I would say I have learned about 75-90 new words in Portuguese. The main program that has been teaching me all my vocabulary is duolingo. In terms of a goal for vocabulary I feel I have almost met my goal of learning most soccer vocabulary. From this point I would like to focus more on sentence forming and actual use of the vocabulary.
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When a language is lost, many things disappear with it. For example, a culture can be lost as a language can often be the vehicle which culture is brought. Since a culture is rather, broad one can narrow down the culture with which language is brought down to things, such as songs, traditions, stories, and possibly even religion. If the language is isolated and has not been spread there is no way for these things to survive unless they are in physical form. This is why the creation of a dictionary, or something that can physically preserve a language is important for language preservation. Another thing that can be lost with a language is people. It is often the case that when a language is lost, it means that all those who speak the language have passed away.
When language dies, Johnson argues that it is not just the alphabet, writing style, and grammar that dies, but it is a vital part of humanity and a vital part of culture that dies with it. I think it makes sense though. If a language is isolated to such a small population, in order for them to survive in the economy of wherever they are, they will have to learn to become bilingual to survive economically. In turn, over time, there will be a decline in the amount of speakers who can also read and write it. With a lack of literature and a lack of recorded history that can be read and interpreted in present day, a language will naturally die off. With that, a culture is lost, which is tragic to the globalizing society in which we live. But it is also somewhat of a natural extension of Darwin's "survival of the fittest" theory because obviously there was a reason that the language did not thrive. I can imagine a world one day where mostly everyone speaks the same language. That is solely because it is easier. Now, that is also a sad society in my mind. I think that one of the most beautiful things about a new culture is rooted in its language. The sing-songy nature of Chinese has always intrigued me and when I go to China, the language somehow makes sense with the architecture, way of life, and style of the country.
I know the numbers. I can effectively count and do basic addition.
We are beginning to go over the seasons, months, days of the week, and weather.
I have updated my blog as prescribed.
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.
So far, I have learned all Korean Alphabets/ Hangul, the technique of pronuncing words, accumulated some commonly used words/phrases, and some dialogues. I am pretty happy with my progress since I have no previous exposure to any Korean. I would say that the most effective time I spent learning Korean is the time I spent with my language partner and classmates, as well as watching some Korean-teaching videos that related grammar/words with popular culture. I found my pace of learning new words is little very fast so that I moved to the next set of words before did not fully get the previous set. In the future, I need to devote more time to review what I have learned. Also, I need to understand the grammar and sentence structure of the sentences in the dialogue.
My third artifact is about asking about my family. It includes questions and answers.
The conversation goes like this:
Q: How many people are there in your family?
A: Three. My dad, mom, and me.
Q: Where do your parents live?
A: They live in China.
Q: Where do your siblings live?
A: I do not have any sibling.
This week Joora and I presented on the transition of Turkish from Ottoman Turkish to Modern Turkish. This was something that Sezgi mentioned in her presentation on Turkish culture before Spring break and we thought it was very unique and interesting. Through our research, we learned that Ottoman Turkish was a very complicated mixture of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. It surprised me that all these languages belong to different language families. With most of the words in Ottoman Turkish being Arabic loanwords, the reformation of the Turkish language to create Modern Turkish required the purging of most of the Arabic and Persian vocabulary. Literally people were asked to make up new words to replace the loan words. One of the main goals of reforming the Turkish language was to make it more simple and easier to learn. This makes sense to me as I was surprised by how relatively simple Turkish is and how easy it is to learn. Other than some phonetic sounds that are difficult to make, the language structure is simple without gendered words or endings and the changing of suffixes to denote change in person or time.
This is a file of me talking about the recent development that Russia has chosen a singer to compete in Ukraine for Eurovision who performed in Crimea following the illegal annexation of Crimea. I talk about how it seems like a political move to provoke Ukrainians and make them angry and uncomfortable in their own country.
Recently, Belarus screened a "documentary" in Russian about the Ukrainian Holy Hundred (the people who were killed by police and the Berkut during the Maidan protests in 2013-2014). The documentary falsely claims that the Holy Hundred were actually killed by protestors, and not by the police. This documentary has naturally caused a stir in Ukraine because people feel that it is hugely disrespectful to the people who lost their lives fighting for their country on the Maidan. This documentary ties in with my cultural project, because I have been finding political songs that are about Maidan and the Orange Revolution. Comparing the difference in treatment of the Holy Hundred in Ukrainian v. Belorussian media is an interesting task, as they both have such different takes on the issue. Despite these different takes, however, it is clear that the Belorussian documentary is completely false propaganda with the goal of discrediting Ukraine in the eyes of Russian-speaking people in Belarus, Russia, and (maybe) Ukraine.
I am really enjoying the learning methods that I am using this semester. I feel that the way my language partner and I have been studying will give me a huge edge when I go to Ukrainian school this summer, because I am seriously working on my listening comprehension. While it is still easier for me to understand what is being spoken when I can read along, I am getting better at hearing and understanding without reading along. I have been working with my language partner by watching cartoons, listening to music, watching TV shows and watching the news to improve my listening comprehension. I did actually notice an improvement when I was in Ukraine over spring break. I was actually able to hear the difference between Russian and Ukrainian, and, even better, I was able to understand a lot more in Ukrainian than I did when I was there over winter break.
Over these two weeks, my language partner and I began trying branch out from cartoons and simple TV shows to watching the news. While it is definitely more difficult for me to understand what the news anchors talk about (they talk very quickly), I have found it interesting to watch Ukrainian news. I have a google alert set up so that I get updates on Ukraine (in English) on my email every morning, so that is actually very helpful for me when watching Ukrainian news. I think that having the background knowledge about things that are going on in English helps me put the pieces together better when I watch in Ukrainian. Usually, we watch a few segments and then we talk about it to make sure I understood what was going on. I often have questions, though, because there have been times when the speaker slides between Russian and Ukrainian, and I go from not understanding much to understanding everything. I know that this is something I will have to get used to (as many Ukrainians do speak with a mix of Russian and Ukrainian), but it still throws me off at this point. I still have to work hard to keep the two languages separate in my mind, so when people mix them together purposefully, it really confuses me.
My goal for this week is to understand the news on the TV. However, I found it very hard again like my second goal, which is to understand weather reports. So this time, instead of watching the news clips on the KBS website first, I went to find some resources about the vocabularies that will use for the broadcast that talking about the celebrities. The reason why I want to learn about the words for the news about the celebrities is because that I think it will be more interesting to learn and also I can know more about the Kpop stars at the same time. And, I did! Yet, it was still very hard to understand all the stuffs the News told about. However, I still had learned a lot through this process.
Post (a) an evaluation of your First Artifact conversation, and (b) an assessment of how well you met your learning goals for weeks 4 and 5.
The first artifact is greetings and short introduction of myself. Since I have learned Korean for 2 years and the teacher would always ask us to introduce ourselves, so I found it not very difficult to write. However, I think I might need to practice more and challenge myself to write more difficult contents.
For week 4 and 5 goals, I practiced " how to introduce a place for traveling" and " how to buy cloth at a clothing store" respectively. Luckily, we practiced the first one in the class. The teacher asked us to recommend a place to each other. I recommended a place in Taiwan which is called 象山( elephant mountain) in the class. From this process, I have learned how to describe the way to go there, why it is good, and how long should I take to go there, etc. The second goal, I practiced it by reading one of the articles in my textbook. From the textbook, I learned many Korean words of different kinds of cloth, and also learned how to ask the clerk if I want a bigger size, etc. In short, I really learned a lot of useful and practical skills from these two goals, and I think there will be a good chance that I will use them one day in Korea.
Over these two weeks, I worked with my language partner on maintaining my grammar and improving my listening comprehension (through cartoons, songs and spoken stories). My language partner has started finding some children's stories for us to use in our lessons. He reads them to me, and then he asks me questions about them. It is much easier for me to answer the questions when I have the story in front of me so that I can read along when he is reading, but I know it is important for me to develop my listening skills enough that I do not have to see the words being spoken in order to comprehend them. We are working on taking away that crutch, but for now, it is more effective for me to read along.
I have also been working on finding some songs for my cultural project. Through these songs, I have learned new Ukrainian words and phrases, and I have also been able to gain a deeper insight into the political climate of Ukraine.
Yuchi’s presentation on Kimchi was very interesting. Kimchi is the most well-known Korean dish and people eat it daily. It is made of cabbage. A typical Korean will eat 60 pounds of it each year. It tastes spicy and crunchy, and it’s very rich in flavor. Winter is long and cold in Korea. During ancient time, there was no access to fresh vegetables during wintertime in Korea. Therefore, they made lots of Kimchi before winter so that they would have vegetables to eat during winter. Each family even has designed refrigerator to store it. The presentation on Turkish coffee tells the difference between Turkish and American coffee. For Turkish coffee, people leave the coffee grounds in the cup while people filter the grounds in American coffee. People also use Turkish coffee fortune telling. It was very interesting to see that food has huge impact on culture.
- Post your third bi-weekly report on your language-learning activities.
We reviewed the Korean alphabet and continued with learning more dialogues. The first one we learned was greetings and a small talk you can have with people as beginners. This was a lot easier for me because it was a review from last year when I had Korean 110. I was able to catch on and remember some of the phrases that we learned. Also, we learned how to say what we liked and ask people about their drink preference.
- Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language.
By researching on the Reformation of Turkish alphabet, I learned how the cultural and religious reasons were there when the first president, Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, who founded the Republic of Turkey, and his party changed Ottoman Turkish to modern Turkish. The government wanted to get rid of Islamic culture and make Turkey secular. It also aimed for young generation not to understand Ottoman legacy. I did not know that there were so many politics related to the big change of Turkish alphabet. Learning the reasons of the Reformation, I understood that there might be some inconvenience and linguistic gap between the young and old generation in Turkey, and learned how the government wanted Turkey to define itself as European/Western country by adapting the alphabet originated from the Latin alphabet that most of the European countries also use.
In Turkish formality and informality are expressed through suffixes or by changing the nature of words. For example, in order to formalize the question 'What is your name?' in Turkish both tactics are used. "Senin adin ne" means 'what is your name' informally, while "sizin adiniz ne" means 'what is your name' in a formal fashion. In this case the initial word "senin" is changed to "sizin" and the suffix "iz" is added to the word "adin" to signify pluralization. In a similar way, "Ya sen" - which means 'and you' - is pluralized as "Ya siz". Therefore, a clear pattern appears to exist in the method of pluralization in the Turkish language.
My learning goal for this week is to recap what I have learned so far in Portuguese. I went about this by reviewing my vocabulary I have learned. I also sang some Capoeira songs. Finally I reviewed my introduction in Portugese.
