Blog #3

After a systematic study, I am very interested in the gender differences in each of the three languages. It’s amazing to me how men and women can be called differently in different cultures. As far as I am concerned, there are not too many differences between men and women in Chinese. At most, there are differences between him and her in Chinese characters, which has updated my knowledge. The second is the different ways that American parents and Asian parents treat their children’s education. Since I spent my junior and senior high school life under high pressure, I really feel the pain.

Kaori has a great way of teaching, which is not dull, but vivid and easy to understand. The class discussion also increased my understanding of the class content, and it was easier to understand knowledge points with more examples than by rote. Because of the language problem, I still have some difficulty in reading, but I can even cope with it. I usually read the reading carefully before class, and write down the key points with the quiz before class, listen to the teacher in class and make notes, and review with the study guide after class and before the exam. In my opinion, this way of learning is handy for me.

This is my first class in linguistics. It has changed my traditional understanding of language, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which are not the same language system. In the past, I think they are all languages from Asia. This course is very similar to the CHN series of courses I have taken before, although they teach different content, the way to prepare is identical. I made the reading and quiz before class, and then explained them in more detail in class.

Blog 2

I found many examples of East Asian writing system. The first one is a Chinese restaurant. It’s name Noodle & Cafe, but its Chinese name is 面面聚到(miàn miàn jù dào). The two translations have completely different meanings. 面面聚到 is an idiom, which means taking care of everything. It means that although everything is taken care of, everything is handled properly.

The second one is Eugene Chinese Christian Church. Its Chinese name is 雨津基督教华人教会 (Yǔ jīn jīdūjiào huárén jiàohuì). “雨津 (Yǔ jīn)” means Eugene, but many people call Eugene as “尤金 (Yóu jīn)” that the same means but in different words. “基督教 (jīdūjiào)” means Christian. “华人 (huárén)” means Chinese. “教会 (jiàohuì)” means Church. This Chinese and English can be a perfect contrast. At the same time, we can also find that some phrases in Chinese can be directly replaced by an English word.

So far, this class is very interesting. I enjoy tanking this class. Professor Idemaru introduces a lot of cultural and historical information about the three languages. I review the whole week’s knowledge with lecture slides every weekend. The Iclicker questions and discussions in class have solved most of my confusion. Secondly, my native language is Chinese. I learned a lot of Chinese knowledge that I didn’t know at the beginning of the class.

Hello, Class!

I‘m Chenxi Liu. You guys also can call me Linda. I’m from Shandong China. I’m a Psychology major and this is my fourth year in UO. I have two cats in the Unit States and one dog in China. There are some pictures of them. My hometown is famous for apples and cherries. Our cherries and apples are so big and sweet that they are very popular with people.  And my hometown is a coastal city, my home is only 10 minutes’ drive from the seaside.

I love watching Japanese anime and Korean TV dramas, which is one of the reasons why I am interested in East Asian Languages. Because when I look at these videos, I find that the pronunciation of Japanese and Korean is very similar to that of Chinese, and there are some Chinese characters in Japanese writing, which makes me think that language is a very magical thing. This course will help me to solve part of my doubts about language problems, and also let me know a lot of knowledge about language. Actually, another fun fact is that I need this class to satisfy my group requirements.

I’m interested in the similarities between Chinese, Korean and Japanese, such as what the same words mean in Japanese and Chinese. So far, I like the teaching method in this class. First, read and the content of the class through the test to consolidate knowledge, so that I can remember the knowledge points more firmly. Besides, there will be some interesting small interactions during the class, which can easily mobilize the atmosphere of the class. I usually take the method of writing down the knowledge points in class and further arranging them after class. In this class I think this method can continue to be used, learning efficiency and quality should not decline. The challenge for me in this class may be to break some of my stereotypes. Before the last class, I thought Chinese, Korean and Japanese were the same system, but in fact, they were not.