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For centuries, Malaysia has been home to a significant amount of cross-cultural societal interaction and influence. As a result, its official language, Bahasa Melayu, retains a great deal of linguistic borrowings from other languages outside of its own language family. Malay is a member of the Austronesian language family, found throughout Southeast Asia as well as in native languages of present-day Taiwan. Perhaps the most sustained influence comes from its neighboring Sino-Tibetan language Chinese simply due to proximity, and one area where I saw this influence almost immediately was in Malay's number structure (i.e. "25" is said as the equivalent of two-ten-five). Beyond this, however, the Chinese influence is somewhat limited and not as present as two other languages are: Arabic and English. This is because modern Malay's origins lie most closely in the Malaccan Sultanate.

Arabic's influence on Malay began in the 15th century following contact with Arab traders in Malacca, an early and very prominent trade hub at the time that featured a Sultanate. This Arabic influence ended up altering Malay's orthography, introducing the Jawi script. Many words and several sounds exist in Malay because of Arabic's influence, e.g. "Salamat" as a greeting term in both Arabic and Malay. The next major linguistic influence, English, came from British colonialism between the 18th and 20th centuries in the region. As a colony, Malaysia became introduced to linguistic loanwords and structures, and, most notably, changed its orthography to a romanization using the same alphabetic script as English. To date, Malay uses a great deal of English terminology (e.g. the name for non-native instruments such as piano and guitar remaining the same in Malay as they are in English), and its linguistic structure is S-V-O like English (and Chinese). 

It is important to recognize these major cultural influences on Malay not just to increase my vocabulary, but also to more deeply understand the processes behind how the language changed and developed over time. Languages are dynamic, and major historical events and cultural developments can have an indelible impact on them. Linguists have to track these changes by being aware of the surrounding historical and cultural influences, which is no small task. Aspects of language such as slang can be difficult to predict or, conversely, come with preexisting cultural connotations, so it is important for linguists to try to remove as many of their own personal biases as possible in assessing neologisms in any given language. English as a lingua franca and the United States as a cultural hegemon have profound reach globally and are contributing to rapid changes in languages everywhere. 

Last week, we learned about house/furniture/appliance related vocabulary words such as bedroom, living room, kitchen, sink, bathtub, bed, vanity, mirror, lighting, fridge, microwave, and more. I was already familiar with a majority of them, but a few of them were words I somewhat knew but never used or heard often. I didn't realize that there were two ways to say sink. A sink in the bathroom is called 세면대, while a sink in the kitchen is called 싱크대. My family tends to just say 싱크, or sink for all the sinks, so I haven't really heard the Korean word for a bathroom sink that much. Another word that I didn't hear often was a full body mirror, which is 전신거울 in Korean. Also I was a bit surprised by the spelling for the Korean word for kitchen, 부엌. I didn't know that the second syllable ended in a ㅋ consonant. We also learned some vocabulary that describes texture like for some surface or skin and sometimes personality depending on the word. The ones that were new to me were the following: 푸석푸석하다 (dry), 꺼끌꺼끌하다 (scratchy), 맨들맨들하다 (smooth/shiny). We then watched a couple videos where Korean YouTubers give an apartment tour. Most of the vocabulary we learned was mentioned in the videos.

This week we talked about Korean food, what a typical meal looks like, and the variety of Korean dishes. We read an article explaining how the author followed Baek Jo Won (a very famous Korean chef)'s 김치찌개, or kimchi stew recipe. It included step by step instructions with some modifications and tips. We also watched a video on this recipe. It was actually Baek Jo Won's video on his YouTube channel. Talking about Korean food made me really miss homecooked Korean food.

I also practiced typing in Korean on my computer. I practiced typing this.

오렌지 립의 성패는 발색에 달렸다. 오렌지 톤의 워터 틴트로 입술 톤을 정돈하고, 립 펜슬로 입술 안쪽부터 꼼꼼히 덧발라 발색을 높인다. 마지막에 같은 색상의 아이섀도를 가볍게 찍어 바르면 발색은 물론 매트한 텍스처를 오래 지속시킬 수 있다. 여기에 여름에 돋보이는 아쿠아 블루 네일로 청량한 기운을 더할 것. 이때 한 손가락에만 페인트처럼 쨍한 녹색으로 포인트를주는 것도 좋은 방법이다.

Typing this took a very long time. Since I don't have the Hangul letters on my keyboard, it was really difficult because I didn't know which key was which. On a website called 10fastfingers, I got 13 WPM, which is really slow. Then on another day, I tried using this website. https://tadaktadak.co.kr/taja/sentence.html

You type sentence by sentence. This one feels like a game because if your accuracy is off, then your health goes down. Hopefully, this will help me become faster at typing in Korean.

Also during fall break, I decided to read more Korean webtoons, so I practice reading Korean even more. The webtoons are very interesting and fun to read, so I think it's a great idea for anyone who wants to practice reading in Korean more.

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These past two weeks have been hectic because of midterms and I’ve had to reschedule both of my sessions for different times. Nevertheless, we had productive classes in which we went over vocabulary, sentence formation (subject (sim) + verb (gis)+ object (tesabī)), and further verb conjugations in Ge’ez and Amharic. We touched on some prepositions as well (ኀበ: habe: to). 

Some example sentences we made were:

1 word commands

ነዓ: ne’a: come (masc, sing)

ንዒ: ni’ī: come (fem, sing)

ንዑ: ni’u: come (plural, masc/neutral)

ሑር: hur: walk/go (masc, sing)

ሑሪ:hurī: walk/go (fem, sing)

ሑሩ: huru: walk/go (plural, masc/neutral)

ይእቲ + ሖረት +ኀበ +ቤተ ትምህርት: she + went/walked + to + school

I also watched a movie in Amharic this weekend called Enchained. It was very dense Amharic in that you had to be paying very close attention to keep up with the plot. Also, it was based in the countryside where it is less modernized and thus some ways of life and vocabulary that goes along with it were very new to me. I still really enjoyed the movie because it also featured some of Church hymns. One of the characters was a Mergieta who is a teacher of hymnology. He rode a bike and had a very calm spirit! He was featured singing some of the most beautiful Church hymns as he carried out his day and as he taught his students. 

Another character which I loved was the wife of the protagonist who was so strong. At the end of the movie, even though her husband wronged her through adultery with another man’s wife she still saved him from the hands of the antagonist. The antagonist was a belligerent but handsome man who went around with a gun killing people who crossed him. He had two friends that were his sidekicks that were a bit silly and funny. Unfortunately one of them died protecting him and the other died betraying him. 

I also listened to two sermons in Amharic last week which were much easier to follow since I was familiar with the subject matter. The speaker was really funny so I was able to learn some cultural jokes from it. 

I am continuing with reading Amharic and Ge’ez texts. One that I am reading now is an excerpt from a book on the current church season: the Season of the Flower or the exile of the Holy Family from Egypt. I also tried my hand at another translation in Ge’ez and shared it with my language partner.

As the Groom rejoices in Paradise, he came down

The flowers were shown in the time which He willed

In your miracles, O Virgin, one greatly rejoices

For He lightens for sinners the heavy load of sadness

For from you Joy was born

According to the history of Korean language, it is hard to say which language family Korean language belongs to, because its origins are obscure. There are many theories about the origin and affiliation of the Korean language. Korean language is commonly speak in North Korea and South Korea. These two, Southern and Northern, have different theories about the origins and affiliation of the Korean language.  Some people believe that it belongs to the Altai language family, while others believe that it belongs to the Japanese language family. However, the mainstream view is that it belongs to an isolated language family, because its grammar is not like any other language. What makes it so hard to classify what language family does Korean language belong to is its long history of being contacting with and influencing by Chinese and Japanese.

Before the 15th century, the Korean language was written only in Chinese characters. Since Korean and Chinese are completely different languages, it is not easy to record Korean with Chinese characters, and only the Korean noble class can learn Chinese characters, and the common people are illiterate. The Korean king Sejong king (세종대왕) think Korean on north Korea following the development of the nation, and even will be of great influence to their offspring, so he decided to have to create a simple and easy for our national phonetic writing. And in 1443 created the Korean alphabet used by December, known as the "after training the people." (훈민정음), meaning "to teach people in the correct pinyin".

In the process of learning Korean, I found many similarities between Korean and Chinese as well as Korean culture and Chinese culture. Many words in Korean sound similar or even identical to Chinese. The Korean flag's idea of tai chi and the eight diagrams comes from the Chinese book of changes. The principles of harmony, symmetry, balance, circulation and stability represent the Chinese nation's profound reflection on the universe and life. The Korean peninsula has long been influenced by Chinese culture, and the south Korean flag reflects this influence. Overall, the south Korean flag is round on the outside, firm on the outside but soft on the inside, Yin and Yang are in harmony, reflecting the inclusive spirit and simple dialectic thought of ancient Chinese culture. Korean cuisine is also partly influenced by China. Korean cuisine is greatly influenced by China in terms of ingredients, ingredients and tableware. The art of architecture created by the Korean people has always had the same aesthetic concepts, themes, techniques and forms as the art of neighboring China and Japan.

The past two weeks have focused on grammatical situations involving accusative and nominative sentences. Ironically, I have no idea what those two things mean in English, and know them purely by examples given in Russian, which made it tough to describe to my language partner what exactly I was interested in learning. We learned new words such as shey, ze, ha, et, which all seem to mean this/that/definition depending on the context. My partner struggled a lot with finding an english counterpart to each of these words, and I don't blame her. One of the most interesting things that I have found about learning a foreign language is how much it shows you how little you understand your mother tongue. I think learning a language definitely has a progression from perfect understanding of what you are studying to just knowing how to say things without thinking about it, like how a native speaker learns. I remember a couple years ago I could probably explain what exactly the chinese word 了 means but know I would really have to think hard about how to explain it, instead I just use it when it sounds right. Same with languages that have case/gender endings like Russian. The progression from actively thinking about a verb's declension to just saying what you think is right is really important and I think defines what is almost paradoxically simultaneous progression and regression.

This weekend I plan on starting to learn the Hebrew Aleph-bet. The reason I waited so long was I didn't want to confuse it with the arabic alphabet that I was learning at the beginning of the semester. Also it isn't something that is as important to me as proper pronunciation and fluidity, and not something that I really need to practice with my language partner. I anticipate it being somewhere in the middle in terms of difficulty between cyrillic and arabic. 

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For the past two weeks, I’ve worked to improve my reading, vocabulary, and grammar. I’ve learned numerous historical facts and the mentioned aspects that I want to improve on by reading several articles.

One of the articles that I read talks about “Hangul Day”, a holiday mandated by the government to celebrate the birth of hangul. I learned that this day was called “Ga Gya Nal”, a play on the combination of Korean consonants and vowels. This title was used until 1928, when Koreans decided to call it “Hangul Day”. I did not understand many of the vocabulary words in this article because the words were not intuitive. Rather, they were specific words coined by the government. My difficulties in learning the words also caused me to slow down in reading. I had to break the article down into several paragraphs so that I can understand every detail.

I read another article about “Hoon Min Jung Eum”, a holiday that commemorates the achievements of King Sejong. I was very interested in King Sejong for quite some time, so I was very engaged with the material. I learned that this holiday is also called “Teacher Day” because Koreans consider King Sejong to be the greatest teacher for inventing hangul. I also learned that hangul used to have 28 characters, but 4 were removed for simplicity. I also realized that the reason hangul is so easy to learn was because it was designed for the masses. The illiteracy rate in Joseon (ancient Korea) was almost 0%, so the commoners needed an easy form of reading, writing, and speaking. I’m very proud that Korea had such a leader that was willing to improve the livelihood of his people through the invention of such a scientific form of language.

After reading the articles, I learned to appropriately use vowels in my writing. Hangul has several combinations of consonants and vowels that produce the same sound but mean different things. The word “de” is not only used when an individual is talking about his or her past, but also when he or she is delivering a message from another person. The word “deun” is used when an individual is making a choice between alternatives. The word “dun” is used when an individual is talking about his or her past. Although I already knew when to use these words through constant practice and intuition, I was intrigued by the specific grammar rules. Learning specific grammar rules helps to keep my knowledge of hangul grounded.

For the week before fall break, Kate and I learned vocabs and expressions about our rooms. We had a theme as a room tour, and we started by looking at some vocabs related to furniture and rooms, such as chairs and living room. We also learned some words that are used to describe the surface or the texture of furniture, such as smooth or sandy. After this, we watched a few clips of Korean room tour with both Korean subtitles. It was really fun to know more about how Koreans decorate their house while meeting new vocabs that we just learned.

This week, since it’s right after fall break, I mentioned that I want to learn more about Korean food. This is my Task 1 and 5, and we as a group love to discuss food together. We had a handout with words of food including different sauces, popular soups and stew, and Korean side dishes, etc. We have a printed-out recipe of kimchi jjigae in Korean from online, and we read through the steps and encountered more words such as spoons and cups. As we read through the recipe, we also got more familiar with the vocabs of food, so we started watching a Korean chief’s channel on YouTube. It turned out to be the same channel I talked about in my cultural post, but this time I watched it only with Korean subtitles. I could understand more than eighty percent of the video with a little help from Jenna. After this lesson, I know a lot more vocabs for Korean food as well as the differences between the soy sauces they use. I also know more kinds of Korean food and how Koreans like to have it by discussing with Jenna and Kate.

Hebrew is part of the semitic language family, so it shares many similarities with the most often spoken modern semitic language, arabic. One of the biggest similarities I have noticed while studying both languages is how the basic posessive works. In Hebrew, you put the word "sheli" after the object that you possess, but occasionally it can be shortened to just "i" as in "achi:" ach (bro) and i (of mine). Arabic works similarly , by placing a "i" after the possessed object, such as in ach which is brother just like in hebrew. Speaking of brothers, familal nouns tend to be the most ancient in any language, so it makes sense that hebrew and arabic share many of their familial words, such as brother, sister, father. Going back to the modern era, hebrew takes quite a few slang loanwords from arabic, although I am not sure whether this is truly because of the shared linguistic family tree or more a product of geopolitics in the region. Words like yallah (lets go) and majnun (crazy) are both arabic words but used constantly in Israel, in fact it would sound kind of weird to say the hebrew versions of those words.

105 Reflection 5:

Do some preliminary research on what interests you about the target culture and describe how this topic relates to language. Do you need any special vocabulary or linguistic knowledge to engage this topic? If so, have you included objectives in your learning plan to engage this topic?

    What interests me about my target culture is the beautiful antiquity of it. The Ge’ez culture if it can be referred to as that is mainly preserved in religious scripts in the modern day. Although we know it was a language for a large empire in East Africa, now it is the mother of many cultures and tribes. Two of which I am very familiar with which are the Tigrigna and Amhara cultures. Others include the Tigre and Tigray cultures. 

    I hope to attend more annual feasts and holidays of the Church in order to get exposure to a wide range of literature and poetry of those different holidays. I can do this by traveling to different churches in the area and out of state too. Each Church celebrates a unique holiday based on their patron saint and with each holiday there is a unique set of hymns and literature that is shared. 

Also, my language partner has prepared lists of vocabulary words that I would need to directly interact with religious texts. This has been really helpful!

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October 6th

110 Reflection 3:

This week in class with my language partner, I was able to get down the simple past conjugations for verbs. The first one that you learned is for third person, singular, masculine conjugation. This is the first form of the verbs in Ge’ez. I’m not exactly sure how to refer to that in the grammatical sense but I believe it is the equivalent of the “infinitive” form — the form with which the verb is primarily referred to as. An example is the verb “to sleep”, in Ge’ez it is deqese, which means “he slept”. This is the past, third person, singular, masculine form of the verb but it is the simplest way to refer to it and all verbs follow this nomenclature. In spanish it would be dormir and you know it is the infinitive form because of the -ir (-ar,-er in other verbs) ending or morpheme. The ending, “se” [sæ], which is the first character out of 7 variants of the “s” is what indicates the gender and plurality. The sound for the first character is always consonant + [æ]. The second is consonant + [u]....

3rd: + [i]

4th: + [a]

5th: + [e]

6th: + [ɘ] or no vowel depending on where it falls in the syllable

7th: + [o] or [ɔ]

This is the transliteration standard that we (our ‘Resource & Translation’ team at church) created to serve for the documents we work with. We have two vowel families አ and ዐ (These characters are both pronounced [a] in Ge’ez but [æ] and [a] with what seems to be more voicing but I’m not sure what the secondary manner difference is for this one)

I really like relearning mechanics of linguistics along side my language learning process because it really helps the information cement into my mind. Being able to write the building blocks of our character system in IPA is really interesting. The reason why we don’t use IPA is because not many people know it and there is already a standard way that people transliterate their own personal messages so we create resources that go by that standard rather than the official one. It is a compromise between the benefits and disadvantages of each system.

Going back to the original lesson, once you know the verb in its “infinitive” form you learn how to conjugate it 9 others ways, one for each pronoun. I will write down each pronoun with the ending for the verb. My professor indicated to me that the endings for 3rd person pronouns (all except for she) can change as verbs change. The consonant may change but it will still be the same variant of the character (the vowel part). 

1st Person: 

ane + verb + [ku] 

nihne + verb + [næ]

2nd Person:

ante + verb + [kæ]

anti + verb + [ki]

antimu + verb + [kɘmu]

antin + verb + [kɘn]

3rd Person:

wi’itu + verb + [ræ]

yi’iti + verb + [t] (voiced)

wi’itomu  + verb + [ru]

wi’iton + verb + [ra]

Moving forward I think I will learn the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs in Ge’ez because Qesis has mentioned that. Additionally, I will learn more conjugations and declensions. We have already begun talking about inflections like prefixes and suffixes. In Ge’ez prefix is [baɘd] and suffix is [mɘlal).

This past weekend we celebrated the feast of the Cross (Mesqel). I got to attend the celebrations at two different churches that weekend. This was good for me because the celebrations are uniform across Eritrean and Ethiopian Tewahdo Orthodox Churches. Thus it helped me really practice hearing the hymns and the poetry. Before attending, I worked on translating the two main hymns of the festival. I did so with the help of my clerical brothers (deacons). They are called the MilTan and Isme le-Alem. They are sung repeatedly during feast and are in Ge’ez. They are beautiful. This was my motivation in wanting to translating them. I also wanted to share them with others that don’t know the meaning but want to participate.

These are the finalized translations on them:

During the Damera | Bonfire Procession of the Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross

1. Mesqel Isme Le-alem: 

መስቀል አብርሐ በከዋክብት አሠርገወ ሰማየ፤ እምኩሉሰ ፀሐየ አርአየ፡፡ 

Mesqel abriha be-kewakibt asergewe semaye; im-kuluse tsehaye araye.

The Cross shined within the stars and adorned the sky; it was shining brighter than the sun. 

2. Mesqel MilTan: 

ሃሌ ሉያ ይቤሎሙ ኢየሱስ፡ ለአይሁድ፡ እመኑ ብየ፡ ወእመኑ በአቡየ፡ ዮምሰ ለእሊአየ፡ አበርህ በመስቀልየ።

Halie luya, yibielomu Īyesus, le-ayhud, imenu Biye, we-imenu be-Abuye, yom’se le’ilī’aye, aberih be-Mesqeliye.

Hallelujah, Jesus says to the Jews, believe in Me, and believe in my Father, today I will shine My Cross on my people.

Another resource I used was other translated versions of these in the Liturgy books that we have but I found that they were confusing. Asking people that knew the context helped me to translate the real meaning. I will give an example of how the translations of the first hymn developed as I got new information:

1. The Cross shined with stars it adorned the sky; the sun shone on all.
2. The Cross shined and had the heavens, embroidered with stars of all the sun is seen. 
   1. This is the translation that is in the Liturgy powerpoint.
3. The cross was shown in structure of stars in sky and shined more than the sun.
   1. This is the translation that is in the Liturgy book.
4. The Cross shined with stars it adorned the sky; the sun [of righteousness who is Jesus Christ] shone the most.
5. The Cross shined within the stars and adorned the sky; it was shining brighter than the sun. 

It is interesting to see the different versions. It may be because of a lack of knowledge of Ge’ez and at the same time the religious context of the works. The fourth translation shows a possible lack of understanding between who the subject of the line is referring to. It also has to do with the word choice. For example, the choice between embroidered and adorned. These don’t make a huge impact on the whole meaning of line.

I am excited to continue translating with my language partner and create new phrases so that it will help me view them also from a writer's eye instead of just a reader's perspective.

Here is a picture of the clergy at a church in Houston singing these hymns. 

This past week I had my first session with my language partner. Before starting with Qesis Moges, I was able to begin my reading schedule in my dual Amharic and Ge’ez book and exposure to listening content. I also found out that I will be teaching basics of Amharic to my Sunday school class in the new curriculum for the Ge’ez new year. After speaking with Qesis, we decided to focus more on Ge’ez and utilize Amharic to teach the material and be a medium between Ge’ez and English. 

In our first lesson, we went over cognates between Ge’ez, Amharic, and Tigrigna and basic parts of speech (pronouns, verbs, adjectives and nouns). A fun fact that I learned is that Ge’ez also has some borrowed words (loan words) from Greek like the words for deacon, bishop (Papas), and episcopal. We talked over all about how verbs are conjugated. Then we dove deeper into pronouns. Ge’ez has 10 pronouns: 

1st Person: 

ane: I (singular, neutral)

nihne: we (plural, neutral)

2nd Person:

ante: you (singular, masculine)

anti: you (singular, feminine)

antimu: you all (plural, masculine, or neutral)

antin: you all (plural, feminine)

3rd Person:

wi’itu: he

yi’iti: she

wi’itomu: they (masculine or neutral)

wi’iton: they (feminine)

Each pronoun has a different conjugation that is gender and plurality specific which is different from English. Though I haven’t formally learned this yet, I know that the endings of these pronouns transfer to different things. Meaning, the -omu, -on, -ti, -te, -ne, etc are morphemes. 

I am excited to learn how to change the general knowledge that I use to gage what different texts are saying into organized knowledge so my reading is not guess work. Learning these structured mechanisms is really interesting and I can apply them almost immediately.

So far, I think a really good way for me to get Ge’ez exposure is simply attending church services and listening to the Ge’ez scriptures being read and hymns being sung. For different Church holidays, I have begun writing down hymns and translating them. 

I appreciate that my language partner has ample knowledge about these texts and services because not only is the language important but the culture and contexts of the hymns. They each have a story behind them that can enhance the meaning of each word. For example, the verb berhe, which means to light up, may mean something way more significant if the person doing the action is God. The words can have double or triple meaning with different contexts because essentially the majority of examples I will look at are pieces of poetry not prose.

The prose that I will be looking at is biographical or historical. I presume that it will be more straightforward than the poetry. Like I said, I will primarily be using a dual Amharic and Ge’ez book called the Miracles of St Mary. 

Next week we will go over more vocabulary that Qesis has prepared for me that will be helpful for my general study.

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The article mentioned pragmatics and it has great variations among societies, cultures and etc. For example, Japanese learners of English would use “I’m sorry” to convey their gratitude to a person who is in high status, while this would cause misunderstanding by native speakers since this actually means apologize in most of situations. This reminded me an experience when I was in an international school and a friend of mine is Germany. One time we were waiting for the bus, and we were talking about the tests we took the other day. She told me that she failed the grammar test, and I replied “oh, I’m sorry”. What I want to convey is I feel sorry for her or I am sorry to hear that, but she did not get the meaning (I guess Germany don’t use “I’m sorry” to convey this kind of meaning), so she asked me with surprise: “Why you are sorry? What did you do? It is not your fault that I failed a test!” I did not know how to explain it to her, and that was the first time I realized how pragmatics might be different across cultures. Also, in Turkish, they like to use a short sentence “Kolay gelsin”, which means “may it be easy for you”. They use it every day everywhere, they would say it to sanitation worker or friend preparing an exam or etc. But in Chinese there is no such expression, because we would use “thank you” to sanitation worker and “加油” (similar to “go for it” in English, but not exactly the same meaning) to friend preparing for exams. I feel like there is no such expression in English either.