Week 4!!

Weeeeek 4!!

Featuring Mahmood.

Inuyasha

*We sing-along to one of his songs and a Mulan song in Dutch below as a fun final mini-challege.

This final week Neha and I made incredible breakthroughs. Though we had some good vocabulary lists, contextualizing them with grammar was proving very difficult through the week, as we were trying to use the vocabulary without having a good enough grasp of general grammar. Though we had looked into grammar, especially present tense for Italian and taken note of it we were having trouble internalizing it. At the same time, we had struggled to find a comprehensive put-together report of Dutch grammar online.

This week we met and got together in person as well. We began physically writing down conjugations and began to internalize so much better due to this. At the same time, as opposed to websites, YouTube videos were an amazing source and taught us the general information we had been looking for in a concise manner. Due to these videos we were able to take note of the equivalents of imperfect and passe compose (French) in Dutch and Italian, as well as learn some things about the future tense in Italian. Meanwhile we learned about how to declinate our describers in Italian based on gender/plurality.

This meant that we were able to begin piecing together vocabulary finally in a way that created the more complex phrases we had been hoping to make. We made progress on Italian and still want to work on Dutch as it has been more difficult for us.

Reflection

Neha and I accomplished our goals of learning what we could of Italian and Dutch. We wanted to challenge ourselves by learning two languages and wanted to be able to begin to understand basic conversation, as well as begin to respond to it. Clearly, we knew in the end we wouldn't be at the same level in both languages and are better in Italian. However, we have learned and are beginning to internalize basic grammar structures throughout the past, present, and somewhat in the future in Italian.  We learned what worked for us with time, such as writing down conjugations and notes, as well as speaking with each other in order to learn conversation. Meanwhile, the languages we know began to come together while learning grammar, in that we began to recognize what elements all these languages are similarly built on. We also immersed ourselves somewhat culturally, by singing in Italian and Dutch. We are still of course very much beginners and did not get as much as we wanted to get done due to technology issues that kept us apart from working on conversation. However, we are hoping to continue this learning into the future in order to use what we have now as a stepping-stone into greater proficiency. This has been very fun and rewarding.

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We had wanted to do a cooking show and sing, but decided a cooking show wouldn't fit within our timeframe. Therefore, as our last project we only sang. Our singing will be linked below. Barrio by Mahmood for Italian and Make a Man Outta You from Mulan for Dutch.

**Disclaimer**
We do not claim ownership to the music videos. By the time we did Mulan, we had already learned Let It Go in Dutch, but decided we didn't like our proficiency. Therefore we sound pretty tired by the time we get to Mulan. 😹

Vid Links:

Mahmood

Mulan