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This week we learned what happens when languages die. Although this tribe described in the article was able to revive a language on the verge of extinction, we lose hundreds of languages every year. The problem with losing languages is that not only is the language itself lost but also the history and culture of a people who spoke and/or wrote that language. In addition, in trying to revive a language that is almost extinct causes issues with diversity within the language. When there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of people who spoke the language in danger it can be assumed that there was more complexity to the language. While trying to preserve a language that may only have one or a few individual speakers left, the language then become limited to the vocabulary of that individual. It was also interesting for me to think about while many hundreds of languages are being lost, that also means that the world is becoming less diverse linguistically and therefore more people are learning the same languages and can understand people more universally. 

Below is my second reflection paper for the 105 section of SDLC: SDLC%20105%20Reflection%20Paper%20%232.docx

• Learning Journal 10:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

My learning goals this week are to be able to describe the Korean dishes I grew up eating through talking about the flavor, spice level, color, ingredients, and more. I did this by attempting to teach my friends during our outing to a Korean restaurant as well as learning how to properly say many of the descriptive terms with my mom. During calls with my mom, I made sure to note many of the foods I wanted to eat when I went back home and the reasons why. For example, I talked about a Korean dish called “dduk-bok-ee,” a spicy rice cake dish often made with cheese, boiled eggs, and green onions. I learned how to say these ingredients as well as basic terms to describe them such as “spicy”, “red”, and “yummy.” Later during the week, during an outing to a Korean restaurant with my friends, I learned new dishes and the ingredients in the dishes. I attempted to describe the dishes using the vocabulary I had to my friends.

Post Learning Journal #8 on Your Blog in the Ning

• How many new words have you learned in your target language?  How did you learn them?  Do you have realistic goals for your acquisition of vocabulary?

I learned many new words in my target language. I learned many formal versions of words I only knew the informal version of such as residence, birthday, age, name, and more. Furthermore, I learned how to say my majors and minor in Korean. I learned them through lessons with my language partner. In addition to lessons with my language partner, I also learned Korean vocabulary through listening to music. When I encountered a word I didn’t know, I would either look it up on Google translate or I would ask my mom. I came to learn how to pronounce many of the words I was saying incorrectly. I think that it’s difficult learning vocabulary because many of the words I know in Korean are often slang or words only my family understands. Therefore, it is a bit difficult to change the words I’ve used for years and replacing them with new words. I hope to continue my quest to acquire new vocabulary through watching television shows and listening to music.

Post Learning Journal #7 on Your Blog in the Ning

• Respond to the reading, reflecting on what is lost when languages die.  (You might want to watch the interview with David Harrison posted to the front page of the Ning.)

It was very interesting to read about the Siletz language, and the many people attempting to keep it alive. As a Korean who grew up in Los Angeles, I never thought about what would happen if my language suddenly disappeared. I was constantly surrounded by it, so I didn’t realize how painful losing it would be. Everyone spoke the language, and we had an entire country across the ocean that also spoke the language. If the Siletz language died, many aspects of the language would die with it as well. The language would lose its traditions due to no one practicing them anymore. Furthermore, it would lose its ability to be spoken. No one would know how the grammar of the language worked, and, thus, would not accurately string words together. The most important thing that would be lost when languages die would be the culture associated with it. We would lose the cultural values the group had. We would lose the traditional clothing and food. We would lose the life lessons and perspectives associate with the language. In a world of seven billion people, it is important to embrace diversity. We thrive through challenging ourselves and maturing, and we do this through learning about others and their differences. We learn from other languages' cultures, and we incorporate that into ours and vice versa. By losing the Siltez language, we, as a world, further deplete ourselves of the ability to grow in understanding. 

• Learning Journal 9:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

My learning goals for this week were to practice saying numbers and months in Korean. When speaking to my mom, I tried my best to say my months and time projections in Korean. In Korean, there are two ways to say numbers. One is based off of the China System and the other is based off of the Native Korean System. It is quite similar to how in English, we say “first” and “one.” Both mean that it was the primary number, but both indicate it in different ways. The China System is used for dates, ranks, time projections, and more. The Korea System is used to count objects. Therefore, I tried to be more conscious and accurately use these systems when speaking to my mom. We would practice time projections by talking about what the date was, what date I was coming home, what the time span that was, and more. As sometimes I get mixed up between the two number systems, it is nice to have my mom there, a native Korean speaker, to correct me and tell me the reasoning for why it is that way.

• Sixth Cultural Post:  Attitudes about Time in the Target Culture

In Korean culture, time seems to be very important, and there is an overall need to be busy and working. For example, high school students in Korea attend school Monday-Saturday (with the exception of two Saturdays off per month) for sixteen hours. After school ends, students then go to “hagwon” or after school in order to learn more. In Korean culture, every hour is prioritized, and it is expected that everyone should be doing something productive. Furthermore, in Korean work culture, it is normal to work overtime, giving more insight to the concept of Koreans prioritizing the concept of doing over the concept of resting. In my personal experience, growing up in a town that had a large population of Korean immigrants, overworking oneself seemed to be normal. Children would be sent to after schools and enrolled in multiple activities in order to boost their resumes and chances to get into good colleges. Parents would work longer than eight hours a day. Overall, Korean culture attempts to combine productivity and time.

For this week, I focused on learning how to introduce my family and hometown.  Minkyung prepared a worksheet for us that has the basic sentence structure for present tense.  We practiced the dialogue together and made notes on the pronunciation. Next, we wrote the conversation with our own family situations. We learned a set of words about family members. It's interesting that women and men address brothers and sisters differently. 형 = older brother (if you're male), 오빠 = older brother (if you're female),누나 = older sister (if you're male), 언니 = older sister (if you're female)

The conversation includes how many family members in my family and where they live.  In this case, we also learned to talk in past and present tenses. I recorded all the conversations in my notebook with detailed translation and pronunciation notes.  This topic is truly useful. I also watched videos about introducing family to reinforce my memory.  

Since language is more than a tool for communication, the death of language can mean the loss of culture, history, and even an ethnicity. The language always ties to the culture, and it might be the most stable element of the culture. For instance, Korean food can adapt to American taste, but the language cannot blend with English. Also, languages represent history and might be the only source to delve into history. Many tribes do not have their own texts. In this case, word of mouth becomes the only way to tell history; therefore, the death of a tribe language can mean the loss of historical records. Most importantly, the disappearance of a language can lead to the “extinction” of an ethnicity or a tribe. According to the article, years ago, Siletz prevailed over other tribes; however, currently, there are only a few people speaking the language. As the article states that school is the enemy of tribal languages, I noticed that this fact is especially true in China. The government encourages mandarin, so there is decreasing number of people speaking dialects or tribal languages. Ethnic minorities in cities speak mandarin most of the time, thus they have already “become” Han people with an ethnic minority title rather than true ethnic minorities. 

"The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life)."

I am impressed with this article but not at all surprised. I think it is a special talent to be able to communicate with people and those who master languages without a doubt use a different part of the brain to recall and respond immediately and innately if they are truly bilingual.

I am interested in how they define bilingualism though, because there are so many ways that you can measure someone's language abilities, but I think that immersion or households that speak two languages are the only ways to truly be able to consider oneself bilingual because there is a tick in your brain that people who are bilingual just don't have. When you are learning a language, usually you start off learning through translation. Eventually, you begin to learn in the target language, but there is still an element of translation so that the learner has something to relate it to. Learning from 0 and having tow different definitions of a concept in different languages is a unique ability that not many can grasp. That is how I define bilingualism.

• Create a learning activity to teach someone else something you have learned in your language; outline this activity in your learning journal; teach someone using this activity; reflect upon the effectiveness of the activity

• Learning Journal 8:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals

I decided to teach my friends how to say basic formal phrases in Korean. When we went to a Korean restaurant, they were very curious about how to say restaurant phrases such as “thank you” and “please” among many other phrases. They also attempted to learn the names of the Korean dishes on the menu. Due to our servers being older than us, I made sure to teach them the formal form rather than the informal. We went through the process of saying every syllable multiple times until they were able to repeat the phrases without my help. When we were paying, they attempted to say “thank you” without my help, and many of them succeeded. Though it was a simple activity, it was challenging for my friends because they never had any experience with the language before. Since I grew up hearing and speaking the language, pronouncing the words were not difficult. However, I came to realize that my friends were not able to say many of the sounds in Korean due to them not existing in the English language. I think that overall it was a successful lesson. Though small, they were exposed to the Korean language through trying the food while also attempting to pronounce many of the words. It was interesting to see them excited when they were able to pronounce the words without my help. Learning to connect with others, even though many of them only knew one word, seemed to be eye-opening and fun for them.

Post Learning Journal #6 on Your Blog in the Ning

• Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language

Knowing a language’s history can help you learn the language because it helps to give context in why some words exist. Knowing Korean history is important to the understanding of how many Korean words formed, allowing the learner to understand the trend of how the Korean language is growing. By understanding the history of how Korean was in the past, the learner is able to have a better idea of where our language is heading to in the future. Historically, after the two Koreas split after World War 2, the two countries became isolated from each other, preventing any potential communications between one another.

Due to North Korea’s distaste for the United States, North Koreans did not incorporate any English into their language. Rather, they chose to incorporate words from Russian. South Korea, on the other hand, was allies with the United States. Due to the exchanges between the two countries, South Korea began to incorporate many English words into their language. This pattern radically changed the two countries over the next several decades, to the point where North and South Koreans were unable to communicate even though they once began with the same language. Looking specifically at South Korean, this trend of incorporating English into our language and our solid relationship with the United States projects for more English to be incorporated into the language. By understanding this osmosis of words between the languages, the Korean learner is able to be more open-minded to seeing English words in Korean language.

Personally, I was incredibly interested in Turkish culture and history. Sezgi introduced us to a Turkish TV show that I will continue to watch (with English subtitles) because it is so historically accurate and shows the importance of family power, struggle, and wealth in the Ottoman Empire, along with the Empire's clashes with the Papacy of Vatican City.

• Learning Journal 10:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

• Learned how to make nouns plural. (Because of vowel harmony, put lar after a, ı, o, and u and put ler after e, i,  ö, and ü.)
• Learned about seasons in Sezqi's class.
• Learned vocabularies like spring, summer, fall, winter, and moths (January to December).
• It was interesting that the direct translation of spring in Turkish is "first spring" and that of fall is "last spring".
• March, and August in Turkish sound similar to English.

Third Artifact: Vocaroo_s0bnr889xN5x.mp3 Transcript: Transcript3 

"Anjing Yang Nakal"

Hari ini saya membaca sebuah cerita. Ada seekor anjing di sebuah desa. Anjing itu sangat nakal dan jelek. Jadi, masternya mengikat dia dengan tali dan balok kayu. Tapi, di cerita itu, tidak diceritakan kenapa anjing itu nakal. Terus, waktu anjing lain melihat dia, mereka tidak suka dengan dia. Pasan moral dari ceritanya adalah "Terkenal karena kebaikkan berbeda dengan terkenal karena kejahatan."

Translation: "Bad Dog"

I read a story today. There was a dog in a village. The dog was very bad and evil. So, the master tied the dog to the ground with a chain and wooden block. But, the story did not say why the dog was bad. When other dogs see the bad dog, they don't like him. The story's message is there is a difference for attaining fame through good behavior versus bad behavior.

Clearly, I have written a crude summary of the story. Nevertheless, I thought the story was particularly interesting and pertinent to my cultural posts. First, in Indonesian fable stories, dogs are used as a "platform" to deliver the message, which highlights their value (or lack thereof) in the society. Moreover, the "master" (when translated into English -- a pejorative term in Indonesian I am told) chained the dog to the ground and placed a wooden block around its neck to ensure it won't move around. This, I believe, condones such treatment of animals in general and dogs in particular. 

In other words, the short story not only highlights the subtle ways in which dogs are portrayed in society -- their value, dignity, and so on; it opens a window on how dogs are viewed, and through the repetitive discourse relayed through children's stories, these views are embedded into successive generations.

• Learning Journal 8:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

• For this week, I prepared materials to teach in 110 class. 
• I and Tenaya decided to give a lesson about weather in Turkish. 
• We reviewed how to talk about weather (asking questions about weather, and answering them) and days.
• We printed out pictures that show weather.
• We developed ideas on how to teach beginners in Turkish effectively.
• We practiced teaching the class with the materials we prepared. 

• Learning Journal 9:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

• Learn about vocabularies that are related to sports. 
• Make PowerPoint slides about soccer.
• Watch a soccer game in Turkish.

• I used UTalk Challenge application to learn about sports in Turkish. I learned how to say and write soccer, soccer ball, referee, team, goal, Olympics, and other sports names (or words related to other sports like basketball). 
• I took notes and I reviewed the words few days later from the day I learned them.
• I made PowerPoint about soccer. Here is the ppt: Soccer.pptx
• I watched a soccer game in Turkish.

• Learning Journal 6:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

• Learn about weather (like how to say degrees)
• Learn about days
• I accomplished these goals by attending Turkish class with Sezgi that we learned vocabularies on weather and days. I can say "How's the weather on Monday(through Sunday)", "Its raining", "It's sunny", "It's cold", "It's hot", "It's cloudy" and "How's the weather on Monday night" in Turkish. I learned how to read and write "today". "yesterday", and "tomorrow".
• I also learned conjunctions like "and" and "but". 
• I reviewed the materials and prepared for the Turkish lesson in SDLC 110.

• Learning Journal 7:  Reflect upon your progress to date, consider the effectiveness of your learning plan and activities, and discuss what changes--if any--you will make to finish the semester.

I think I need to work on Mango Language more often. I think balancing more between Sezqi's class and self-studying outside of the class is necessary at this point. I accomplished seven goals out of ten on my learning plan. I think that is a good progress and I think I should keep going. I think I need to review what I have learned and spend more time during the weekends reviewing. 

I will go to a Turkish restaurant to order food in Turkish and I will learn how to shop in Turkish using Mango Language. 

I recorded myself asking and answering about weather and what day it is. 

Second Artifact: Weather forecast in Turkish. WeatherForecast Transcript: WeatherForecast_Transcript

This week, I adjusted my learning goal to include writing a Korean cover letter. Lately, my job applications have been required a cover letter in Korean rather than English. Therefore, I spent most of this week learning how to write one and then writing one. This process has actually been a culmination of all my efforts this semester since it has required me to talk about myself in great detail (in past, present, and future tense), with great use of form and style, and attention to cultural norms and standards. The process has been, in a way, emblematic of my whole Korean learning journey. I have had to combine a lot of disparate knowledge together to make a cover letter. A task that would take easily 20-30 minutes to do in English.

Once I finished writing my cover letter, I sent it to two Korean friends to edit and provide feedback. Currently I am waiting to receive my feedback but I am proud that I was able to write my cover letter in any way shape or form.