I am taking advantage of my free time and have started taking language lessons. The local language is quite a difficult one with a totally different set of scripts and tones, but at least I hope to have some basics. I didn't even try in my last duty station country, and I felt bad.
Culture reflects languages and vice versa. It is a window to understanding culture. I am yet to have significant analysis of the culture and language being here for only a few weeks. However, I love seeing uniqueness and idiosyncrasy of a language.
In this B language, to say "do you understand?" is literally "is your ear turning?".
Restaurant is "Eat, Drink Shop". Bread is "Bread snack". Cake is "cake snack." Why don't they just say "bread"? I am sure there is a very good reason for this.
There is no equivalent of "hello", "good morning" or "good afternoon".
People apparently don't say "thank you" all the time like I (and Japanese and Westerners) do.
Learning a new language is hard at this age, and we need to use every possible brain capacity to memorize words. It's funny how I desperately try to pull all my prior language knowledge to associate any new words with anything remotely sounds similar to facilitate memorization. For example, in B language 5 sounds like "ngo-", which is similar to 5 in Japanese. Then, M.FR would say 6 sounds a bit like 6 in Nepali.
We also started looking at scripts for numbers. They look like drawings. I would say "6 looks like an ear", and M.FR would say "No but 5 and 9 also look like an ear with a long earlobe." So, we can't decide what will be the best way to visually recognize the numbers!!
Culture reflects languages and vice versa. It is a window to understanding culture. I am yet to have significant analysis of the culture and language being here for only a few weeks. However, I love seeing uniqueness and idiosyncrasy of a language.
In this B language, to say "do you understand?" is literally "is your ear turning?".
Restaurant is "Eat, Drink Shop". Bread is "Bread snack". Cake is "cake snack." Why don't they just say "bread"? I am sure there is a very good reason for this.
There is no equivalent of "hello", "good morning" or "good afternoon".
People apparently don't say "thank you" all the time like I (and Japanese and Westerners) do.
Learning a new language is hard at this age, and we need to use every possible brain capacity to memorize words. It's funny how I desperately try to pull all my prior language knowledge to associate any new words with anything remotely sounds similar to facilitate memorization. For example, in B language 5 sounds like "ngo-", which is similar to 5 in Japanese. Then, M.FR would say 6 sounds a bit like 6 in Nepali.
We also started looking at scripts for numbers. They look like drawings. I would say "6 looks like an ear", and M.FR would say "No but 5 and 9 also look like an ear with a long earlobe." So, we can't decide what will be the best way to visually recognize the numbers!!
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