Blogs

In my first week of learning Ukrainian I have been able to apply my knowledge of Russian, specifically in the learning of the Ukrainian alphabet, which is very similar to the Russian alphabet. There are differences in pronunciation of some identical letters as well as some additional letters that are not present in the Russian alphabet. My language partner pointed out to me that my pronunciation is already pretty good, but I need to make sure that I remember the letters that are pronounced differently in Russian so that I don’t make mistakes further on in my learning. Therefore we spent time practicing words that are spelled the same in both languages but simultaneously sound different. I think that practice paid off and I will be able to remember these tendencies in the Ukrainian language. We then went over common greetings and reenacted several scenarios where the variables were: the time of day and the type of person I was addressing (sex, age, relationship, etc). We conjugated several greetings for me to understand the difference in use dependent on who exactly I am addressing in my conversations. I also learned numbers and their grammatical form of progressive adaptation.

These last two weeks we continued on with the book and we began preparing for my Hebrew exam for Hebrew University.  We began drilling verbs and vocabulary.  

November 7- 18, 2013

In class we worked on a word worksheet that Sabrina had been compiling from some of the readings we had done. These words were ones that I did not know. She had the English word written and I translated it to Bangla. She helped me with the ones that I did not remember from the reading. 

We tried to do something new this week. I suggested we do diction because we did that in Arabic last year and it was helpful in showing how well we recognized Arabic letters and sounds. Sabrina chose to do a reading from Complete Bengali, Chapter 19 “Health and diet” and I wrote what she read out. I did amazing! At first, I was nervous, but as we continued I realized that I felt much more comfortable writing in Bangla now than I did last semester. It was an exciting moment! We plan on doing more diction. 

At this point in the semester, I'm pretty fluent in speaking in shuddho Bangla. I practice in my head outside of class and I try to incorporate it more in my speech when I talk to my relatives or to my mom. The feeling of presumptuous people speaking in shuddho Bangla wore out because I do it so often now. Every time me and Sabrina speak in Bangla, inside or outside of class, we try to speak in shuddho Bangla for my convenience. Sabrina also remarked on how well my shuddho Bangla is now! She said it was more effortless, and I feel the same way. As we speak in shuddho Bangla I realized that there are many words that I mispronounce. She corrects me when I pronounce something wrong and we work on attacking that error until it is natural to me. For example, in colloquial Bangla for "I slept" I would say "ghumaysi" but in shuddho Bangla it is "ghumiache". Transitioning from colloquial to shuddho I make more mistakes because the endings change in a pattern that I have never before used in my life. While I heard others do it, I did not know how to do it. I've improved from before, but I targeted that as something I need to practice much more. 

For reading this week, we read Rabindranath Tagore's song (sangeet) “Emono dine tare bola jay.” The title translates to "on a day like this, it can be said." Sabrina introduced Rabindranath to me last year and ever since then I've loved his work. This song just became another one of my favorites. His writing is so poignant and beautiful, I did not know that Bangla could be so poetic. There were archaic words in his song as well well as words that I did not know so I wrote them in my Bangla journal as part of my new vocabulary. 

Here is the link to the song, sung by Hemanta Mukherjee:

October 24- November 4, 2013

Although we had decided to speak in Bangla at least once every week, we had instead focused more on writing and reading for the first couple weeks. For that reason, this week we spoke in Bangla a lot. I struggled a lot at first because I had to speak slower and think about how to word things rather than speaking without giving it much thought. The first day was hard and it twisted my tongue, but by the third time we did it it felt more natural. It feels strange speaking in shuddho Bangla because the only people I encountered speaking it were presumptuous. Needless to say, I had a bad impression about it. I also know that it is an important form of the language to learn because it is indicative of status and education. If I want to be taken seriously in "higher" society or by government officials, I need to learn speaking in shuddho Bangla. Moreover, it is a show of respect and formality. Just as I can't talk in slang to a professor, I can't speak to official people in colloquial Bangla.

We also watched a natok (drama) by the famous writer Humayun Ahmed. He was an influential playwright and dramatist in Bangladesh. Many recognized as a genius. The natok we watched is called Aaj Robibar which means, today is Sunday. It is a comedy sitcom revolving around a family made up of two teenage girls, an two uncles, grandfather, father of the two girls, and a boy who lives as a tenant in their house. This episode is the first of the series and begins with one of the girls, Kanka, narrating and introducing all the characters. She and her sister Titli are in love with the tenant, Aneez, because he is intellectual and kind. However, he is so obsessed with his intellectual things that he is oblivious to their love and does not understand why they get upset at him or what they hint it all the time. He is also blind without his classes so there are hilarious situations that occur because of it all. All the characters are quirky and it's enjoyable to watch. The natok is in shuddho Bangla which helps me get used to listening to it and helps my own speech because I can mimic the way they speak in their phrases and contexts of speech. When I didn't understand a word or a sentence, we paused and Sabrina would explain it to me and we'd rewind a little and listen to it again. I hope to do more of this in later classes! 

Here is the link to the episode we watched:

We also did a reading from Complete Bengali, Chapter 23 “Telling stories.” It had many conjuncts we discussed earlier. Some of the conjuncts that we did not see as much before appeared, too, so it was a good read. I got faster at reading at this point because there were so many familiar structures appearing. It was heartening to see that! We will be doing more readings from this book.

October 7-21, 2013

There wasn't much activity this week. Class was cancelled on Monday because it was a hectic week and we both needed time for our other classes. We continued doing readings. We found a website with children's short stories and read a story from that. We chose a story about a king whose laughter trickled gold, I believe. It was a relatively easy read, however there were some strange things about it. There were unfamiliar words to both me and Sabrina, we figured out it was because the site used Calcutta Bangla which is a little different from Bangladeshi Bangla. It used words like "jhurjhura" to describe laughter, I suppose giggling, but that was a term we had both never heard before. It may have been an alliterative word, however. At the end of the reading, we surmised that we did not enjoy Calcutta Bangla because it was strange to us. That may be something interesting to learn more about at some point- to note differences between Calcutta Bangla and Bangladeshi Bangla and why the differences exist. Although, I think the difference has mostly to do with religious influences over it. Calcutta Bangla, I think, is closer to Sanskirt because of Hinduism. Calcutta people are predominantly Hindu. Bangladesh is an Islamic country and many of the words are borrowings from Arabic or Urdu. The Urdu influence is an obvious one. 

Another class period, we worked on a conjunct worksheet together. As I worked on it, Sabrina checked and made sure the words were correctly spelled. I have trouble with the 's' sounds, but Sabrina told me that it is more of a memorization issue because some words are spelled a certain way though they could be spelled with another 's'. Overall, my use of conjuncts improved because of my familiarity with them. I think that the worksheets are very helpful and they help me retain words and work on both reading and writing- which is fantastic!

I also learned the Bangla words for days of the week. The ones in bold are the ones I knew beforehand: 

robibaar- sunday
shanivaar- saturday
shombaar- monday
mongolbaar- tuesday
budhbaar- wednesday
brihoshpotibar- thursday
shukrobaar- friday

This is the link in which we read the children's short story:

http://www.galpobolishono.com/prod/index.asp?categoryid=KC

HOW TO COOK DAAL 

These are the different types of daal most commonly used in Bangladesh cuisine.

Me and Sabrina cooked the orange colored one, masoor daal. Daal is as easy as cooking rice because it involves very little effort and the steps are quite simple. 

Ingredients:

-Lentils

-Diced onions

-Diced garlic

-Diced thai peppers

-Cumin

-Turmeric 

-Mixed spices (masala)

-Salt

1. Wash the lentils

2. Boil the lentils in water until soft (you can boil it forever, if you want, daal is supposed to be soupy). 

In a separate pot, heat oil and then throw in cumin. I eyeballed the amounts of spices I used so I don't have approximates. After the cumin, add onions, garlic, and thai peppers in the oil and caramelize it. Add the remainder of spices as it caramelizes. Once the lentils are cooked, transfer it into the separate pot and bring it to a boil. After that, it is basically done, but how long the daal is boiled is based on preference. I prefer to boil it longer. In this case, I boiled it for about 10-15 minutes. 

This was the product of our cooking! It is thick and not soup-like because we used a lot of lentils and we didn't proportion it according to the amount of water we added. The more lentils you put in, the less soup-like the daal will be.

This is another dish we prepared. It's not a traditional dish, but we made it Bengali style in the way we cooked it and with the masalas we used. The ingredients were the same as the daal, except for the lentils. We also used vegetables (yellow squash, acorn squash, and potatoes) and shrimp. This was a spicy dish, which we both relished! 

What is a Bengali meal without rice? Rice is present in every meal and is eaten with different side dishes. We ate the rice mixed daal and then with the dish above. In Bangla, the dish above would be called a torkari which can refer to a variety of dishes. I suppose the easiest way to describe what a torkari is would be that it has jhol, the watery sauce like content that sets in the dish while cooking. That jhol remains, either in a low or high amount. It is not stir fry in any sort of way.

September 23- October 4, 2013.

I continued reading the Protom Alo news article.It was an opinion article about how the young generation in Dhaka is changing in the new times and how older generations are unable to keep up with them. I was very pleased with myself on this reading because I successfully read part of a news article! As I continued reading, my pace increased and it felt good. I love that we were doing more readings because I felt my reading ability improve with each line and my confidence in being able to perfect my Bangla rose with it. There were also many conjuncts within the reading which helped me remember them in the long run. 

I had another Bangla translation due on October 4. This one was set up differently from the last in that I had to identify the two letters that created the conjunct that was in the word. For example for shokti (power) it was k + t. I did better on this worksheet because I knew all of it. 

This week we decided to have a culture day in cooking. We cooked daal a staple diet for Bangladeshis. Daal means lentils in English. I will explain how to cook daal in a culture post.

Is English Taking Over Bangla?

Last summer, I traveled to Bangladesh for about two months. I lived with relatives in both the capital city, Dhaka, and in Jessore, which is a well known district of the country. The most interesting aspect I noticed while living there in regards to the language was the usage of English over Bangla. 

When I went shopping and looked at fabrics, dresses, or other items, the shopkeepers would inquire about my color preferences using English color terms instead of Bangla. If the shopkeepers knew about my American identity, I would have thought they were using English terms in order to accommodate or impress me, however because I am Bengali and dressed and behaved as one, it was not possible for them to know. What was more, the sellers would get temporarily confused when I'd ask for colors using Bangla terms. I saw a lot of this happen throughout my stay when speaking with people and they used English words in place of Bangla ones.

I thought about the different possibilities of this happening. My first thought was that it was a generational thing, that younger students who spoke English preferred to use English over Bangla words, among other reasons, but this occurred among older generations as well. For example, I can never think about whether or not I ever learned a Bangla word for "chair" or "table" because my parents always used the English terms for them. English dominance of Bangla is increasing, surprisingly, even though English imperialism isn't present (physically) in the country. Due to this dominance, many Bangla words are becoming obsolete, just as many words have already become obsolete and archaic.  

This article is great for learning more about English in Bangladesh now (in terms of it not being under British control anymore). http://www.academia.edu/2269914/The_Status_of_Bangla_and_the_English_Language_in_Post-Colonial_Bangladesh_-_Resistance_versus_Utility

This semester my goals for Bangla were the following:

1. Perfecting shuddho bhasa (formal Bangla)

2. Getting past basics of writing, being able to write longer complicated sentences using more conjuncts.

3. Increasing my speed/familiarity with reading.

Me and Sabrina decided to meet on the following days:

Monday: 3 PM- 5 PM

Thursday: 3:45 PM- 4:45 PM

On Mondays we will be doing most of the lessons because we have a two hour block. A mixture of reading and writing will be done. Occasionally we'll watch Bangla natoks (drama/TV shows) so that I can follow their conversations because Bangla shows tend to have a variety of speech dialects. There will be shuddho Bangla and colloquial Bangla. 

On Tuesdays, we will dedicate the hour to talking in shuddho Bangla the entire time. We will talk about daily activities, future plans, and explanations. This will greatly improve my conversational skills and polish my use of the language because I tend to use many unnecessary words while talking. For example, I tend to use the Bangla equivalent of 'like' and 'that' when I speak in Bangla. I think that may be an English habit/thinking that translated into Bangla over time.

We've kept a syllabus:

https://docs.google.com/a/richmond.edu/document/d/1yCDHcehfLStyr3fv07mLlvuOI2OfHjxpLSe8QYHnRGw/edit

September 9-19, 2013

Me and Sabrina began the semester with reviewing the alphabet during our first class meeting. I was surprised at myself for remembering the letters so succinctly when I did not study much of the alphabet and such over summer break. After reading the letters, I practiced writing the letters. Sabrina would say a letter and I would write it on the board. We did this until we began writing words (she would say a word and I would write). After the basic review, we decided to delve into Bangla conjuncts so that we could work on advancing my reading skill. We used the conjunct list from Epar Opar (http://depts.washington.edu/llc/olr/bengali/index.php), the online Bangla textbook from last year. 

I knew the double consonant conjuncts because those letters usually linked to each other underneath the first letter. 

The highlighted letters are ones that I am familiar with and are among the easier to remember because the interconnected letters are easy to see. This is not the full conjunct list and so there are many more conjuncts that I learned and now know that are not on this. 

Later, we decided that it would be a good idea to have translation homework so we can track my progress over the semester. She gave me a list of words (in English) and I had to translate them into Bangla. I got the majority correct and the those I did not know were because I did not know the Bangla word for them. For example, I did not know how to distinguish between school, college, and university because Bangla is so modernized that many Bangla words are now replaced by English words. I will discuss this more in a later culture post. 

On September 19, I read a few paragraphs from Protom Alo, a Bangla news source. 

Link: http://www.prothom-alo.com/opinion/article/48777/এতিম_এক_শহর

En sevdigim sehir

En sevdigim sehir Saraybosna. Saraybosna Bosnanin baskent ve en buyuk bir sehir.

Hakkinda 300,000 insanlar var. Bu sehirde farkli insanlar yasiyor. Her yil, cok turistler geliyor.

Orada cok Turkler yasiyor. Benim kiz kardesim de orada yasiyor. Memleketim baskentten yedi

saat uzak. Bu sehir bir muze ve bazi sinemalar var. Simdi muzeyi kapat cunku insanlar muzeye

gitmek sevmiyor. Sadece genc insanlar sinemaya gidiyor. Sehir buyuk bir nehir var. Nehirin adi

Miljacka ama bu nehir cok kirli. Cevapi unlu bir yemek. Cok insanlar dusunuyor, biz Turkiyeden

bu yemek getirdik. Bu yemek cok iyi cunku sadece et ve ekmek var. Bu yemek her gun yiyebilim.

Sehirde cok camilar var, ve insanlar camiye her gun gidiyor. Saraybosnanin yaninda unlu bir

sehir var. Adi Mostar. Bu sehirde okudum. Turistler Bosnadaken, Saraybosnaya ve Mostara

gitmek zorundalar. Saraybosnada her hafta bazi konserler var.

Olsa bile bu sehiri cok seviyorum, orada yasamak istemiyorum. Bu sehir tehlikeli. Cok

hirsizlar var. Insanlar her zaman caliyor ve diger insanlari olduruyor. Boylece, orada yasamak

http://www.cnnturk.com/2013/turkiye/11/26/istanbulu.saganak.vurdu/732257.0/index.html

With the semester winding down, I wanted to ensure that I had maintained a balanced approach with my language learning that I had hoped for at the beginning of the semester. This semester, I wanted to be able to improve as many aspects of my Dari knowledge as possible. Personally, I wanted to improve my writing, reading and listening comprehension, pronunciation and speaking skills. I truly felt I was able to hit upon all of the areas I had hoped to improve on. That said, in the final weeks I wanted to improve in an area where I felt I still needed some more work - listening comprehension.

My language partner and I decided it would be best to build upon the activities that I had done during weeks nine and ten; however, this time they would be much more intensive. I wanted to immerse myself in the language by replacing most of the media that I typically watch in English with a Dari counterpoint. For instance, I would watch the news, television shows and sports in Dari when I could. Of course, I did not always know what was being said, but I realized that the more time I spent watching thing in Dari the easier it was for me to gauge what was being said and link it back to what previous knowledge of the language I had. Weeks eleven and twelve were definitely an increase in difficulty over what I had done in weeks nine and ten and I was often frustrated when I would come across a news segment or part of a show that was too complex for me to understand. Despite that, the experience was truly worthwhile and something that I wish I had done more often earlier in the semester and hope to continue to do during winter break. With that in mind, to get a perspective of a sample listening comprehension task that I would perform, refer to my fourth artifact. 

While reading this article I kept relating it to being in good shape. Exercising the body (being in shape) through physical activity and exercising the brain by speaking another languages. All of the health benefits that the article talks about are also health benefits one has when he/she exercises regularly - less likely to get dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, able to switch from one thing to the other quickly, being focused and using less energy to complete activities. 

When you are in good shape it is easier to do other physical activities, it does not require as much energy to complete most activities. This is why I equivocate it to speaking another language. Speaking another language is an exercise for your brain that uses parts of your brain that you might not use otherwise. Knowing that speaking another language does not only have an emotional benefit but also a physical benefit is motivating me to work harder at being more proficient in a second language. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HJ0tQtfTCQ 

This was our last and final 105 class. We discussed the advantages of being bilingual but then also questioned if there was a disadvantage to knowing too many languages. After we discussed our potential cultural topics and got into a bit of a discussion on one particular one. Now all we have left is the cultural presentation, two page reflection paper, and a final. Fingers crossed all goes well.

Here is my powerpoint presentation on the history of Hindi! Hindi%20History.pptx

On monday we had our midterm. It took a lot of studying and preparation but was kind of an interesting format I thought. We had about ten sections that we have covered. So on each page there were about 10 words we had to translate into Swedish and then bellow that we would have to write a paragraph in regards to the topic (weather, transportation, etc). I am not quite sure how I did on it but it was cool to able to see that even if my paragraph isn't the most grammatically correct, that I knew enough in Swedish to write a paragraph. For the rest of the week we are focusing on reading the Adventures of Tin Tin or in Swedish Tintins Äventyr. This is going to be challenging because there will be a lot of slang and new vocabulary we have not covered yet. What I have done so far is when I read the book I have google translator open. When I am unsure of what a word is I write it down and google the translation. When translator doesn't have the word I write the word on the side to ask Lousie what it means later. This is for sure a challenge but I think it is a new and fun technique to continue learning more vocabulary.

Until watching the Culture Shock video I didn’t know that such a phenomenon existed. I have definitely experienced it more times than I could count but I didn’t know that it had a name and that it happened to everyone else as well.  Living in the United States for the past seven years, I had forgotten about my experience arriving into a completely different country and culture with a foreign language. Being depressed, losing weight, and becoming more of an introvert, missing ‘home’ to a point where I craved hearing spoken Russian; I never attributed them to culture shock. I blamed it on not learning English while I lived in Uzbekistan. The first month before school started, everything was new, shiny and exciting. But that didn’t last long; once I started interacting or the lack of interaction with my peers in school quickly turned everything to dull, gray and confusing. Being forced to navigate through a new culture and language with no outside help or support affected my health and well-being.

Now that I think about it my parents didn’t help me deal with it in a healthier way. From day one, my siblings and I were not allowed to speak in Russian, read in Russian or listen to Russian music. They wanted us to learn English, and having no other options and losing that connection to ‘home’ that was built through Russian language, I became obsessed with learning English as fast as possible, to a point that I almost forgot Russian completely. My siblings did; they only speak in English now and some Farsi. Fortunately for me I have regained most of the Russian that I lost but that connection is not as strong as it was before.  Now that I am getting ready to go to Poland for study abroad in three months, I can’t help being a little nervous. A completely different culture and a language that I know nothing about, the idea that I might experience culture shock again, is putting my nerves on edge. But this time I am more prepared for it. I feel like understanding culture shock and almost expecting it to happen will help me deal with it better. Poland will definitely be a challenge but one that I am ready for.  I have learned a lot from my experiences and I am ready to tackle culture shock once again. 

English language started spreading with the onset of colonization by Great Britain. In recent years it has become the global language that everyone has to know to get anywhere. Most countries have made a mandatory language to be thought in their schools. United States becoming a super power in the world has helped raise the importance of English language as the language of business and success not just in the Global North but also the Global South.  The focus to learn English has had a great impact on indigenous languages. It has marginalized them to the point of extinction because they are ‘not important’ or ‘needed’ to succeed in the world. Just the fact that only five people speak a language that once was so widely spoken across North America explains the significance of English as a means to success. I think its great that they are trying to revive an almost dead language by using modern technology. Using the Internet to reach the modern youth in order to promote an ancient language and show that although English is important, not forgetting the existence of the old languages is also very important. 

Learning the history of a language can help us better understand and learn the target language. A language is not a constant and stagnant entity. It changes over time, taking different forms. Through interaction with other cultures and languages, that language adopts words, expressions, and even grammar to enrich and transform that language. It evolves with each generation according to the needs of the society and culture. This transformation is clearly seen in Hindi language. Originating from Sanskrit, earliest form of religious texts, it has evolved to reflect todays’ generation of a more globalized youth. Over the years Hindi has been most heavily influenced by Urdu, Persian, and in recent years English as it has become the global language. Due to colonization of India by Great Britain, Hindi has adopted a lot of English words and phrases into their language. But more importantly the younger generation has started using English and Hindi interchangeably by methods of code switching. For example phrases such as ‘aram karna’ (take a rest) became ‘rest karna’—taking an English word and a Hindi word to get the same message across to someone who also speak both languages. So in this case knowing the history of what other languages have come in contact with Hindi and how it has changed the Hindi language gives the learner a better understanding of the language.