Geared Up for Next Time

Geared Up for Next Time - Dominic Brunaccioni

Good evening! 

As for how my Indonesian is going, Paskalis and I sadly did not meet this week, as I had way too much work to do. Well, that was my story until my Arabic teacher today pushed the dreaded test that I had been hardcore studying to the class next week, so I missed Wednesday’s lesson for nothing. I should be happy, but now I feel cheated out of a good session with Paskalis.

Regardless, we shared with each other what we have prepared for the next session. So I can, at the very least, let you have a glimpse of what my “English lessons” will entail for next week and vice-versa for what he will do with me.

Honestly, Paskalis is kicking some major butt for Indonesian. While I have not gotten close at all of fully memorizing the vocabulary he gave me last week, he has a lot of new vocabulary ready at the helm. We will be doing numbers (angka) next week, which is numbers one through twenty, as well as ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc) and has them going all the way from first to twentieth. That’s a lot! He also wants to start with basic grammar, passive and active transitive verbs, and standard versus non-standard Indonesian sentences. This much work makes me squirm, out of a place of both nervousness and enthusiasm. Hopefully, it won’t be too overbearing for me!

What I have for him is what he requested: Looking at what certain words go in certain sentences. He seemed to enjoy the exercise I made last time, so we are repeating the fill-in-the-blank activity, where he searches where certain words go in specific spots by looking at the contexts of the overall paragraph and each individual sentence. I stole three paragraphs from either previous papers of mine or random passages in my collection of literature in my dorm. Here’s an example of the last paragraph, which is the hardest one. It’s from my World Politics class, for a paper on Constructivism:

Complete the following paragraphs with the words given in each word bank:

[Glanced, Alliances, Controlled, Necessary, Protected, Continent, To be ready, Established]

Take for instance the _______ that the Ottoman Empire had with Europe throughout

history. When the Europeans found it _______ to fight with one another again, they often

_______ towards the Ottomans for help. Ottoman and Maltese historian Elena Augusti notes this

unstable relationship, as “Capitulations _______ their merchants, trade, contracts and cases; they

[Europeans] _______ in the strategic specific places of Mediterranean Western presence and

________, from a privileged inner position, their Muslim interlocutor” (Augusti 292). So if the

Ottomans were to join an alliance with a certain European power, they had ______ for their

“ally” to turn on them at any moment, and to be ready to immediately seek another alliance

elsewhere, in a _______ where there was no easy alliance to be found.

See y’all in class tomorrow, and have a great weekend!

~ Dom

Beginning Bahasa and Explaining English

Beginning Bahasa and Explaining English - Dominic Brunaccioni





It was week two of my language exchange with Paskalis, and I have to say that I’m super impressed with what he prepared for me. It was very formal and organized. We practiced a basic conversation:





“What’s your name?” [Siapa nama Anda?]





“My name is Dominic. What’s yours?” [Nama saya Dominic. Siapa nama Anda?]





“Mine is Paskalis”. [Nama saya Paskalis.]





“Where do you live?” [Di mana Anda tinggal?]





“I live in Maryland, and you?”[Saya tinggal di Maryland, dan Anda tinggal di mana?”





“I live in Connecticut” [Saya tinggal di Connecticut.]





You get the idea. I don’t want to bore you with the nitty-gritty stuff, but we practiced the pronunciation of those words together to form basic sentences. I also learned some vocab, with the theme being members of the family. He then gave me whole paragraphs of Indonesian text, and asked me to read it out. Although I had no idea what the heck I was saying, it was great for me to learn how to pronounce the language. I’m really happy with what I’ve been given, Paskalis really seems to know what he’s doing with the language, and although you may say “No duh, he’s from Indonesia!”, most Indonesians learn Indonesia as their second language, and really only use it in school. Their regional language is what they learn first, so Indonesian is a new language just as much as it was to Paskalis when he learned it years ago. So, in my book, he’s doing amazing.





Now, for the flip side, I prepared two exercises for Paskalis to better ace English and its many complexities. I went through some of my schoolwork and novels and pulled random sentences from them that had plural nouns and adjectives. I then purposefully changed them to the singular tense and asked Paskalis to read the sentence, understand the errors, and fix them. Hopefully, this will translate to his actual work routine in the future. The other aspect we worked on is synonyms, as Paskalis struggles with understanding as to what words to use in certain scenarios, and how they sound in a sentence when added. So I did the classic vocab quiz-esque exercise where I had Webster dictionary sentences of words, then deleting the word in the sentences, and making a word bank for a fill-in-the-blank. This was not easy for him, and I explained that while there are “wrong” and “right” answers about language, especially English, many parts of language are interchangeable. It’s just the practice and repetition of words in sentences that will help you understand which words go where at whichever time. See y’all next week!

Lessons Learned and Aspirations

Lessons Learned and Aspirations - Dominic Brunaccioni

So I had my first meeting with my Indonesian language exchange partner today, and all I can is, well, nothing. I prepared a whole bunch of stuff for him, and I didn't get too much from him on his end. That's okay, though, as he explained he will be ready next week. We did go over the Indonesian alphabet, which is extremely similar to the English alphabet, with more literal pronunciation of vowel letters, much like Italian. One difference I did note is that "Q" is pronounced like "Chee", which I found interesting.

One trouble that I noticed Paskalis having is plural agreements, especially in more complicated and heavy grammatical sentences, which in his graduate-level papers are very common. Words like "background", "identity", and "language" were constantly tripping him up when he attempted to change them to their plural forms. So, in preparation for next week, I will create a few sentences that need to have a plural agreement and give it to him like an exercise.

Not all of Paskalis's problems are stemming internally, though, as I realized that he refers to Google Translate when attempting to translate certain words from Indonesian to English.

In his sentence, "Students of Papuan tribes have two major categories of lifestyle which is individualistic and mutual cooperation manners", Paskalis is attempting to convey that Papuan students either work individually or in groups. I originally had no idea what "mutual cooperation manners" meant until I read it in the context of the sentence, and realized that Paskalis simply meant "Teamwork" or "Group work".

To fix his problem, I referred him to Thesaurus instead of Google Translate, as many of us know that Google isn't as accurate as we would like it to be when it comes to specific word translation and exact meaning. Hopefully, that will help him in the future.

Can't wait to dive into Indonesian next week!

- Dom

An Indonesian Adventure

An Indonesian Adventure - Dominic Brunaccioni

So much for Basque learning! I realize now that my Language Exchange Program (LEP) at American University may be a better use of my time for the language log, however, I am still very much wanting to learn Basque and am excited to go this summer. Keeping this in mind, though, my LEP started last week and I got to meet my Language Exchange partner. I am teaching him English, and he is teaching me Indonesian. When I arrived, I saw only freshmen, sophomores, and other young faces. I expected that I would have a fellow freshman teaching me Indonesian. Well, to my surprise, my partner is actually a graduate student at American University for a major in youth education. It was the exact opposite of what I was expecting. Yay for subverting my expectations!

His name is Paskalis Kaipman, and he is from Papua, Indonesia. The island is split by Indonesia on the left, and Papua New Guinea on the right. Per most Indonesians, Paskalis knows a language native to Papua, and Indonesian itself. Unfortunately, our first meeting is tomorrow so I have no Indonesian to share with you all. What I do have is what I’m teaching for him tomorrow. What I immediately thought of was why Paskalis was at the LEP for English. His English seemed perfectly fine to me. More importantly, what was a college freshman such as myself going to do for him?

As it turns out, Paskalis needs help with advanced English, specifically academic research words and comprehensive sentence structure. So what I needed to do is read his papers and spot out some funky stuff. Yay for more reading! I thought it would be cool to share with you all what I noticed from his work.

Here are some things I noticed from his 2019 first semester final paper, “Applying Cooperative Learning to Middle Schools in Papua Province of Indonesia with Multicultural Societies”.

Original: “Both developed and developing countries are concerning on the standard of education as it derives every sectors to improve its qualities and quantities.”

Edited: “All countries, both developed and third-world, are concerned about the standards of their education, as global efforts have been made to improve educational qualities and quantities.”

Original: “What is interesting in this paper is schools in Papua Province of Indonesia may face challenges in applying cooperative learning because of the diverse cultures and religious values.”

Edited: “What is noteworthy is that schools in the province of Papua in Indonesia may face challenges in applying cooperative learning because of the diverse cultures and religious values that exist there.”

Basque or Bust

Basque or Bust - Dominic Brunaccioni

So this is my first blog post! 

At first, I had no idea what I was going to write about each week, and I even skipped the first week to still think about it. Conveniently, a few days ago, my itinerary for my annual trip was released. Its tradition for a few members of my family to go somewhere in the summer. Last year, we ventured to Paris, and then several towns in Turkey (Which was the best part of my trip, ask me for my photos, and how I almost lost my passport!) and then ended the trip in  Lindos, Greece. It was an amazing time! Truth be told, though, is that up until a few days ago, my sister and I had literally no idea where we were going this upcoming summer.

Well, I’ll spill the beans. We are landing in Bilbao, in the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain. I’ve been to Bilbao personally myself when I went to Spain to study Spanish. I landed there at Bilbao International Airport, and drove to my favorite town in the whole entire world, San Sebastian (In Euskara, its called Donostia). So, we are going there as well. Next, we will fly to Lisbon, Portugal, and then four towns in Morocco (Fez, Marrakesh, Essaouria, and Casablanca). I’m very excited.

Now to the language part. I’ve taken 8-9 years of Spanish (Middle school and High school classes, private tutoring, and lessons in Spain) but I’m still not very good. Spanish, of course, isn’t a minority language so I can’t apply that here. Morocco-wise, they speak Arabic, and that isn’t a minority language either. I take Arabic here at AU so that would just be extra homework for me--not fun!

What they speak in the Basque Country, though, is what I’ve decided to learn. Euskara, as it is called in their language, is really an interesting case. It has no known relatives, it’s as old as Latin, and it has survived the widespread oppression from Fransisco Franco during his regime. Euskara is only spoken by 750,000 people and has just started various movements to increase its frequency and popularity in its own community, and in Spain as a whole. I must also add that the Basque diaspora ranges into France and not just Spain. I have been to French Basque areas, in the towns of Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. They are magical towns, I heavily advise you to visit them.

So this semester, I am preparing to dive into the Basque language and come in swinging when I visit Bilbao and Donostia. To do this, I am utilizing the aptly-named website <ilovelanguages.org>, which supports language learning for minority languages. Rosetta Stone and Babble do not offer support for Euskara, sadly. Here are some basic starter words I learned today:

English	Euskara
How are you?	Zer moduz
Hi!	Kaixo!
Thanks	Esker anitz
Good morning!	Egun on!

Hopefully this leads me down a good path and prepares me for when I visit!