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I think the farming the article does of languages that win the linguistic sweepstakes” makes the  fact that a language can disappear more understandable but sad reality. In the case of Siletz Dee-ni I found the story of how it survived to be fascinating, but also very sad. The fact that only five people speak a tribal language when more than five people belong to the tribe to me speaks to the realities of assimilation. Even in my own experiences with language I don’t speak the community language that my father does. I think this is in part because it makes it easier for adults to speak freely but also my father may not have seen a point in teaching my brother and I. We were born in America, went to catholic schools and outside of our family patois would not have been spoken. It was part of my Dad’s culture but in us not being immersed did not become the part that he brought with him to give to us when he moved. I see the same thing to some degree in the story of Siletz Dee-ni. Many people do not grow up with it being their first language and with the rise of the digital age it seemed to fade into the past which is quite sad when you consider the fact that it was once one of the most widely spoken native languages and that it was even adopted but other tribes as their own cultures began to fade. The article also made me think about the role that other countries, entities have in language production.  The reason that Siletz Dee-ni became integrated into other native dances is because the U.S government forced a collection of different tribal communities to live together when they often shared nothing culturally.  In this there is a forced reckoning the U.S. government grouped them all together so they then began to bleed into each other. They had a role in its erasure and I wish they would take a more active role in its preservation.

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Language is not only a tool of communication but also a unique expression of different cultures, natural environments, histories, human nature, and heritages. In order to protect human cultural heritage, one of the necessary works to do is to protect endangered languages. Language maintains the vitality of tradition, motivates us to understand and respect history and the world we live in, and connects different societies beyond national boundaries and time.

In today's society, some languages are becoming extinct in a very fast way. No matter for political, geographical and cultural reasons, the fragile environment plays a critical role in the death of language. The rise of a language is not only the language symbol itself but also covers all kinds of phenomena behind the language - economy, geography, politics, etc. A language can also be seen as the crystallization of highly concentrated human thoughts and one of the important cultural symbols. When a language becomes endangered, more things supported by the language are also facing the risk of collapse.          

The extinction of language can be either voluntary or involuntary: the voluntary extinction may be influenced by the environment of language, and the language will be reformed and changed from the inside of the language group, and involuntary extinction can be explained by the external political oppression.

Many linguists worked so hard in order to protect endangered languages around the world. These linguists deeply studied these endangered languages, go to the place where native speakers speak to record videos and sound materials and organize it into a large database for many language scholars to use.

These two weeks, I focussed on improving my conversational Korean. I am a college student and these few weeks have been stressful for everyone because we all had tests in out current classes and we also had registration for next semester. Hence, I worked with my language partner to learn sentences which are fitting for a college student at this time in the semester so that I could use them to have regular conversations with my friends in Korean. These are the main sentences that I learned -

안녕하세요, 교수님! (Hello, professor!)

몇학년이에요? (What grade (year in college) are you in?)

나는 이 학년입니다. (I’m in the 2nd grade (year).)

전공이 뭐에요? (What’s your major?)

오늘 수업 몇개 있어요? (How many classes do you have today?)

오늘 수업 두개 있어요. (I have 2 classes today.)

어제 과제하느라 잠을 못잤어요. (I was doing homework last night so I couldn’t sleep.)

곧 시험기간이에요? (Is it going to be exam season soon?)

수강신청 잘했어? (Did registration go well?) 

시험 어땠어? 잘봤어? (How was the exam? Did you do well?)

응! 잘봤어 / 아니 잘 못봤어 (Yes I did / No I couldn’t)

Funnily enough, 어제 과제하느라 잠을 못잤어요 has been one of my most used sentences, because like most college students I tend to procrastinate my work and cram everything in the last minute. Also, because most college students procrastinate work sometimes or tend to work really hard before their tests, everyone I said this to found the statement extremely relatable. They would laugh when they heard me say this sentence and my story behind it and then they would tell me about how they too did not sleep for various reasons. They told me their reasons in Korean, and they were very patient with me when I’d ask them to explain some words that they used that I didn’t know or didn’t immediately understand. This simple process of sharing our familiar struggles with each other firstly helped me learn a lot of new vocabulary which people my age use with each other in everyday life, and secondly helped me and people who are native Korean speakers connect with each other at a level beyond just basic greetings.

In order to help improve my conversational Korean even more I realised that I need to understand how people interact with each other in Korean in their everyday lives. K-dramas come pretty close to emulating such interactions and a lot of them are centered around college students such as myself. So, I have also been watching the K-drama Boys with Flowers over the past few weeks and I finally finished it. I learned a lot of useful words and phrase from it. I also learned how the words and phrases are used differently depending on the social situation and also how saying them in different tones or with a different body language can cause slight changes in their meanings. Listed here are some of the words and phrases that I learned:

준비 (ready) , 그래 (really) , 알았어 (got it), 선배 (senpai), 오빠 (female’s older brother), 아빠 (dad), 엄마 (mom), 할아버지 (grandfather), 가자 (let’s go), 가지 마 (don’t go),  빨리빨리 (hurry up), 걱정 말아 (don’t worry)

There are many reasons that could cause a language to become endangered. Globalization is one crucial reason. Many languages are falling out of use and being replaced by others that are more widely used in the region or nation, such as English in the U.S. or Spanish in Mexico. Unless current trends are reversed, these endangered languages will become extinct within the next century. Many other languages are no longer being learned by new generations of children or by new adult speakers; these languages will become extinct when their last speaker dies. In fact, dozens of languages today have only one native speaker still living, and that person's death will mean the extinction of the language: It will no longer be spoken, or known, by anyone.
When a community loses its language, it often loses a great deal of its cultural identity at the same time. Although language loss may be voluntary or involuntary, it always involves the pressure of some kind, and it is often felt as a loss of social identity or as a symbol of defeat. That doesn't mean that a group's social identity is always lost when its language is lost. But language is a powerful symbol of a group's identity. Much of the cultural, spiritual, and intellectual life of a person is experienced through language. This ranges from prayers, myths, ceremonies, poetry, oratory, and technical vocabulary to everyday greetings, leave-takings, conversational styles, humor, ways of speaking to children, and terms for habits, behaviors, and emotions. When a language is lost, all of this must be refashioned in the new language-with different words, sounds, and grammar- if it is to be kept at all. Frequently traditions are abruptly lost in the process and replaced by the cultural habits of the more powerful group.

Last week, we were still learning the expressions of numbers and we began to practice listening. Hazal asked her friends to record their greetings and self-introduction and she played these recordings to me. It was really fun! But at the beginning, I could not understand a thing at all, because I never practiced Turkish listening before. After practicing for a while, it began to become better! Also, we used a Turkish learning tool during the class, and I found my studying result is not bad! I can get a 95 on average for some spelling and listening tests. However, I kept forgetting there are no letter q, w, or x in Turkish and I asked my friend who learned Turkish for a long time. Here are some reasons he told me.

He said this question is the same as why we no longer use traditional Chinese characters in Chinese now. In fact, most Turkish don't know much about this problem (as we do not know too much about traditional Chinese characters as well) and don't care a lot, because these 29 letters are enough, and they don't need extra Q, W, X to compose words (simplified characters are more convenient to use).

First of all, Turkish belongs to Turkic language family, and Turkic language family focuses a lot on spoken language, so how to read is more important than how to write in the Turkish language. As for letters, it's enough as long as people can read and understand. So the requirement of letters is not that high. Of course, the later Ottoman Turkic culture reached its peak, and the writing became more and more advanced.

Another reason is that the primary reason for the change from Osman to Latin in the period of character reformation was to reduce the pressure on people to read. At that time, the purpose was to be as simple and easy to read as possible, so unnecessary letters were left out, including Q, W, X.
In fact, the corresponding letters of Q, W, X are K, V, H. in Turkish, Q, W, X and K, V, H are basically homophones, for example, tavuk and tawuk (chicken) have the same pronunciation, so in Turkish view, W and V are basically the same. So why bother to have three more redundant letters.

In the past two weeks, we learned about the history of Korea. A language class is not only about how to speak, listen, write and read. It is also really important for us to learn the history background of this country.

The Japanese occupation of Korea began in 1910 and ended at the end of World War II in 1945. The empire of Korea was stripped of its diplomatic sovereignty and declared a protectorate of Japan with the signing of the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1905. This came after the Russo-Japanese War in which Russia was forced to concede that Japan had “paramount political, military, and economic interest” in Korea. On August 22, 1910, Japan officially annexed Korea. Through this time, Japanese settlers had been migrating to Korea to combat overcrowding in Japan. By 1910 there were over 170,000 Japanese people living in Korea. In Korea, the landowners were mostly Japanese, while the tenants were all Koreans.  The Japanese created a feudal state where they owned the land and the Koreans worked the fields. The Korean tenants were forced to pay over half their crop as rent which caused many farmers to send their wives and daughters to work in factories or to become prostitutes（위안부.）By 1910 an estimated 7 to 8% of all arable land in Korea had come under Japanese control.This ratio increased steadily; as of the years 1916, 1920, and 1932, the ratio of Japanese land ownership increased from 36.8 to 39.8 yo 52.7%.

The March 1 Movement was a large anti-Japanese rally in 1919. A declaration of independence was read in Seoul. Over 2 million people attended these rallies which were violently suppressed by the Japanese. The protests continued for about a year. It is estimated that 50,000 Koreans were arrested 7500 were killed. In 1939 Japan was plagues with labor shortages as a result of conscription for WWII military efforts. Koreans were recruited, first voluntarily and later by force, to move to Japan and work in the factories. In 1942, the National Mobilization Law extended to the conscription of Korean workers for factories and mines in Korea. Out of the 670,000 Koreans who went to work in Japan, 60,000 died from the horrendous work conditions. The total death toll from forced labor in Korea is estimated between 270,000 and 810,000 people. On 10 December 1941, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, under the presidency of Kim Gu, declared war on Japan and Germany. Kim Gu organized many of the exiled Korean resistance groups, forming the “Korean Liberation Army”. On the other hand, Kim II-sung led tens of thousands of Koreans who volunteered for the National Revolutionary Army and the People’s Liberation Army. The communist-backed Korean Volunteer Army was established in China, outside of the Provisional Government’s control, from a core of 1000 deserters from the Imperial Japanese Army. After the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, the KVA entered Manchuria where it recruited from the ethnic Korean population and eventually became the Korean People’s Army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

During last week's lesson, we focused on learning about words related to clothing. There were a few new words I came across. They were 상의, which means upper half or tops, and the opposite, 하의, which means bottom half, or bottoms. Many of the clothing words are easy for anyone to remember because a number of them are just borrowed words from English. For example, these include the following: 셔츠, 스웨터, 자켓, 코트. In order, they are shirt, sweater, jacket, and coat. I find it interesting that the word for shirt can actually refer to both a regular t-shirt but also to a formal button down shirt. I think in English shirt is usually used just for casual t-shirts. Another interesting one is the word for dress, 원피스, which literally means one piece. Other vocabulary words we went over were 운동화 (sneakers), 구두 (high heels/male dress shoes), 부츠 (boots), 슬리퍼 (slippers), 긔걸이 (earrings), 목걸이 (necklace), 팔찌 (bracelet), 손목시계 (wristwatch), 핸드백 (literally handbag/purse), 안경 (glasses), 선글라스 (sunglasses). We then learned some verbs that are used with the clothing/fashion related items. In English, there isn't much of a variety for the verbs associated with clothing. You can wear clothes or wear a shirt or put on a shirt. You can wear sneakers or wear long pants, or wear a hat or put on earrings. Essentially you can use wear or put on for almost any clothing item, accessory, and shoes. However in Korean, there are separate verbs for wearing clothes, wearing shoes and accessories. I remember when I was younger I would accidentally switch these up. Here are some of them. 입다 is for wearing clothes. 신다 is for wearing shoes. 쓰다 is for wearing things like hats and glasses, 끼다 is used for things you put on your hands like gloves or rings. At the end of the lesson, we watched fashion YouTube videos which used most of these words. I recommend watching similar videos for those who become confused with the several different to wear verbs.

This week, we learned about spacing rules in Korean. This was something I really needed to brush up on. Whenever I text a message in Korean, I always just guess and put a space if it looks I need or not. I was never very sure. I learned in class that there should be a space between an adjective and a noun, an adverb and a verb, a noun (with/without particle) and a verb, a noun and another noun. On the other hand, there should not be a space between a noun/pronoun and its following particle and also between longer words such as some title or organization name. However, there are a few exceptions. Words that form fixed expressions can be written together without a space like 남자친구. Also for the form noun + 하다 does not need a space. For example, the word for to study, 공부하다, does not have a space. Now, I feel more confident when putting a space or not.

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In the past, the main cause of language death was an increase in mortality. This may be the result of violence such as war or genocide, or it may be the result of large-scale epidemics or natural disasters. Now, the main reason for the extinction of languages is I think urbanization. In Kenya, two people from different places meet in the capital Nairobi. They don't speak their mother tongue. They speak Kenya's common language, English or Swahili. The children they give birth to may learn a little of their respective languages from their parents, but by the third generation these remnants will soon have disappeared. For most of history, including in many parts of the world today, it was normal for residents to speak a language with fewer than 500 speakers. Cities that can be settled for long periods of time contain more and more people, which keeps the same language stable and reduces the number of languages.

For linguists, protecting endangered languages is a big task. Not only are many languages on the verge of extinction, but there is a lot of work to be done to keep a language intact. Individual power is limited, but social power is enormous. Linguists can do this by joining forces with language conservation groups. Every language is unique and beautiful in its own way. Therefore, through propaganda of the cultural history behind the language, the public can first be exposed to the language, and slowly understand the culture behind the language.

The carrier of a language is a person, so if you want to revive an extinct language you need someone to start using it. The best candidates are the people to whom the language belongs.In my opinion, the biggest problem with the extinction of these extinct languages is that the community wants to give up its indigenous language and culture to integrate into the world. So, the main thing is to make them aware of the uniqueness and beauty of their language, to encourage them to learn and pass it on.

Last week, we had a class talking about fashion in Korea. On the handout, Jenna printed out clothing vocabs in Korean, including tops, bottoms, accessories, and coats. We met many words derived from English here too. Also, similar to Chinese, Korean uses different verbs to describe “wear” for clothing in different categories. After reading out the words and taking notes on their meanings, we watched two YouTube clips from a Korean famous fashion stylist (“코디” in Korean), where she showed her fashion taste while describing the items she saw in a store. It was really interesting to see how her style differs from others and how she introduces the clothes. We learned more vocabs such as “silk” and “scarf” when watching the video. For homework, we wrote out two sentences using the phrases and nouns we learned in the lesson.

This week’s lesson was a little bit different from the ones we had. I was watching a Korean TV show where the hosts’ spacing was checked to decide if they could go home right away. It turned out that spacing in writing in Korean could be confusing sometimes. As a result, we learned about the rule for spacing this week. While major rules are not hard to understand, there are some exceptions that we need to pay attention to, so we will do more practice on that. After that, we learned about vocabs and phrases for traveling. After going over the handout, we watched a travel vlog from a Korean. We learned that Koreans focus a lot on finding good restaurants when they are traveling, and we learned more vocabs for food as well when watching the video.

During the past two weeks, I have been meeting with Jenna instead of attending the LJKC hagwon. Jenna has placed a greater emphasis on improving my reading skills. She encourages me to become more familiar with the Korean letters. I agree with her approach, as I believe that becoming more comfortable with reading Korean words will help me learn more vocabulary in a more efficient manner. This is because I still heavily rely on the English Romanization of Korean words.

It has been difficult for me to learn the Korean letters, as I have never learned a different alphabet before. I speak Spanish, but it uses the same alphabet as English, except for one letter and the accents. One thing that I was not expecting is that it is easier for me to remember consonants over vowels. I believe this is because the consonants look unique from each other, whereas it is difficult for me to distinguish the vowels from each other. There are some consonants that look similar to others, but that is actually helpful because they make similar sounds. With the vowels, I have to think for a long time to try to remember which one makes what sound.

At this point, I read very slowly in Korean. For example, at our last lesson, Jenna brought one page, front and back, of short, important Korean words and phrases. It took an hour for me to read through them all. This is because I have to think about how every letter in the word sounds. One helpful tip that Jenna told me was to think about the consonants and vowels in order. In English, the order of the letters is “A, B, C,” and so on. There are orders for Korean consonants and vowels. These orders have helped me remember the sounds of the letters. It is very rhythmic, which relates to my musical ability. I am a partially auditory learner, so this “song” is a helpful reminder.

I am continually learning about the importance of respect in Korean culture. It manifests itself in many ways in the language. There are several ways to say certain phrases in Korean. I thought that there would only be two, one that is informal and another that is formal, but there are actually degrees of respect. There are forms that are used among peers, then ones that convey more respect, then those that are the most formal. I hope to learn more about the contexts in which to use each term.

I have very little prior knowledge of how to read and write in Korean, but I have more experience listening to and speaking in Korean. When I was reading through the vocabulary sheet that Jenna gave me, I recognized some phrases. However, one phrase that I recognized actually had a different meaning in that context. Even though the meaning was different, I was happy that I recognized it at all.

As I advance in my Korean studies, I will continue to use Quizlet to become more familiar with Korean letters. One thing that I find helpful from Quizlet is that there is an audio feature, so I can hear how each letter is pronounced. I would also recommend that other Korean language beginners learn the consonants and vowels in order, so that they can remember that rhythm.

Languages become extinct when language isn’t transcribed and recorded. The job of a linguist is to go into language tribes and record/analyze/transcribe any information about the language, in order to preserve it. When linguists don’t record or preserve any information about a language, the language becomes extinct. Because the main languages like French, English, Spanish, etc. are so popular, other small languages become less and less common and become extinct. When a language dies, we not only lose speakers of that language, but we also lose rich information, culture, and memories of that language. Many of these language tribes have very primitive living styles, so they don’t have a way of archiving or preserving any information. They only have memories and information in their brain. That is why linguists are crucial in preserving a language. By immersing themselves in the culture and learning the language first-hand, they can record and archive the language and culture. The documentary talks about the scarcity of linguists and how there are so many languages that are becoming extinct. The documentary also talks about the emic approach of language, where an anthropologist will actually go into a culture with zero knowledge of the language. This is a great way for linguists to preserve a language. Languages become extinct for many reasons including, change in environment and culture, change in people and diversity, and change in culture. Culture and language go hand in hand, and as cultures fade, languages also fade. I believe that dead language can be brought back to life, only if it was archived properly in the past and preserved. Many linguists and anthropologists are currently trying to document linguistic documentary by creating a large collection and record of all the different languages around the world. These records and archives can be digital recordings or writings of the native language speakers.

These past two weeks, I transferred to two sessions per week with my language learning partner to cater more towards my language goals. We have gone over several things including three main types of the future tense, spacing between words, and vocabulary relating to school and travel. Additionally, we have continued to build off of the sentence structures, “I want to…” and “I have to…” by gradually adding more factors to complicate each phrase. For example, when I started off learning these structures, I could say “I want to dance” or “저는 춤 추고 싶어요”. Now, I can say “I want to meet with you at the gym on Saturday to dance” or “토요일에 체육관에서 만나서 춤 추고 싶어요”. To get to this point, I write up around 5 sentences between lessons every week using the material we covered in the previous session to review and practice the material. This gives me the opportunity to realize any points that I do not understand and helps me see where I would like to continue. This is a system that I enjoy using because it is easy to follow and effectively produces results. One of the best ways to learn a language, in my opinion, is to start with a small unit and use it as a building block to increase your abilities.

I have also been able to apply the grammatical concepts I have learned previously to writing sentences using the future tense. The main thing we are focusing on now is building up some vocabulary to expand the words I can use in these sentence structures.

In future lessons, I would like to focus some more on conversation skills. I think that I have built up enough knowledge at this point to start practicing putting those phrases into a casual conversation between friends. This is also a great opportunity to learn how to put the general sentence structures I have learned into questions. I hope to be able to use what I learn in real conversations with my language partner when we determine where to meet for lessons. I also have friends who speak Korean in my dance group with whom I can practice in real life.

This week, we had a short test on vocabulary which helped me to review some words we have learned so far. And Professor Kim also helped us review some words from the Korean song Love Scenario we learned to sing. In addition, we covered some grammar related to verbs. Verbs in Korean have their verb stem, which is the original form of the verb. And we need to add different particles to the verb stems to use the verbs in a sentence. There are two general rules that describe how to do this. The first rule is that verb stems ending with vowels are followed by. The second rule is that verb steams ending with vowels other than are followed by. But of course, there are also special cases.  We went over 10 special cases that do not conform to the general rule. Additionally, we started learning a new song by BTS.

Professor Kim recommended us to watch the Korean tv show Cheese in the Trap(치즈인더트랩). I started watching that on Netflix. I am currently on episode 3. I think it was a great show to start with. The drama focuses on the life and relationships of a group of university students, particularly the difficult relationship between Hong Seol and her 선배(senior student) Yoo Jung. I can relate to their conversations and learn Korean words and daily conversations that are used by younger Korean people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKWEtdsXbuU

I found a youtube video that covers some Korean words and sentences from episode 1. 선배 (Sun bae)

Senior(higher grade/level)

2. 후배 (Hoo bae)

Junior(lower grade/level)

3. 망했어(요)/ 망했다

I'm screwed.

4. 같이 밥 먹을래(요)? 

Should we grab a meal together? 

The YouTuber also explained the Korean culture that appeared in the episode. For example, lower classmen in college can not call upperclassmen by their names because that’s disrespectful in Korean culture. They have to call them 선배 (Sun bae) to show respect. And they also have to speak to their 선배 with formal speech. However, when the upperclassmen talk to lower classmen or other students in the same grade, they can use informal speech. Therefore, you can see that the hierarchical structure in Korean is very strict, even among students.

I also found a page on facebook that select a conversation from Cheese in the Trap and analyzed it word by word. Below is an excerpt from the analysis.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=555204371354200

** Hong Seol: 용서해주세요. Forgive me.

용서하다 forgive

주세요 ‘주다’ means ‘to give’, however if you use this with a verb it means ‘do something for someone‘.

** Yoo Jung: 안되겠는데 I don't think I can't.

안되다 means that things aren't going well as someone thought

는데 used to illicit a response from the listener, while at the same time expressing the speaker's own surprise or interest. It can be used in situations when the speaker is responding to something (a comment, an observation, etc.

** Hong Seol: 왜요? Why not?

→ 제가 이렇게 열과 성을 다해서... 사과하고 있는데...

I'm giving you a heartfelt and genuine apology... I'm trying to say sorry...

이렇게 like this

열과 성을 다해 expression means heart & soul

~과/와 means "with" 과 If there is a 받침 at the end of the adj/verb stem

와 If there is no 받침 or if the adj/verb stem ends with aㄹin 받침

ps: 받침 is the final consonant which is written in the bottom/final position

사과하다 apologize

고 있다 it's used to describe an action that is going on at this moment

I think I’m learning a lot of Korean words and grammar, but also Korean culture from this tv show, and I will keep watching it.

Over the past two weeks, I have continued to work on the expression of emotions in Malay and linking this back to other concepts I have learned in the past to build upon them. In addition, I have had the interactive children's nursery rhyme songbook and have been using that to record my voice and practice my pronunciation of Malay words as well as my rhythm. Singing can be one of the best ways to improve these skills, and it is also a lighthearted and fun way of practicing and sharing my experience with my language partner, Melisa. One of the most fun meetings with Melisa was this past Friday morning before our SDLC105 class meeting. She made kuih (tiny snacks) and coffee, and provided traditional Malay attire for me and Mehreen (who joined us that day) to wear. We then watched three very interesting Indie films in Malay that discussed problems facing Malaysia today.

The first film involved two travelers meeting on a northbound train and turned into a discussion of the Malaysia outside of Kuala Lumpur and the importance of preservation of the national language of Bahasa Melayu (very timely with our SDLC105 concurrent discussions). English or "Manglish" is more and more influential and widely spoken in Kuala Lumpur and West Malaysia more broadly, and some fear that this has negatively impacted the country and Malaysian people. This also raised the concern that teachers of the national language were less common or appreciated, which was an interesting insight. It was filmed in the very beautiful landscape of Northern Malaysia on the border with Thailand, where Bahasa Melayu is still widely spoken, albeit with a distinct regional accent. The second film focused on the issue of substance addiction and how it is handled or seen in certain communities. The film introduced a group of young Muslim men living together under the direction of a peer who was studying the Quran and seemingly wanted to become an Imam. One of the men was an alcoholic, and the film offered a perspective that, instead of lambasting or ostracizing him on religious grounds for something he may not be able to control or stop right away, there should be a little more open-mindedness about him and his situation by the religious leader. This is of course controversial in the country, as Muslims there are not permitted to drink alcohol, and raises very interesting points on society over the medium of film. The last film we watched centered upon a biracial boy who was half Chinese and half Malay. The boy struggled to understand his identity alongside his peers, who were either all Chinese or all Malay (though there is of course more diversity in Malaysia than this). Seeing the issue of defining race and subsequently adopting certain identities related to this through the eyes of a child was an effective way of raising the issue - and in the end he made friends as well! This issue is of course not limited to Malaysia, though it is interesting to parallel it to the situation in the United States and see where commonalities and differences occur.

All in all, each of the three films offered a perspective on issues society is grappling with in Malaysia and ultimately improved my understanding of the country and its culture more than I had initially expected.

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Our readings and class discussion on the life and death of languages is fascinating  - not least of all because documenting a language and preserving not just its vocabulary, but the distinct perspectives and worldview it carries is essentially a race against the clock. Linguists armed with the ability to transcribe using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) can, much like anthropologists doing fieldwork, gather a wide array of information on the language, but also necessarily must start from ground zero and rely on learning through a common language, a local teacher, etc. in a situation that is ultimately difficult to coordinate and even more difficult to carry through. The clip we watched in class on the Himba people in northern Namibia who see and describe color differently because of their environment is only one of many facets that could be found in other, less commonly spoken languages worldwide that are quickly dying. Globalization and the importance of a Lingua Franca such as English has severely endangered less commonly spoken languages, given that it is no longer necessary or convenient for younger generations to continue to speak these languages and pass them on. Linguists can try their hardest to preserve a language, but they cannot force a generation to continue to speak it or learn it (though this might follow naturally). 

When a language dies, so, too, do its unique cultural insights and legacy more broadly. Though it can be resurrected, so to speak, it also may have lost some of the distinct impressions that it left on the speakers and their outlooks, and could also have some more functional vocabulary holes as well. That said, it certainly can be brought back to life, at least in some sense of the word. The so-called Rosetta Stone, found in 1799, allowed linguists to decipher hieroglyphs and bring back some of this ancient language based on the translations of its script. Though not every language is as fortunate to have an archeological relic such as this, it showcases that clues can be found and pieced together to make larger insights for a language, much like finding disparate pieces of a puzzle and piecing it together to form some image of a completed whole. 

Preserving languages and documenting the sheer linguistic diversity of humans is absolutely essential because it can provide so many insights into how we think, speak, and operate in the world. It was very interesting to learn in class that the Basque language, for instance, is largely unrelated to neighboring languages and closer to what Neanderthals may have spoken. The presence of linguistic "islands" that are outliers in Hungary, Estonia, and Finland is another example of the ways in which language and linguistic diversity can deeply impact a country and its culture. Programs currently in existence, such as the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme and a similar one by National Geographic, draw from endowments equip linguists with funding and give them the ability to undertake these documenting projects, which are themselves of monumental significance to humanity and, as previously mentioned, more and more urgent.

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