In my second week of working with Thalia, I am working on greetings and introductions. We first worked on the equivalent of saying good morning/afternoon/night. In Indoesia, the day is broken into 4 parts instead of 3. The 4 parts of the day are broken up into specific times of the day. This is a little difficult to understand as somone who has only known 3 parts of a day. The four parts of the day are selamat pagi/siang/sore/malam. We are also working on sentence structure. In Indonesian, there is not a “to be” verb. The direct translation, for instance, of “I am well” is simply “baik”. Not being able to directly translate a sentence word for word is different to me. I have taken Spanish and Latin, and this is much different. In Spanish, you translate word for word. In Latin, you may not translate every word, but you utilize case endings to demonstrate a direct object, indirect object, or possession. To understand this concept, I need to work on understanding this difference by seeing more examples. As far as learning the vocabulary, I think I have done a good job of keeping up. I have worked on memorizing the information by quizzing myself and looking at flashcards. I am looking forward to using this basic information I have learned to start understanding sentence structure and start a conversation with an Indonesian speaker. To ensure further learning, I have been reading the textbook that Thalia provided us.
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I am currently working on developing my Learning Plan. The goal of this exercise is to develop a set of tasks to hold myself accountable to so that I can keep track of my goals and my progress. I hope to develop a learning plan that develops my reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills by using simple and interconnected tasks. To develop my goals, I am using my learning partner to formulate goals that are simple and realistic. My plan focuses on breaking down simple, everyday tasks into goals. For instance, I want to know how to count to ten and learn how to pronounce the alphabet so that I can learn to speak in everyday life. Another goal is to learn how to write a sentence while maintaining grammar rules. This is so that I can go on to learn how to write a paragraph so that I can communicate with text.
Sources:
Indonesian Grammar In Context, 2014, ed. Ellen Rafferty, Molly Burns, and Shintia Argazali-Thomas.
Oral Summary:
Learning Journal 15: Summarize your work this semester, the progress you made and the difficulties you encountered.
Looking back through the Portuguese journal I keep throughout the semester, I have learned so many new words and phrases. I was also able to learn 5 different verb tenses. Overall, I learned a lot about Brazilian (and Portuguese) culture and the language in general. One of the main difficulties I encountered was pronunciation. Even now at the end of the semester, there are many sounds I struggle with (especially nasal sounds). Nonetheless, I have become more comfortable with Portuguese sounds and I like to think that even though my pronunciation is far from perfect people might be able to tell what I am trying to say. While studying there were many questions and topic that I would have liked to investigate more in depth but I did not have the time. In the future, I will like to continue exploring Portuguese in a more informal context. Rather than studying grammar, I would like to continue exposure through media (music and shows), which I hope allows me to continue learning or at least not lose everything I have learned.
Learning Journal 14: Summarize your work this semester, the progress you made and the difficulties you encountered.
Goals: Imperative, traveling vocabulary
This week I will finish my study of the Imperative tense using more Babble lessons and exercises. Furthermore, I will like to end my study plan on a happy note learning vocabulary on traveling. I will use Babble lessons as well as Brazilian travel blogs for this vocabulary topic. After I document new vocabulary on my Portuguese journal, I will have a second review of material from past weeks to assess my progress.
Learning Journal 13: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
Goals: Imperative and Media
This week I will start working on my last verb tense, imperative. Babble lessons and practice exercises have been very helpful tools to learn verb conjugations and so I will continue to use them for my last verb tense. I will also be learning media vocabulary. For this topic I want to do some research to see what people have to say about Brazilian media (e.g. music, TV shows, etc) and compare it to my own impression of the things I have encountered so far.
I will use my meeting with my language parter to ask some questions regarding some cultural aspects of Brazil and the Portuguese language. I want to ask these questions as a guide for my cultural presentation.
Hello, attached is my cultural project powerpoint! Let me know if you have any questions!
Bird%20language%20in%20Black%20Sea%20Region%20of%20Turkey.pptx
Learning Journal 12: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
Goals: Future, technology, and work
This week I will finish working with future tense conjugations. I will be doing my last review using Babble and and some handouts I found online that include present, past, and future tense in Portuguese. I will also review technology and work vocabulary using Babble lessons and document new vocabulary in my Portuguese journal.
I plan to review propositions and accompanying words used in Portuguese with my language partner.
Learning Journal 11
Goals: Future, life stages: adulthood and old age
This week I will start working on future tense conjugations. I have encountered a few examples of future tense through music and reading but I will be formally reviewing conjugation rules for future tense. Furthermore, I am to continue with my study of vocabulary for life stages. This week I am reviewing adulthood and old age. As usual, I will be using Babble lessons to practice and document new vocabulary in my Portuguese journal. I would also like to find time to go back through my journal and review material from past weeks.
This week I want to discuss media culture with my language partner, especially music. I will also like to discuss any questions I might find while reviewing material from past weeks.
Learning Journal 10: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
Goals: Imperfect, life: childhood and Adolescence
This week I will continue to work with Imperfect conjugations and I will use Babble exercises for practice. I will also be learning vocabulary to describe stages of life. This week I will be working on childhood and adolescence and next week I will work on adulthood and old age. I will also use Babble lessons to practice vocabulary and review words using my journal.
Following last week's topic of idioms, I will be discussing the cultural meaning of idioms used in Brazil with my language partner.
This artifact demonstrates my understanding of vocabulary words from one of the chapters in the lesson plan.
Final entries... D:
Journal Entry 14:
I was, in the end, able to get cover about 80% of the textbook that Mahshad suggested; I would like to be able to have covered all of it, but we had to skip a few sessions for various reasons. I think I work much better with the guidance of a textbook; unfortunately, it also makes it hard to want to branch out and use other resources. My perennial struggle with all languages is memorizing vocabulary, so one of my goals over the summer is to research and develop a system that works well for me to memorize vocabulary (especially since I am officially signed up for multiple languages simultaneously). In short, I am satisfied with my progress, even if it could be better. Over the course of the semester, I think my goals started to shift from “I want to learn Persian in order to communicate with people” to “I want to learn Persian out of linguistic curiosity,” which I am fine with, but it also very much changes the work that I am doing.
Cultural Post 8:
Unfortunately, I cannot see any of the other cultural projects online except Sneha’s, which was primarily in Hindi (which I very much do not understand). I did notice that a lot of the cadences are similar to Persian. Once I am able to see more, I will update this.
This week’s goals were to learn about psychological verbs, which are a class of compound verbs in Persian that are declined, for the verbal aspect, in the third person singular, but use a personal pronoun attached to the nonverbal component of the compound verbs. This construction is somewhat analogous to saying something such as “my liking is for pizza” instead of “I like pizza.” They are strange to me, but they are common, especially in colloquial speech. I am realizing now that several of the conjugations that Arya uses seem to fit this form. When I speak with her next, I will have to record her speaking and see if they match this particular conjugation format.
Learning Journal 9: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
Goals: Preterite vs Imperfect, Idioms, and weather
This week I will be doing practice exercises for determining when to use preterite as opposed to the imperfect verb conjugation. I found some exercises online which I think could be a useful. Furthermore, I will be learning vocabulary to describe weather. For this I will use Babble lessons. Lastly I want to study spend some time studying Portuguese idioms. I have found some videos and websites that talk about idioms. As usual, I will document new learnings in my journal for review.
This week I will also be working on learning how to make nouns plural when they have ending nasal sounds. These rules are confusing to me, and so I will be reviewing them with my language partner.
Journal Entry 12
The goals for this week were to learn about geography in Persian (and the past tense, but I want to write about geography). The cardinal directions in Persian come from Arabic originally, but when I was talking with Arya, she noted that the words for east and west in Dari were inverted to what I know from Arabic (šarq for east and garb for west in Arabic and Farsi; inverted for Dari). I was surprised at this and she called her parents to verify this. They noted that a slang term for Arab is “šarqi” (i.e. “easterner” in Farsi/Arabic, but westerner in Dari), which aligns well, geographically speaking. Mahshad contradicted this. I am curious if this is a universal facet of Dari or merely a feature unique to Arya and her family.
Journal Entry 11
This week is focusing a lot on review as 3 of the last 4 weeks Mahshad and I were unable to meet and go over grammar and speak. I have been primarily working from the textbook, but have spent significantly more time with online dictionaries memorizing vocabulary and conjugating words.
Culture Post 7
Persian culture is very communal and frequently extended families will live together or near one another. Families are oriented somewhat similarly to a “traditional” nuclear American family; children are raised primarily by the mother while the father works, and extended family and friends all pitch in to take care of children. Family is very important as a value in Persian culture (as it is in most cultures) and the distinction between “private” and “family” space is very, very weak unlike general American culture.
Journal Entry 10
Unfortunately, Mahshad and I had to skip this week as well due to Nowruz. That being said, this was also the first week I am able to start working with Arya. My goal here is to understand some of the differences between Dari and Farsi. The pronunciation differences are noticeable, with Dari preserving certain things that are orthographically represented, but not pronounced in Farsi, and vice versa (e.g. the word for sister in Persian is spelled like it should be pronounced “xwāhar” in the Perso-Arabic script, but is pronounced “xāhar” in Farsi, but “xwār” in Dari.). There is also a significant difference in introductory and basic conversational words and structures, so I will be reviewing more with Arya and seeing if I can obtain some materials for Dari specifically.
Journal Entry 9
Because it is spring break, I did not have lessons with Mahshad, but I instead spent the break reviewing grammar concepts and memorizing vocabulary.
Cultural Post
Persians, as a people group, have one of the oldest relationships with time, with some of the earliest calendars originating in ancient Persian societies. Over time, this relationship with the calendar merged with Islamic conceptions of time. Days in Iran and other Persianate societies are heavily influenced and segmented by Islam, which mandates five prayers per day, and the azan (call to prayer), like in other Islamic societies, is used for timekeeping as well as religious purposes. Outside of these set times, Persian society is polychronic, and punctuality is not nearly as important as it is in more “western” societies like the United States, but time is still highly valued and important.
Journal Entry 8
The goal for this week is imperatives and subjunctives. They share the same basic form (add be to the present stem of a verb then decline). This intuitively works like English in my mind. I have noticed that people rarely, if ever, use a direct imperative e.g. “eat the sandwich!” but rather use a jussive subjunctive, e.g. “you should eat the sandwich!” This seems to match up well with how I understand the imperative form in Persian, which is very close to the subjunctive. I am wondering if this emerged because of the excessive politeness and taarof characterizing parts of Persian culture. Regardless of my meditation on the subjunctive and imperative, my method for learning them is the same as my usual method: work with Mahshad, review outside of class, and do worksheets.
Journal Entry 7
We had to skip today’s lesson due to a meeting, and I reviewed instead. I think things are going well. I am not as well planned and organized as I would have liked to be at this point; however, I am moving along in my textbook at a pace significantly quicker than a student in a formal classroom setting (according to Mahshad). Hopefully if/once Arya is able to be my language partner, I will be able to introduce a little more structure and variation into my lessons, but we will find out. I think the current format of following the textbook works well.
