Learning a foreign Language

           I think that when learning a new language, it could sometimes be a little intimidating because of how different a language can be to your fist language. Many say it is difficult and some may say it is easy, but everyone learns at a different pace so comparing one-self to another is irrelevant and will only discourage you and make you feel like you aren't learning and eventually you'll start doubting yourself. I'm not writing this to discourage you or tell you how hard learning a language could be but instead encourage those who may want to learn a language or may be already learning a language as well as tell you about some obstacles you may face when learning a foreign language. In a way this is also a way to encourage myself to not give up on the languages I want to learn and to stop being so negative!  And since i'm currently learning a foreign language (Japanese) and plan on learning others as well, I'll also input some of the things that i think may be difficult when learning a new language.

               In this first article that I read, Is Learning a Language Difficult? It spoke about learning a new language and how people think when learning a foreign language such as "It's impossible" or "it's too hard". When reading this article I fell guilty to some of the examples they gave as to why some people may think learning a new language is difficult. One of the examples that David gave was the limiting beliefs some may have like "I'm not smart enough", you have to have more confidence when learning a new language. Trust me, I know all too well about that, i'm still working on it. It's okay to may mistakes, like some may say " Through trial and error is the best way to learn". I loved all the people David interviewed too because they all had a similar reason as to why they believe learning a language is not difficult but also gave advice on to how it could be easier on you. Of course learning a language isn't easy enough for everyone to learn but is easy to learn for those who are willing to put in the work to learning a new language. Hardwork will never fail, in the long run your perseverance will show when you start speaking the language. Although it may not be as fast as you'd like, it will show! Also in this article, one of the things I find a difficult obstacle when learning a language is the pronunciation. Susanna Zaraysky briefly touched upon that subject by saying, " pronunciation can be difficult if one is not used to new sounds and listening carefully but once the language learner gets used to learning how to listen this barrier melts away." And i totally agree with her! I'm learning Japanese and one of the things I would sometimes have trouble with was the sounds of different words mixed together (since we didn't have those sounds mixed together in English), I would get tough twisted too! but with time, as I would hear the professor pronounce it, I got better at speaking as well as listening to the different pronunciations of words. I found this really cool video below show different pronunciations different language had of a specific word.

     Cool right?! He has a lot of other videos that are like this so if you liked this you could check out his other videos as well that are related to this as well right here. In this next article (10 most common mistakes) It talks about some mistakes we may make when learning a new language as well as advice on how you could fix it. I thought all of those were right on the mark, but out of those 10, the most common ones I've seen with people and personally have trouble with are number 2. a single method, 4. waiting too long before speaking, 5. not listening enough, 8. translating concepts directly and of course 10. lack of confidence. tarting with number 2, I've seen this so much in my foreign language classes and have experienced this myself as well. Since we do have a textbook we use for the entire year (both semesters) we sometimes limit ourselves to only using the book instead of going out of our way to finding new ways to learn the language. I think one of the good points they brought up was when learning a language you should "try different methods to use so you develop a habit of approaching the language in various ways." Since we are so accustomed to our textbooks we (or maybe it's just me) sometimes forget that we have many other resources to help with learning new material. Numbers 4 and 5 are similar because they are equally important. You should never be embarrassed to speak out because of how you may sound of pronounce a word, speaking is a very important part of learning the language and it is what helps you communicate with people. The more you speak the more comfortable you become when speaking and your pronunciation will slowly get better with it. Now this ties in with number 5 because it is equally as important to develop your listening skills so you understand what others are saying. I really helps listening to others speak in the language you are speaking because you start to develop your listening skills as well as learn how others pronounce works and construct sentences and get a sense of how a conversation should 'flow'. 

 As for number 8. translating concept directly, that is one of the things I have the most trouble with and as well as others who I have talked too. Wanting to directly translate something from English can many times be frustrating because sometimes you can;t translate some words or expressions directly. Or even using some words you need in English such as 'I' or 'you' are not necessarily needed to be spoken because they will sound forced or awkward. This is very true in Japanese because I spoke to my teacher not to long ago and she told me that a lot of her students want to use(or use) the word 'watashi' which is 'I' in Japanese, in the beginning of every sentence, but she said it wasn't necessary for them to do so because it sounds very forced or an unnatural way of speaking. The reasoning behind this is because in English we say 'I went to... I did this ...... I want... etc but in Japanese after you say 'I' in your first sentence you don't have to say it again since the speaker knows you are talking about yourself. Also when translating you should get into the groove of not thinking in English because that's how you start to want to translate directly, whereas if you think about it in the language you are learning, not only are you developing thinking skills but you will learn to translate faster instead of thinking about it in English and then translating into a different language making room for translating errors and slowing you down by thinking about if it's right or not. 

            Now lastly for number 10. Lack of confidence, It speaks for itself. Have more confidence! You'll be surprised what a little confidence can do for you when learning a language. I still have trouble with this because sometimes I have those day where I just pity myself(shame on me!) but I am getting better at it and of course some days are better than others. Just remember, don't compare yourself to others, some people just digest language very well, whereas others have a little bit more trouble remembering and learning language. My key to learning is working hard, studying, and not giving up! Your perseverance will not cheat you because if you put in the hard work, you will in return get results.

 

                        -Karen :)

Unknown world of Spanish slang

So for this Blog post i decided to introduce the different lexical (or jargon) words that I and my family use within our family. So since I speak Spanish to my parents and family members, most of the words I describe will be in Spanish. I picked words that may be known to Spanish speakers but if you are a foreigner learning Spanish as a second language, you wouldn't be taught this in school, so you would probably learn them while having a conversation with a native speaker. Although at first you'll get confused and will probably have to ask them what that word means, you'll slowly get the hang of it and will understand what it means when other speakers use it. So to start it off I wanted to show you this short video that translates some Spanish sayings into English literally so a lot of the translations don't make sense because they are translating the words the the meaning so I found it really funny since I knew what they were talking about. The video is called : 'If Spanish sayings were said in English'. So how was it!? Funny right! It was really interesting because I've heard some of my family members use some of the sayings used in the video. Now since a lot of the words i'll be introducing here are slang words or might not be translatable, I'll try my best to translate the words to the best of my ability so you can understand what it means and how it can be used. Also, these words are used mostly with people you trust and get along with so you wouldn't really say these with people you just meet.  Now then, let's get started! The first word is 'greñuda' to sound it out 'gre' as in great, 'ñu' as in new, and 'da' as in duh but like dah instead of the 'u' in duh (if that makes sense). When someone uses the word 'greñuda' they will be referring to how someone looks but mostly about someones hair. I could mean ' she isn't put together', or it could mean her hair is all over the place (again, not put together). For example, when someone wakes up and they have bed hair and go out like that without brushing their hair you can say 'ella esta greñuda' (if it's a guy you say el esta greñudo). So i could say that about myself as well and call may self 'greñuda', meaning my hair is a mess. You would say this with family or friends, not so much with strangers since they don't know you as well, but it could still be used. I think it is a set expression since if you just say the word 'greñuda' Spanish speakers should know what it means. There are multiple way of saying it in a sentence since you could also use it with animals. It could be a reason to do something like i could say,"the dog esta greñudo, we should wash him". Now the 2nd word is 'paspusia', pa as in pause, s as in snake, pu as in pooh, si as in see, and a as in ah. 'Paspusia' means to be slow. For example if someone is walking in front of me and they are walking slow i can say to my friend 'ella es paspusia' (she is walking slow; lit. translation is: she is slow). So this can be used when another person is slow at doing something or are just taking their time doing it or finishing it. And i don't mean as in they are slow at learning something but they are taking forever to do something or finish something.
 
Now the 3rd word is 'pinchurrienta (pinchurriento)', pin as in pin, chur as in  churro, r as in rat, i as in the letter e, en as in the letter n, and to as in toe. It means to not be fond of or like something. So, say i was out looking to buy a birthday cake and my mom shows me one i didn't like i would say, "esta pinchurriento" (I don't really like it; it's not really to my liking). So it's a fixed expression with multiple ways of using it to say you don't really like something or when talking about people it could be meant in a bad way. So this is definitely only used with people you get along with or know like family and friends. Next is the word 'Conchuda' (for describing guys add the 'o' instead of the 'a' at the end). co as in coat, n as is nose, chu as is chew, and da as in duh but instead of the 'u' in the middle replace it with 'a' as in dah. So this means that the person someone is describing is someone that doesn't pay attention or she/he is a person that doesn't care about something he/she is doing. For example i could be out with a friend eating somewhere and the table next to us there is a mother and daughter eating together. So while the mother is trying to talk to her daughter, the daughter is on her phone with headphones in not listening to the mother speak, i could say 'que conchuda' which means, wow she doesn't care or wow she's not paying attention to her mother, how rude. it could also be used in a classroom where the teacher is teaching the class and speaking while a student isn't paying attention to the lecture. It's not a fix expression because it has other meanings too, you just have to pay attention to context. So instead of conchuda you could also say concha with means the same thing but you would say 'se haste concha' she acts dumb, like she doesn't understand as an excuse to not pay attention (or acting clueless). But the word concha also means a type of pastry bread in spanish or it could be a shorter name of a long name. Example could be the name Alexandra but she could go as Alex. So the name in Spanish is Concepcion and could be known as Concha.

           Now the 5th word is 'garrero', gar as in guard, re as in red, and ro as in rodeo. It means clothes or junk/stuff you have. So if i have clothes lying around my room and my mom comes in, she could say "recoge tu garrero" which would mean pick up your stuff (or clean your room) so you just have to pay attention to context to know that the other person means. it could mean junk as well. Like " wow look at all your junk", 'mira tu garrero'. Now the 6th word is more of a phrase and it is 'no manches' no as is no, manch as in munch but with an 'a' instead of the 'u', and es as especially. It means like 'you gotta be kidding me'. So if i drop a glass cup on the ground and it breaks, the other person can say "no manches" which is "come on man, you gotta be kidding me". This is a lot harder to translate into english because you don't really have a word for that but the closest I could think of was 'you gotta be kidding me'. And it doesn't have to be in an angry or bad context, it could be joking around but you just have to pay attention to the tone and the way they say it. It's not a fixed expression since if you translate it literally it translates to 'don't get something dirty; don't stain something'. The 7th word is also a phrase and is 'que mala onda' que as in cake, ma as in mama, la as in laugh, o as in Olivia, n as in neck, and da as in dah. It means ' this sucks, or shes mean or shes not nice. Depends on how you use it but you understand it's something that made you sad, upset or angry. So as an example, I could be eating at the dinner table having dessert but my brother eats the last bite of pie, i could say 'que mala onda' which could be that sucks, or so mean you aren't sharing etc. So it's not a fixed expression because you just have to pay attention to tone and context.

Now for the last word, it is a word I kind of made up when I was younger to describe the hair knots my dog would get when it would grow long. I didn't know how say the word in English or Spanish so I just went with the feeling I felt it could be called. So the word is 'ponchos', pon as in Pontiac, and chos as in chose. Don't ask me how i got Ponchos from hair knots but it stuck with me and my family, so if my family says ponchos, now we know they are referring to a dogs hair knots. Well I hope you enjoyed and learned some new words or phrases from this blog. Hope it wasn't too long or boring. :) Lastly I'm putting up a link to a video similar to the the first one I put up in the beginning because i found it to be interesting since there are some words and phrases that are hard to translate or just don't know how to. In the video it just list some words that don't have a translation to English. It's called 'Spanish words that don't exist in English'. Hope you enjoy!

Language Family Tree

How many languages are out there? How did Language come about? These are just a few questions of many that linguists ask and debate about. I watched a video called How Languages evolve and it spoke about how language has evolved over the generations and one of the topics they covered was the origin of language. This topic even today is debated amongst many people because we haven't truly discovered how language came about. So their (Alex G) away of explaining this was by going back to the Biblical story of 'The Tower of Babel'. This was meant to explain the origins of different languages. The word 'Babel' means the 'gate of God' but in the book of Genesis it's mentioned as 'The City and Its tower'.  To summarize the story, it claims that after the flood the people started to migrate east and when they settled they started to build a city that would lead to heaven and let them go anywhere they wanted in the world. And the reason this was possible was because they all spoke the one (same) language thus being able to build together, they could communicate with each other making the impossible possible back then. So then when god saw what they were doing he split them up making them unable to understand each other, which lead to the discontinuation of the Tower. Since the people no longer understood each other, those who did migrated to different areas to create their own tribe and city. But from those tribes, they split into even more smaller tribes and migrated away to live in their own land. After being isolated from one another for so long they started to talk differently or use different dialects. The reason behind this was they were living in different environments, with different neighbors, different food, and different climate. They had to adapt to everything thing that were foreign to them so eventually creating a different Lagrange. Now this is where the 'Language Family Trees' come in.  In the video it briefly talks about Language Family trees and how many of the languages we have today can be traced into a smaller number of languages. An example they gave was the language Chinese; Chinese is classified as a single language but it could be broken down into different dialects and other "types" of Chinese like Mandarin or Cantonese(there are many more). This could be seen in many other languages, you just have to pay close attention and listen. Since I speak Spanish,
I see a lot of comparison with other countries like Spain, Cuba etc. This is especially true when listening to Portuguese, I don't understand it but there are some words that sound very similar to Spanish that I can guess what it means.  This was so fascinating to me because illustrating it as a Language tree made it so much more easier to understand the concept of how one root had branches and from those were even smaller ones and from there it would just keep on growing. I just thought it was genius to explain the evolution of language and how far it has come through this tree. Although his video was short, it explained and taught me may things; Some I may have already known but it made me see them in a different light. We may never truly know the origin of Language or how language came about but just knowing that language is growing and expanding into this strong tree is comforting because you can never forget or get rid on your roots that created what you have today.

Making a word 'real'

In the video "What makes a word real", It talks about the many ways people view the English language and how some may react when adding new words into the dictionary. And as the titles states, they also cover the debate on what makes a word 'real'. The concept of making a word is interesting in itself but actually getting a word to catch on and be spoken by others is just fascinating. Who gets to choose what words get to be considered a 'real word', or better yet who decides what gets put into the dictionary as well as putting down the meaning and making it a 'real' word.

This is where the speaker in the video asks the audience how many of them  look to see who edits the dictionary's they use.  Not many raised up their hand, and it wasn't much of a shock that many didn't check. What surprised me was that I had never thought of looking up the editors of the dictionary whether it be online or by book and it just kind of shocked me because I remembered looking up a word before and when finding the meaning of the word I never questioned it, I just went on with my life like nothing. That question really hit me, it brought curiosity to me about how the editors made the decisions when adding a new word into the dictionary. For example the word 'selfie' was not a 'real' word until many people started to use it. Even if the word sounded weird, when spoken, people knew the meaning behind it and slowly you started to heard it being used often when out-and-about. That's where the debate comes in, does a word get recognized as a 'real' word if it is spoken enough times?   Anne Curzan is the speaker in this video and throughout the video when speaking she brought up her class and how for in the beginning of every class she has her students teach her two new slang words, such as the examples adorkable and hangry (which I am guilty of using [hangry]). That's where you could ask yourself do the slang words kids make up have influence on making them part of our language? I believe so, like with the word 'selfie' or the word 'bae' they were words people said many times even though it wasn't necessarily a 'real' word but people understood the meaning of it and knew what you were talking about which soon was spoken so much that it was added into the dictionary and considered a 'real' word. So going back to the main point, the editors, when adding words they are always looking out for words that may be spreading and may be catching on with many people. 
So I guess what I took from this was that if many people start using a word that isn't in the dictionary but are using a lot, it can be reconsidered as a word to be added in our vocabulary and also be acknowledged as a 'real word'.

Culture Hidden in Language

The Article that I chose was titled : 'Lost in Translation' by Lera Boroditsky. This article is about the relationship between language and culture and how it affects how we think and do things differently because of our language. This article was very insightful by giving different examples of why we think or do things differently because of the language we speak. One of the examples they gave was about the story of Humpty Dumpty and how cultures may have to translate the story in a different way to be understood by those who speak different languages. It was very interesting to see the different examples of verbs having to be used to just explain 'Humpty Dumpty sat on a...". I had never really though about how different a story could be when translated, and by that I mean the story is the same but because it is translated to be understood by a certain language it could be interpreted differently and just sound different all together. Another point that struck out to me was " they inadvertently also learn a new way of looking at the world"(when learning a language), I related this to myself since I am bilingual and speak 2 languages fluently (English and Spanish; learning French[4yrs] and Japanese[1 1/2]). I would have to agree with this statement because since I have the knowledge of different languages I tend to indulge myself into the culture of the Language where it is spoken. Once I have some knowledge of the cultures it gives me an insight of how different we view and do things differently. For example, in Japan when meeting people you bow as a sign of respect, where as in America you don't bow but instead you could handshake and just say hello.
Another statement that the article mentioned was "When bilingual people switch from one language to another they start thinking differently.." and as a bilingual person myself I would have to say it's not entirely true. Yes, you learn how native speakers think and gives you knowledge of the culture and how things are but I think it also depends on the environment you are in. For example, if I was in Japan and I was speaking English to a native speaker there, I wouldn't start to think differently because of the fact I am in Japan (even if I'm speaking English) and they have different rules like I had mentioned before with the Bowing. This again could be a another example; If I am meeting someone in Japan for some kind of business I would bow and greet them and if by chance they spoke English to me I would still bow to them because that is their custom there and even if I switched to speaking English I would still do customs they have in Japan since I am there. Now back to what I was saying in the beginning of this, I just think that it depends in the situation given at the time that will distinguish how you think when switching Languages. This especially is true when learning a new language, it's easier if you think in the language you are learning than to think in your native language and then translate over to the language being learned. In general I love learning about different Languages and Cultures so I enjoyed reading this article and learning about their point of view they had about Language and Culture. This article had many more points not mentioned here so I would highly recommend this to others to read especially if you are interested in the connection/debate between Language and Culture.

Blog Introduction!

Hello! My name is Karen Gonzalez and I am 20yrs old.  I have many interests but one of them is Photography! I love photography, I mostly do night photography but I also just love experimenting with the camera. There are unlimited possibilities so I love trying new things, and not just with Photography but with my life itself. I'm a very active person so I love anything involving physical activities just as sports (tennis, soccer etc), hiking, yoga, and Pilates. Other interests would include music, travel, culture, cooking and the lists goes on and on! Though, I also love just staying at home and watching Netflix while indulging myself with food.   And if I'm not on Netflix, 99% of the time I will be on Pinterest! I love Pinterest, it has everything and anything I am looking for! I could be on there for hours and not get tired of it. Now for pet peeves, I don't really have any. I'm a very simple and accepting person so what others do don't really annoy me or bother me. Lastly, my goals for right now is to get my certificate in Japanese. Though that is not all I want to accomplish, for now it's my top priority. It's my stepping stone to the world of endless possibilities. Though I may not like it, I have to go one step at a time. Now, I will leave you with a song I have been obsessed with just recently since music is also something I am very passionate about. Crush- Don't Forget And well why not? Also this is a Korean song (Another fun fact: I love kpop!)