So far, I have learned around 20 new words in Korean. I learned the words by watching a show or reading a book and writing down new words that I do not know. My Korean mentor would then explain what the word meant and I would keep a book just for new vocabulary words. In my everyday life I would try to incorporate the new words into my daily vocabulary in order to memorize it. Once I have it memorized and have it used in everyday conversations, I would be able to recognize it in any readings and really get comfortable with spelling out the word. Then I would use the word in writings. This method really helped me to memorize new vocabulary words ever since I was a kid and was trying to learn basic vocabulary from my parents. Watching shows and listening to Korean music really got me motivated to continuously use new vocabulary words in hopes of one day becoming conversational in Korean.
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Learning Journal 7
It’s been so weird finding out how similar the vocab of Nepali and Sanskrit is. I have a small/moderate vocab understanding of Nepali, but it’s definitely been helping me with understanding the roots of so many words. It’s crazy that language could change that little, since Nepali was derived from Sanskrit thousands of years beforehand! I’ll give a few examples from words that are very similar or the same between the two languages. Pardon my spelling, since I’m going off the Nepali from memory and I learned a lot of it orally.
Sanskrit Nepali
deva/devi (god)
chandra/chandramaa (moon)
hasta/haat (hand)
sarpa/sarpa (snake)
chaura/chera (thief)
phala/pharphul (fruit)
duhkha/dukha (pain)
agni/aago (fire)
There’s also so many religious words that are directly the same still, but I won’t list those. It’s just amazing to me that these seemingly random, basic words have changed so little. In these ways I find learning Sanskrit to be almost easier than learning other languages because it’s so easy to derive the root and find the derivative words as well. I’d like to know more about how quickly other languages change. I know that Old English is entirely a different language to modern English and that change happened in only a couple hundred years. Is it geography or a lack of migration that has kept Sanskrit/Nepali so similar?
Learning Journal # 8
Sandhi, Sandhi, Sandhi. This will be the bane of my existence.
Sanskrit has so many rules!
Sandhi basically refers to the vowel and consonant shifts that occur when certain letters are next to each other. It’s kinda like how a/an works in English, or how le/l’ works in French. The vowels will be modified or dropped to become easier to say, or to flow better. Most of the time these changes make sense, but there’s just so many of them! There are both external rules (changes between words) and internal rules (changes within a word). A common rule would be that no two vowels should be next to each other.
There’s a lot of changes that I find make it harder to locate the case or gender/number of a word. For example, a rule is that in front of any vowel except ‘a’, the ending ‘h’ is dropped. Ex. narah icchati → nara icchati. Then you just keep adding rules for each vowel and type of consonant. It’s definitely going to take a lot of memorization!
My goals/objectives for these past two weeks:
- Complete chapter 6 “Mencari Pekerjaan” in Indonesian Grammar In Context;
- Complete chapter 7 “Keluarga Fata” in Indonesian Grammar In Context;
- Meet with my language partner to work on my reading, writing, and speaking skills; and
- Create a learning activity to teach someone else something you have learned in your language.
These past two weeks, I have completed:
- Complete chapter 6 “Mencari Pekerjaan” in Indonesian Grammar In Context;
- Complete chapter 7 “Keluarga Fata” in Indonesian Grammar In Context;
- Met with my language partner for four hours to work on my reading, writing, and speaking skills; and
- Created a learning activity to teach someone else something I have learned in my language.
Reflection:
I spent about 4 hours each week completing a chapter.
I finished Chapter 6 in Indonesian Grammar In Context. I learned the following:
- The function of the verbal prefix ter-;
- The conjunction sehingga; and
- The stative function of the verbal prefix ter-;
The chapter included a variety of activities: Oral tasks, written tables and charts, and writing exercises. In addition to these activities, I took grammar notes and listed new vocabulary words.
I finished Chapter 7 in Indonesian Grammar In Context. I learned the following:
- Classifiers;
- The conjunctions sambil, sementara, and padahal; and
- Intransitive verbs with the meN- prefix.
Both chapters included a variety of activities: Oral tasks, written tables and charts, and writing exercises. In addition to these activities, I took grammar notes and listed new vocabulary words.
In addition, I met with my language learning partner for 4 hours -- 2 hours/week. Our time was spent on engaging in oral conversational activities like role play and dialogue chats, as well as going over new grammar points and vocabulary.
Learning Activity
Since this is level three, I presumed the person to whom I am supposed to teach this activity has taken at least level two Indonesian.
I decided to use the normalization of verbs using -nya as the subject for this activity because making nouns by adding -nya to verbs is very common in colloquial conversation. While this activity is rudimentary, I think it is effective in driving the pattern of the subject at hand across. What follows is an outline of this activity:
Background: Thalia ke Denpasar. Lima hari sesudah dia pergi, Thalia bertemu dengan temmanya, Brad.
Thalia: Saya pergi ke Denpasar.
Brad: (Berangkat -- the verb to be transformed into a noun by adding the -nya prefix) Berangkatnya kapan?
Thalia: Berangkatnya lima hari lagi.
Brad: (Pulang) Pulangnya kapan?
And so on.
Learning Journal # 9
Pronouns!
These aren’t really used that often from what I can tell. But when they are, it’s confusing. My journal page above lists the different forms of mad (me)/tvad (you)/tad(it/that/this). We have these in English too, but it’s been tricky learning them all over especially when the forms are so different. For example, “mad” in the singular object form is “mam” in the dual is “aavam”, in the plural is “asaman”. Tvad also takes some pretty big changes. In the singular, it is “tvaam”, dual “yuvaam”, and plural “yuusman”
Also I recently discovered this declension table maker and it’s so helpful! http://sanskrit.inria.fr/cgi-bin/sktdeclin?q=tvad;g=Any
These past few weeks my language partner and I have been working hard on grammar. More specifically verb conjugations. We have worked hard on the use of imperfect, preterite, future, and indicative tense. I am also becoming quite proficient at conjugating ar, er, and ir verbs. I still tend to struggle with irregular verbs such as ir and ser. Also I we are starting to work with reflexive verbs, which involve a direct object pronouns. I have also sent another email to my friend in Brazil, but this time I did it on my own. My friend in Brazil seemed to be able to figure out what I was trying to say, which I feel is a step in the right direction.
- Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language. To what family does your language belong? What sounds, words, or structures exemplify periods of contact with other cultures?
I find the origins of Sanskrit very interesting. It derives from Indo-European, just like English and many other European languages. It has been compared to Latin and (Ancient) Greek because of its similar linguistic derivations and its ancient history. Here’s a language family chart that includes Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin:
Sanskrit is derived from the Indo-Iranian language family just as English is derived from Germanic. Many Indian and South Asian languages remain very similar to Sanskrit still in both vocabulary and structure. Hindi is the largest native language of India and it shares many similarities with Sanskrit. There are many words from Sanskrit which overlap in English sounds or meaning, which might reflect the Proto-Indo-European roots or other cultural contact. Some words are strikingly similar between English and Sanskrit, including “Jangala”-Jungle; “Manas”-Mind; “Manu”-Man; “Gau”-Cow; “Matr”-Mother; “Naas”-Nose. There are so many of these similarities, and it still feels really weird to recognize them in their modern English form when I’m trying to read a Sanskrit sentence.
Ten weeks into my self-directed language study I think I have learned a couple hundred words. By this I mean I've been exposed to them through my online study or with my language partner, not necessarily that I'm a master of all these words. I learned these primarily using Mango, Memrise, KoreanClass101.com videos, the internet, and my language partner. Mango teaches lots of words and then helps build grammatical structure by putting them together. I've used KoreanClass101.com videos because they have some specialized ones like "25 Important Nouns" or "How to Talk about Food." I like these because it uses visuals and I get to hear the words pronounced by a native speaker. In addition to this, I've looked up a couple vocabulary sets like "50 Important Nouns" or "Introductory Phrases" to try to specialize my vocabulary learning. With these new words I've been putting them into flashcard form on Quizlet in an attempt to master them. Quizlet is great because it is able to read many different languages so I can have it pronounce the Korean word for me while I'm studying. It's hard to have a realistic goal of an exact number of words I want to learn. Also, in my learning plan I have certain sets of vocabulary I hope to learn such as food or weather or families, but it isn't realistic to believe that I can learn every word regarding food and drink in one semester. That's why I like the specialized lists made by native speakers about the Top ___ Words about ____, because that way I can try to learn at least the most important ones. For example, I think mastering the words for popular Korean dishes and drinks is more important than learning how to say nearly every word for a type of food at a very surface level.
During my 6th and 7th weeks I had a goal of being able to express feelings, speak and write about winter break, using past tense and future tense, make sentences about wishes and needs, ask questions, revise animal and fruits vocabulary as well as get familiar with the most famous historical sites of Turkey. I intended to use online resources, two of which I discovered a few weeks ago and found really useful( http://turkishbasics.com, https://www.turkishclass101.com). I also was hoping to use Quizlet for vocabulary revision and ask questions to my language partner.
In order to develop speaking and listening skills, I and my language partner spoke about winter break using different tenses and asked each other questions about our plans. I also got to learn and conjugate more verbs when we were creating sentences. I was able to express some of my wishes such as I want to do this/that in the future or I want to have coffee etc. and ask questions. As planned, I used Quizlet for revising the animals and fruits and made a few sentences of shopping for fruits. I also learnt to express negative and positive feelings when asked how I am or how I feel. These past 2 weeks I did a lot of speaking and listening practice both online and with my classmate. As part of our class, we also got to read a small children's book and tried to translate what we read. It was quite challenging with a number of unfamiliar words but also very useful in terms of reading and pronunciation. My language partner also spoke about the famous Turkish historical sites and told a few interesting stories about their architecture over a cup of Turkish coffee.
Below are some of the sentence.vocabulary artifacts that I used during the past 2 weeks.
This week for my cultural learning Youngmin and I have been going over the Korean royal palace Gyeong Bok Gung(경복궁). This was prompted by a gift from Youngmin that she brought from Korea of a build-it-yourself cardboard model of the palace and grounds, but I was especially excited to learn more about the place
because I had actually visited there on my last trip to Korea. We decided that it would be a good learning exercise to build the model together and then use it as part of my final presentation, with her giving me the instructions and part numbers in Korean, and me following her instructions. It was really helpful to get some practice using the positional vocabulary we had learned and using numbers in a real life situation.
After we finished each building or section she would tell me the name in Korean and then we would read about the history of what we'd just built. We built models of and learned about structures like 광화문, the great southern gate of the palace which was built in 1395, which I was planning on including a picture of us in front of but Isla vetoed the picture because she didn't think she looked good (which obviously isn't true), but here is a picture of us in front of the museum entrance with Isla attempting to hide from the camera.
- Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language. To what family does your language belong? What sounds, words, or structures exemplify periods of contact with other cultures?
I am not all that familiar with the history of Korea. However, I do know that Korea has a long history of involvement with its neighboring countries. Because of countries such as China and Japan, Korean language and culture sees a lot of similarity with Chinese and Korean. Korean actually has many root words in Hanja, which is a form of Chinese writing. This writing is still taught in Korean schools but I have not learned it. Learning these root words can help learn Korean better because most Korean words have root words with specific meaning behind them. Hanja and Korean is similar to Latin's relationship with English.
Before being in this class, I always believed that Korean, Chinese, and Japanese languages were all in the same family, However, I learned that Korean is in the Koreanic family and is fairly unique in terms of syntax and grammar.
Complete Reflection Paper #2 (500 words) and Post to Your Blog in the Ning
Reflect on your language learning so far. How would you describe the relationship between understanding the target culture and target language. What do you need to improve your communicative competence? What other kinds of competence from the readings by H.D. Brown do you need to consider to make tangible advances in your linguistic abilities?
When studying a language, the attached culture becomes just as evident. In fact, the culture is a type of language that communicates a society’s social norms. Untranslatable phrases and meanings help to illustrate the cultural barriers that divide different languages. Therefore, to truly understand my target language I must think outside of my own cultural entrapments. I must reconfigure the ways I understand certain concepts to properly engage with my target language. A small example is the use of articles in French. I’m not saying I force myself to understand the philosophical underpinnings of French article usage, but I certainly have to be conscious of this concept when I’m writing.
This relationship also goes the other way around. From sentence structure down to philosophical semantics, the language quickly becomes the culture’s proxy. Certain phrases and structures in the target language serve as windows into the culture. It’s then my job to ask appropriate questions to be sure that I thoroughly understand the concept at hand. As I described in an earlier journal, Senegalese culture exhibits such communal tendencies that the literal translation of “How is your mother?” from Wolof to English is “Where is your mother?” This one example along with several others speak to the intrinsic nature of language and culture. There no way you can understand one without at least partially understanding the other.
Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language. To what family does your language belong? What sounds, words, or structures exemplify periods of contact with other cultures?
Understanding the history of a language means to understand where certain roots and constructions of from. When you’re able to identify a root, it’s easier to recognize it when it appears again and again. Language is essentially repetition, so once you’re able to hone down on the pattern you’ve learned the language.
My target language, Wolof, belongs to the Niger-Congo language family. Certain sounds in Wolof illustrate the Arabic and French influences on the culture. Many French words are used or manipulated in Wolof. French is so heavily a part of Wolof that some conversations seem to switch between the languages, weaving them together.
How do languages go extinct? Respond to the reading, reflecting on what happens when a language dies. How can linguists help preserve a language? Can a language ever be brought back to life?
Languages often die by the hands of other languages that have more power, referred in Kirk Johnson’s article as “linguistic sweepstake winners.” These languages like French, English, Mandarin, Spanish, etc often push out smaller languages through education, religion, and federal policy.
Linguists can help to preserve languages by educating local populations of the value of all languages –both to the speakers and nonspeakers. Linguists must communicate the fact that these languages are valid. They have their own ways of understanding and interpreting life that may by drastically different from English language and culture, for example. Nevertheless, those languages matter. Secondly, linguists help by documenting the languages that are going extinct. The objective is to preserve them so that in the case of a language revival, the appropriate materials would be available. With the right materials and atmosphere, I think a language can definitely be brought back to life. However, the possibility becomes scarce where cultural oppression is the maximized and intercultural understanding is minimized.
Since my language plan starts on week 4, I focused on solidifying the information for my 1st and 2nd language tasks during my 3rd week. In order to learn "classroom/survival language" and "greetings, farewells, and introductions." For task learning 1, I primarily used an online source: Koreanclass101.com. This source provided me with the Korean words for objects such as pencil, notebook, desk, etc., as well as romanizations, and example sentences that included the new vocabulary words. I liked this source because it also included recordings of someone saying the words and example sentences so that I would be able to practice my pronunciation. Furthermore, in order to complete my second language task, I referred to multiple websites and created flashcards with the Hangul form, romanization, formal/informal, and English meaning of the phrases. When I finally got all the information written down I took a few minutes each day to practice reading and saying the phrases.
This is another conversation between my dad and I. It includes questions and answers about my name, my family members' names and their ages.
This is a conversation between my dad and about my identity. It includes questions and answers about name, age, birthday, where I live, and birthplace.
My goals/objectives for these past two weeks:
- Complete chapter 4 “Kesulitan Mahasiswa” in Indonesian Grammar In Context
- Complete chapter 5 “Ibu Lia dan Keluarganya” in Indonesian Grammar In Context
- Meet with my language partner to work on my reading, writing, and speaking skills.
These past two weeks, I have completed:
- Chapter 4 “Kesulitan Mahasiswa” in Indonesian Grammar In Context
- Chapter 5 “Ibu Lia dan Keluarganya” in Indonesian Grammar In Context
- Met with my language partner for four hours to work on my reading, writing, and speaking skills.
Reflection:
I spent about 4 hours each week completing a chapter.
I finished Chapter 4 in Indonesian Grammar In Context. I learned the following:
- Language registers ;
- Narrating from two points of reference;
- Shifting time frames; and
- The iterative function of the verbal suffix -i
The chapter included a variety of activities: Oral tasks, written tables and charts, and writing exercises. In addition to these activities, I took grammar notes and listed new vocabulary words.
I finished Chapter 5 in Indonesian Grammar In Context. I learned the following:
- The conjunctions untuk and supaya;
- The benefactive function of the verbal suffix -kan; and
- The adverb se-adjective + adjective -nya.
Both chapters included a variety of activities: Oral tasks, written tables and charts, and writing exercises. In addition to these activities, I took grammar notes and listed new vocabulary words.
In addition, I met with my language learning partner for 4 hours -- 2 hours/week. Our time was spent on engaging in oral conversational activities like role play and dialogue chats, as well as going over new grammar points and vocabulary.
