Structure of Language ( Linguistics )

I'm sitting in CLB on the lower ground level waiting to go into my first linguistics lecture of the year. 

Some of you may remember that I tried thus in 2010, but because of ending up four weeks behind in all of my subjects, dropped this one, so here I am attempting it again in 2012.

Of Learning a Language.

It makes no sense to me at all that when I've learnt a language here at UNSW (so far only Japanese & Korean) that one of the first things they teach you is that languages written characters, often quickly discarding romanisations altogether in favour of that languages writing system.

The reason this doesn't make sense to me is that it seems to me that the best way to learn any new language was the same way you learnt the one you originally spoke - vocabulary & grammar first, then reading & writing as a distant second.

When you try to learn the written characters first, it becomes difficult because your mind doesn't have a concept to relate the "strange symbol" to, making them easier to forget.

If you learn the spoken words first, and thereby the sounds, by the time you've acquired a large enough vocabulary, and started to learn to write the characters, your mind will be like "Ah, so that's what the written form of XYZ looks like," giving your mind something concrete to which it can attach the abstract concept of the written word (and thereby solidifying the learning process of that language's written characters).

Good luck with all of your learning!

- Ian (The guy in the Mario cap)  I'll keep you posted. :-)

I'm thinking of dropping Linguistics ... so I've got more time for studying Korean.

When I first started at UNSW this year, I was lacking a fourth subject, but because of something the Korean lecturer said in week one, I was able to sign up to Linguistics before the first lecture had begun.

Anyhowz ... in the beginning we had one, rather entertaining person, as our Linguistics lecturer, and another, rather dull person, as our tutor.  It has since come to pass that the entertaining person has received a summons from a higher power within the university to do some sort of double checking and signing off on paper work, leaving us with the rather dull tutor, as our rather dull lecturer.

And as much as I'm enjoying the content of the course, I probably didn't do myself any favours by holding off on not only buying most of my text books until I'd found somewhere more permanent (which I now have), thereby putting myself three weeks behind the work schedule.

And as much as I love Korean, it just isn't. Sinking. In! ... so I'm really going to try and put as much of my efforts as possible into learning that, as it's a subject I want to do really well at ... or at the very least, pass.

As good as the prescribed text book and accompanying exercize book are for the subject, I've been thinking about going that extra mile and purchasing a book from the on-campus book store called something like "Korean in Easy Steps" ... which I was going to link you to using my Amazon Associates account, but as I can't seem to find the book on Amazon right now (which may have something to do with not remembering its exact title) but as that is not currently not a possibility, you'll just have to wait ... because I really don't wanna have to go all the down to the bookshop just so I can find out the name of it, so I can look it up on Amazon, and then post the link here.

I'll just remember what it's called next time - heck, I might even buy it next time.

My Four Subjects.

Okay, just to clarify, these are the subjects that I am definitely studying this year:

Korean A
Concepts of Asia
Psychology
Linguistics

At this point I'm very glad that I enrolled in Korean A - I think I was "supposed to" (that is, in the grand scheme of things).  Why do I think that?  I think that because of the Korean lecturer mentioning linguistics.  Therefore, if not for having enrolled in Korean, and having instead enrolled in something else, I would perhaps still be without a fourth subject.

So thank you to that man whose name I currently forget ... sorry!

Thank you.  ^_^