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I think I would like to focus less on the technical side of Hebrew linguistics, since I am sure that has been done to death and by people better at linguistics than me, but rather I would focus on the more cultural and political side of why, and eventually exactly how, Hebrew was simplified from a very arcane ancient semitic language to the extremely simplified and straightforward version taught today. Some of the examples that I could research from things I have already learned in Hebrew would be easily compared to a more complicated language in the same language family, such as MSA. MSA has a total of 13 different verb conjugations, while Hebrew only has 4 (I think).

Broader grammar in Hebrew could also be an interesting area, as especially in recent years, the use of the internet and having large immigrant populations speak broken Hebrew has changed the acceptable and linguistically intelligible word order to become much more fluid. In religious texts, there is a very strict word order than can't be changed for any reason, but nowadays you can switch words around and people will understand without issue. 

Last week, we had a class about counting in Korean. The day before our lesson, in SDLC 105, Esme talked about it as well, so before the actual lesson, I had a quick review of the counting system. In class, Jenna talked more about the differences between Sino-Korean and Korean numbers in detail. Sino-Korean was derived from Chinese characters, so they have similar pronunciation to the counting system we are using now in China. Sino-Korean is used for dates, money, time, addresses, and also numbers over 100. On the other hand, Korean numbers are used for age, the minute in time, and counters for counting objects. There are words for multiples for tens in Korean numbers up to 90. Thus, the biggest number we can represent with Korean numbers is 99, and hence we have to use Sino-Korean for numbers greater than that. We also learned about the numbers in currency, which are usually large numbers such as one thousand and ten thousand in Korean. It is interesting to notice that while English has thousand, million, and billion, Korean and Chinese has thousand, ten thousand, and ten million. We did some practice on writing down the dates and times with different systems of counting.

This week, we went to the Pan-Asian Dinner at the dining hall together for our cultural outings. We explored various food from different countries in Asia, such as China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Japan. I was indeed surprised by the quality and variety of food provided at the dining hall that night. We couldn’t find many kinds of Korean food, but I did find some Korean/Japanese snacks, such as the 호두빵(hodu-gwaja) that I tried for the first time. I enjoyed the food at the dining hall that night and would like to experience this type of thing again. I’m glad that the International Center is trying to make the campus aware of other cultures on campus, and I hope they will keep doing it.

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How have you started writing in the target language? Do you prefer to type or write free hand? Have you started to see patterns emerge in the structures between words, clauses, and sentences? What is the relationship between simple and complex sentences? How does your knowledge of parts of speech, government, and agreement affect your ability to communicate in written contexts? Provide a sample of several short meaningful writing exercises from your target language.

I prefer to write free hand in Ge’ez because it is quite complicated on the keyboard that I use. It is probably because I haven’t gotten used to it. I also like to write free hand because I have developed my own unique handwriting that I quite like. 

Simple sentences in Ge’ez can be one word, for example: he ate is bel’a with stress on the ‘a’. More complex sentences have words with a couple of morphemes like as-tedalo-ku-ke, which alone means I got ready for you. The sentence structure for complete sentences in Ge’ez is generally similar to the English with the subject + verb + object formulation. Being able to identify the parts of speech plays a huge part in interpreting readings in Ge’ez for me at this stage of my understanding of the language because it is another clue to the context of the sentence and overall meaning in addition to the semantics of the words which I can gage with the lexical morphemes. 

Some examples from my recent homework assignment are:

Kahin qedese be’ilete Senbet. The priest did liturgy on Sunday.

Ikuy bi’isi qetele insisa. The evil man killed animals.

We’iton gebra hibst. They made bread,

Adding on to the process of making complete thoughts and sentences, we have begun learning how to make words plural. In Ge’ez plurality is expressed by adding an affix either at the beginning of the word or at the end. There is one predominantly used suffix which is adding the “at” sound at the end of the word. For example with the word qidus which can mean holy one, qidusat means holy people. Another common way to show plurality is by using the prefix “a”. For example, the word feleg which means river can be made plural by making the word aflag. The root of the word is also altered a bit. Another example of this is hager which means country is made plural as ahgur.

Here are more examples:

Dog: kelb → kelebat

Deacon: diyaqon→ diyaqonat

Father: ab → abew

Horse: feres → afras

Donkey: adg → a’idug

House: biet → abyat (this one looks like its using both the “a” preffix and the “at” suffix)

In Amharic, the majority of pluralities are created by adding the suffix “-och” sound as in the beginning consonant of the word church. 

House: biet → bietoch

Name: sim → simoch

Donkey: ahiya → ahiyawoch

In both Amharic and Ge’ez you add the possessive morpheme after the plurality one. Other uses for morphemes include specific subject pronoun indicators (written first) and case (written second). As we discussed in class, Amharic and Ge’ez are examples agglutinative languages but also use free morphemes to indicate some concepts or to emphasize them. Agglutinative language primarily use many attached morphemes. English is an example of a language that has less agglutination in comparison to other languages like German and Russian. Pronunciation wise I find that this makes it much harder to manage all the parts of the word in my mouth and often struggle especially in Amharic adding the suffixes while at the same time trying to distinguish which is the correct one to use. However, I can sometimes get away with not finishing the word properly and the message still gets across for my listener. That’s the good thing about speaking, it is composed through different means of communication like body language and facial expression that can help you send your message. However with writing, it definitely needs to be clear through spelling the idea that you are trying to convey.

One aspect of Ge’ez ‘culture’ is the hymnology of different seasons. For example, the season of the Flower which I previously discussed contains 5-6 days worth of hymns. Each is performed on a Sunday during the 5-6 week season (depending on how the Church calendar falls that year it could be 5 or 6 weeks). These hymns are called Mahiliet and each day’s hymns can last around 7 hours. At my church in Richmond they start at about 2 am and go until 6:30 am. They primarily use the staff, the sistrum, and the drums during worship. Each of the hymns is repeated slowly multiple times, then in a faster tone, and end with the most accelerated speed and intensity. Each hymn is very deeply enlaced with allegories, metaphors, and rhyme to name a few of literary devices. It also heavily references other ancient books and histories from the Bible and extra biblical sources. One must be able to understand those external sources to capture the essence of the hymns in interpretation and translation and even just comprehension.

   In order to hold these special services at a church a scholar of these hymns needs to be present. They hold the title of priest but also have an extra “degree” in these studies and their meanings. They are also able to produce new poetry called “qines” and the tunes for them based on the Church season or holiday because they are well learned in the mechanics of it. This is in addition to the written and recorded texts that are held in the book called “Zikre Qal”. These scholars are also teachers. There aren’t many of them in the United States but they are growing in number. It takes years to learn it so most students go back to Eritrea or Ethiopia to have a more concentrated learning experience abroad.  

As a believer, I try to learn some of them and participate when it comes to service. Some people just enjoy the tunes or even do their own personal prayers during this time. Yet some people don’t attend the service at all and come later on in the day. Following this service is the mass so most parishioners attend this service and during Mahiliet there is usually only clergy and choir members present. With more teachers coming to the United States, I hope this means that more people will get a chance to learn, both members of the clergy and parishioners so that they would at least be able to participate if not to teach themselves.

My study of Ge’ez has definitely been a huge aid for me in this aspiration, but I do understand that not everyone has the kind of support that I have in this venture. Support and resources (time and energy). It is important to focus on teaching the youth these hymns as they are the ones who have more time and energy to give.

This is a picture of the clergy during Mahiliet. 

The first time I started writing in my target language is when I was taking notes by write free hand. I wanted to type but the letters of Turkish are different from English, so I am not sure how to type Turkish, so until now I still need to copy and paste those letters from Wikipedia when I was typing Turkish. I also love to take notes by writing free hand because I can more easily memorize what I was writing in this way. I began to see some patterns of word structure because of the vowels and even some grammars related to words (because Turkish put grammar into the word). I believe we are still writing simple sentences, such as telling time, self-introduction and greetings, which don’t have complicated grammar or meaning. But we read some complex sentences before and I believe it is more like put complex context into the simple sentences, so basically complex sentences can be split into simple sentence and some small words/phrases. Because when I was learning English, we always tried to understand a complex sentence by splitting it into a simple version.

Right now, it is more like my language partner give me an example of how to express a sentence and then I followed it to write my own sentences. For example, she told how to write “my mom Fatma is 60 years old’ in Turkish which is “Benim annem Fatma, altmiş yaşinda.” And then I will write a sentence telling my father’s name and age in Turkish, which is “Benim babam Guoqing, elli yaşinda.”

How do languages go extinct? Respond to the readings, and reflect on what happens when a language dies? How can linguists help preserve a language? Can a ‘dead’ language ever be brought back to life? What efforts are currently underway to document linguistic diversity?

Languages are lost through a variety of different ways. One way spoken about in the article is when unique tribes get conglomerated and they end up having to use a common language or a dominant language. The dominant culture is the one that is carried on. With American Indian tribes this is a common trend as they were being pushed out by US expansion. It also reminds me of how in Nigeria and other multiethnic countries in diverse metropolitan areas using English as their mode of communication. Due to the diversity in languages and cultural backgrounds of people, it is impossible to retain the ethnic languages in academic and professional settings.  

Linguists document endangered languages by recording, writing, and curating it. They also take an ethnographic approach by building relationships and living amongst the people to learn and document the language. These approaches expand the focus of linguistics from internal (ie theoretical studies) to external (ie preservation efforts). It was interesting to see how the linguist in the video talked about the ownership of languages by the speakers as their intellectual property. In a lot of ways the Siletz speakers took that ownership into action by reviving their language through different methods such as implementing their language in academic settings, especially for the younger generations. 

Indeed a dead language can be brought back to life, but according to statistics 84 languages dominate in global media and are spoken by 80% of people, the other 6000 are spoken by 20%. These impending tragedies are impoverishing as David Harrison said and losing a language is like losing a whole way of thinking about the world. 

In this post, I would like to honor University of Richmond’s International Week that is highlighting East Asia this year! I am participating in the event by hosting a K-pop station that will share Korean pop culture with all those who participate.  In preparation for this event, I have been researching trivia and noting related vocabulary, and I have noticed some aspects of traditional Korean culture that are still prevalent in this modern industry.  

One of these cultural aspects relates to my overall topic of the elder culture and attitudes around the aging population in Korea. In each K-pop group there is a leader who usually is the oldest member and there is a label for the youngest member called the maknae or 막내. Each of the younger members are expected to follow their leader by respecting their decisions and valuing their opinions and input over others. In turn the leader is expected to look out for the other members while always having the interest of the group in mind when making decisions. Each group acts as a family which reflects the idea of valuing community in Korean society. I have talked about this in my previous cultural posts as the family being of the highest importance. I find it interesting how those values maintain a striking presence in such a modern pop culture sensation that is now sweeping across the world and sharing its uniqueness with other societies.

Another traditional cultural aspect that it’s still prevalent in modern day culture, and can be seen in the K-pop industry today, is the hard work that is required to maintain a high status of honor and pride among the K-pop groups. Most trainees go through a period of 7 to 9 years of dance and voice instruction that prepares them for their later career.  In many speeches by K-pop groups after their concerts, the members are always one to point out their own flaws and promise that they will work even harder to please their fans and create quality performances and products. This dedication is partially why the K-pop industry is so appealing to countries such as the US because of the seemingly perfect display of human creation. While artists in the United States also work hard, it is a critical part of Korean culture that one is always learning and always improving until, perhaps, they reach their elderly stage. 

It was a bit eye-opening for me to make these connections between the aspects of K-pop culture and traditional culture.  I have been following K-pop and learning about the functioning of the groups and the overall industry for several years now.  But I have not realized until recently how their values are so closely intertwined with the values of previous generations. 

Below I put a link to a video made about BTS, one of the most popular and successful boy K-pop groups world wide, that shows their struggles and highlights some of the down sides of the industry that holds such high standards.  I would just like to note that BTS has confronted a lot of these issues since their debut in 2013, yet they continue to work hard while learning more about how to take care of themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuQ_O9aMXMg  

I have not yet started writing in my target language outside of being able to write my name in Hebrew along with words that are common in services. As of right now I will say that if I have to write in Hebrew I prefer to write it free hand because I still have a bit of trouble recognizing the different characters but if I am using the transliteration then I prefer to type it. It looks strange to me when I see it written. The pattern of subject verb then object that English has applies to Hebrew also. I have done readings on sentence structure and how it differs in Biblical and Modern Hebrew. I wouldn’t say that I have be able to notice any patterns because I am still relatively illiterate in HHebrew,but I did learn that Hebrew both modern and biblical have a marker that indicates what is the indirect object in a sentence that we don’t have in English. I say the relationship between simple and complex sentences is that Hebrew allows for clauses in complex sentences which is essentially a simple sentence. Because there are nuances like terms of possession, singular or plural I would say that I am not able to effectively communicate in the written outside of simple sentences that revolve around shul or what I would like to eat.

Since the first day of learning Korean, we’ve been learning to speak, write, and read Korean with Professor Sumi Kim. This has been extremely useful because after we properly understood and perfected the basic sounds in Korean, every time we learn a new word, seeing how it is written and writing it on my own makes pronouncing it correctly and remembering it much easier.

We’ve only recently started looking into Korean grammar in class so I don’t have a lot of knowledge about it. However, it only affects my ability to communicate properly in some contexts. If we’re looking at me texting my friends, broken Korean still does the work of me communicating my point and them understanding it. But if we’re talking about doing writing exercises in Korean like writing a letter to yourself or writing a short paragraph about something you like to eat, my lack of knowledge about Korean grammar definitely constrains me from being able to properly express myself. Due to the fact that we haven’t delved deeper into Korean grammar, the writing exercises that I’ve done so far are extremely basic and limited to alphabets, random words, and very few sentences. Here are some pictures of the things I’ve written so far:

In general, I prefer writing over typing because I find it more engaging and it helps me better retain the things that I learn. However, I’ve recently noticed something extremely amusing. When I’m typing out a word, I think of what letters and sounds are in it and I type them out correctly. However, sometimes when I writing a word, I know what letters and sounds are used in my head but the letters that I write down are sometimes completely off. For example, just the other day I was doing another sudoku puzzle in Korean, and when I was checking the answers, I realised that at some point when I was solving the puzzle wheneverI thought ‘팔’ (pal i.e. eight), I started writing ‘발’ (bal). So, my sudoku had a mix of 팔 and 발 being used for 8. This has happened multiple times when I write a word and then I realise that I used the wrong symbol somewhere. So, even though I like writing more, I’m definitely better at typing Korean than writing it.

So far the only writing I have done is typing on my phone in texts to my language partner. It isn't easy to adjust to Hebrew script as a writing system mainly because vowels aren't written and there are some letters that are basically the same as other ones, just written differently. Luckily, because of the lack of vowels, even words spelled wrong are usually intelligible, since the brain auto corrects the word to what it thinks it should be. This isn't really as possible in languages like Chinese where if you write the word wrong the whole meaning can go out the window. 

One of the tougher things is getting used to different key positions for foreign keyboards. Chinese doesn't have this problem at all, since you essentially type using a qwerty keyboard that gets switched to Chinese once the word is finished, but for languages like Russian, Arabic, and of course Hebrew, it can take forever to find the letter that you need since we have so much muscle memory pushing us to one corner of the screen. Of course, this is even worse on a laptop, since you can't see which key you are hitting as you hit - this makes phones much better tools for learning the keyboard. So one exercise I do is just to grab a nonsense string of letters and try and type it out as fast as I can. This really helps in speeding up typing, which I think is far more important in this day and age than handwriting. 

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Although I have not started using Turkish to write long paragraphs to express my opinions or make statements about some controversial phenomena as I write in English, I did write some short sentences to introduce myself in Turkish. I introduced my name, my phone numbers, my family members and my school. When I write in Turkish, I prefer to type because I think it is really difficult for me to correctly spell the words. When I use words to type, I feel more confident about the spells and, thus, could pay more attention to the writing itself. However, I do think that writing freehand is really helpful for beginners to practice basic grammars, especially for beginners learning Turkish. Turkish is like Japanese. They use suffix attached to words to show different tenses and personal pronouns. Therefore, it is crucial to spell words correctly to express meanings.

In terms of the relationship between complex and simple sentences, I think that simple sentences are the foundation of complex sentences. Based on my experience of learning English, I think that the only way to master complex sentences is to fully understand the structure of the simple sentences. For example, the sentence “I really admire heroes who sacrifice themselves to save others” is composed of two simple sentences “I really admire heroes.” and “Heroes sacrifice themselves to save others”. Therefore, as long as language learners know how to write simple sentences, they could learn how to write complex sentences as time goes by.

While it is true that I would like to focus more on speaking than writing, the latter is nonetheless an important metric of my progress and understanding of the language and one that I have not ignored. The process of writing itself in Malay is fairly straightforward, given the romanization of Malay orthography and the relatively few outliers in spelling ('c' pronounced as 'ch', e.g.). One consistent writing piece has come in the form of my assignments from Melisa, typically in the form of a 5-7 sentence paragraph detailing a certain topic or set of topics. This has been a great way not only for me to grasp my understanding of the concepts, vocabulary, and structures that I am learning, but also to connect older grammar points or vocabulary and be adventurous in trying to link everything together. Malay is a language that does not have a lot of diphthongs or the like, so writing actually helps me gain a better understanding of if I am pronouncing it correctly in spoken form (funnily enough). Writing by hand has been very effective and I have heard that it allows for a better grasp of material compared with typing, so I will keep this up. 

In terms of creating both simple and complex sentences, one word has been particularly useful: yang. This words means "which/who/that is" and can easily be included in sentences to add detail and complexity (e.g. "under the tree is a bird that is red"). I have also been learning conjunctions and words to more fluidly link two sentences or clauses together so I am not writing in short and blunt sentences, making my handle of the language stronger as well. My Malay textbook is essentially a workbook, so I write all over it and can often learn new words, patterns, or usages from simply reading the instructions preceding the exercises. In addition, Melisa and I often try to make use of typing Malay during our meetings so I can practice my listening skills and see this translates in the act of typing. Much of this use of the computer includes searching for certain words, concepts, or ideas, typically in image or video form, to further my understanding of the language.

Handwriting was a very important aspect of learning Chinese, which included a lot of memorizing and learning radicals and stroke order, but handwriting in Malay has a different function because its orthography is romanized. I will continue to use it as an effective counterbalance to my spoken language skills and as a way of gauging my grasp and understanding of key terms and concepts. 

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I think writing practice is necessary from the very beginning of learning a language. Listening, speaking, reading and writing are necessary for language learning. If you just look with your eyes, you might be able to recall it in a short time, but the letters or words in the target language won't stick in your memory.Chinese typing is input pinyin and computer will show the corresponding Chinese, sometimes even think out your next possible input words. Therefore, for the young people of my generation, they often chat with mobile phone software and do homework on the computer. When they occasionally need handwritten words, they often forget how to write the words they want to write. Similarly, in English, my mobile phone and computer often associate the corresponding words after I input a few letters, so I sometimes can't remember how to spell or even spell the wrong words when I write my homework by hand. Another reason is that there is an old Chinese saying that "the character is like the person", which means that a person's character can be known by his or her words. The words written by a person with good temperament will also looks beautiful, which was a feast for the eyes. Many calligraphers can infer the characteristics of the person who wrote the character and the mood of creation from a single character. Therefore, when learning Korean in the future, I will choose write Korean.

Unlike Chinese and English, Korean sentences have parts in the order of subject, object, and verb. Attachment are extremely important in Korean, the attachments include the particles attached right after subjects and objects, and the suffixes for a whole sentence which are added at the end of one sentence to make a sentence sound pretty, into a question, in different tenses, or something else. Talking to elders or juniors have different suffixes, as do questions and exclamations. Although it is difficult to remember so many things at the beginning of learning, it will become very easy after you become proficient. Korean input is relatively simple, because Korean is a written sound, just remember the syllables on the keyboard, you can type in Korean.

I think the idea that cultural groups can be complicit in the extinction of languages is interesting. Yiddish isn't quite dead yet, but it is certainly heading that way, which is a shame especially since it influenced English so heavily. I didn't realize growing up how many words I used and heard in normal English were just yiddish words. I was especially surprised when at home and hearing my dad (from Brooklyn) talk to me I realized that a ton of the words were not English, but I understood them by virtue of growing up with them. I had always thought of it as normal english, but then when I asked my friends if they could understand, none of them could. 

One thing that makes me hopeful about the future of language preservation is current technology. With how powerful computers and the internet are at the moment, I find it hard to believe that a current language could be completely lost short of a global catastrophe. We live in a really fortunate time, with the breadth of human knowledge available at no cost to us. Thinking about ancient civilizations that have been totally forgotten makes me very grateful to have been born in this millennium.

This week was mostly about new vocab and learning how letters function. Hebrew can be tough since Semitic alphabets work quite differently than roman ones. One of the big differences that I have noticed in both arabic and hebrew is that letters can be written differently depending on where they are in the word. In arabic, most letters have 4 different ways of writing them, since all letters conjoin in some way to letters around them. It makes writing in Arabic like writing very complicated cursive. Hebrew is much simpler, but has still has a couple letters like this, such as the letter nun (n). There is a variant of the letter called nun sofit, or final nun, which is only used when a word is ended with a nun. I am curious why this holdover from ancient semitic languages was kept in modern hebrew - it doesn't have any real use that I or Israelis can figure out since Hebrew is never conjoined.

Another interesting similarity is the letter ayin. In arabic this is a very common consonant and learning to pronounce it correctly is very important in terms of fluency. In hebrew this letter still exists, but it is always silent, with no exceptions that my language partner could think of. Again, why keep it? I think part of the reason is that when Hebrew was revived, there was a huge lack of vocabulary since the language had been stagnant for so long, so the government resorted to using ancient words to describe new concepts. But these words could only be written with ayin, so they decided it was easier to keep the letter rather than change the vocabulary. I am not certain about this though, so I think I will do more research/ ask someone who knows more about ancient hebrew.