I found the readings for this week very fascinating. The article that sparked the most interest in me was “How the brain handles language”. The part that I found the most interesting was about tongue slips. I always thought they happened when people were too excited or under a lot of stress. I always had tongue slips towards the end of the day when I was very tired. Reading that there is an actual scientific reason for it was enlightening. Grammatical construction of words causes tongue slips.
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Growing up in India, I was familiar with the language itself; however, I knew nothing about the history of the language. In order to make it easier to remember, I divided my research into three categories: basics, script, and history.
Basics
Hindi is the third most spoken language in the world, after English and Mandarin. There are approximately 500 to 600 million Hindi speakers around the globe. The language is a direct descendant of Sanskrit. Hindi consists of 11 vowels and 33 consonants. The pronunciation of Hindi is very similar to Urdu. The language closely related to Bengali, Punjabi and Gujarati.
Script
Hindi uses the Devanagari script. The pronunciation of the letters is always the same. For example, हिन्दी is always going to be pronounced Hindi. नाम is always going to be pronounced naam. This format is unlike English and the use of silent letters i.e. the word psychology where the p is silent. The Devanagari script consists of “hanging from a line” system. There is always a line drawn above the letters and the letters are “hanging from the line”. For example, पूजा, हिन्दी, etc. This script does not have capital letters. Also, in Hindi a period or a full stop is not a dot at the end. A vertical line at the end of the sentence implies a period. मेरा नाम पूजा हैI
History
Hindi is a direct descendant of Sanskrit. Sanskrit was the language used in the Hindu scriptures. It is a very proper and appropriate language. Hindi is essentially a colloquial version of Sanskrit. Over the years Hindi was heavily influenced by Persian, Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Portuguese, and English. Turks controlled the regions of Punjab and Gangetic plains during the early years of Indian history. This population spoke Persian. They needed a means of communication with the native Indian population. Therefore, they merged Persian and Arabic words with Sanskrit into order to form Hindi. The language was then spread throughout India as the rulers of various dynasties expanded their rule over the nation. Hindi became the official language of India during the British colonial rule.
The chapter on communicative competence had many new information that is useful to a new language learner like everyone in this class. I think it's good to know that we need basic language skills in order to interact with others in social situations and face to face communications. The cognitive academic language proficiency or (CALP) refers to formal academic learning which is used to discuss the language proficiency levels of students who are in the process of acquiring a new language. This seems to fit us very well because what we are all trying to do is teach ourselves a new language with the help of a partner to re-enforce some things. I'm sure all of us took on this class to become somewhat proficient in the languages that we chose to teach ourselves. The four subcategories of communicative competence also are very helpful to understand how to efficiently communicate with others. These four are grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competence. This is important because we must be able to use grammatically correct forms of words, construct full meaningful sentences/phrases, use appropriate social meaning, and to manipulate language to meet communicative goals. Overall, this read was informative and definitely helpful in our language learning process.
Here is my presentation on history of Urdu
Goal: Vocabulary
This week, I focused heavily on vocabulary. My language partners and I met twice and their main focus was to teach me whatever vocabulary words I felt I use on a day to day basis.
To start some were:
love: prem
friend: mithra
sun: suriya
book: chopadi
water: pani
student: shickshack
grade: marks
dance: naach
dinner: jumvanu
sky: aakash
dream: supahna
color: rung
grass: ghass
clouds: vahdera
thank you: abharr
In addition to these words, there were many words that don't have Gujarati translations, like success, exercise, pencil, pen, and bottle. My language partners said that in this case, I should just add a Gujarati accent. That is the most effective way to use them in a sentence.
I focused on learning words that I could use in basic sentences. For example: I am drinking water.
(Hu pani piu che)
I am started to formulate sentences without the help of my language partners based solely on the vocab that I am learning from them and books that I have.
I was able to formulate and say that I loved my mom over the phone (Hu tane prem karu chu)
She didn't know what I said, but that wasn't the point. The sentences that I am making are correct and I am able to remember the structure which makes it even easier to learn more. My confidence in this recent learning process is what helps me to learn even more!
I truly believe that I have been making progress in my speaking, reading and writing ability in Dari. When I think back to my language ability Dari when I first started taking the language last spring semester compared to where I am now, there is a tremendous difference. That said, I have always felt that my speaking ability is significantly better than my ability to read and write in Dari; probably since I have spent some time informally speaking the language before actually taking a course in it. As a result, I wanted to spend this semester with a little more added focus on reading and writing. Ironically, while I do feel my reading and writing have improved, I believe that my attempts at getting better at reading and writing have made my speaking ability even better. I assume that this is due to the fact that I usually read aloud whatever I am writing or reading; thus, improving my speaking ability given the constant practice. In regard to my learning plan, I think I should be able to cover a lot of what I had set forth for myself. Honestly, I believe that the only reason I will be accomplish most my learning goals is because I have made them realistic and did not try to add anything I thought was unreasonable. However, looking back at my learning plan, I think given the amount of things that I have listed I might not be able to cover all of goals I had in mind. I do not think this will be too large of an issued, but I do want to make sure that I still keep up with all of the reading and writing related activities in my learning plan as those are the two areas I know I need the most improvement in.
History of the Persian Language
Attached is my second cultural presentation on the history of the Persian language, and my notes for the presentation.
For BCS, I’ve found that the language is inextricably connected to its history and national identity. Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin are now considered different languages, despite their near identical alphabet, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The reason, according South Slavic language expert Ronelle Alexander, is symbolic. Each country believes that language is the foundational claim to cultural distinctiveness and authenticity.
In the 9th century, the Slavic language was spoken, but not written. A Christian Moravian prince named Rastislav wanted to convert the people of the Balkans in the native language. He requested liturgical books for missionaries to use. That language is called glagolitic, which was in Cyrillic.
A Serbian linguist named Vuk Karadzic sought to reform the language because he felt the language inaccessible to the common man. In a time in which Serbia was trying to break from Ottoman rule, he sought to base the written language on the spoken language expressed in folk poetry and famous epic songs of a heroic past (382). “Write as you speak” (Pisi kao sto govoris) was his motto. This became the foundation for BCS. In agreement with Croatians, who used Latin a Latin alphabet, the language of Bosnia was officially called Serbo-Croatian.
As time when on, Croatians, Serbians, and Bosnians grew apart. Croats were Catholics, Serbians were Orthodox, and Bosnians were Muslim. Serbian was closely tied to the Cyrillic alphabet, which has historical connections to the Christian Orthodoxy. Croats were closely tied to the Latin, which has historical connections to Catholicism.
Bosnian was created, and more recently Montenegrin, in the midst of war and nationalistic fervor in the 1990s. Bosnians wanted to feel closer to their Islamic roots. So the adopted some Turkish words here and there.
If one is truly interested in learning Croatian, Serbian, or Bosnian, these slight differences are important. Only an understanding of Bosnia’s tumultuous history can help one truly be able to make distinctions between the near identical languages. For my purposes, and for the majority of native speakers, it seems that they couldn’t care less for what the language is called. This concern occupies politicians. Nevertheless, it is an advantage on applications to know that you know 4-5 languages when you only studied one!
Goal for the Week:
Recover
Experiment with the Croatian textbook.
Result:
Done
Two Chapters from the textbook.
Method:
I’ve found the first chapter of the elementary Croatian textbook to be a fantastic resource. It’s really helpful to be able to listen to native speakers talk about simple subjects, but at a very high speed. There is a sense, especially in the beginning, that you are struggling to keep up and end up falling out of the conversation. Familiarity with vocabulary is clearly only the first step. After working through the conversations, I did the exercises. These included English-Bosnian and Bosnian-English translations and fill in the blank present tense conjugation. It was basic, but really reinforced what I was learning. For instance, I knew the verb “govoriti” (to speak) well. I knew how to ask questions (Da li… or verb li…). But after listening and speaking the thing so many times it’s become more “automatic” in my head.
Shir and I have been doing a lot of stuff lately for Hebrew.
Week 6: We spent one week working on verb conjugations in the present tense for all the noun forms. (to want, to go, to do, to eat, to drink, to read, to ask for, to speak, and to try). I am working on these verbs and writing them in cursive.
Week 7: The first day during the week we met and walked around the lake together and talked about our colors. The next day we met outside the commons and spoke Hebrew together. This was the first time that we really had a good conversation. I was able to begin to initiate questions and focus on the Hebrew. I learned the verbs (to walk, run, camp, jump, bike, and hike) Also I learned about the significance of a hypostrophe in Hebrew.
A hypostrophe in Hebrew is significant because when it is seen near a Tzadik (Tz sound), the sound becomes CH (as in church). When seen next to a gimel (G sound as in golf), the sound become J (as in joke). This is necessary for words that are not originally from Hebrew or have a Hebrew equivalent word. Similar to in English when we say the word Quesadilla, Hebrew will spell out the words to sound similar to how it is pronounced.
Week 8: Shir and I met at a park for 2 hours - We began to read Harry Potter (first two paragraphs). There were many new vocabulary words in the book (I only knew about 4 words in the entire 2 paragraphs). Shir was patient with me and worked on teaching me how to try and infer what some words mean from the context of the paragraph. We also talked about the importance of learning to read using primary books and not more advanced Children's books such as Harry Potter. Another interesting fact that we came across while reading Harry Potter was that pronouns such as the Dursley's or the name of the company that Mr. Dursley works at, the words all contain vowels. They are to help the reader pronounce the words correctly, because they are not natural Hebrew pronunciations.
The beginning of this week was a much-needed fall break! I got to go home and see my parents for the first time since move-in. As native Farsi speakers from Iran, they were really impressed with how much I had learned in a few short weeks. We practiced speaking in Farsi often while I was home for the weekend. My dad showed me an online Iranian newspaper and had me read the headlines to him, something I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do at the start of the semester. My parents gave me some children’s books and a small Farsi textbook that I will definitely take advantage of.
This week, my language partner taught us some common prepositions in Farsi, like the words for on, below, outside, inside, etc. For homework, we had to write simple sentences using the prepositions we had learned, one for each preposition.
We also continued reading and translating the short story “The Search for the Dinosaurs”. We practiced dictation or transcribing – the other students in the class would read a word from the text, and we would have to write it in Farsi on the whiteboard.
We watched a short Afghan cartoon about a man who drove recklessly, to practice our listening and comprehension skills. I definitely had trouble understanding most of what was going on, but I was able to get the general idea of the cartoon, which was good.
While I am still utilizing the learning plan, I tend to focus more on what Mirwais is teaching us at the time. Since he is a certified Persian instructor, not the typical contemporary college student that other language partners are, I trust what he is teaching us. I will still use the learning plan for my personal goals, however. I am tending to use Rosetta Stone less, so I'm revising my goal to just finishing the first two lessons of the first unit for this semester. I am still using easypersian.com, but only to clarify any questions I have about the grammar Mirwais is teaching. For the rest of the semester, I'm going to keep focusing on what Mirwais is teaching in class, and mastering those topics.
After reading Communicative competence I learned that it , refers to a learner’s L2 ability. It refers to a learner’s ability of using grammatical rules, forming correct utterances, and knowing how to use these utterances appropriately.
When I read the communicative competence I really was amazed how Hymes discussed the ethnographic-oriented exploration of communicative competence that included “communicative form and function” in relation to each other.
however, I noticed that Chomsky’s view of linguistic competence was not intended to inform pedagogy, but serve as part of developing a theory of the linguistic system itself, idealized as the abstract language knowledge of the monolingual adult native speaker, and different from how they happen to use and experience language. Hymes, rather than Chomsky, had developed a theory of education and learning
Knowing the history of a language is very important in learning it, here is a brief history of Urdu:
Upon the conquest of the lands past the Indus, the Muslim armies gathered and prepared for their battles. The strength of the communication between them could be the determinant of their fate. Thus was laid the foundations of the Urdu language. It began with Muhammad bin Qasim, the Arab who entered what is now Pakistan proclaiming the message of the One God and his final messenger in the 700’s CE. For the next thousand years many Arab, Persian, and Turkish armies conquered the region; some for worldly gains and others who sought benefit in the life to come. A language that constituted all languages that came into power came to be known as ‘Urdu’, meaning camp, referring to history of the language how it came to existence through the army camps or as Rekhta (ریختہ), meaning molded or mixed.
In this week I learned how to ask someone about the time, and also how to answer. I also practiced teaching a word to the class (sdlc-105) the week before fall break. learning about time and knowing the significance of time in urdu speaking culture was very interesting.
In Week Seven I learned the following:
1-Where are you from? ( and the answer)
2-Where do you live?
3-What did you eat?
4-Where are you going now?
5-What are you studying?
6 Where is your family?
and some other questions about daily activities. I think I am improving a lot since my second artifact was much better than the first one.
My second Artifact is a conversation with my language partner talking about my identity and daily activities:
here is the link:
Goal: Question words, additional vocab
This week, I meet with my language partners twice. We focused heavily on specific words that would help me improve my sentence structure.
These words were
who: korn
what: shu
where: kya
whe: kyare
why: kem
how: kavreethe
I felt that learning these words would significantly help me to spark conversation with native speakers. These words in combination with basic sentence structure that I learned last week, added to my speaking abilities.
For example, I can now ask someone:
Where are you going? Tu kya jai che?
What are you going to buy? Tu shu leva jai che?
Who are you going with? Koni sathe jai che?
When are you going? Tu kyare jyais?
How will you go? Kavreethe jyais?
Why are you going? Tu kem jai che?
Additionally, I am proud to say that I can respond promptly to all of these questions.
I am working on learning more essential vocabulary as well so that I can build onto responses and questions.
Goal for the week:
Finish Noun Cases
Learn a number of vocabulary words
Result:
Done with Noun Cases!
Learned a few vocabulary words
Method:
Practicing grammar and thinking about grammar is not very fun. I realize that I need to lighten up and have more fun learning this language so that I’ll spend more time not only learning, but enjoying myself. I have found that this last week was the least fun, and the least productive. As a person whose productivity and ambition is strongly correlated to my feelings about the material, I have just realized the importance of fun to balance my seriousness. A professor has given me an elementary Croatain book and accompanying DVD with dialogues and classical music. They are fantastic. The recordings are of native speakers who speak very quickly.
I was light on the vocabulary this week, but would write down and look up random words I thought might be useful to know.
By doing the presentation on the history of the Persian language, I feel that I have learned a lot and also was able to teach the people in my class as well. Most people think that Persian is a distant Middle Eastern language, closely related to Arabic, but this is actually very inaccurate. Persian is an Indo-European language, and is actually much more closely related to English than to Arabic, despite sharing the same script. It is part of the westernmost branch of the Indo-European language family, along with languages like Sanskrit.
I talked with my dad after doing the presentation and shared with him what I had learned. It was really interesting to see how it had all been taught in schools in Iran to him -- the way the Persian language was able to still persist in the face of the Muslim conquest of Iran, all because of an epic book, the Shahnameh. This fact is a source of national pride to Iranians, showing how knowing the history of a language can help understand its culture.
Throughout Persian's history, it has been known in the Middle East as the language of literature and culture, and its poetry is another source of national pride. Persian's history in literature is still celebrated today across Iran, and famous Iranian poets like Rumi and Hafez are still studied in schools and read in homes across the country.
By learning the history of the Iranian language, I can see how it has evolved over time, to the different dialects spoken by my language partner Mirwais from Afghanistan and my parents from Iran.
This week, we began reading the short story “The Search for the Dinosaurs,” which is about a little girl named Sara who gets a computer game for her birthday and then, while playing, becomes part of the game and has to search for dinosaur bones. My language partner had us write a short paragraph describing our favorite birthday and what we did on that birthday. We also learned some of the vocabulary from the story.
In my second artifact, I asked and answered questions about identity. My dialogue translates as, "How old are you? I am eighteen years old. Where are you from? Where do you live? I am from Australia but I live in Richmond. What's your profession? I am a university student."
