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For the last bi-weekly journal post, I would like to challenge myself and read a short Turkish news report about COVID-19. I copy the Turkish news below and translated it into English. During the process of translating, I have learned so many new words and have more understanding about grammar. 

Turkish News about the COVID-19:

Kurumun başkanı 27 Mart'ta yaptığı açıklamada, bir Türk üniversitesinin koronavirüs için doğal bir DNA aşısı geliştirmek için çalışmaya başladığını söyledi.İzmir ilinde Ege Üniversitesi başkanı Necdet Budak, yaptığı açıklamada, COVID-19 için

lisanslı bir aşının henüz mevcut olmadığından, birçok ülkenin konuyla ilgili araştırma başlattığını söyledi.

Sanayi ve Teknoloji Bakanı Mustafa Varank da bir aşıya ihtiyaç olduğunu vurguladı.

26 Mart'ta Varank, COVID-19'a karşı aşı ve ilaç geliştirme projelerini destekleme platformunun bir parçası olarak Ege 
Üniversitesi de dahil olmak üzere çeşitli kurumların destekleneceğini söyledi.

Budak, "Ege Üniversitesi'nde, bakanlığımızın çağrısı üzerine yerli bir DNA aşısı üzerinde çalışmaya başladık." Dedi.

"Rektörlüğümüz altında kurulan ve İlaç Geliştirme ve Farmakokinetik Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi merkezli Aşı

Araştırma ve Geliştirme Grubu, yıllardır birçok üniversitenin katılımıyla çeşitli patojenlere karşı aşı araştırma ve geliştirme çalışmaları yürütmektedir. kurumlar ve sektör ortakları. "

Çalışma grubumuz, bu salgına karşı neler yapılabileceğini tartıştı ve böylece aşı projesini başlattı. "

Virüs için potansiyel bir aşının klinik araştırması ABD'de bu ayın başlarında başladı.

Aşıyı ilk alan kişi mRNA-1273, Seattle'dan 43 yaşındaki Jennifer Haller'dı.

English Translation:

A Turkish university has started to work on developing a native DNA vaccine for coronavirus, the institution's head said on March 27.

In a statement, Necdet Budak, head of Ege University in İzmir province, said that since a licensed vaccine for COVID-19 was not yet available, many countries initiated research on the subject.

Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank also stressed the need for a vaccine, he added.

On March 26, Varank said that as part of a platform to support projects on vaccine and drug development against COVID-19, several institutions, including Ege University, will be supported.


"At Ege University, we have started to work on a native DNA vaccine upon the call of our ministry," Budak said.

"The Vaccine Research and Development Group, which is established under our Rectorate and centered on Research and Application Center of Drug Development and Pharmacokinetics, has been carrying on vaccine research and development studies against various pathogens for years, with the participation of many universities, public institutions, and industry partners."

Our working group, he added, discussed what could be done against this pandemic, and thus initiated the vaccine project."

Clinical trial of a potential vaccine for the virus began in the U.S. earlier this month.

The first person to get the vaccine, mRNA-1273, was 43-year-old Jennifer Haller from Seattle.

For this post, I would like to review something important that I learned before with my language partner, Hazal, since we did not have more regular meetings due to the COVID-19. Asking questions is of great importance in daily conversations. Also, I always have trouble remembering the "wh-" words in Turkish. So I think this is a good opportunity to strengthen my memory. 

Grammar Tips:

In Turkish there are several ways of asking a question:

1. Wh Questions:

In Turkish this kind of questions start with different question words. For example:

Who:    Kim        What: Ne    When: Ne zaman    Why: Niçin, Neden     

Where: Nereye, nerede, nereden

“Kim gelecek?”   means   Who will come?

“Ne dedin?”   means   What did you say?

“Ne zaman geldiniz?”   means   When did you come?

“ Neden gelmedin?”     means Why didn’t you come?

“Nereye gideceğiz?”    means  Where will we go?

2. Yes / No Questions

This kind of questions are constructed using “-mı, -mi, -mu, -mü”  at the end of the sentences.

Examples:

O gelecek mi?          means     Will he/she come?

O yaptı mı?               means     Did he/she do?

Sen yoruldun mu?     means     Are you tired?

Sen gördün mü?       means      Did you see?

3. Tag Questions

Finally, you can also make a question by adding a tag question to the end of a sentence. The tag question is “değil mi” in Turkish.

Examples:

O toplantıya geldi, değil mi?  means  He/She came to the meeting, didn’t she/he?

Aslı eve gitmeyecek, değil mi?  means  Aslı won’t go to home, will she? 

( In the last example, the word gitmeyecek has negative meaning. The suffix “–me, (-ma)” gives the negative meaning to the verb.)       

The chart below is the summary of "wh" words in Turkish and their translation in English 

The chart below gives some simple examples 

For this post, I would like to talk about the art of Turkish photographs. 

Photography was one of the major technological discoveries that contributed to the rise of modernity in the 19th century. It was introduced to the lands of the Ottoman Empire by travelers and became widespread in the end of the 19th century. The first professional photography studio in Istanbul was established in 1845 by Italian brothers Carlo and Giovanni Naya. Vasilaki Kargopoulo was the first Ottoman to establish a studio in 1850. Following the 1860s, the number of such studios increased significantly, and they were mainly located around the Pera and Kadıköy districts in Istanbul. Some of the principal photographic studios were operated by Greek Christians and Italians, as well as by photographers of Armenian descent such as Pascal Sebah, Polycarpe Joaillier and the court photographers Abdullah Frères, who opened their studio in 1858 and upon whom were bestowed the title Ressam-ı Hazret-i Şehriyar-i by Sultan Abdülaziz.

Sultan Abdülhamid II  is interested in photography and takes pictures in person. During his reign, the art of photography developed rapidly in the Ottoman Empire. Sudan commissioned photographers to record events and major institutions in the country. In 1884, he ordered Police Minister Kamil Pasha to set up a studio and take pictures of all prisoners in Istanbul. In 1893, Sultan Abdülhamid II sent 51 albums to the Library of Congress and 47 albums to the British Museum to introduce the Ottoman Empire. In January 1894, Sultan Abdulhamid II ordered the establishment of a fully equipped photo studio in the Yilziz Palace and appointed Ali Riza Bay as the director of the studio. Sultan Abdülhamid II ’s photo album includes photos taken by six photographers that show Aleppo, Damascus, Adana, Izmir, Çankırı, Denizli, Baghdad, Edirne, Manisa, Ai Den, Bursa, Izmit, Thessaloniki, Besson, Besson, Casamonu, Istanbul A large part of these albums are currently available in the Central Library of the University of Istanbul and the Islamic Conference Organization Islam View in the archives of the Center for History, Art and Culture Research. More than 8,500 images depicting Turkey can also be found in the Print and Photo Online Catalogue 

Portrait photography was generally preferred by the elite class in the beginning, with the sultans and their families and statesmen having their portrait photos taken. At the end of the 19th century, photography was embraced by other social classes as well.

One of the first Turkish Muslims who opened a photographic studio in Crete was Rahmizade Bahaeddin. He was also active in the first half of the 20th century as a pioneer photographer in Istanbul. There were also Turks active in the photography business in several other cities in Turkey. Kitabi Hamdi Efendi, the Turkish owner of a printing house in Trabzon, was publishing his photographs and he sold cameras as well. Another Turkish photographer and postcard editor who was active from the late 19th century in Trabzon was Osman Nouri. Into the 20th century, numerous Turkish photographers became active in and outside of Turkey.

           For this post, I would like to talk about the art of Turkish tiles and ceramic. 

           The art of Turkish ceramic tiles and ceramics occupies a pivotal position in the history of Islamic art. Its roots can be traced back to at least the Uighurs in the eighth and ninth centuries. Subsequent developments were influenced by Karakhanid, Ghaznavid and (especially) Iranian Seljuk art. As Seljuks defeated the Byzantines at Malazgirt in 1071, Art followed them into Anatolia and began a new period of strong development bred by Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate.          

            The Seljuqs of the Anatolians were of course influenced by the cultural heritage they encountered in their new hometown, adapting them to the technology they took away from the Iranian plateau. This led to the unique Anatolian Seljuk (Seljuk) architecture prevailing in the 13th century. The Seljuk Mosque, Intermediate Theological Seminary, Mausoleum and Palace are all decorated with fine ceramic tiles. In the capital city of Selcuk, Sinia, Sivas, Tokat, Beysehir, Kayseri, Erzurum, Malati Examples of such tile paving structures can still be seen in cities such as Malatya and Alanya.

            The most common type of architectural decoration encountered during the Anatolian Seljuk period was the use of glazed tiles, where glazed tiles (also including unglazed tiles) were arranged to produce various patterns, mainly in buildings Exterior wall. Turquoise is the most commonly used color in glazes, although cobalt blue, eggplant purple and sometimes black are also popular.

            One architectural decoration used in combination with glazed tiles is hexagonal, triangular, square and rectangular monochrome tiles. Unlike bricks, they are the first choice for indoor applications and are suitable for a variety of geometric arrangements. Tiles are made of harder, yellower paste than bricks. Cyan, cobalt blue, purple and (sometimes) green glazes are used. There are very few examples of gold-plated traces.

            The third technique proficient in Anatolian Seljuks is mosaic tiles. This is also used in interior design, especially inside the mihrab walls, and inside the dome, transitioning into the dome, dome, and walls. Tile mosaics are formed by cutting tiles into tiles that fit the desired pattern. The inlaid unglazed surface is slightly conical. Arrange these pieces of glass face down, then pour white mortar on them. After setting, you can install the required board or panel in the desired location. The composition of mosaic tiles is usually geometric shapes, but floral patterns and Kufik or Toulouse calligraphy can also be found. The most popular colors are turquoise, cobalt blue, eggplant purple and black. Examples of Anatolian Seljuk buildings decorated with mosaic tiles include Karatay Medrese, Alaaddin Mosque, Gok Medrese and Mosque, Malatya Grand Mosque and Ince Minareli Medrese.

            In addition to these techniques, which, along with underglaze, appear in religious and funerary architecture, there were two techniques employed only in civil and palace architecture: minai tiles and luster tiles. The forms of these tiles were also different, the favorite shapes being stars and crosses; instead of geometric patterns, vegetal scroll and lively figurative compositions were used.

            Minai technology was developed in Iran in the 12th and 13th centuries, mainly for ceramics. The only place to find such tiles in Anatolia is Alaeddin Kiosk in Konya. The palette provided by this technology is much larger, and purple, blue, turquoise, green, red, brown, black and white, and gilded shades can be found. Apply some color under the glaze and then fire it; apply other paints to the glaze, and then get the secondary opaque white, transparent or blue-green glaze, and then fire it again. The design of the Minai tiles is vivid and lively, reminiscent of miniature sculptures with the theme of palace and palace life.

            The luster technique first appeared in Abbasid Iraq. Later developed to a high level by the Fatimids in Egypt, it was successfully employed by the Iranian Seljuks. The only place in Anatolia where luster tiles have been found is Kubadabad. The tiles discovered at the excavations of the palace are now on display at the Karatay Medrese Museum in Konya. Luster tiles are decorated in an overglaze technique in which the design is painted with lusterÄ¿a mixture of metallic oxides incorporating silver and copperÄ¿onto a previously glazed and fired surface. The tiles are then given a second firing at a lower temperature producing a range of lustrous, mostly brownish and yellowish tones. Seljuk palace luster tiles are decorated with plant motifs as well as with human and animal figures.

For this post, I would like to talk about Turkish clothing and the history behind it.

The earliest sources found in the history of Turkish clothing date back to the miniatures and wall pictures uncovered in Central Asia. Sources of 100 B.C. reveal that woolen and the cotton fabric were woven on handlooms but silk came from China. The Turkish way of living at that time brought about functional clothing styles. As the horse was the common and inevitable form of transport in the daily routine, women's and men's wear resembled each other (unisex).

Leather and felt materials had priority due to natural and social conditions. In addition to these materials, sheepskin, fur and woolen materials were major constituents in clothes of that period. Sources indicate that central Asian Turks used to wear leather boots, maintain shirt, a short caftan used with a belt, and a kind of riding trousers lose at the top narrowing downwards suitable for horse riding. Caftan and boots also gained significance as a sign of status.

Bashlyks, head coverings, as in clothes, were made of fur or sheepskin with the purpose of protection from the cold. Bashlyks were also observed to be symbols of status. Emigration from Asia to Anatolia caused many cultures to integrate. This was reflected in clothes, symbols, and motifs of the 24 Gagauz tribes which formed a united culture of their own. In the following years, Kırkhiz, Özbek, Uygur, Azerbaijan, Tartar tribes coming to Anatolia were also affected by each other.

Samples of woven material, carpet, and clothes belonging to the "Seljuk" and "Principality" periods are exhibited in museums. Clothes of the Seljuks were produced from materials such as wool, felt, camel's hair, fur, cotton, and silk. The varied climate conditions in Anatolia required clothes to be used in all conditions. Cold climate areas brought in the use of fur linings.

Clothes of this period display pre-Anatolian influences. The principal material was composed of works of the highly developed art of weaving. Materials forming bashlyks and clothes eventually gained variations. In the Ottoman period, as the borders of the empire expanded, new relations were set up, cultures and their clothing traditions reached a static state. Istanbul, Bursa, Bilecik, Denizli, Ankara, Konya, Trabzon, Rize Kastamonu, Gürün were districts well specialized in weaving.

Knowledge of this period is obtained from museums, travel descriptions, pictures and miniatures. The socio-economic differences between the administrators and the common people also affected the clothing styles.

While the Palace and its court displayed showy clothes, the common people were only concerned with covering themselves. The administrators occasionally brought about legal regulations on clothes. These applications were first initiated during the period of Süleyman the Magnificent. In this period men wore outer items such as 'mintan', 'zıbın', 'şalvar', 'kuşak', 'potur', 'entari'; 'kalpak', 'sarık' on the head; 'çarık', 'çizme', 'çedik', 'yemeni' on the feet. The administrators and the wealthy wore caftans with fur lining and embroidery, whereas the middle class wore 'cübbe', 'hırka' and the poor wore collarless 'cepken' or 'yelek' (vest).

Bashlyks were the most prominent accessories of social statues. While the people wore

 "külah's" covered with 'abani' or 'yemeni', the cream of the society wore bashlyks such as 'yusufi, örfi, katibi, kavaze', etc. During the rule of Süleyman a bashlyk called 'perişani' was popular as the Palace people valued bashlyks adorned with precious stones. 'Kavuk', however, was the most common type of bashlyk. For this reason, a related tradesmenship was formed in the XVII. century. Fur was a material of prestige in that period.

final%20presentation-Yahui%20Wu.mp4

Reflection 7

In last reflection, I mentioned the benefits of making the connections between new words in vocabulary and the words that I already know. In the new chapter I continue to use this strategy, and I found more benefits. Firstly, it helps clarifies phrases in spoken sound and in written words. For example, 작다 and 짧다, which have similar meanings are to be small and to be short. Since they have similar pronunciations, I thought they were the same word before I search in the dictionary. Because of the awareness of the uncertainty towards it and the willingness to clarify this knowledge, I learnt these two words. Secondly, by making connections we can notice some language phenomenons such as, 비 has the similar meaning as suffices un-, non-, dis-, etc. When I saw the word 비싸다, to be expensive, I immediately thought of the word 싸다 in last chapter, which has an overlapped part with 비싸다 and have the exact opposite meaning, to be cheap. From my previous knowledge of Korean, one of the meanings of 비 has a corresponding Chinese character 非, which indicates negativity. Also, I collect other meanings of 비, such as rain and sad. By doing this small research, the knowledge of new words is no longer linear, instead, it has branches and leaves and has relationships with each other. Thirdly, you can make connections between the grammar and expression session in the following sections of the same chapter with the examples. For example, 고맙다 changes the ㅂ to 우, when it meets ~어요 for vowel contraction and becomes 고마워요. This exception is is not mentioned in the following contents of this chapter but by having this explanation when remembering the words makes the language phenomenon a lot easier to understand. Moreover, the connections between the dictionary form and the everyday usage of the word. For example, when me and my Korean speaking friends say good night after dance practice, we would say 잘자 to each other. However, when I encounter its dictionary form, 자다, to sleep, I didn’t recognize it at first. Now I know the character 잘 means good and well, and 자 means sleep. To extend this knowledge, you can ask someone to go to bed quickly by saying 빨리자 where 빨리 means quick. 

Another thing that I really want to share with Korean learners who use the textbook Integrated Korean is that sometime the English translations besides the Korean words are not as accurate. There is one word in this chapter’s vocabulary list, 운동 which has the translation exercise and it is not accurate. This Korean phrase can be used in various place outside exercise, such as 운동선수 which means athlete where 선수 means player. However, Chinese has a similar word, 运动, pronounced as [yun dong]. I mentioned at the beginning of the semester about whether it is better to use Chinese textbook to learn Korean or English textbook for me. From my experience of using these two I would say they have both pros and cons. Using English textbook you can easily communicate with your fellow classmates and your language partner about the questions you have during your study, or search on Google. In contrast, using Chinese textbook for Chinese learners is definitely easier and quicker to read and remember, and more content can be conveyed more accurately. 

A lot of interesting topic were raised, the final recording was almost 30 minutes so I had to cut out a lot to fit under the time limit. I hope it does sound too choppy!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18fLTrCrqO1yY_OdZfuBrERTwWzYgSlmJ/view?usp=sharing

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2.

For my last cultural artifact I want to share a conversation between my language p

artner, myself, and our second student. I want to reflect on what a helpful language partner I was lucky to have this semester. I think I enjoyed the fact that he always challenged me during the class to do things that I wouldn’t think to do myself nor think that I could even do.

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He made it manageable by compiling the necessary materials for us to start working and also did the research to ensure that we wouldn’t be in the dark. I also loved the fact he really took our interests and decisions into consideration 

when guiding us to the new project. Here is how the conversation went. It also includes a lot of interesting information that served as an introduction for us as we started on the work that I thought was really important to highlight.

For this blog post, I want to share the podcast questions my language partner gave me along with my reflection on them. We both prepared questions for each other to speak on during the podcast. I thought they were good reflection questions so I also wanted to write my thoughts to gather them on my post for this week.

Language Partner Podcast questions:

What made you first interested in linguistics and philology?

How have your initial interests and motivations changed or developed in your studies?

What languages have you studied and which do you have more of an interest in?

How do you plan to continue with your future studies?

What other projects are you working on related to 

Lidia’s Questions & Answers:

How does it feel for you, as an Eritrean, to study Ge’ez? 

I don’t know, I never really considered it in that sense of feeding my personal identity as an Eritrean but rather a Tewahdo Christian. I guess I always associated Ge’ez as something different from anything in this world. Even though I contest it intellectually, I still feel like it is unique and taps into something so beautiful and not yet formed in my brain, sometimes something that feels out of reach. Tigrigna being a Semitic language as well has helped me probably more than I know, though. It definitely has made studying Ge’ez a little more manageable because I often notice cognates and such.

People often consider Ge’ez to be a “dead” language, but you and I worked on composition, can we challenge this label (consider qine etc.)? 

Ge’ez is very much alive in the Tewahdo Church and I think scholars do continue to write qine, arkies, compositions, I don’t know how much of it is published though. I see that it is documented, but overall I guess since more efforts are going into translations than compositions the label is probably fitting. What do you think about this label?

How did you find the spectrum of composing new texts, working with more recent ones, and working from a 600 year old manuscript?

I found it really fascinating and consider myself very lucky to have an opportunity to work with such texts. Doing a wide range of things has helped me detect different styles more. More prominently the difference between poetry and narrative...which I really didn’t think were that different until being exposed to both right after one another here. Obviously, I have a ways to go but it’s really interesting to me when you point out certain stylistic items. It helps draw the bigger picture, and the works in context. 

During Holy Week, I was listening to a lot more Ge’ez than I was used to. Like several hours a day and not in melody, I think all of this has helped me to at least be able to sit through these services and at the most be able to understand fully what is being read. At one point I fell asleep during a reading and actually had a dream in Ge’ez.

Sunday, April 12 Reflection

This week we were working with another student in the “classroom”. The new student was a friend that I often talked Ge’ez things with. He had also been doing classes with my language partner as well. We had talked about it for a while but it was a scheduling conflict that brought us to working together. I remember I was really excited to recommend my language partner to my good friend so it was really nice to finally have him in the classroom. I do recognize though that it was good to have personal tutoring time so we could get a foundational instruction.

Our classroom format was the same as usual but we just took turns reading and translating. We translate on the spot by speaking and discuss word/tense choice as we go. We were able to give each other feedback and chime in to the questions our language partner had for us. We also made sure to discuss with each other before about not judging one another just as a disclaimer but that didn’t pose an issue during our sessions. 

At first we worked on a manuscript that had been uploaded on the British Library called the Vision of Theophilus and though it was my first time reading from a manuscript this semester it wasn’t too bad. It was a hagiography of Theophilus and also told the story of Mary and Jesus (from conception, incarnation, exile, etc. onwards). The next work we worked on a scanned version of a very old book (dated in the 1400s) called the Book of Mystery by Abba Giorgis zeGasicha. It was of Abba Giyorgis’ refutation of the canons of the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD). This manuscript was much more difficult to read as it was older and stored as a scan of a scan rather than a picture. Nevertheless, it was very interesting! Here is an excerpt from another section of the book. 

ለቀዳማዊ፡ ምስለ፡ ካልአይ፨ The first with the second,

ወለሣልሳዊ፡ ምስለ፡ ራብዓይ፨ And the third with the fourth,

ፍልጠተ፡ ዓመታት፡ በዘይትሌለይ፨ (Who made) the division of the years into which they are separated,

ውስተ፡ ልበ፡ መሓስባን፡ በዘይትሔለይ፨ In which they are intelligible to the mind(s) of astronomers,

ሎቱ፡ ስብሐት፡ ለብሑተ፡ ስልጣን፡ ወዕበይ፨ To Him be glory, to (Him who is) alone in authority and greatness,

ለዓለመ፡ ዓለመ፡ አሜን፨ Unto ages of ages, amen.

This work was less of a story and more like a theological analysis. It required a different set of vocabulary though its focus was still the Incarnation of Christ. It also contained some poetry of exaltation to God that was quite abstract as we can see in the example excerpt. 

I know I wouldn’t have dared to look at something like this on my own so I’m very glad our language partner challenged us with this!

Reflection 6

It has been quite a long time since I studied Korean because of the condition I’m in, so I decided to do some review first to get me prepared to continue learning new lessons. Covering the meanings, I go through all the vocabulary I’ve learned from the textbook and try to recall their meanings. When I encounter words I don’t remember or feeling shaky about, I write them down in a small notebook to keep track of the words that I didn’t acquired without writing down their meanings. After going through all of the words, I try to recall their meanings and write them down besides each word. During this process, I found out many words that are similar and confusing to me. For example, the character 참, has several meanings: 1 really; 2 a modal particle; 3 to express complaint. I only remember the last two and by reviewing I acquired the first. Moreover, the pronunciation of it is very similar to another character 잠, which most often occurs in the phrase 잠시만요 and 잠깐만요, which means please wait a second. These two characters confuse me before but get clarified after I searched it during revision. Another example is 마시다   and 맛있다 which have the same pronunciations but different meanings: to drink and to be tasty. From reviewing vocabulary, I also make more connections between the words/phrases in dictionary form and words/phrases I know from other sources. For example, the phrase for to get along is 지내다, which never used on its dictionary form but widely used when greeting along with the adjective 잘, as 잘 지내요. Knowing its meaning in greeting but not in its original form might burden learners to remember things more than they need to be, just like in English we can add prefixes and postfixed to change meanings. New words may have different meanings, pronunciations, or properties, but they share the same roots. 

New lesson for today is related to numbers. As well known, there are two counting systems in Korean: Sino-Korean and Native Korean. For me, to remember Sino-Korean numbers is really easy because their pronunciations are like a dialect of mandarin. Surprisingly, I spend less effort on remembering Native Korean numbers as I’ve imagined, maybe it is because that they are frequently occurred on reality shows and dramas so that they become really familiar to me. This phenomenon has the exact opposite when I learnt English. The multipliers also align with Chinese. Besides hundred and thousand, Korean and Chinese count numbers with the multiplication of 10,000 instead of 1,000 in most western countries. This can be hard for learners who are used to other multipliers to adjust to the new concepts of amount. The same applied when I studied English since I have to get to feel weight in pounds instead of kilograms, liquid in ounce instead of liters, temperature in Fahrenheit instead of Celsius, and objects in thousands and millions instead of ten thousands and hundred millions. Another difficulty that learners may encounter is that Korean, again like Chinese, uses different counters for different objects. What makes it more complex for me is that different counters are paired with different types of counting systems with additional exceptions. For example, when 과 is used to count lessons, it uses native Korean numbers; when it is used to count lesson numbers, it uses Sino-Korean. Another special case is that 달 is used to count months and uses native Korean; 월 is used to count months for date and uses Sino-Korean. If we want to express possession, we have to choose the correct particle for the noun which requires us to make a lot of decisions. I decided to practice writing down sentences using these words I’ve learned related to counting.

Reflection 1

The first class is mainly about me and my instructor Jenna working knowing each other. We first looked at the alphabet table and we decided to skip the very first beginning of the language learning since I had already known the alphabet. Then Jenna provided two short daily conversations for me to read through. I read through the conversations and cleared the new words that get into the way of understanding. Jenna also gave me a short newspaper article about a K-Pop group called BTS. There were much more words that I have never seen before, and the syntax was very different with the everyday language use. At the end of the session, we discussed the content of this semester. My initiative to learn Korean is that I want to be able to travel in Korea and understand people’s words in Korean. From this original intention, I would be focus more on listening and speaking and less on reading and the least in writing. However, Jenna explained to me that knowing how to write will be very helpful for the other three of language aspects.

Reflection 2

On Tuesday, I attended Jenna’s session with three other students. We went through the single supporting consonants again in Korean and then we took a step forward to the double supporting consonants. When we were going through the material that I had already learned last week, I found myself forgetting some of the material. The difficult part about the supporting consonants is that both of the writing and the pronunciation is different for different words. Korean, like English, the words don’t always sounds like what they are written. For the supporting consonants especially, sometime some part of the character is mute and sometime we pronounce the second part instead of the first part of it. The one thing that I am afraid when learning languages is the process of forgetting. It makes the learning seems useless and never able to proceed. Especially after this session of learning double supporting consonants, Jenna explained that this part of language phenomenon really need us to spend time and memorize them. There are exceptions out of exceptions and the best way to learn is to practice using them and correct mistake. 

My goals for these two weeks are trying to list out most of the common used words including  supporting consonants. By listing out the words I would be able to create my own sentences. This self-assignment will be sent to Jenna and corrected together on the following sessions.

The class on February 11th we learned about phonology and articulatory phonetics. Some of the final consonants pronunciation include what we have talked about in class. The airstream has been stopped at some part of the body. For example, ㅆ stops the airstream at the alveolar region; ㄱ stops the airstream at the epiglottis. ㅌ stops the airflow at dental region. Having the knowledge of phonetic articulation in mind, it makes the learning process slightly easier, but it definitely helps me better remember how to produce the exact sound I made a long time ago. I would be using this method to teach languages if I have a chance in the future.

Reflection 4

This week, I borrowed a Korean language learning textbook from the global studio called Integrated Korean. It is a textbook that my language partner Jenna and many other Korean language learner friends suggested. There are a few volumes for different language learner at different stages. For me, I chose the Beginning 1 to start off my language learning process. The book organizes the content into Introduction and Objectives with Appendices and Grammar Index and the end of the book. This week I read the first half of the introduction to Korean hoping to have a general impression and knowledge about the language. Having some knowledge of Korean, reading through the introduction is more like a review on the information that I’ve already had. Although, I do gained a lot of new knowledge such as the relationship to mandarin and Japanese. From a few years in Kpop culture, I noticed that Korean entertainment companies always have the attempt to break into the Chinese and Japanese market with either by making songs in the language or having their groups debut in the country. For example, one of the most well-known group, EXO, had a subunit called EXO-M. The M in their name stands for Mandarin, which coincides with their main purpose to perform their songs in Mandarin. Besides, one of the biggest girl group, Blackpink, made their debut in Japan a few years ago. According to the idols who speaks Korean had experience learning Japanese and Mandarin, it is very similar in terms of grammar with Japanese, words with Mandarin, which made the learning process slightly easier that learning English and Spanish. From the book, I learned that there word-borrowing from Japanese created based on Chinese characters which is called Sino-Korean. 

Besides the connection with other cultures, Korean itself is, of course, a special language. The characteristic of situation-oriented makes it different from the languages that I can speak. Speakers will not include the subject or/and object when the context makes them obvious. The degree of obviousness can be vague and usually are played around with in lyrics and K-dramas. Another unique feature is its word order. The general order is subject + object

 + verb, but it is also often called free word order language because it permits the element before the verb to be scrambled for emphatic or other purposes. Unlike Mandarin and English, the two language that I speak, where subject/object and word order are comparatively important in comprehension, Korean can be hard for me to get used to based on these two features.

By connecting the knowledge that I had about the culture and the language with the content in the book, I feel more confident in the upcoming language learning because I can see the progress, the increase in knowledge each week. It is also a good way to test and organize what you’ve already had. Learning by with a proper textbook is what I’ve always wanted to try since that is how I learnt English with a decent efficiency. I would continue to use this strategy for the future language learning and make adjustment when necessary.

Reflection 5

This week I studied the remaining introduction and the first chapter —greetings. The introduction mentions the subject honorific suffix with multiple examples. Long before I started to learn Korean seriously, I noticed that there would always be a series of sound: Si-Mi-De, at the end of each sentence. Just like “hello, how are you” is a typical short sentence that we will say if we are asked about English, Si-Mi-Da is the general impression of Korean among Chinese people. Knowing that this is a honorific suffix used when at the end of the sentence when the subject is a senior or an adult equal. The sound pattern is another point worth mentioning. It has always been hard for me to separate the consonants. Unlike Chinese or English were consonants are separated into two degree: voiced and voiceless, for example, tie and die, 台 and 代, Korean has unique structure of dividing the consonants into three parts: plain, aspirate and tense: ㅍ, ㅂ, and ㅃ. Therefore, learning the pronounciation by looking at the book is hard. I would definetely seek help from my language partner for specifications. Although, after studying the international phonetic alphabet, other sounds became easier to find by looking at description, for example, nasal soft palate ㅇ is pronounced as /-ng/;  alveolar fricative ㅅ is pronounced as /s/. I would suggest other Korean language learners who might be struggling with the prononciation to study the international phonetic alphabet. 

Similar to Chinese, Korean can be written both horizontally and vertically, most on newspapers. However, in north Korea, only vertical is used. This is something that I have never heard of before. From my knowledge of Chinese culture, vertical text is always used for books made of bamboos in ancient time because of the texture of the book and continue to be in this way until 1950. Besides, the stroke order for writing hangul is the same for writing Chinese characters, which was never noticed by me when I copied down lyrics in Korean. The connections between my own culture and my target language’s culture encourage me to learn more about it, and help me to be conscious about what I have already known about the language and the culture itself.

The next part of the introduction is a review for me on pronunciation rules which was covered by my language partner a few weeks before. I do not find more information than she provided. My favorite part of this introduction is its last part: useful classroom expressions where the book provides a few basic sentence that can be used right away without knowing grammar rules, which are essential for studying in Korean. The section is very thoughtful for students who don’t have time to fully study Korean before study abroad in Korea. 

In the first lesson, my second half content for this week, I studied two conversations and a narration. The book provides the vocabulary lists with their word classes and humble/plain indication. For this chapter, most of the vocabulary are already familiar with me, so I focused more on the spelling instead of trying to remember the words.

Conversation about Melke'a Himamat: 

This week I have been listening to Melke’a Himamat during church services. Similar to the first work we translated this semester Melke’a Si’il, it is poetry that is sung. It is under the same genre: “melk” or “image/portrait”. This particular one is called the Image of the Sufferings (of Christ). It is recited in hymn and is very beautiful. One particular line caught my eye one afternoon and I decided to think about how to word the translation in English. I sent it to my language partner to get a second eye on it and this is how our conversation went.

There are a couple of things I want to note here. I generally like writing my translations better because that is the mode that I have practiced the most. Also, you can give different options in a written format. I often need to do this because I don’t know exactly how certain words are being used (even commonly seen ones). Often words have different renderings in different contexts (this is concerning semantics). I have two examples of this. One example is of “ኀበ..ኀበ..” where ኀበ (pronounced ha-be) usually means towards, to, where. However, when used in this construction it means “the more...the more” and such is used to make a comparison. The other example is the use of the words በስመ ብእሲት (be-sime bi’isīt) which literally is in/by the name of a woman. Better put for the context is the feminine name in English. 

The idea is that the Holy Trinity is so compassionate, and since women are known for compassion they are known by the feminine form of holy in Ge’ez-- that is Qidist instead of Qidus. It’s quite an interesting phenomena in the Orthodox faith since many times God is considered in the masculine. The faith shows that God doesn’t fit into a gender and that the masculine label is just a default. You would never hear someone say Qidus Silassie (Holy Trinity in the masculine). 

The language itself also lends to this kind of flexibility as well I suppose since it offers the option of having gender attached to adjectives. Overall, I think this is a good example of learning as you go. I have been loving the fact that I get to have this kind of interaction with my language partner as well. I can work through things and have him there to help where needed. 

Sunday, March 29

This week we have been finalizing the Aba Giorgis piece that told of his life and most famous known works. Here is an excerpt from the translation:

I have really been able to see my growth in language learning this week and I have two anecdotes to share. The first is while listening to the Miracles of Jesus book  (Te’amire Eyesus) being read I was surprised to find that I understood the whole story. Even without catching every work I knew what miracle it was referencing and saw that I caught small details. Because this text isn’t very obscure and the miracles of Jesus are often retold and read throughout the Bible, I had the familiarity to connect passages where I couldn’t recognize as much of the words. This was an extraordinary experience and I hope to have more like this. It showed me how context is key and that I’ve really been retaining the instruction I have had. The second story is about dreaming in Ge’ez. After listening to what felt like hours of Ge’ez being read, I dozed off for a moment and actually had a dream in Ge’ez. I dreamt about my priest telling me a funny story about a little boy and a bag of flour. 

After discussing it, my language partner and I decided to make the next project a composition which is a little different than what I have been doing thus far. Last semester, we started a little with compositions, applying the grammar concepts in sample sentences of my choosing. Now, we have decided to compose a Ge’ez “synaxarium” (Book of the Life of Saints) passage according to the life and miracles of St. Spyridon. 

This means writing in the same style as the Synaxarium and using similar conventions. There is an English version that we are working from that is written with slightly different conventions than what would be used in Ge’ez. I am excited to apply what I have been noting and learning through the past couple of months on something that is a real story and an original rendering of it in Ge’ez! Of course, with the guidance of my language partner and the dictionaries that we have on hand but nevertheless, it will be interesting! I often hear the Synaxarium being read in Ge’ez in church and following along with my English pdf version I notice a lot of different attributes of the texts. I think it will be similar to the previous Miracle piece by Aba Giorgis that we translated so it was really good preparation.

For me, I really enjoy learning language with others. In this way, all of us could encourage one another in learning languages. Also, I really love the atmosphere in classes as my classmates would draw examples from different languages when answering questions related to grammar, phonology, and sentence structure. It is very insightful and interesting to know the differences between languages. Also, from the classes, I remembered the video that was about a tribe in Africa and their different perspective in reading colors. I really love to see this kind of experiences as it relates to how human brains and the surrounding could shape and change your behavior and perception to the world. 

As for my target language, I especially fond of learning about the culture by watching movies ("Parasite"). In this way, it's good for me to cultivate a good language sense and also learn phrases and slangs that I may not be able to learn in formal language study. However, after a semester of learning, I still have some difficulties. These difficulties mainly relate to different grammatical rules. For example, the counting system, the age system, and the combination of the counting system and the age system. I really couldn't understand and take them in at first. However, after rounds and rounds of practices and examples, I finally managed to understand them and get used to their existence since they are super different from Chinese and English that I know. 

In the future, I would continue learning different languages. Because I find it very intriguing to compare different languages with respect to their grammars and other elements of languages. After all, there is no ending in this path of language learning and that each learning experience is very meaningful and valuable.

This is the first bi-weekly journal following the extension of Spring Break due to the spread of COVID-19. As Spring Break was this past week, I did not get the chance to meet up with my language partner and continued my Korean studies on my own. In the two weeks, I read over the notes I took from my weekly classes with Jimin and Tommy to review the content I learned. To further my knowledge on 속담, 관용어, and 급식체, I sought out online resources such as blogs written by native Koreans, HiNative global Q&A platform, and YouTube Videos. Naver Blogs are easily accessible that contain information posted by native South Koreans. I found a lot of lists of 관용어 and 속담 from such blog posts to add to the list Jimin had given me. There was an author’s Naver Blog who published multiple posts about 관용어 based on different human features such as the eye or mouth. An example is “입만 살다” which directly translates to “only the mouth lives” meaning that the person is “all talk, no work/all bark, no bite”. I also compiled a list of 85 commonly used 속담 and 관용어 from the global Q&A platform, HiNative. Some of these overlapped what I had learned previously, such as 코가 높다 (“nose is high” = arrogant) and 김칫국을 마시다 (“drink kimchi soup” = get ahead of oneself). The most entertaining resource that helped me remember slang or 급식체 was a YouTube video compiling three SNL Korea skits about slang. It was very informative as it was about a dad attempting to learn the complicated and fast-evolving slang language of his son. Each term was explained for understatement. It was also very funny because it was an SNL skit featuring famous Korean comedians and parodies of famous dramas and movies like my all-time favorites, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (도깨비). I can still remember 띵작/명작 because of the 도깨비 scene the skit used. Another blog I used provided the top 2019 급식체. The internet has an abundance of content I can use to expand what I learn with my language partner. Being home for Spring Break was a good opportunity to verbalize the content I had learned before coming home. I shared my SDLAP experience with my parents and discussed the terms and content I learned. Although neither of my parents uses 급식체, my mom helped me with the commonly used 속담 and 관용어. Watching TV with my mom, I was happy to point out the idioms and proverbs I studied. As I look at my younger brother who has completely forgotten the majority of his Korean since our move to Maryland, I feel a stronger urge to make sure I don’t forget Korean and also assist my brother to regain his knowledge.

Link to video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRmUzfqHWOI
Link to HiNative:
https://hinative.com/ko/questions/2142651
Link to Naver Blogs:
https://blog.naver.com/narae718/220355553902  ;
http://blog.naver.com/lllyourinlll/221435359607 ;

If I'm granted a research fund in conducting linguistic study, I would want to start by analyzing the structural components in Korean including morphemes, syntax, words and sentence structures and so on. The reason why is that after analyzing and documenting the traits of elements of Korean, the foundation is laid. The ultimate goal of the study is to learn the origin of this language because I want to know how, in the past, did people, more specifically human brains, developed this language. As i mentioned in my last learning journal, I find this subject matter really intriguing while it still remains a mystery. Moreover, I want to study the variations in Korean, meaning that I want to learn more about Korean dialects as well and how they develop and different from the "official Korean." 

Additionally, I would want to compare different languages. For example, I want to compare Korean with Chinese because they both have similarities and differences. The differences include different sentence structure and grammar while the similarities come from having the counting system from Chinese. Chinese has 4 tones plus a neutral tone. Korean has a phonetic script with alphabets while Chinese has a logographic script where every word is written as one or more  Chinese characters, thus making it more complex to learn to read as well as write. If I'm able to accomplish this task, our understanding of language, and more importantly human brain, will be improved. 

안녕하세요, 저는 Raymond 입니다. 한국어를 배우는 것이 좋습니다. 도전해야 할 언어가 있지만 언어를 배우는 것을 좋아합니다. 반 친구들
과 만나서 함께하게되어 기쁩니다. 여러분 모두와 함께 배울 수있는 훌륭한 학습 기 회였습 니 다. 
Hi my name is Raymond. It's nice to be given a chance to learn Korean. I love learning languages even though there are
many challenges I have to face.. It's nice to meet with my classmates and get along with them. It's been a great learning
opportunity for me to know all of you!

I started to write in Korean since the beginning of the semester. Through these exercises, I've honed my knowledge and
cultivated the habit of writing in Korean and the wya of thinking in Korean. However, there were no formal exercise since
a formal exercise could, from my perspective, make the learning process more boring. For example, I would write the
current time on a paper using Korean when I want to know the time. Another example is writing a short paragraph in 
Korean, documenting what interesting things had happened everyday. In this way, I managed to find the difference 
between a simple sentence and a complex one. A simple sentence consists of only one clause while a compound one 
consists of two or more independent clauses. And when I try to write a long sentence (complex sentence) in Korean, 
the example thought process of mine is:

I came to Korea to practice Korean and meet friends

breaks down into 3 sentences:

1. I came to Korea (past)

2. I practise Korean (future)

3. I meet friends (future)

The three nouns in this sentence: Korea, Korean, friends

So I concluded that sentence 2 & 3 should fit somewhere between 오다 and 한국. I also read the sentence as "I came to Korea in order to practice Korean and meet friends". From my understanding, (으)러 can be used as it implies movement to go do something. I could also make one of the verbs 연습하다 or 만나다 into an adjective since they both are action verbs and I could use that to describe one of the nouns above.

In linguistics, language dies when the last speaker of the language is lost, including secondary speakers. As the article indicates, there are many linguists attempt to save certain language such as the language, Siletz Dee-ni, mentioned in the article. Additionally, there are also students who are learning this language. Therefore, I was wondering how could language goes into extinction with so these many actions have been done to preserve it? I went to do some researches online and some factors including war or disaster. However, most languages die out gradually as successive generations of speakers become bilingual and then begin to lose proficiency in their traditional languages. This is surprising.

But there are definitely many means that could be used to save and preserve endangered languages. As I mentioned above, learning the language could prevent the language from extinction since there are more speakers who understand the structure of the language throughly. Another method, as mentioned in the article, is to create dictionaries for endangered languages. In the article, Bud Lane, who is a tribe member, is working on the online talking dictionary for Siletz Dee-ni. From my perspectives, one of the ways that could potentially protect and document linguistic diversity is through recording. Recording the way native speakers talk, the vocabulary, and the grammar and so on. Even though this method would require a lot of labor work. 

As far as we know, there are still many languages die out every day with nobody knowing. Therefore, it is important to preserve the ones that we are aware of and try to find other languages that remain unnoticed.