So last week was my last week of Farsi. I feel pretty confident that I achieved my learning objectives for last week although after reviewing all of my vocabulary and grammar I have realized that there are certainly areas I know much better than others. For example I feel much more comfortable introducing myself and talking a little bit about myself than trying to give directions or talk about the weather. I also still struggle with present tense verbs because of the way the stems change in irregular ways that it is hard to always remember how to conjugate verbs in that tense. The past tense is much easier for me and I sometimes find myself switching to the past tense when I don't know what the present tense is because at least I am getting my thoughts across that way.Last week we also had several more presentations that taught me more about the cultural aspects of Persian, Muslim and Afghan culture. One presentation was on the culture of Afghanistan, which was extremely similar to Iranian culture. There seemed to be certain aspects that transcended state boundaries including hospitality and the importance of tea. Another presentation was on the political structure of Afghanistan, which although length, was extremely helpful. In one of my other classes we were talking about the political structure in Afghanistan and I was able to contribute to the class because of what I had learned through this presentation. The final presentation was on the way the Dutch speak, but it actually tied into the Middle East slightly because of the murder of several prominent Dutch politicians and activists by radical Islamists. The presentations were interesting and it was also nice to be able to do my presentation.It is weird to think that this is going to be one of my last blog posts and that I will no longer have language sessions with Mona, who was a wonderful language partner. This has been a great experience and I am extremely glad that I signed up and took this course.
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on April 24, 2009 at 12:57pm
Recently I have been working a lot on conditional clauses and sentences. I feel like I have learned most of the tenses and types of things I would like to be able to say, but I still misuse them a lot. I have also been practicing using a lot of common expressions and interjections (like "sure", somewhat, the rest of, finally, etc.). I had tried to learn some of these types of things before but they're often hard to find in a dictionary or to learn from a book, so most of them I have come across during class meetings and written down. Since I was just writing them down as I came across them I hadn't really learned them, I could just recognize them and sometimes infer their meaning. I finally got organized and compiled them into one list, which has made learning them a lot easier and more efficient.Overall, I think I have made more progress than I expected to this semester. When I first started out it seemed like things were sort of too overwhelming to be able to really gain much understanding of the language. At some point, though, I feel like I crossed a threshold where I am now much more comfortable with the language. I feel confident enough with the language to try to sort of improvise ways to say things to get my point across. I can still really only speak correctly at a very basic level, but it seems like when I try to say things that I don't actually know how to say what I end up saying is usually wrong in a lot of ways, but usually understandable. I've never been very good at studying lists of things and memorization, so my vocabulary is still pretty terrible. A lot of the vocab that I wanted to learn I'm still not as familiar with as I would like to be, which is disappointing since I picked the things I wanted to know how to say. I've also realized that there are a lot of basic expressions that are usually the first thing someone learns when learning a language (like how to ask someone to repeat themselves, or talk slower, or what a word means...) that I only sort of know. I had skipped them because I thought it would be more useful to learn enough to be able to actually understand what they mean instead of just memorizing, but I never went back later on to learn them. Having realized this, that's one of the things I want to do now, especially considering how important they are in carrying out an actual conversation. In the end, I'm fairly pleased with the progress I've made. One of my main goals was to reach the point where I am familiar enough with sentence structure and inflection and such to be able to pick apart sentences that I don't understand. I think I've made a lot of progress in this area, which will make it a lot easier to continue to learn the language through reading, which will be the easiest type of medium to have access to in the future.
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I really enjoyed being an autonomous learner this semester and not worrying about learning or pacing myself through someone else’s standards. Focusing on my own individual goals was an awesome change of air from the learning I have been accustomed to for more than 10 years of being a student. I believe the main hurdle most people have in autonomous learning and especially in autonomous language learning is motivation. But for me, from day one I knew this was never going to be an issue due to the pain and discomfort I have felt for years by not assimilating in my Persian community back home. Sticking with the rational model/framework even thou sometimes I wanted to stray toward other mechanisms and having the discipline not to really helped me have a consistent level of learning during the many weeks.From the outset I wanted to focus primarily on the oral elements of the language and especially the sub-areas that would help assimilate better in the Persian community back home. By far, the greatest resource for me was my language instructor. The resources provided to us, i.e. Rosetta, TV channels, textbooks, etc were okay but I didn’t feel they played even a minor part in my development throughout the semester. Having stockpiled an array of personalized recorded clips that my language instructor and I critiqued was the by far the main resource in my learning process. Hearing and listening people has never worked for me, I have been listening for more than 10 years in the Persian community and it hasn’t helped one iota. Therefore, I focused on recording myself as much as I could and continuously going back and forth until I perfected my recordings for whatever area I was working with at that time. This also helped me realize which areas I was progressing with and which areas I was not, i.e. the “ka” sound was one of the most troublesome, tongue-twisting areas for me. Working with various forms of comedy no doubt was extremely interesting throughout the semester and I feel that I can somewhat go back home and at least not feel as uncomfortably conscious of my Farsi when I am with strangers. My flashcards helped me maintain the vocabulary I learned starting back from week 1 because I knew there were too many words for me to use on a regular basis and so a more systematic approach worked better on that front.The cultural project helped me understand the context behind shifting my accent from Khandari to Kabuli. Throughout the semester as I worked on having one consistent dialect in my speech, I did not bother to understand the history and underpinnings behind the two variations of Dari, and the cultural project as a whole helped bridge my overall learning between the two accents. Understanding precisely how and why the two dialects emerged from one language and not just the differences on the surface can help escalate my long-term development in mastering a single accent.My original learning objectives were not realistic or precise enough for me to be consistent and successful throughout the semester. I had too many goals and if I tried to achieve each one before the end of the semester I would’ve had no progress at all. Therefore after meeting with Dr. Scinicariello and revising a new plan with my language instructor I decided to focus on comedy (jokes, riddles, satires, sarcasm) and elevating my childish, Khandari-esque accent into a more mature Kabuli variant form. On the comedy side, I believe I’ve made huge strides as I can comfortably understand most children jokes, and I’m gradually getting a bit more comfortable in the longer mullah nasrudin jokes. The most difficult part in this front was trying not to translate a Persian joke in my head into English to understand it, most Persian jokes don’t make sense in English let alone be comedic, therefore the ones I posted in my blogs were the closest I could muster that were at least somewhat witty in both languages. My pace in telling jokes is a bit slower compared to my conversational pace overall, but when compared to the gap that existed early in the semester, I believe I am close in developing a consistent pace in both areas.I know some people spend decades without completely erasing their accents in a language, so therefore this semester I primarily wanted to work on developing at least a more mature tone in my conversations and not sounding like a child. This area was a bit more difficult than my other learning objective, but I feel more proud in my development in this area because at times I felt completely frustrated as I never did in my development in Persian comedy. Working on pronunciation and many tongue-twisting, i.e. 5 or more syllable words were areas I primarily focused on in my weekly recordings. At our sessions, I spent more than 80 percent of the time talking and I believe that was the correct way of approaching it. I am extremely glad with my progress in phonetics and intonation and overall I see them as very good building blocks that I can carry into the future to further remedy my accent.
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For my final artifact, I wanted to expand on what I did in my second artifact, instead of recording myself saying short children jokes, I have here recorded myself here saying the more longer and mature "chicken soup" joke that I mentioned in my week 10 and 12 blog.
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Semester Goals and Objectives:My first draft on 1/26/09 encompassed many goals and objectives that I don’t believe was very realistic for a semester’s length of time although they were perfect for a more long-term based approach. With that said, I still plan on just focusing on my oral skills because I believe they will have the most practical use for me and I find it a lot more interesting. My two primary areas of focus were one, Persian jokes, riddles, satire, sarcasm, etc. and two, improving my child-like accent into a more adult sounding form while increasing my vocabulary.I decided to focus on forms of Persian comedy because from my experience, if a person can feel comfortable making others laugh or understanding other people’s jokes that are from a different culture than yours, it’s one of the fastest and safest ways to form a connection with that person and consequently use it as a springboard for further learning and development. Many times in the past I felt ostracized from Persian gatherings and events because I did not understand or appropriately react to various forms of comedy for various reasons, which really prevented me from forming bonds with those people and hence increasing my progress in understanding their community. Being able to understand and relay jokes is one of most important social tools a person can have in a foreign environment and I believe if I can improve on this area it will escalate other need areas for me long-term in the language.Secondly, I wanted to focus on this semester on improving my accent in the language. Due to the fact that my language instructor and the Dari community overall in this country use a Kabuli dialect, I wanted to gradually shed my Khandari accent and adopt a more Kabuli tongue so to speak. I also have been told in the past that my accent was akin to a 5 or 6 year old kid but with a very deep voice, and therefore developing a more mature and confident accent was important for me. I know I might never if at all get rid of my accent completely, but I do want to improve upon it and set myself up for further improvement in the future.Future Goals and ObjectivesBe able to follow very complex and lengthy forms of comedy, ie. >1 min as I discussed in my blogs.Recognizing when to match voice level and intonation to a variety of situationsUsing correct grammatical structure for a variety of purposesIncreasing knowledge of proverbs and fablesDeveloping a faster pace in my daily conversationsStart having more dreams in Farsi, because it is said that dreaming in a language is one of the first signs of comfortLess reliance on physical gestures to communicate what I am trying to say
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Posted by ReidSchluter on April 21, 2009 at 3:30pm
This week I only studies one section of the book, albeit an important one. Instead, I spent a lot of time looking at the internet resources that Jan gave me in order to gauge how my understanding of Dutch has developed.The section of the book that I looked at was perhaps the most important I have read to date. It explained that Dutch was a TMP language meaning that modifiers in any sentence are always ordered by time, manner, place. This is incredibly useful knowledge because English is the opposite as a PMT language, and to this point I had always been confused by the word ordering in Dutch. I don't know why the book waited so long to elaborate on such a fundamental rule, but it is certainly helpful knowledge that will help me a lot.Since I've learned many of the fundamentals of Dutch including the basic verb tenses, all the major word groups including vocabulary, pronouns, interrogatives, possessives, etc..., I asked Jan for some Dutch-language websites that would help me reinforce & contextualize these skills. I already look at the main--sort of tabloidish--newspaper a lot, but he gave me some other helpful resources.Geenstijl.nl is a useful popular news website that is sort of similar to drudgereport.com in the United States. It explains popular news in relatively everyday linguistic terms.Spitsnieuws.nl is another, slightly more formal, news source that uses more functional dialogue than de Telegraaf.He also gave me two other websites jeugdjournaal.nl & hetklokhuis.nl (which I already had), which are for early-teenaged kids. These sources possess a lot of reading and listening material that outline things in a simpler & more easy to understand fashion.All of these sources together are very helpful. They will allow me to keep interacting with the Dutch language on a daily business once this semester is done, and I'm no longer around Jan. Reading the blogs & comments on the sites is very helpful too, as I can read colloquial/conversational Dutch.
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For my third artifact I'm thinking about writing a recipe in farsi. It could be for Iranian food or it could possibly be for something we eat everyday, but I think that this project would summarize my learning for this semester because my lesson plan was focused on reading and writing.
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Learning ObjectivesLearn 5 kitchen objectsLearn past tense ing form of verbsReview of vocabulary and grammar learnedEvaluationBe able to describe a kitchen including a place setting on the kitchen tableBe able to tell someone what I was just doing and ask them what they were just doing.Since this is my last week before the evaluation I would like to focus on reviewing material rather than learning new material.
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Last week I met all of my learning objectives and I am feeling very comfortable with household objects and rooms in the house. The verbs in the present tense ing form ended up being extremely easy because it is the same as present tense verbs. Apparently the two forms are used interchangeably. I also spoke with Mona about family life and it was interesting learning household customs such as taking off shoes when you enter the house or having special kinds of shoes to go to the bathroom. Also, we talked a lot about the differences in treatment between boys and girls. Boys are allowed a lot more freedoms than women are because there is so much more at stake for women if something happens to them. If their reputation is tarnished for some reason then it makes their prospects for marriage much less likely. I also watched a movie called "Divorce Iranian Style" which showed a court in Iran and talked about what it took for people, especially women. It was interesting to see what women would say to try and get out of marriages they did not want to be in and how hard it was for them to obtain their bride gift (a sum of money) from their husband. Most women ended up giving up their bride gift in order to get a divorce. It was a very eye opening documentary and I highly recommend it.Last week was extremely interesting because we had cultural project presentations which allowed me to learn about a variety of topics including music, the youth and Iranian food. My two favorite were the presentations on music and food. Up until last week I had only really heard classical music and I liked listening to other forms of music, especially the Iranian rap. It was also interesting to hear about how in Iran the music was extremely censored but outside of the country certain artists had very popular followings. The food presentation was also really great because we got to learn about the main Iranian dishes and the ingredients along with getting to try the food. We tried a flat thin bread that we put sour cherry jelly and a white cheese on. We could also put halwa on it, but I don't like halwa so I didn't. The bread and the sour cherry jelly were great, but I wasn't really a fan of the white cheese. It seems that the staples of Iranian food tend to be rice and meat. The presentations were really informative and I am excited to see the ones tomorrow.
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Posted by Becky Walker on April 20, 2009 at 5:14pm
This week was spent almost exclusively practicing my oral skills. I created sentences for the week, and read them with my drill instructor, who helped me both with pronunciation and grammar. Fortunately, this week I had only a few errors with my grammar. The sounds that do not exist in English such as the 'kh' or the 'gh' have posed a problem for me throughout the semester, however this week I was able to pronounce them "like a pro (according to Mona)" so long as they were the last syllable in the word. When they fall mid-word they still cause me to stumble if I am reading them, however when I am speaking, I do better.This last week of reflection is a bit bittersweet. My greatest fear is that when I return to studying Arabic this summer that I will lose much of what I have learned and accomplished in Farsi this semester. Thus my next goal is to learn how to learn both Arabic and Farsi together, so that they supplement each other as opposed to hindering my learning process. Overall, this course has been a wonderful experience of how much I can accomplish without direct instruction--my ideal learning style for most classes.
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After the cultural reading and finishing my cultural project, I was able to find some interesting connections.The section on cultural difference categories was most relevant. The categories are: symbols, heros, and rituals.Especially with the poem that i chose, the Shahnameh, many of the heros of Persian culture come from this "Epic of the Kings." All of these heros uplift the culture and strengthen the moral codes and norms that they cherish most.There are also endless values given by the Shahnemeh, for example:the proverb shahnemeh quoteknowledge is power "one who has wisdom is powerful"finding true friends is "If the enemy is a thorn it is because of you own sowing, if he is aonly possible you you brocade it is because of your own weaving"are worthy of themReward and punishment "when you dg the pit dig it according to the estimate of the size of body"are inevitable. If we harmanybody we must be preparedto receive reprisal in return
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Posted by Becky Walker on April 16, 2009 at 11:26am
My favorite part of the week was spent researching for my cultural project about the Iranian Youth. I am focused my research on unemployment, marriage, university enrollment rates, and the relationship between the youth and state/religion dynamic. Though I did not touch upon divorce rates in Iran in my presentation, I have since done some investigating as to the rates and reasons of divorce. A very liberal media site said that one of the reasons that Iranian women are divorcing their husbands is due to sexual dissatisfaction. This is interesting for a variety of reasons. The first being that women are initiating these divorces. The second being that they are allowed to divorce on the grounds of sexual dissatisfaction--when traditionally sex was reserved exclusively for procreation. It was not until 2002 that women were even allowed to divorce their husbands without their spouse's written permission. I have yet to come across what I would consider an accurate statistic for the divorce rate, but when I find it, I will be sure to include it in one of my posts.Otherwise, this past week was spent piecing a lot of things together. I built upon my knowledge of the verbs I already know, using them in new tenses, and new ways. Additionally, I am working on constructing more complex sentences, with direct and indirect objects, which is creating a variety of questions that I am continually on a quest for answering.
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Here are some of the bands I came across for my project (the ones I thought were decent, at least):O-Hum: http://www.myspace.com/ohumThey're the best rock band I found. They mostly use Hafez's poems for lyrics which is probably why they were the first ones allowed to perform a concert abroad. You also can actually buy their CDs.Salome: http://www.myspace.com/salomerapA female rapper. I don't really like rap but I think she's really good. She speaks really clearly too so I can actually understand some of it.Hichkas: http://www.myspace.com/hichkas021Another rapper. I think he might be the most popular one in Iran as far as I can tell.Khashayar: Khashayar-Doostam_(www.Bia2.com).mp3Yas: http://www.myspace.com/yaspersian2
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Week 10 and 12Although I am happy with my progress in my knowledge and conformability with jokes and riddles, I don’t think I’ve progressed as extensively when in comparison to my accent. I initially thought this was the easier of the two semester goals but its proving otherwise.My language instructor recommended a few youtube comedy clips that have Farsi voiceovers, where the actual visual is an American movie but the dialogue as been altered to Farsi and unrelated at all to the movie. For example, I watched a 5 minute clip of a dialogue between two generals in the Trojan war but instead of talking about the war the Farsi voiceover had them talking about circuses and flying boats. My language partner recommended such odd variations of clips that had a separation of visual and oral elements because they would help reinforce on relying just on sound to understand the flow of conversation without any aides.I am getting a bit more comfortable with the 15-30 second mullah nasrudin jokes, I definitely haven’t mastered them in all there rudiments but I think I’m a the point where I don’t have to worry about understanding them but just finding the reasons why the punch lines are funny and sometimes with no fault of my own, unknown cultural references hinder me on this.I have tried the >1 minute jokes and although I am struggling with them, I think they by extension will really help master the 15-30 second jokes which really is what I am more concerned with. According to my language partner, no one says a one minute joke at social gatherings in Afghanistan but rather short and quick ones like the 15-30 second variations I have been practicing with. However I still find the >1 minute jokes very interesting because in some ways there not just longer variations of the 15-30 second jokes, they really are more confiscated in their cultural references.Here are some of my favorite >1 minute mullah nasrudin jokes that also make sense in english:One day a friend of Mullah Nasrudin visited him with a chicken as a gift. Nasrudin was very happy to receive such a rare and expensive gift. Consequently he killed the chicken and made a delicious soup from it and enjoyed it with his friend. Several days later, a stranger came asking for Mullah Nasrudin. Upon inquiring, Nasrudin was told that he is a friend of the friend that brought the aforementioned chicken. So Nasrudin invited him to have dinner with him and offered some chicken soup that was still left in the house. A few days later another stranger appeared claiming that he is a friend of the friend of the friend that brought the chicken. Nasrudin, now a bit annoyed nevertheless invited him to supper and offered him a soup. Yet another day, one more friend of the friend... came to see Nasrudin. Without further questions Nasrudin offered him a soup. "This is the worst ever soup I tasted. It tastes almost like water. Is this the way you treat a friend of a friend of a ...?" the angry friend shouted. "Pardon me sir, this is a soup made from the soup, that was made from the soup,..... that was made from the chicken."When Nasrudin was a magistrate, a woman came to him with her son. "This youth," she said, "eats too much sugar; I cannot afford to keep him in it. Therefore I ask you formally to forbid him to eat it, as he will not obey me." Nasrudin told her to come back in seven days. When she returned, he postponed his decision for yet another week. "Now," he said to the youth, "I forbid you eat more than such and such a quantity of sugar every day." The woman subsequently asked him why so time had been necessary before a simple order could be given. "Because, madam, I had to see whether I myself could cut down on the use of sugar, before ordering anyone else to do it."
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