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In the class today we spoke a lot about cultural tendencies, and how that although it my be acceptable to act one way in one country it may be different in another country. We spoke about how in Turkey if you were invited to a dinner party at 6, you wouldn't show up still 7:30. So I decided to do some research into the Swedish culture about that. What I found is that Swedes are very punctual about their time, both in private and professional lives. If you are going to be late, let the person who is waiting let them know you will be last, and make sure to apologize upon arrival. Another interesting thing that I've learned is that Swedish people aren't super huge into the small talk. When answering the phone they will either state their first name, last name, or both. I think people tend to overestimate these little cultural differences. And that's where I assume culture shock comes from. Is when someone is not prepared for all these little difference and they add up quite quickly. 

I think the following video is a neat piece of culture from Sweden because it depicts one of Sweden's most famous modern actors, Stellan Skarsgard, being interviewed by two Danish talk-show hosts and yet he responds only in Swedish. This demonstrates not only how closely the two languages are (because they can understand enough of each others' language to process the question and formulate an answer in their native tongue) but it also demonstrates the regional animosity between Denmark and Sweden. I find it funny and interesting that Swedes for the most part can understand/speak Danish and Norwegian (Finnish is a bit more challenges because it sounds so archaic) but choose not to. I know personally that my boyfriend and his sister can understand Danish because they are from so far south in Sweden that they actually fly out of Copenhagen rather than Stockholm and they can answer questions/have conversations with Danish people. You'd think that if you have the ability to communicate with someone in their language, you would! But in the case of Swedes and Danes especially it seems as if there is enough regional animosity (even if it is less political/militarily based and more cultural and even sort of a joke these days) to prevent Swedes to this day from speaking Danish to a Danish native. I do think, however, that it would be neat to know/understand enough Swedish to be able to converse in Danish or Norwegian too!

This week we had our first quiz! It covered the alphabet (more specifically vowels), colors, numbers up to 100, animals, and greetings. I think it really helped me to begin to realize how much easier it is to know speak (mostly to pronounce) another language when you know what the vowels and consonants sound like. Swedish vowels especially were tricky to get down (and it's still a process!) because they have three extra vowels, use the letter y as a vowel only, and quite frankly to my untrained ears I think a lot of their vowels sound the same. And, like in any other language, all the vowels have both short and long sounds! Eek!

In addition to our quiz, we have also started incorporating some grammar into our lessons. It's really hard for my language partner to be able to teach us grammar rules on the spot (nor is she expected to) so it's been a good experience to go out and research/teach myself these rules on my own. Then coming back to my sessions and putting these rules in the context of sentences is making the process make much more sense! On Wednesday, for instance, Louise taught us how to say members of our family. We were then asked to go out on our own and come up with sentences about our family, questions we would want to ask others about their families, and how to introduce our family to others. This experience, I think, is a really comprehensive way to learn vocabulary and grammar at the same time.

How did the readings help me shape my language learning process?

In the article about how the brain handles the language I thought that knowing which hemisphere of the brain tends to be more active when right-handed is useful in the way that some tasks, such as categorization, calculation and information sequences are performed more efficiently by the brain.

In the article about how we analyze meaning, It is interesting to realize that we are, as learners, consciously aware of all the facets of an utterance we hear. When we put our attention on them, on grammar or vocabulary for instance, they become easily distinguishable. However we should always put the study of individual facets within a more general structure so that we can actually have a better understanding and processing of the language.

Finally, the article mention that there is no right order to learn a language but the author makes a good point at the end of the article saying that the aim of grammar is to give structure to meaning , hence it is appropriate to learn meaning first and then to structure it.

That is why I asked Alvin, my Korean instructor to teach me basic sentences, like greetings and introductions at first so that I become familiar with the phonology and basic vocabulary; we then planned to go through more analytical and written way of learning.

I have worked on my vocabulary alot and learned many words. Omar and i met twice this week and worked on propositions, conjunctions, and on the endings of the sentences. I practiced the propositions many times and made sentences for them. We practiced making short sentences. So i could use some of the words in sentences as well. We also practiced speaking for few minutes in Urdu. So basically, i have met my with my tutor twice and worked on a grammar a bit, propositions, speakings, short sentences, and as well as practiced my writing.  I am very happy, i see good improvement in my learning Urdu. My language partner is a great help.

The article on autonomy learning didn't really tell me anything new, but rather covered topics I was already aware of. You have to be very conscious of how you learn best so that you are able to do activities that will help you succeed in learning the best. The section on cognitive learning was the section which I use most. I'm big into repetition, note taking, and translation. I tend to get nervous when trying to pronounce a word for the first time so I will ask Louise to repeat it a few times before I even attempt it. I think that also is a self -esteem issue as well, that I assume I am saying it terribly wrong. I need to be okay with the fact I won't be perfect at it but hey, im trying. I agree with the concept that one must be motivated in order to succeed but I think thatch the beauty of self learning, that you are so interested in a certain subject that you will be willing to learn it on your own. You are learning something you enjoy opposed to something you could careless about. I think teaching ones self a new thing whether it be skill or language is a test to their personality, and it might be harder for some than others but it something that everyone, given the right subject can accomplish.

This week went decently well for learning purposes. We just had a quiz earlier today that covered the basics of what we have been talking about (alphabet, numbers, colors, and a few animals and basic phrases). For me remembering the word and how to spell it, really isn't that hard at all it more of the pronunciation and that is where Louise really comes in handy. So my strategies are basically to memorize the word and how to spell it, then with Louise and Molly just try to verbally repeat it or make up little rhymes in which I can get it down. I think that strategy will be the most effective for myself. Next week we plan on introducing a little bit of grammar so that we are able to speak more and also family members and potentially body parts.  I also have a friend at another University taking basic Swedish, so we plan to look over his tests and work and try to incorporate some of those ideas into our class.

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(Here is a picture of the Swedish alphabet. The most difficult things are the vowels, but ill eventually get there)

The linguistic aspect of Swedish that interests me most is also linked to culture! Sweden has a very egalitarian culture. Very few people live too far below or above the average and there seems to be a lot of emphasis put on gender equality. For instance, in Sweden both new moms and new dads get time off from work so that women do not feel like they can't go back to work after having children. I was reading an article recently about a new trend in Swedish grammar that I thought related to this cultural phenomenon! In Swedish if you want to say "he" you say "han" and if you want to say "she" you say "hon". Simple enough! Well, if you want to say he/she you could use the general "man" almost like in English when a speaker could say "one really ought to do..." or you could say "han eller hon". Recently, however, a new trend has erupted in Swedish culture where people are saying a new pronoun "hen" to mean the gender neutral version of "man" or "one" because a lot of Swedes think saying "man" is discriminatory. I asked my language partner about this trend and she said that typically Swedes will only say "hen" sarcastically or in a funny way. I do wonder, however, if it will start to get more serious usage.

After reading the articles by Crystal on how the brain handles language and how we use symbols to communicate with one another, I found the texts very relevant to what I have been learning so far this semester about the Swedish language. I particularly find it interesting to compare English with Swedish when I feel as if something is fundamentally different about the two languages. The same can be done for Spanish. Because I took Spanish all through high school I immediately recognized gendered nouns in the Swedish I was learning. In English we have no set genders for objects. In Spanish and Swedish, however, the nouns are gendered. In Swedish you could say "en stol" to mean a chair and "ett skrivbord" to mean a desk. It was helpful that I took Spanish so that I could recognize this pattern in Swedish.

Additionally, I find that Swedish is a cool language because words build off one another. If you know the word for hotel, street, and back, you can come up with the word in Swedish that means a back-alley hotel (bakgatshotell). I also think it's really neat that in Swedish rather than saying my maternal grandmother, there is a specific word for that person. Your mormor is your mom's mom and your farmor is your dad's mom. This is just another example where Swedish is very clear.

Over the summer I thought it would be a good idea to order some books on Amazon that were in Swedish so I could practice my reading and expand my vocabulary. I, of course, decided to get all three of the "Dragon Tattoo" books because they were originally published in Swedish. I had also already read the books in English and had seen the three Swedish movies and first American movie. The first time I sat down to "read" the first book entitled "Man som hatar kvinnor", literally "Men who hate women" (whereas the American version is just called "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"), it took me an entire hour to read the first few pages. I had to google translate basically every other word and filled the blank spaces between the text with their English counterparts.

Although this was incredibly tedious at first, the more I translated the more comfortable I was becoming with reading the book. It definitely did help that I had some idea of where the plot was going and that a lot of Swedish words are similar to their English counterparts. I also began to realize that I was constantly looking up the same words and then immediately forgetting them on the next page so I began a system where if I saw a word I SHOULD be familiar with I would underline it and then I made a separate sheet of paper as a vocabulary list in my own handwriting with those words and their English translations. By the time I was a few chapters in to the first book I had an entire pages for prepositions, one for adverbs, and one for commonly used verbs. I found this to be very helpful and by the end I had inadvertantly memorized a lot of words and phrases!

Reading in Swedish, however, did prove to be difficult because sentence construction is quite different from English and because the book used a lot of colloquialism that I had a hard time translating and also used phrases unique to the Swedish language that either couldn't be translated directly into English or did not make any sense outside their Swedish context. Sentence construction was hard for me to understand because I do not know Swedish grammar rules and therefore couldn't understand why, unlike in English, some sentences begin with the verb rather than the pronoun. So like if in English I would say "She ate a salad", there would be times in Swedish where it would look like "Ate she a salad" which made very little sense to me. And naturally there were many times where I would translate something literally and then the translation wouldn't make sense. For instance if you wanted to say "Starting from..." in Swedish you would say "Från och med...", which literally means "From and with...", which kind of makes sense but stil isn't exactly the same as "Starting from..."!!!

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Here's a cool link I found about how to survive a Swedish dinner party!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoWo8EvTWeE

I found this video to be really interesting because part of the reason I am learning Swedish is because my boyfriend and his family are from Helsingborg, Sweden and I'd like to be able to communicate with them in the future! I also really like learning about Swedish culture and comparing it to my experiences.

Some interesting lessons that I learned from the demonstration are that in Swedish culture you cannot start drinking until everyone has said "skol" and done a very elaborate toast that involves nodding at everyone at the table individually. Likewise, after you have taken the first sip of your drink you cannot put the glass back down until everyone has nodded with everyone again! I learned from my boyfriend's family that this gets even more technical as their are rules that apply to the different genders (for instance the time you wait before drinking depends on your gender).

Additionally, I found this clip to be fascinating because the narrator made a large point to say that Swedes in general tend to be very prompt people, they think it is very rude to show up late, and they never arrive more than 15 minutes after a party is set to start. In my experience, the Swedes I know are the LEAST prompt people. I always say that my boyfriend and his family must use a different scale for time because somehow they are always too optimistic about how much time they have to do a task and end up running late.

This has been a really interesting first week! Ultimately I am really happy that my Swedish tutor is teaching both me and Malory at the same time. Swedish is a language that has many sounds and especially vowels that are hard for Americans to say, without practice. Therefore, I've already found it to be so helpful that I can meet up with Malory and check with her to see if she thinks I am pronouncing a word like Louise had in our meeting! 

I also have been finding that it is very helpful, when I am learning new words in Swedish, to think of how I would say that word in Spanish. I took Spanish all through high school and some of college so I feel pretty comfortable with that language and being able to relate Swedish vocabulary especially back to Spanish has been a good tool for me.

This week I have also discovered that looking for youtube videos of people speaking Swedish and even podcasts on Itunes in Swedish has been helpful because I think getting used to hearing the language is important because then you can just implicitly understand what is being said.

This week Louise taught (and struggled with) Malory and me how to pronounce Swedish vowels. This was rather difficult because to my untrained ears they all sound very similar. In addition, Swedish has three more vowels than English and one of those vowels is I sound I never make in my daily speaking in English! Although it was/is hard to get all the vowels right, I've already discovered that knowing how to say vowels makes it so much easier to know how to pronounce a word just by looking at it. For instance, the word for "yellow" in Swedish is "gul". The first time I said it aloud I pronounced it "guhhhl". But, once I knew that "u" in Swedish is pronounced "ewwww", I knew that the word "gul" should be pronounced more like "geewwwwl".

I've really enjoyed this first week of practicing my Swedish with Louise and Malory and I'm excited for the weeks to come!

 Omar and I met twice for one hour each this week. Since I don’t know a word of Urdu, we have started to work on Urdu alphabet in the first session. I learned how to pronounce and write each letter in Urdu. We also had a basic conversation in Urdu. It was great and i was so excited to start speaking. So I am able to introduce myself and say some basic introduction sentences. On the next session, we worked on making some short sentences. I learned how to pronounce those sentences and differentiate the verbs and propositions. I have written down everything and I am practicing by myself as well to get fluent on saying the sentences and using the words in the sentences. We worked on some conjunction words as well as their usage.

1. Enrich vocabulary
2. work on pronunciation
3. work on reading without vowels
4. work on speaking with Emily
5. learn to construct correct sentences
6. work on spelling and texting

 To do this we will:

     Read short stories (once Emily can find a couple online)

     Watch youtube videos in Hebrew about something

     Work through my workbook

Lessons will be:  15 minutes of talking in Hebrew about:  our day, school, life, the weekend, and trying to incorporate words that we are learning in the workbook and the short stories

Emily and I met a couple of times this week and spoke Hebrew and I was able to go through 10 more pages of my book.

The following are some of the words I was able to learn:  

“Figuring Foreigners Out”

The book “Figuring Foreigners Out” was written by Graig Storti to help you understand why people of other countries think and act the way they do. We live and work in a multicultural world so it is important to know about other cultures, religions, ethnicities and traditions. Basically this book can help you to learn about them.  I agree with Storti about the notion that “Cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity are no longer just the subjects of college course but they are basic survival skills for almost everyone” (p,3).  On the other hand, I disagree with Storti’s notion that “It is not possible to talk about culture, about groups of people, without making generalizations” (p, 4). I think it is not a good idea to make generalization and assumptions about other cultures or religions. Generalization leads to misunderstanding and stereotypes about other cultures, religions and ethnicities. It is important to have facts and accurate information and knowledge about other cultures, religions and people of different backgrounds.

What is culture? The first chapter of the books starts with the definition of culture. Storti defines culture as “the shared assumptions, values and beliefs of a group of people which result in characteristics behaviors” (p, 5). Chapter one ends with three exercises to make the readers ready for the coming chapters.  I like the definition of culture but I disagree with the idea of “the shared assumption”.  I think there should not be assumptions about or within cultures. Culture is the way different people live, think, worship, and speak and more.  Culture is beautiful and different and there is nothing to assume about them.  You can learn about them though.  For example, culture and religion has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda but many people in the US assume that all Muslims are terrorists and their religion is the cause of it. Another example is the KKK in the US. Many people abroad might assume that all White and Christian Americans were part of this extremist group. It is not like that. All Muslims are not terrorists and all White Americans were not part of KKK.  Ninety nine percent of Muslims and White Americans hate these both fanatic and extremist groups.  None of them represent the two nations and religions. See how assumption and generalization leads to misunderstandings and stereotypes about other cultures and religions.  Facts and accurate knowledge and information are important about cultures.  Over all, I like the book and the exercises. It definitely makes one to think and to learn about other cultures. 

The human brain acts as command central for language and communication which controls both physical and mental components of talking and speech. There are two hemispheres in the human brain which each one of them plays different rules. The two hemispheres are thought to contribute to the processing and understanding of language. First the left hemisphere processes the linguistic meaning or rhythm, stress and intonation of connected speech. On the other hand, right hemisphere processes the emotions conveyed by rhythm, stress intonation of connected speech.  Studies showed that if a child has damage to the left hemisphere, the child may develop language in the right hemisphere.  The example for how the brain handles language can be like below example. When you start speaking, sounds begin as your breath expels from the lungs.  On its journey to the mouth, the air vibrates as it’s forced through the vocal cords. Mouth, nose and tongue help this vibrating air to create sound waves.  As the sound waves come out the other person hears and process to understand it. It is important to mention that the left hemisphere contains the specialized language areas.  Also the way we think and behave affects the structure of our language.  Some areas of the brain that handles the language are Wernicke’s area which processes visual and spoken information. Auditory cortex processes spoken words. Visual cortex processes written words. Broca’s area triggers speech production.  Motor cortex controls physical aspects of the speech.  Broca area which was named after Paul Broca processes the grammar aspects and distinguishes a sentence in passive form from other simpler tense.

In the Figuring Foreigners Out, the author talks about the two ends of how different cultures identify themselves, communicate and perceive things. While discussing these two opposite poles, Storti repeatedly mentions how individuals in these cultures are more likely to identify with the pole that their culture identifies with. To me this statement seems like a generalization. Storti does not take into consideration the fact that cultures are more permeable and malleable due to increased mobility. He only accounts for those individuals who are born and raised in their country surrounded by their culture which influences how they identify themselves and perceive the world around them. 

With the globalization more and more people are likely to live in different countries throughout their lives and experience different cultures. The contact with other cultures changes and enriches one’s self-identity and perception, so that they no longer believe in the same things as their collective culture does. More and more people identify as multi-cultural not because their ancestors are from different countries but because they have absorbed aspects of different cultures in order to form a unique identity just for themselves. These people don’t identify with a specific cultural group or country. They belong to neither of the cultures but at the same time to some extinct they can identify with all of them. I am one of those people. Throughout my 19 years I have lived in 5 different countries absorbing aspects of  each culture and forming my own identity. I don’t identify with the collective Afghani culture but at the same time I am not completely American or Uzbeki. I am somewhere in between were the Storti’s statement does not apply. 

“It is the interaction between words and sentence structure which actually conveys our ‘sense of sense’.” When it comes to learning a new language, vocabulary is essential to a successful learning experience. If you don’t know the words then you are not able to communicate, but at the same time if you only learn vocabulary, you wouldn't be able to convey your message to the listener. One has to learn the word in the context that it is used. What I mean by that is not just memorize all the words in the dictionary but learn how to use them in different situations. For that one has to learn basic grammar of the desired language and the culture in which it is used. Different cultures have different words that have specific meanings in that culture that is completely different from the meaning that you would find in a dictionary. 

Throughout my learning experience I never used a dictionary or any kind of translator device. In my experience most words in addition to having a literal meaning, also has a cultural meaning. For example I learned the meaning of ‘cool’ when I came to the US. Before moving here to me it just meant cold and I was really confused when people used it to express acceptance or approval. Only later I learned what it meant by listening to others use it. In my opinion the quickest way to be able to communicate in another language is to learn the basic vocabulary but also learn how to use it properly within that cultural context.