Posts

Music and Language

Nathaniel Worthman Professor. Dadak 10.4.19 Music and Language For my final language log I want to talk about how music has affected my language learning process. For my whole life, music and language have been important to the development of who I am asa person today but almost exclusively separate. It wasn’t until 6th  grade when I decided to dedicate my summer to perfecting my knowledge of the Spanish language that I mixed the two. At the end of my 6th grade school year, I asked Señora Perez for her advice. “How can I accelerate the language learning process and become fluent this summer.” Looking back now I can laugh and can understand why sra. Perez was so taken aback. She had told me that in order to get better at Spanish over the summer I could do a couple of things: watch tv in Spanish, read an article everyday in Spanish and finally, listen to spanish music. While I did all of the things she recommended, I focused on listening to Spanish music. To me, this was th
Post a Comment
Read more

Duolingo: Friend or Foe

Nathaniel Worthman  Professor. Dadak Writing 101 4.4.19 Duolingo: Friend or Foe              Today I want to talk about the increase in popularity of Duolingo. Is this a god thing or a bad thing? Now I want to preface this with the fact that this is solely based on my opinion and thus this is NOT fact and shouldn’t be treated as such. Anyway, I feel that from my personal experience Duolingo has become such a great platform for people to not only learn languages but to learn about language. What do I mean by this...? Well, I know so many people who have never heard of languages like Romanian, Catalan or even Irish. Additionally, I know some people who have never  seen  languages like Vietnamese or Esperanto. For that reason, I believe that Duolingo serves the great purpose of educating people on languages and the cultures behind them.              With that being said, I don’t believe that it’s possible to learn a language through Duolingo alone while many people who I’ve
2 comments
Read more

Krieviešu Valodu

Nathaniel Worthman  Professor. Dadak Writing 101 28.3.19 Project 3 -         “ Labrīt  моя Сашинка ! Kā tev?” -         “Man iet super labi, ну я не очень хорошо спала un tagad es tikai gribu gūlet.” -         “Man žēl  мой котик !  Dzeriet tēju, ja jūsu galva sāp! -         “ Хорошо ,  буду ! Have a great day today!” -         “Paldies! Es būs, un tevi arī! Čau” -         “Paldies, Čau!” W hile many people are may be familiar with the “Spanglish language,” Many people are not familiar with Krievie šu Valodu (Krievu and Latviešu) . In their defense however, I will add that many people aren’t familiar with the Latvian language nor the nation of Latvia as a whole. I however was lucky enough to live in the Republic of Latvia for six weeks thanks to a critical language exchange programme sponsored completely by the United States Department of State through a programme called NSLI-Y (National Security Language Initiative for Youth.) While I was in Latvia the goal
1 comment
Read more

My New Language Obsession

Nathaniel Worthman Professor. Dadak Writing 101 21.3.19 My new obsession: Türkçe (Turkish!!!) So how did this happen and what does this mean for my love of Latvian? First of all,  Endişelenme (Don’t worry,) Latvian is still safely one of my favorite languages in the world. Because I’m a huge language nerd I’m always searching the internet for the next best song regardless of language and country of origin. In all honesty it’s probably more interesting if it’s in a language I know little to nothing about so I have something I can learn about.  So, who did I become obsessed with Turkish? Well, a friend of mine told me she used to listen to a song in Turkish and was wondering if I knew any Turkish music. Unfortunately, at the time I really didn’t but luckily, she was about to change that for me. The song is called “ Bangır Bangır ” by the artist  Gülşen. (If you haven’t heard the song or are unfamiliar, I suggest this song to get you acquainted my language log will still be h
Post a Comment
Read more

How Do Languages Affect Holidays

Nathaniel Worthman Professor. Dadak Writing 101 8.3.19 This week for my language log I want to talk about holidays. Now, I know what you're thinking, “what does this have to do with languages?” “I come to this blog for content on language!” Okay hold your horses it all connects! So what holiday sparked this? Маслиница (Maslinitsa). Маслиница is the Russian version of Mardi Gras. So why is this important? Well, the way we use language demonstrates what a culture values and not just the literal meaning. During Маслиница people all over the Russian speaking world people make блины (bleenee) or Russian pancakes to celebrate this holiday rooted in pagan tradition wherein the pagans believed this was how the should say goodbye to the new year and winter and help the sun return to bring spring.  This is so interesting to because if you speak one language the likelihood of you practicing a language/culture specific holiday increases significantly. Another great example is
1 comment
Read more

Should We Have One Standard Form Of English?

Nathaniel Worthman  Professor. Dadak Writing-101 25.2.19             This week I want to talk about how people react to different forms of English and talk about weather or not there should be one standard form of English. Now, before I get into this I want to make it explicitly clear that I am going off of my own experiences in life and my own opinion from a person who is a strong believer in language change and that this in no way reflects all of any community or nations beliefs but just what I’ve seen in my life.              Now, getting into this… So, I grew up in a place where many people identified themselves first and foremost as Americans. This isn’t a positive or negative thing but rather the lense in which they chose to live their life through. With my life experience I have seen that people who mainly identify themselves as Americans they typically are strong believers that English should be spoken one way and that should be the American dialect and accent of E
Post a Comment
Read more

When should we start teaching kids languages?

Nathaniel Worthman Professor. Dadak Writing-101 21.2.19                          Should foreign languages be taught from a younger age in the United States? Well, there are many benefits and few drawbacks to doing this. For example, teaching kids a foreign language from a younger increases the retention rate of the language in comparison from people who start learning a language from an older age. Additionally, having kids being multilingual from a young age not only will benefit them when they are older because they will be more desired in the workforce, but it also increases one’s creativity because it makes you brain operate in a new way thus enhancing your thought process.              Maybe I feel this way because I grew up monolingual and have always wanted to be anything but it. However, I also know that the kids that did grow up multilingual did on average get better grades and were also able to learn other languages easily and I believe that this is all because
Post a Comment
Read more