the first person asks how many brothers -then what is his name. his name is Mashoud. the questioner asks is he older or younger (bojuktary or kujuktary)
three years= ce sal kujuktare= younger and lazman= than me
does he go to school?
nahair= no
do you have sister? shoma hoharam dareed?
bali dota hohar doram= yes I have two sisters
doram= to have; i have
hohar= sister
hoharatoon= possesive with tu meaning your so "your sister"
kujuktarand is younger
hoharatun shakor mikonand= what do your sisters do? one is a student (donesjused) the other (one of them=yekeham) lives with her husband shoharesh.
According to Dell Hymes, 'cultural competence' is that aspect of our competence "that enables us to convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meanings interpersonally within specific contexts." It is a "dynamic, interpersonal construct that can be examined only by means of the overt performance of two or more individuals in the process of communication."
The four components of cultural competence are as follows:
1. Grammatical competence
2. Discourse competence
3. Sociolinguistic competence
4. Strategic competence
I tried to gauge my own cultural competence based on the four components in Korean. I am still not even remotely grammatically competent. My discourse competence similarly low, as I can pass with simple spoken conversation but I would falter with lengthy written texts like news articles. Regarding sociolinguistic competence, I think I this kind of competence can only be increased if one is in the society of the target language since it deals with an understanding of the social context. As such, nuances escape me when I watch Korean dramas; even if I understand the words, the gravity of the words or the humor of a scene escape me. I think I am strongest with strategic competence out of the four components. I view the fourth competence as something more inherent in a person as it is "the competence underlying our ability to make repairs, to cope with imperfect knowledge, and to sustain communication through 'paraphrase, circumlocution, repetition, hesitation, avoidance, and guessing, as well as shifts in register and style'." It is something that informs all communication strategies.
as labiba said, there are many different formal dialects in korean so when to use the correct pronunciation and words is important - not something we always learn; instead I think I am trying to learn how to do simple things with simple people; I am not trying to learn how to write an academic journal in persian but my language partner showed me the future tense verbs that are very formal.
My orientation is more practical how to. It important that I learn contextual clues - nouns and verbs specific to context
If I am at the post office I may need to clarify what the person is saying by asking if they might also mean what I know.
We dont learn enough body language because we are word-focused and so we aren't seeing unless we watch soap operas.
one part of the chapter with red next to it said that context is not enough. Being polite is not the only factor either. The way sentences are constructed should include the apology so as to be understood politely. In these cases it is necessary to speak a lot about the situation to fully explain oneself. body language is not enough!
often times funny movies like "Meet the folkers" will show what happens when formal situations are misunderstood. Clothing communicates much more than the wearer might intend to say - sometimes people assume certain things as cultural stereotypes.
another example of misunderstanding is when body language is insulting, demanding, or aggressive by accident. Eye contact is sometimes very important when dealing with authority and yet it is the least desirable thing to do state someone in the eyes. It is funny when a guy says I couldn't help you looking at me to a girl and she says I wasn't looking at you. The presence of objects signals intent: a television or a car or bike signals desire to use and may be seen as a barrier to communication. These situations of anxiety are not easily resolved by communicating as it is seen an inappropriate time to communicate.
For the last few weeks, we have covered quite a few grammar lessons. This semester is very different from the first semester since I have more experience in learning the self-directed language. Before, I did not have a good direction of how to carry out my lessons and learn my tasks. This semester, I have a solid plan with specific tasks that I would like to learn. I feel much more organized and more productive when doing my lessons with my partner. She explains things well when I have questions and tries her best to help me understand everything. So far, the lessons have been sufficiently effective because when I hear dialogues and speeches, I can distinguish words and phrases much better than I was able to before. Being able to express what I like and what I don't like or what I have and what I don't have makes conversation go a bit smoother. Knowing a few grammars also helps with sentence construction but grammar is definitely not the easiest part of learning the language. There are many rules and exceptions that are different from the English language so sometimes it is a little frustrating but that comes with learning any new languages. I hope to keep up with the work and keep learning for the rest of the semester.
Week 9: Fourth Bi-weekly Post:
For week 8 and week 9 (spring break), my language partner and I weren't able to meet due to scheduling problems conflicting with studying for midterms. Instead of doing a new lesson, I looked over the last three lessons and tried to increase my reading speed while memorizing the vocabularies more. During spring break, I spent majority of my time watching a korean drama called "Dream High 2" which is the continuation of "Dream High" that I watched last semester. From watching the series with the subtitles, I was able to hear some phrases from different voices. I could hear the actors saying common phrases such as I'm sorry, thank you, are you okay? where are you going? and etc. It's good to hear the different formalities being used in the scenes because during our lessons, I am more focused on using only the formal rather than the informal language used within people of the same age.
Learning activity:
One of the tasks I completed was to tell directions/locations. In this learning activity, I will create a worksheet with pictures of buildings which will have a blank line under each building to be filled in by the person doing the activity. There will be a word bank of the vocabularies that the person can refer to but the vocab will be introduced to the person beforehand. In the middle of the page will be another fill in the blank sentences that needs to completed with the correct locations. Example: _______(a building: bookstore) is next to _______(another building: cafeteria).
This will be a little tricky because you would need to also include grammar when creating these sentences. An object marker must be used after the first building before expressing the location and the correcting ending from lesson three must also be used to complete the sentence.
Although the article was fairly difficult to read, it had important ideas when learning a language. The concept is revolved around the fact within certain moments or contexts allow people to say what we want. During this moment of speech we can interpret the messages, which can be pertained to certain contexts. One of the more interesting things from the article was gendering influencing how one learns a language. Although I have learned Japanese myself, I never did realize this. There are certainly words which are used more frequently with females, while others are more used with males. Some of these words are
うまい 美味しい Delicious
すげー すごい Amazing
かっけー かっこい Cool
The words on the left are more used by males, and females use the words on the right more. Although I am currently studying Korean, I have yet to learn the words that are used more by females.
This refers to the ability to interact well with people of other cultures. In today's multicultural world, it is important to learn how to interact with different people. This includes knowing the vocabulary and non-verbal communication. There are different types of competence such as grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. Understanding these four types of cultural competence helps with communication.
I enjoyed reading about non-verbal communication because we talked a lot about it in class. Body language and other non-verbal communication methods are very culturally dependent. They are different from culture to culture and one should follow them when interacting with people of another culture.
My second artifact is a transcription of one of the songs in the Kdrama "Protect the Boss," A Pink's sickly-sweet and infectious "Please Let's Just Love."
I first listened to the song and tried to understand as much as I could without looking up any words. This song isn't that difficult since I was able to understand most of it, the majority of sentences, actually. I was surprised that the song lyrics were quite pertinent to the drama because usually songs in Korean dramas are general, talking about lost loves or the various trials and tribulations of love, or fate, etc. However, this song perfectly sums up the love-hate relationship between the two main characters of "Protect the Boss."
My wrist cramped up while writing this:
Here's the video in case the embedded video below doesn't work.
English Translation* Again, did I (did I) did I (did I) did I do something wrong?
You get mad so easily (mad) and get tired (tired)
Please know my heart
(Hey baby) I only have you- the only person who makes my heart beat
(You know baby) I only have you alone
CHORUS: Please let us just love, please let us stop fighting
Sometimes we doubt and argue but still (but still) but still I love you
I'm still young (still young) but would you trust you, till always (I only love you)
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 am very happy with my progress so far. I have been submitting my work on time and I am on track with my learning tasks. I have been moving tasks around because I feel that I need to learn certain tasks before moving on to others. For example, I pushed my task to have a simple conversation in Hebrew to the end of the semester after I gather more knowledge and vocabulary. I am also trying to make more than only 4 artifacts so that I can show my proficiency. I have been working on my reading with my language partner and I think that is very helpful because I am learning many words from the readings.
The main learning activities that I use currently are repetition (out loud) and flashcards. So far, these two activities have been effective in helping me learn words and sentences. I tried using flashcards with one of my friends to see if she will learn words. I used 10 flashcards with Hebrew words written in English letters. 5 of them had only the words while the other 5 had words and associated pictures. After 1 hour of repeated learning, my friend remembered all 5 words with pictures and only 2 words without pictures. I asked her and she said that she is a visual learner. As a visual learner myself, I might start using pictures in my flashcards too.
I consider myself very punctual and get a little bit upset when I have to wait. Ever since I know of myself, my parents taught me the importance of being "on time". For example, if a meeting starts at 3pm, I would always come to the meeting at least 5 minutes earlier. I follow the rule "Better early than late!" When I was in Turkey, I was very surprised how Turkish people are so relaxed and laid back. Simply, they do not pay too much attention to whether they are going to be late for an event or not. I remember when I was at my friend's house in Turkey, we called over some friends to come for dinner at 6pm. When it was around 5.30pm I asked my friend when are we going to prepare dinner because our friends are coming in only half an hour and we basically did not prepare any food. My friend told me not to worry, and that we have enough time because even though our friends were invited to come over at 6pm they were not going to come until 7pm. And she was correct! Our friends came around 7:30pm! They were late for about an hour and a half I was even more convinced about this Turkish culture when I met some other Turkish people at the University of Richmond. I can say that majority of Turkish people that I know and am friends with are always late, no matter whether it is for a meeting, class or an event. All in all, I can only say that they are very relaxed and laid back and they find it normal to be late. This is very interesting and in a way similar to my country's culture (I am an exception to this rule) where most people are always late. For example, a Bosnian friend of mine who lives in Richmond got married last year. She had two types of wedding invitations. One type of invitations was only for Bosnian where it said that the wedding starts at 5pm, and the other type of invitations was for Americans which indicated that the wedding starts at 6pm. They knew that Bosnian will take 5pm as if it was 6pm and will be at least an hour late. However, Americans are generally very punctual and therefore the correct time of the wedding was written on the invitation. When I told this to my Turkish friend, she told me that a similar situation happened when her cousin was organizing a birthday party, and the party started at noon, but he sent out the invitations to his Turkish friends indicating that the party starts at 11am.
Another interesting fact that I learned about Turkish culture and its people is that time actually does not mean much to them. For example, when Turkish people take a coffee break, which would take us 5-10 minutes, such breaks last at least 45 minutes to them. I talked about this with my language partner and several more Turkish people that I know, and they all said that majority of Turks are like that. When they go for a coffee or Turkish tea, they usually stay so long that it basically should not be considered a coffee break but a lunch break.
We read an article, in Professor Nuray's class, that there are some cultures, such as Turkey, in which people think that so much time is given to everybody and that people do not have to rush with anything because they have so much time, while other cultures believe that time is limited and should not be wasted. It just depends on culture as well as on individuals how they perceive time and what their attitude towards time is. Speaking in general, I can definitely say that Turkish people tend to be more relaxed when it comes to meeting deadlines, coming to an event at time, and being on time. I say this based on my experience, conversation with Turkish people and research I have done regarding this topic.
I learned ~40 vocabulary words in the last two weeks. Milica and I went through the same sort of exercises as reported in previous weeks. We spoke about the city of Mostar and some of its attractions such as the United World College, the Old Bridge, the Neretva river, the Old Town Street, and the stunningly beautiful Kravice waterfalls. As the semester draws to its conclusion, I am becoming increasingly excited at the prospect of visiting Bosnia. The places just look very pretty and full of history and tradition. We also went over the superlative forms (ie best, worst, etc...).
I also finished the second half of the Bridge on the Drina. I talk more about this in the review, but I found most striking was the subjugation that Bosnians endured during Ottoman rule for centuries. For me, what was interesting was how these years of oppression affected the psyche and worldview of the inhabitants. What's more, there were moments that were that showed the power of some instilled cultural norms and variations of history that are told. I feel much more connected, much more understanding of Bosnian culture, why certain behavioral tendencies exist.
I like the notion of looking at language as an interactive communication among individuals, each with a sociocultural identity. Given my minor in WGSS, I was particularly drawn to the segment titles, "Language and Gender." As an American english speaker, I don't find it odd that gender is considered a pragmatic factor in affecting the how well someone grasps cultural competence of a language. The examples given referencing gender differences within the American context is familiar, however the remarks on Japanese differences has me intrigued. Prior to reading this, I didn't know that there was a difference between how men and women spoke - well so much so that it could make or break a business deal in addition of the expense of an individual's dignity.
Given that Persian is a genderless language, I wonder how or if this is relevant? I would think that the differences between men and women would come up in some respect to cultural competence. If not directly in the language, then perhaps in gestures or non gestures.
My first artifact was a screenshot of a cellphone conversation I had with my Korean friend about the weather. I will continue to use technology in future artifacts.
The next artifact will be a voice recording of such topics as greetings and cooking-related dialogues, as it will be another way to efficiently memorize pertinent vocabulary.
Since I listen to Korean pop music nearly every day and music is an essential part of a culture to me, I want to do something with it. Unfortunately I am unwilling to record myself singing along with songs so I'm not exactly sure what form this next artifact will take. I may record the lyrics in Hangul to work on my writing skills and post the song and translation for others to follow along.
Whether knowledge of a language's history is helpful in learning the language is debatable since it largely depends on that particular language's unique history. In the case of Korean, I think it is important because Korea has exceptional pride in its written system, Hangul. For example, they are perhaps the only country in the world to have a holiday to celebrate the development of its writing system. But this is by no means an isolated view--indeed, legendary University of Chicago linguist James McCawley was famous for holding Hangul Day celebrations ever year and for championing the holiday as an international celebration for linguists everywhere. In an interview shortly before his death in 1999, McCawley noted that "Hangul is the most ingeniously devised writing system that exists, and it occupies a special place in the typology of writing systems." He adds that it is "the only writing system in the world that divides sentences not only into words and syllables and individual sounds, but also articulatory features, and the achievement of its creators in the 1440s was really amazing. They were doing work that would qualify as excellent linguistics by the standards of 500 years later."
The history of Hangul is the story of Korea's struggle to nurture its most important cultural product, a struggle mirroring Korea's efforts to create an independent, strong, and prosperous nation amid aggressive powers (for one example, consider Korea under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945, during which the use of Korean was prohibited). Hangul began as the invention of King Sejong for a country unified beyond class lines, only to languish as a second-class writing system for centuries. It was rediscovered by newly awakened nationalists who sought to adopt Hangul as a symbol of Korea's independence from China.
In general, I would say that learning the language's history alongside the language itself will allow one to make better sense of it, to be more aware of the weight behind the language's growth, and to be informed of the intimate relationship between a language and its speakers.
During last Friday's meeting with my language partner, he showed me a news article on naver, a popular Korean search portal, about some guy's altercation with the police (I don't have the exact link to the story). I read the article aloud so that he can gauge my reading level. I mainly had trouble pronouncing words that I hardly ever come across since my mouth is unaccustomed to shaping them. Reading an article like this on The Korea Times, about a Japanese scholar's criticism of Japan's claim to S. Korea's islets, is difficult because I may understand the barebones gist of a sentence but lack many important details. (That Korea Times article has a side-by-side translation so I see what I'm missing.) Written Korean is also much more formal than daily speech, which is something I'm more used to, having grown up trying to speak to my grandmother.
In terms of new words that I've learned, I've been using the Korean widget on my ning page. It gives a word of the day along with an example sentence and I would write it in my notebook. I have to review it daily because the vocab is learned in isolation; in other words, I'm not encountering these words through shows or music and I have to work harder to put them into my long-term memory. I've also been watching an episode or two of a Korean drama a week as part of my meeting with my language partner and listening to K-Pop on my iPod as a supplement for some 'ear-training.' I have lowered my expectations since the beginning of the semester, though. As long as I feel more comfortable speaking it by the semester's end, I will consider this a success.
