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.
Author Archives: khushboo.jain
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Restaurant..
When I moved to Jamaica Estates four years ago, I came across a restaurant name Annam Brahma. It’s an vegetarian restaurant mainly with indian dishes. This restaurant is run by Sri Chinmoy followers and all of the followers are americans which was interesting because they make some delicious indian food. At first, I was scared to go in that restaurant but one day my sisters and I took my mother to that restaurant for Mother’s Day and we loved it. It looked like an actual restaurant from inside and out nothing crazy or anything and people were so nice and polite. As we all know cults are known for being dangerous but as years went by and we started going to that restaraunt more often because of the walking distance that scary feeling I felt went away. I just wanted to bring this restaurant to the class attention, I know noone is going to travel all the way out to queens just to eat as we do in the city. But if any of you are in the area, you should definitly try this amazing place with variety of vegetarian food.
www.annambrahma.com
8443 164th St Jamaica Hills, NY 11432
(718) 523-2600
final research paper topic
For my final research project, I am planning to do research on globalization and languages which we have been discussing in the class throughout the semester. In this paper, I will be discussing the effects of globalization on language. The increase of globalization has both positive and negative effects on language.
IAT
I did the IAT test 2 days ago and I found it interesting how the test is structure. At first it lets you know which words are associated with what category, religion was blue so whatever word that were associated with religion was blue and good was yellow, whatever words were yellow, they associated with good. I took the religion IAT because I wanted to know what it was going to show at the end of the result because in my opinion, I think every religion says the same thing except in a different way. I believe in every religion, it just depends on how people interpret it everyone has there on point of view. The result of my IAT was just i expected it to be, all of the religion were in the middle..1. buddhism 2. hinduism 3. christianity 4. islam. I think all these religions were in the middle because I didn’t make that many mistake. The test was structure to see if a person makes rational decision when they have to make it in the fast situation. I found it interesting that at first when I took my time I didnt make any mistakes and as soon as it asked you have to do it fast I made few mistakes because it gave you everything that were associted with that religion and good and then all of the sudden it gave you words that weren’t associated with good or that religion. Once you started to press on “i” again and again when you saw the words that weren’t asscoaited with good or that religion you would still press on “i” even when you meant to press on “e” and get that wrong, and that’s what happen to me.
Indian traditional wedding…
Two years ago, I was lucky enough to help plan my cousin wedding. It was very nerve wrecking and happy experience because Indian traditional wedding can be very hard to plan. Indian wedding celebration can be longer than 2 weeks and carries out many fun activities to engage in. I, also, remember my uncle’s wedding which took place in India when I was 9 years old which was a bit different from my cousin wedding because in america we are not able to get the permit we might need to carry one of the main event of the wedding which is barat (the groom rides up on the horse with bunch of people from the groom side dancing and marching till they reach destination of the wedding). But in India, it is common to do everything that indian wedding needs without getting any permission or permit. So I wanted to share my experience of planning and attending a indian traditional wedding.