Reading Figuring Foreigners Out was a reiteration of different cultural concepts to me because I grew up in the midst of two cultures and experienced two opposite sides. It was comical, almost, to read about the various classifications of time, individualism versus collectivism, and different forms of communications for that reason. My Bengali ethnicity familiarized me to polychronic time, collectivism, and indirect communication, among other things, while growing up in America taught me individualism, direct communication, and monochronic time. I'm glad that I got the best of both worlds...sort of.

In learning new languages, one may learn the speech, but when it comes to practical usage it is imperative to pick up on cultural cues. In Bengali, a person does not always necessarily mean what they say (indirect communication) and their perception of time is way off charts in western standards. While westerners value word of mouth, like promises and favors, Bengalis tend to not follow through with such things. For example, in Bangladesh, if one asks another for a favor and the person agrees, unless the person constantly reminds the person about the favor, it would not be likely that the person would do the favor. It is a social norm to remind the person about it and if not overdone, it is not considered pestering as it would be in the western world. This is where the concept of trust in the culture is skewed; it does not have the same characteristics as in America. While simply learning words, grammar, and being able to directly speak to someone in a new language may be great, it may not be helpful if the typical speakers of that language are not "direct" speakers as in Bengali.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/science/indo-european-languages-originated-in-anatolia-analysis-suggests.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0    

Family Tree of Languages Has Roots in Anatolia, Biologists Say

reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language:\

I know there are more consonants and different pronunciation in dari than in farsi; I know why the letters are arabic; why there are cognates? because of history

if it is an old word like mother I can look to a cognate

if it is a really new word like malaria I can look to a cognate

if its in between I have to know indo iranian

is this accessible?  During the Sassanian era, a very advanced form of alphabet was used, what is today known as the "Din Dabereh". It has 48 alphabets consisting of 14 vowels and 34 consonants. This alphabet is capable of recording all types of sound and therefore every language. 

for fear of persecution from the muslims, dari was a secret language:

The Zarathushties of Kerman born after 1940's do not speak Dari, because their parents, who thought that by speaking Dari their children would develop a Farsi accent unique to Dari speakers and thus be recognized as Zarathushti in school and thus be harassed by the Muslims, did not teach them Dari. Fortunately the Zarathushties of Yazd have maintained a strong link with this language and every child learns and speaks this language. (iran chamber society)

 Indo-Iranian

cognates:  Since the 10^th century AD, with the entry of Mongolian, Turkish, and most recently, French and English words into New Persian

Most common and popular Sindhi Dishes. The first is Sindhi Kadhi chaval aur took. That is a Sindhi curry with rice and potato fritters on the side. The second dish is Koki aur dahi. That is a wheat pancake with yogurt. The third dish on top is Dal Pakwaan. That is a lentils curry with fried chips made from flour. The last dish at the bottom is a dessert known as Seyun Batata. It is a sweet and salty dish. It is sweet vermicelli served with spicy potatoes on the side.

I have written the various fruits and vegetables using Devanagari script.

For my artifacts, I have already posted a picture of me writing out Korean letters and proceeding to outlining them in photoshop. I wish to do two videos in iMovie, and another picture of me writing in Korean. I have not yet decided what I want these three last things to be, but I hope to make them very entertaining. I might have some difficulty in doing so because I am not able to learn Korean quickly. But in the future I know I will learn more.

아자 아자! (Hwaiting!) 

(This means I will do my best in Korean) 

I've attached a review of Balkan Ghosts:

balkanGhostsReview.docx

I posted two artifacts so far to the Ning. One was a picture of the alphabet with words I wrote in Hebrew that start with the corresponding letter. The second artifact I posted was a video I made. Using iMovies, I dubbed my voice over a video I downloaded from Youtube. I had to cut the video and move scenes in order to match the voice with the images. The video was about greetings, introduction, and farwell.

For my future learning tasks, I will be making videos to document my progress. I don't think that pictures will necessarily show my progress because speaking is an important part of learning a language. That is the reason why I will use videos to show my competency in speaking Hebrew. I am currently working on making a montage about my family that I will dub my voice over using iMovies to present them and talk about their careers and ages. Other artifacts I will make will be about the weather or soccer. I always show my artifacts to my language partner after they are done to assess the grammar, accent, and overall accuracy.

My favorite artifact will be the one about having a short daily dialogue with a native speaker. I will record a Skype conversation that I will have with one of my Israeli friends from high school. It will be exciting to talk to them in Hebrew.

It took me a lot of time to figure out a topic for my culture project. There is just so much I want to learn about Turkey and Turkish culture that I just could not make up my mind. First I wanted to do a project on how Turkey got its name, then I changed my mind to talking about Children's day which is April 23rd, the day when I will be delivering my presentation, however in the end I decided to talk about the integral part of Turkish culture- Turkish coffee! 

Turkish coffee is very popular in Europe, especially on the Balkan. However, not so many people know much about the tradition of "Turkish coffee" or the actual rituals of preparing and usage of it. I did some research on this topic and I can tell that this topic can be very interesting for both myself and the classmates that I deliver my presentation to. Few things I found interesting so far: in arranged marriages, Turkish coffee plays a very important role. By sweetening coffee too much or too little, the girl tells the guy indirectly whether she is interested in marrying him or not. Turkish coffee is not only about drinking it, there is another part equally important and that is fortune reading from the coffee grounds remaining in the cup. There are many more rituals related to Turkish coffee that I want to talk about in my presentation and need to do further research. I have also asked my language partner what she thinks about this topic, and she said that talking about Turkish coffee is a great idea. 

My learning goals for this project are the followings:

- get deeper insights in Turkish culture

- learn what makes "Turkish coffee" so popular in the world 

- learn more about the rituals related to drinking "Turkish coffee" such as fortune telling, or marriages  

- be ready to prepare a great cup of Turkish coffee in case I get an arranged marriage with a Turkish guy

I believe this is going to be a very interesting topic from which we all can learn more about the Turkish culture and tradition. I am truly excited to work on this project. 

I'm going to be using pictures and audio recordings for documenting my learning. I have already started to take photos of my writing of the alphabet and construction of sentences. I think these forms will be the most logical and relevant for the purposes of my language goals. 

One of the interesting aspect about Korean is its level of being polite. Korean has different expressions for the same word, but depending on the person you are speaking with can change the appropriate word. For example, when speaking with a friend you can use the Korean words “Na-Yi (age)” and “Bab (meal)” with your friend. But would use the words “Yeon-Sae (age)” and “Jin-ji (meal)” with someone older such as your grandparent. There is also a range of politeness from simple polite to extreme polite.

Korean body language is also different from American lifestyle. In America to signify one has come up with a good idea, many snap their fingers. Koreans apparently slap their knees for the same accomplishment. Another interesting fact, although  when arguing Koreans will not point their index finger towards a person. Regardless of the fact they are arguing, and probably angered with the person they are upset with, they will point to the sky rather than at the other point. Pointing one’s finger at someone is considered extremely rude. This also incorporates the idea of politeness of being important, because regardless of the fact situation might be a heated argument, a Korean in general still will not point their index finger. Incorporating the collectivist mind state found in Korea, Koreans consider it a personal violation if someone who is not a relative or close friend touches them. Here is a short view of some differences between American and Korean body language. 

 Language is the gathering of thinking, such as philosophy, culture and lifestyle of the respected speakers. Learning a language you can learn many things about a country’s belief and way of life.

Currently I am studying Korean with my language partner. As mentioned before, Korean is not the first foreign language I have studied. Regardless how many languages I have studied until this point, there are certain things I make myself aware of when learning a new language. One of these things is the cultural aspect of it. For one reason why the cultural dimension is an important concept to study is because there is always associated vocabulary with the language. One of the cultural aspects Korea is the idea of collectivism. While in America, we refer to things as ‘my’ when describing their possessions. While in Korea people refer to things and people as ‘our. In the same way, Koreans share their food together in a collectively manner. 

Korean Dinner

In Korean culture, everyone individually have their own bowl of rice but that is only personal aspect of the meal. Throughout the meal everyone share the food from the table and share the food equally. While in western culture is normal to have a personal plate while we gather our food from the table and proceed to eat from our own personal eating space. There is less concept of a personal space in Korea. Korea has less of an individualist approach to everyday situations and more collectivist. 

American Dinner

Culture is very important to understand when studying a language because both are directly correlated. For example, I have already described the differences between a typical Korean meal setting versus an American dinner but what if a Korean immigrated to America? It can be assumed regardless of the foreign surroundings, the Korean would try their best to preserve their culture. Another understanding between language and culture is culture supports and defines the language. 

An artifact is something made by someone of cultural or historical importance. In my case I have used different things to show my learning progress in the Sindhi language. You may use videos, pictures, writings, stories etc. to create an artifact.

I plan to be able to narrate a story by myself by the end of the semester and that will be final artifact. That is one of my biggest challenges and I’m excited about creating that artifact. I want to focus only simple stories for children because the sentence structure in such stories is simple and I can use that structure to even talk to my family when narrating to them my life at the University of Richmond.

Another artifact that I plan to do is to record a conversation with my Language partner. I haven’t decided the topic of the conversation but I want to be able to let the conversation flow smoothly because there are many times that I blank out for words and start using hesitation words like “umm” or “uh” which I want to let go off.

I have posted an artifact where I wrote the days of the week and the numbers usinf Devanagiri script.

I wanna do videos for my artifacts but I think photos are easier.  I thought about going to the grocery store with my phone and recording fruits.  It is good to do for colors too.  photos are easier.  I donno what resources are available since I forgot the talking robot program voki?  

In these last two weeks, I learned ~40 vocabulary words. These words included country names, common environmental features (road, steps, glass), words to describe the architecture or landscape I'm likely to see (peaceful, magnificent, trademark), and miscellaneous words I heard in songs or was just curious about (shame, power, addictive, things, busy, message, always).

I'm through about one half of Ivo Andrič's The Bridge on the Drina. I have been told that if I can understand this book, I can not only understand Bosnia, but the story of the Balkans. I'll write a review for an artifact at some point. Nevertheless, I'll go ahead and write my thoughts/what I've learned thus far. First, the bridge on the Drina river by the town of Višegrad is important. The author comes out and says that "the story of the foundation and destiny of the bridge is at the same time the story of the life of the town and of its people" (21). Second, the bridge was built on the command of the Ottoman Empire. It was extraordinarily costly and was in large part, built with the unpaid labor of Serbian Christian peasants and better treated Bosnian Muslims. Third, fear, cruelty and brute force are terrifyingly powerful weapons. Within the first one hundred pages, a man named Abidaga, the Turk responsible for completion of the bridge, quashes a small rebellion by private, and then public torture. There were nails torn from hands and feet, and a live impaling. The impaler was paid extra for avoiding major organs, so as to keep him alive for as long as possible. Fourth, and this is connected with the last comment on fear, is a theme of powerlessness in the face of misfortune or fate. It's heartbreaking. The ideal story is that of a the story of a young girl who kills herself, as what she sees the only option, rather than marry against her will (110). There are also heads of decapitated rebels and forced baptisms. It's quite irking. The final theme I've noticed is about the impermanence of sensation, memory, pain, all things essentially as a solemn, rather than embraced truth. The book has moments of intensity that sort of fade out-- the author makes a special point to emphasize impermanence, using the bridge as a sort of still anchor.... a sort of helpless feel to the story.... it's depressing.

As in the last meetings, Milica and I would talk about our days or weekends, and then jump into the flashcard game. This week, we reviewed commands, also called the imperative form. We'd have fun telling each other to listen, come over, write, read, etc... We've also started to discuss famous places in Bosnia. So this time I read about Sarajevo, and then we talked about it in Bosnian. I learned that Sarajevo, the capital of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is famous for several reasons: the bridge on which Franz Ferdinand was killed (ignited WWI), an eternal fire commemorating the victims of WWII, famous religious landmarks, and a famous market that smells like Turkish food, according to Milica.

My reading skills have been progressing slowly in Hebrew. I do most of my reading from Facebook, reading posts that my Israeli friends posted. While I do not have a problem with recognizing letters, I have a problem with pronunciation. Vowel sounds are usually added as dots below the letters. However, these vowel sounds are not used by experienced Hebrew speakers because they know the words already. Therefore, I have a problem knowing whether the letter mem "m" is pronounced as "ma", "me", "mi", "mo", or "moo" in a word. In addition, some letters have more than one way to pronounce. For example, both letters khet and khaf can be pronounced as "k" or "kh"; bet can be pronounced as "b" or "v"; shin can be pronounced as "s" or "sh". The only way to learn how to recognize these vowels and different letter sounds is through experience and reading.

I have been working with my language partner on reading verbs in the different tenses and knowing what vowels are associated with them without writing the dots down. In addition, I will borrow a book from the Global Studio to read in my own time and then read to my language partner. These methods should help me reach my goal to be able to read and understand simple Hebrew writing. Maybe I will try to find children books with images to help me understand the big picture in what I am reading.

Overall I learned many words. I cannot remember the exact number, but I know it is a lot because I have been formulating sentences without looking up the words in a dictionary. It might be helpful that many words are shared in Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew. 

One of the biggest difficulties I have had in Korean is reading and writing. This has been my target goal to be able to do both without any issues. I have tried reading various things in Korean. The previous Korean language partner, Joon Kim, provided my current language partner with an ebook which he gave his students last semester. Although it basic and probably does not go past grade-school level in the grammar and writing, it still takes me sufficient amount of time to read it.

This difficulty can be traced back to the first day of class when we all discussed the idea of learning a language. Although I do not clearly remember who stated this, but learning a new language when you already have knowledge about a language which is somewhat similar might make it more difficult for the student. For instance, if someone already knows Spanish and wants to learn Italian. Well I am in the same boat right now. I have taken and have engraved Japanese in my brain that I can not seem to pick up Korean as fast. (Shout out to the Japanese department aka Suzuki Sensei and Kadekawa Sensei. They have definitely have taught me so much since my freshmen year. Anyone reading my blog posts and wish to learn an Asian language more formally, I highly recommend Japanese.) In Japanese each letter represents a sound. While in Korean you combine letters to make a sound.

Switching between the two languages is a struggle for me. But, I might have found the solution. Well, my language partner actually did. He took my cell phone and without my permission changed the language settings from English to Korean. Now I am forced to read in Korean. Also I have picked up vocabulary words randomly as well. This is almost similar to being in a foreign country because at first I was taken back by all the new words that I have never seen before. But slowly and constantly seeing these words has eased me into learning them and remembering them. But due to the fact the semester is about to end, my goal is still simply to read more swiftly with confidence.  

For a long time I have been thinking what artifacts I will use to document my learning. I have thought of using Audacity, as it is recommended by this blog. However, I have realized that the choice of my artifacts will depend on what goal I achieve. For example, I used Audacity when I learned how to correctly pronounce words in Turkish and read simple Turkish stories (which I not necessarily need to completely understand at this point). I believe that audacity can be a very helpful tool in recording my voice while reading a specific story because I (together with my partner) can just listen to it afterwards and hear where I make mistakes. I can also record the same story after a certain period of time and compare the old audacity file with the new one. This way, I can grade myself and realize whether my Turkish pronunciation improved and whether my reading became more fluent.

I am also thinking of creating iMovie where I can use video camera to record a specific scene/event. For example, I can record myself being in a class where I speak to a friend in Turkish about our classes and weather. This is what I would do when I learn words related to school and weather. I could also use iMovie to make a short video on ordering food and drinks at a restaurant. I love food, and that is always a big topic for me. So I will definitely create an artifact (iMovie) when I learn the words related to food and ordering at a restaurant. However, I might not go to a Turkish restaurant and record myself ordering food, but I could do it in dhall or Passport or just create a scene of me being at a restaurant. 

I think once I learn basic grammar such as present simple or continuous, I will set out a goal to write a certain amount of sentences using that tense and scan the documents and keep it as my documentation of achieving a goal. I believe this is a good artifact because this way I will be actually writing down sentences and translating them from English to Turkish and/or vice verse, and I might even try to write a small essay using the words and tenses I have learned. I believe that when I actually write down sentences using correct grammar and spelling that come directly from my mind without using dictionary or somebody's help I can say that my Turkish really improved. This is a very good motivational factor for me that keeps me working really hard towards achieving my goal.

Another artifact I may use is taking a you tube video of some characters or animals and deleting their voices and inserting my voice instead. I could record a dialog of me and my friend at a market place shopping for new clothes. This would actually require a combination of audacity and iMovie or even some different applications such as Final Cut Pro. This artifact might be very interesting for the audience as well, as they see animals/flowers/cartoon characters speak in an unfamiliar human language.

I was very happy with my artifacts for last week. The first one is a conversation video I made in the Global Studio using iMovies. The second one was several words I wrote as part of my homework from my language partner. The video was creativ and I worked hard to find the correct sentences to use. I showed the video to my language partner and she also thought that it was good and the pronunciation was good too.

I started working on my next goals. However, I still have more to do. I started working on how to recognize past, present, and future. I think this will help with my conversation goal. I started gathering words for my other goals about describing family members and telling time. However, i still need another week to feel confident about it. Although I did not completely meet my goals, I am sure I will meet them by the end of week 5.

This week, I got a taste of Balkan popular and traditional music.

The first artist Milica introduced me to was the Croatian pop-star Severina. We watched her hit video titled "Uzbuna." Basically, it's about the delirious, frantic, but light-hearted panic of Severina not waking up next to her love interest. She misses him terribly. I thought the piece was incredibly catchy. Very enjoyable. I will likely never forget some of the vocabulary, nor the tune, repeated in that song. I've been humming it for days. I suppose music, as Dr. Grove had mentioned last semester in SDLAP 105, is certainly an effective means to learn some words or cultural concepts. Severina also had a sextape scandal with some wealthy business video. This video was also interesting, but not as culturally informative.

My favorite part of the "Uzbuna" was the folk elements, specifically the use of the accordion and this really fantastic sounding guitar. I decided to explore for myself, Bosnian folk music. As I was perusing, I stumbled on a famous, traditional genre called Sevdalinka. Apparently, the topic in this genre is almost always love or longing. My favorite piece was Đorđe Balašević's "Sevdalinka." First, I listened to the song first, without any effort to understand what was said. On first impression, I thought that this piece was perfect in describing this surrendering, melancholy, nothing I do makes a difference attitude in the face of an unjust, cruel fate, as the singers voice indicated to me. Yet, as the accordions consistent melody shows, the world goes on as if nothing happened, even joyously. Anyhow, I thought this was a beautiful song that captured some Bosnian humor and a pervasive attitude/worldview. The song is in fact, a melancholy reminisce of multiple topics.

I only learn Korean in listening and speaking. I do not do any reading, so I will reflect what I have learnt from the listening part. I think it is more helpful to listen to what the sentences are and read the translation/subtitle in Chinese. In this way, I can know how they form grammar, and how they speak their language and when to apply them in different situations. At the beginning it is important to follow their conversation by reading the subtitles, but later I can gradually catch up their sentences and use it as my own knowledge. Again, practicing is the most important thing. When you stop saying that language, you are very easy to forget it. 

My mom taught me Bengali for a year or so, when we first moved to Florida, in an attempt to wholly retain our Bengali heritage. She was successful in all, but making me and my siblings literate in the language; we spoke it, but cannot read or write in it. Being an avid language learner, I find it sad that I'm not literate in my native tongue, so I'm very excited to (as well as my mom) learn Bengali! It should be challenging, from the looks of it, but I'm confident that I can pick it up easily with a consistent plan seeing as I am already familiar with the language linguistically. 

My learning plan involves using the interactive textbook from this website: http://depts.washington.edu/llc/olr/bengali/index.php. The textbook is Epar Opar Bangla and it is extensive, as well as neatly organized when it comes to the script. The textbook divides consonants, vowels, and special signs in different categories making it simpler for me to focus on specific groups of script to learn. 

I also have a language partner who will be testing me on my learning progress and helping me piece my former knowledge, along with my new knowledge, together. I will rely on her and the Epar Opar Bangla textbook to learn how to read and write and once I can do that, I will pick up children's books from my mom to read. My goal is to really delve deep into the scripture of Bengali and focus on properly reading and writing it. I will test myself with small texts and then slowly work my way up to harder texts to see if the amount I learned is enough to cover most levels of intensity, if not all. 

Once I have that completed, I will buy an intermediate Bengali dictionary in order to refine my vocabulary and attempt to use that in my daily vocab when speaking with my language partner or family members. 

I'm fairly certain this method will work because it's sectioned off according to the way I learn the best; which is by doing rather than simply studying.