Monthly Archives: May 2013

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Reading the story of the Ansarac, I easily imagine that Usurla kroeber has been influenced by her parents’ experience with Ishi. The inspiration of creating that sort of “antrhopological science fiction” projected in the future directly derives from the differences that her parents noted in the ways of living of Ishi’s tribe. When Ursula mentions ” he was a little bored and lonely among the uninterested tourists,and when he found me a willing listener (surely not the first or last, but currently the only one) he took pleasure in telling me about his people, as we sat with a tall glass of iced U in the long, soft evenings…” ( on the first and second pages of the extract). I cannot help but think of the relationship between Ishi and Dr Kroeber. The same bond that linked Ishi and the doctor, seems to link the Ansarac and the narrator. Dr Kroeber discovered a world that was totally foreign to him when he befriended Ishi and learned about his culture. I do believe that Usurla writes about the Ansarac to also reflect on cultural diversity all over the world.

sj

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Harlem Shake

Hey guys, I am sure we all are very busy with the finals but someone bought this to my attention “Harlem shake” that is going on worldwide now. It just made my day when I watched it and couldn’t stop laughing I thought I share this. Thank You.. By the way this is not a Harlem shake, Harlem shake is very different than this…there are like way too many video of this online.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f7wj_RcqYk

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connection with Foreign Words

I wasn’t able to connect with “Foreign Words”
while writing my memoir because my topic was very different and there wasn’t
any connection that I could have used but I felt very close connection to it.
It has been very long time since I have been here and as years go by I
experience language barrier in my own native language than any other family
members in my family. I feel the reason could be because when I came to this
country I was a very young girl, going to school here and not been able to use
my native language here like we would in India, my native language skills
started to become very low. I realize everyday that knowing where I came from,
reminding myself what my religion is about, that makes me who I am today so the
family roots are very important and without them we cannot understand
ourselves. I remember the particular discussion about the book when we talking
about the education, how they only get taught in French but not in Sango, I remember
when I was going to school in India I was taught in both languages, Hindi and English
but the only difference was when I was taught in Hindi it was only up to 2nd
grade and rest was in English. The opinion I can really say is learning in two different
languages can have its own advantage. I know I did even though I can’t really
write in Hindi anymore but Hindi always will be with me. So there wasn’t any
relation between my memoir paper and Foreign Words but I can relate to
foreign words with my own experience and my research paper that I am writing on
“Status of Hindi in India”.

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Roger Williams and Rosmarie

 

These two pieces are mirror to each other but they both have two different purposes. Roger Williams’s work was with the Native-Americans, to be used as a guide for the Settlers to learn more when it came to the Native-American culture. He also saw how the Native-Americans treated each other and the settlers. Rosmarie Waldrop is from different time, her work is a story within a story, and it is constructing its own form, giving Roger William’s queue. She is trying to find her place in all of this, either as a Native-American or a Settler. She identifies herself as a Native-American because she is a woman; the Settlers just like Native Americans also conquered her. On the other hand, she also identifies herself as Settlers because she was not born in America, she was from Germany and she traveled here to find something new just like the Settlers did. In her “A Key into the Language of America” she is able to include all of these identifications. Her goal is to show the conflict that occurred between the Native-Americans and the Settlers. She also includes an experience of a woman coming to terms with being dominated in the italic paragraphs that accompany each chapter.

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My thoughts on the talk at Engelman

What really marked me during the talk was when Nadeem Aslam said ” when you smile to someone when you don’t feel like smiling is JIhad”  I do not know if I am misinterpreting what he said but I do feel like this is the total opposite of the idea of Jihad that was

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The speaker whom I enjoyed the most was Nadeem ASlam, the Pakistani writer. He came from a tumultuous background and I admire that he chose literature to voice his concerns  and to advocate. he addressed the issue regarding the prejudices and discrimination against the Muslim with such fervor. He also denounced the US government for thE assassination of a journalist/ reporter and his wife.

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Williams and Waldrop

Rosemarie Waldrop discusses Roger Williams’  work “A Key into the Language of America” and how it was used against Williams’ wishes and aided the European settler’s in invading and destroying Native American lands. He was clearly one of the very few people that were open to learning about Native American culture and language and preserving it rather than destroying it for economic benefit. She has some things in common with William’s including her place of residence, her skin color, and poetry but she is different in that she is female and while she was on the side of the losers in post war Nazi Germany she is now on the side of the winners, unlike Williams, who had it the other way around. I find it interesting that she calls attention to such comparisons and I like that her book discusses gender and conquering.  I enjoyed her comparison of the conquered female archetype with the conquered Native American lands. I also found it very interesting that the Narragansett now look to William’s book to learn about their past and their lost language.

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My thoughts to the speakers from Engelman Hall-

I enjoyed listening to the speakers so much. Even though, the speakers had an accent but I was able to understand them very well because I have a passion of watching movies in different language. The Japanese author who I thought couldn’t speak a word of English, I was surprise o hear when he spoke English even though his English was very limited but I liked it that he made an effort to speak in English. Nadeem Aslam, who talked about the politics in Pakistan to London to get away from it all. I Pakistan if you take any kind of action towards the government or any digging around or even talk about what the government don’t wan you to talk about, that person would get killed. I liked it when he talked about the word “Jihad” to us, we only know that word as one meaning, “terrorism group”, I, myself thought that everyone else I know knows that but when he explained that word to us, it reminded me how one word can have more than one meaning. I liked it that he has so much courage to talk about these issues that can reflect on other people lives.

The Scottish writer, I liked it how energized he was even though he used profanity while talking but that’s how he let his emotions out. I personally liked it a lot because he was speaking freely and a lot of writers wouldn’t speak the way he did.

The writer from Guatemala that was interesting too even though I haven’t lost Hindi completely but I was able to relate to him in some sense because even though I can speak Hindi, read Hindi to some extent but I have lost the writing structure completely and each day I realize that my vocabulary in Hindi is very low than my sisters, I came to America at very young age than my sisters.

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My reaction to Ithkuil

The article Utopian for Beginners was very interesting. John Quijada certainly had an interesting idea to create a language that hopes to eliminate ambiguity so the language would be more efficient and precise. But I wouldn’t say, I agree with his intentions completely, imprecision is what makes a language active. To be able to manipulate a sentence is what keeps the language and culture alive. One thing I was reflecting over while I was reading the article is how I use English and Hindi in my daily life. When I am trying to have conversation with my cousin who is visiting from India knows English but we rather have a conservation in Hindi , I realize how much there is a vocabulary difference between the conversation because I haven’t been using Hindi as my first language and I have been forgetting the language so while I was talking to him, in my head I was trying to translate what I was going to say, even though while I was trying to do that at some point there was a loss in translation from one language to another, one word in English would mean one thing but in Hindi it can mean other things at the same time. So in my response, I would agree with Lackoff when he states “Ithkuil is a work of art…”, in other words, language is just like art and it should preserve just like an art and I agree with that statement because art is a somewhat like a language it speaks to us not like language but in other ways.

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connection between Ishi and Ansarac

The Ansarac made a whole different place for the forgeniers(outsiders) to learn about their culture without having them to have a say in annything that involved their culture. In Ansarac, all members became genderless but in Ishi, mean and women were very different, they both had different language. Women’s were not allowed to talk to other men outside their culture. In Ishi, everyone else died except Ishi, the last decendent of the Yahi. He survived the attacks from the settlers by hiding in many different places especially the mountains. The settlers came and destroyed everything but in Ansarac, they didn’t let that happen to their culture, they made sure that the outsiders wouldn’t influence or destroy their culture by keeping the outsiders on the distance. In Ishi, we saw hat when Ishi was found and stayed at the museum, he wasn’t much in contact with the outside world because they wanted to make sure that they can preserve that culture shomehow and the they succeeded on doing that even though Ishi died. Now, we have the books, recordings, other material that we can look but not the actual person to learn or hear it from.