new words
   3. “Culture Talk”

                    i.      Ask questions about Indian culture and have a cultural conversation utilizing basic Hindi words

1. 2.       Reading a short story
   1. Sanya will assign me a short story on Thursday. I will read this on my own and I should be able to fluently read this story to Sanya during our next meeting
   2. Learn 10 new words
   3. “Culture Talk”

                    i.      Ask questions about Indian culture and have a cultural conversation utilizing basic Hindi words

This time around, Sanya and I tackled my second goal for this semester: learning how to read in Hindi! Sanya gave me a short story that we read together. At first, this was a big challenge. Throughout the course of the semester, I have been focusing on writing. I have made considerable progress in that field. However, as far as reading went a story goes, I was a little taken aback. I went in feeling confident about being comfortable with reading. However, a small set back was not going to stop me.

During my session with my language partner, we continued reading even though it was challenging. Sanya advised that I break down the words and use the alphabet pronunciation. Since Hindi is a language based on phonetics, this was extremely useful advice. Separating the words gave me the same familiarity that I had in the beginning stages of the semester. Using this technique, I read the short story multiple times. After a few times, I was able to grasp the overall pattern.

I have been practicing on my own and am hoping to become more fluent over time. 

Third Bi-weekly Post

1. 1.       Half words
   1. Using the “half” Hindi alphabets
   2. Learn 20 new words
   3. “Culture Talk”

                     i.      Ask questions about Indian culture and have a cultural conversation utilizing basic Hindi words

1. 2.       Simple Sentences
   1. Put words without matras and with  matras together
   2. Learn 10 new words
   3. “Culture Talk”

                   i.      Ask questions about Indian culture and have a cultural conversation utilizing basic Hindi words

The last two weeks were challenging and productive as well. Learning the “half” alphabets was a challenge. Sanya and I were not able to fully cover the topic in our meetings. Instead, our attention was diverted into putting the words I had learning into sentences. I was able to write basic sentences utilizing sets of words that Sanya had taught me. Sanya recited the sentences to me. First, I translated the sentence in English in order to ensure that I understood the meaning of what I was writing. Then I proceeded to write the words individually as Sanya kept an eye on my work. Finally, I was able to achieve my goal of writing simple sentences!

After this success, Sanya provided me with another set of words. This set of words included the matras that I was having a little difficulty learning. At first, I practiced these words at my own time. When I met with Sanya, I wrote sentences using the words with matras.  Below are the words:

1. दिन - day

2. निशान - mark

3. दीवार - wall

4. चाबी - key

5. अलमारी - cupboard

6. तैयार - ready

7. तैरना - swim

8. खुशबू - fragrance

9. रसोई - kitchen

10. दोपहर - afternoon

11. टोकरी - basket

12. मौसम - weather

13. सुबह - morning

14. औरत - woman

15. खिलौना - toy

16. साबुन - soap

17. रुकावट - obstacle or to stop something

18. सामान - luggage

19. रविवार - sunday

20. मेहमान – guest

This week’s meetings were very productive for me. I learned a lot and I was actually able to measure my progress! As far as cultural conversations go, Sanya and I have been talking a lot about the Indian society and how it functions at a micro and macro level. We were able to uncover some key differences. I will be discussing these conversations in my cultural posts!