Morphology

What is Morphology? Well in linguistics it is a term that refers to the formation of a language. This involves the morpheme, which is the smallest unit in a language. Sometimes it can be a word, but generally it is not. For example, The word unforgivable is three morphemes. The prefix "un-", the root forgive, and the suffix "-able." A low morpheme per word (Isolating) language means little to one morpheme representing a word (Loos, 2004). Purely Isolating Languages almost always have a ratio of morpheme to word of one. Chinese is a prime example of this. If you look at the sentence "I sold my dog yesterday," in Mandarin, "my" is two separate morphemes and yesterday is one morpheme instead of being two as in English.

Isolating Languages
• Chinese
• Thai
• Vietnamese

Synthetic Language

The other type of morphology is a Synthetic Language. It is essentially the opposite of Isolating. That means that instead of having low morpheme to word, it has a high morpheme to word ratio (Loos, 2004). This is the majority of most languages. But there are some that are far more synthetic than others. Sometimes this is to the point where literally one word can represent an idea that needs to be explained in a sentence in lower-morpheme-order languages.

For example, in Yupik, tuntussuqatarniksaitengqiggtuq is a word that consists of seven morphemes (Loos, 2004). Which of course in English is 13 words. The idea in the word expresses "He had yet to say that he was going to hunt reindeer again." This is an extreme, and falls under the category, agglutinative, literally meaning to glue together (Loos, 2004). However there is Fusional language. These similarly have a lot of morphemes per word, but are rather unintelligible. They are consisting of suffixes, root mutations, and prefixes. They are put together so well, each part cannot be deciphered unless looked upon as a whole. For example, the medical word hypercholesterolemia derived from Greek, is formed by "hyper-," meaning elevated, "cholesterol," "em," meaning blood, and "-ia" which is a grammatical ending (Loos, 2004).

Besides the morphemes being perfectly fused together, there are some languages that undergo change during conjugation. Romance languages deal with this heavily. Take the Spanish word Hablar, to speak. The stem is Habl, to express "I speak," you add an -o to form Hablo. If you wanted to express "I spoke," you add an "é" to form hablé. Some verbs require a root change when indicating tense and mood (Loos, 2004). Which of course, is very well known for Romance languages since there conjugation schemes seem to be nearly endless.

So basically you can break down into two forms of morphologies:

• Isolating
• Synthetic
• Agglutinative
• Fusional

So you decide. Do you want to speak a language that has a word for everything and grammar being the least of your problems, a language that deals with just as much grammar as you deal with now (that being English), words that contain numerous compounds, or would you rather learn a language that is involved in high context or low context? It's your decision. Go with what interests you most.

Sources
Loos, E. E. (2004). What is an isolating language?. In D. Day Jr., P. Jordan & J. Wingate (Eds.), Glossary of linguistic terms. Retrieved from http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/contents.htm
Loos, E. E. (2004). What is a polysynthetic language?. In D. Day Jr., P. Jordan & J. Wingate (Eds.), Glossary of linguistic terms. Retrieved from http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPolysyntheticLanguage.htm

Syntax: The formation of the sentence

Basically it all boils down to the basic part of a language, the sentence. Several sentences make a paragraph. Several paragraphs make a story. We all like stories; they help us create a world of fantasy and freedom. Now all languages have stories, and they tell them differently. The chance that all languages developed the same formation is essentially zero. Less than half of the word's languages (based on population) follow a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) formation. about the same portion uses Subject-Verb-Object (SVO). The rest of the world uses Verb-Subject-Object (VSO)(Meyer, 2010).

SOV essentially means that in a sentence, verb comes last (Boeree). In a way it similar to speaking like Yoda would. For example, if I were to say "That meal was delicious," in a standard SOV language it would become, "That meal delicious it was." "I fed my dog this morning before work," would become "My dog this morning before work I fed."

SOV Languages:
• Japanese
• Korean
• Hindi
• Turkish
• Hungarian

SVO is used in English syntax. As you read this sentence, you can clearly see its usage. This would be an easy concept for a beginner in a foreign language to grasp. If you were visiting Sweden and wanted to tell someone that you wanted to eat pizza you would say: "Jag vill äta vissa pizza." It means exactly that and no worry of having to rearrange parts of the sentence to match its order. Jag, the subject (I), vill äta, the verb (want to eat), and vissa pizza, the object (some pizza).

SVO Languages:
• Romance Languages
  • French
  • Spanish
  • Italian
• Germanic Languages
  • English
  • German
  • Swedish
  • Norwegian
• Spoken Arabic
• Greek
• Thai
• Vietnamese

The last type of syntactical formation is VSO. This mainly applies to the Semitic and Celtic languages (Boeree). "I discovered the cure" becomes "discovered I the cure." This can become confusing since there are some languages that invert their structure to VSO to form questions. English is one of them. "There is a storm today," becomes "Is there a storm today?"(Boeree)

VSO Languages:
• Semitic Languages
  • Literary Arabic
  • Hebrew
• Celtic Languages
  • Welsh
  • Gaelic
• American Indian Languages

Basically there are three main structures in use. Of course they will seem different to you, but that is normal. If you want a challenge, you could attempt Russian. It has no rules on order and all are used in common day speak (Meyer, 2010). So saying, "I like apples," "Like I apples," and "I apples like," mean the same thing.

Sources
Boeree, G. (n.d.). Basic language structures. Retrieved from http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/basiclangstruct.html
Meyer, C. F. (2010). Introducing English linguistics. (p. 36). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MWbrvUiYzSkC&pg=PA36

Non Verbal Language

It may not be the first thought, but there are forms of language that require no speaking, and no writing. It can be as simple as a facial expression, or as complex as Sign Language. At first glance, most people just see "signing," the equivalent of speaking and assume that the hand-signs directly represent a simplification of the language in that country. There are many people who even fail to stop and think that Sign Language is just as rich and complex as any other language. In fact, there are many different signs, each having a base, such as Spanish, British, American, German, and French.

For example, British Sign Language (BSL) uses two hands to form the letters of the alphabet while American Sign Language (ASL) uses one (NIDCD, 2012). Despite that the UK and the US share a spoken language their sign language is similar to the difference of Chinese and Greek. This difference is due to how ASL developed its signing system from France (NIDCD, 2012). Space i.e., the area in front of the signer is used for syntax. Facial expressions and body gesture represent are used together to form meaning (Liddell, 2003). If you were to keep them in one spot, it may be interpreted as a humongous complicated and technical word. That space in front of the signer is just as vital as the spaces between words in most languages.

At homes in deaf communities, a different sign (a "type" of sign language) is used at home. This is called a home sign (NIDCD, 2012) and many families have their own. An interesting fact about these communities is that if you put several of the children with their own sign and no knowledge of any other sign in the same room, they will develop a new sign language to communicate with each other. ASL also has accent. Depending on where the signer lives, the location or space where they sign, i.e., height, will differ (Walker, 1987).

Everyone has a different way of signing, reflecting everything about their personality(NIDCD, 2012) just like how yours is revealed when you speak. Your culture, will reflect how fast you sign, just like in many countries the rate of speaking is far more elevated than in English(Liddell, 2003). Unfortunately you can't use ASL in Mexico and many other countries. A simple sign for mother, could be a nasty pejorative in another. I leave you with a video from Expert Village on a few basic expressions in ASL.

Sources
Walker, L. A. (1987). A loss for words: The story of deafness in a family. (p. 30). New York: Harper Perennial.
Liddell, Scott K. (2003). Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language. Cambridge University Press.
American sign language. (2011, June). Retrieved from http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/pages/asl.aspx
Basic words in sign language. [Print Photo]. Retrieved from http://www.deafedge.com/image-files/basic-words-in-sign-language-hello.jpg

Visual Appeal: Ideograms

Words in a picture

Passions for language differ from everyone else. Your social life, private life, and educational life are big factors in the ability to "decipher" language. Now when I say "decipher," I am speaking of how you look at it, how you read it, and how you write it. The ability to use the artistic brain and creativeness. Those who tend to be more art oriented find it easier to utilize ideograms. Someone who is art oriented will be able to see a different side of the language that most fail to conceptualize.

Ideograms, or rather picture words, are grammatical entities that represent a sound while visually looking like a picture. Ideograms are similar to hieroglyphs, but are able to be broken down into smaller pieces (called radicals) and represent an entirely separate group with different pronunciations (Tsai, 2006). For example, the Mandarin word for "eclipse" is:
日食 (Rì shí). It is composed of two characters that mean "sun" and "eat" respectfully. If we were to speak of a lunar eclipse, it would follow similarly, 月食 (Yuè shí), "moon" and "eat"

Take a look at the image below. What do you see? You may at first just see some random Chinese character, but when I tell you it is the one for "to eat," what do you see?

Look at the top of the character, it resembles a bamboo hat. Below the hat seems to be something that represents a man holding a fish and taking a bite out of it. Do you see it now? This is the essence of an ideogram. To make things simpler, when you see a sign high in the air that resembles two golden arches, what does that mean? "McDonald's." When you see a siren wearing a crown, that represents "Starbucks" (Lewis, 2012). Fork and Knife on the side of the Interstate, that represents "restaurant." The world is literally polluted with these images, and you know more than you think. Signs from car manufacturers, fast-food restaurant chains, clothing and apparel outlets, and electronics, so many that maybe languages like Chinese and Japanese are not as foreign as one may think (Lewis, 2012).

Mandarin at first glance is overwhelming due to the strokes. When you open up a Mandarin dictionary, you will not find it alphabetized or arranged by sound. In fact, it will be arranged according to stroke count. Take in consideration the words:
water, (to) see, mouth, bamboo, one, two, and heart. In English, these words would be arranged to: bamboo, heart, mouth, one, see, two, and water. (MGBD, 2012).

But it Manda rin? No. This is how they are arranged (MGBD, 2012):
一, 二, 口, 心, 水, 竹, and 車. When transliterated, yī (one), èr (two), kǒu (mouth), xīn (heart), shuǐ (water), zhú (bamboo), and chē (cart).

There is one character to fear and love at the same time. It is so rare you would never have to memorize it; but if you ever saw it, you would know it almost instantly. The character is Biáng, and used only in the name of a noodle dish.

So much writing for so little to say? It may seem like overkill, but take a look at the characters inside, they all represent a story. This is a rarity and the most common stroke count for the most commonly used characters is eight to nine strokes. Hopefully that can allow you to relax for a bit. If you want to explore radicals and other Chinese words, I highly recommend using: MDBG Chinese-English dictionary . I have found it to be quite informative.

Sources
Lewis, B. (2012, May 1). Why chinese isn’t as hard as you think: over 8000 words of encouragement for potential learners. Retrieved from http://www.fluentin3months.com/chinese/
Tsai, C. (2006)Frequency and stroke counts of Chinese characters. Retrieved from http://technology.chtsai.org/charfreq/
MDBG. Radical/strokes lookup. (2012) Retrieved from http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=radicals

Visual Appeal: Abjads

Now an abjad is similar to an alphabet, the only difference is that it does not have letters that represent vowels, and is usually written right-to-left (Ager, 2012). To repeat what I've said earlier, it would be difficult for an alphabetic user to comprehend such an idea.

For example try reading this: TH QCK BRWN FX JMPS VR TH LZY DG

Now you can easily fill in the vowels, you have seen this phrase before (hopefully) and it becomes: THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG

See? It's just another representation. Now thankfully these "alphabets" do occasionally, and I mean that it is rare, to have some markings that allow you to know which vowel to say.

Here are the two main scripts using an abjad:

The Hebrew abjad

א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ ך ל מ ם נ ן ס ע פ ף צ ץ ק ר ש ת

The Arabic abjad

غ ظ ض ذ خ ث ت ش ر ق ص ف ع س ن م ل ك ي ط ح ز و ه د ج ب أ

Understanding this script involves becoming more active in Middle-Eastern culture. A possible reason that these scripts are written right-to-left could have to do with why the left and is considered unclean. Association with it is equivalent of hygienic purposes only (Smith, 2012). This could be one of the cases, but it has been commonly agreed by linguists not so. Their reasoning was that most of the people who finally had the script and began using it, were writing both right-to-left and left-to-right. It just happened that when the masses came together, it was the standard to write right-to-left.

Why am I bringing this up? Because these text are considered sacred in their countries and defacing it is an insult to the entire people. Learning to respect a culture and gain knowledge about it, will be one of the most useful things to do when learning a new language.

Take a look at how an abjad looks when put together:

English: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

Hebrew: שועל החום הזריז קפץ מעל הכלב העצלן.

Arabic: قفز الثعلب البني السريع فوق الكلب الكسول.

Sources
Ager, S. (2012). Types of writing system. Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/types.htm#abjads
Ager, S. (2012). Types of writing system. Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com /writing/arabic.htm
Ager, S. (2012). Types of writing system. Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/hebrew.htm
Smith, S.E. , and Bronwyn Harris, eds. "What are some Middle Eastern etiquttetTips?." wiseGEEK. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Dec 2012. .

Visual Appeal: Alphabets

The look of a language

Let me ask you one thing, what exactly is it in a language you look at most? What about how it is appeal in written form? Is it the curvaceous letters? Or is it the sharp and jagged edges? I'm speaking of how a language is written. In our native tongues, we do not always give much attention to the to the way it is formed. We simply just look, and read without a taking a moment to realize where the characters originated from. Language changes constantly which is how the various writing systems exist today.

Here are the basic categories:

• Alphabets
• Abjads
• Ideographic
• Syllabic
• Sign Language

An alphabet, now that is something you should recognize right away. Why? Because you are using one to read this blog right now. An alphabet is a scripted system that consists of both vowels and consonants, representing nearly every sound made in the spoken language (Ager, 2012). English, French, Spanish, are just a few of the many languages that use this type of writing system. Most will use a Latin-based alphabet, but have additional letters to accompany their own set of phonemes. For example, The Icelandic alphabet has two unique letters, and many accented and diacritical marks (Ager, 2012). That essentially can sum up the majority of European languages, and having knowledge of a Latin-based alphabet makes most languages seem less foreign. Not all alphabets use this base; there are a few others that can make you squint your eyes and wonder what they are saying. Cyrillic, Greek, and Hangul (Korean alphabet) are the other common bases. Let's take a look at them:

The Cyrillic alphabet:

Аа Бб Вв Гг Дд Ее Ёё Жж Зз Ии Йй Кк Лл Мм Нн Оо Пп Рр Сс Тт Уу Фф Хх Цц Чч
Шш Щщ Ъъ Ыы Ьь Ээ Юю Яя

The Greek alphabet:

Αα Ββ Γγ Δδ Εε Ζζ Ηη Θθ Ιι Κκ Λλ Μμ Νν Ξξ Οο Ππ Ρρ Σσ/ς Ττ Υυ Φφ Χχ Ψψ Ωω

The Hangul (Korean alphabet)

Consonants: ㄱㄴㄷ ㄹㅁㅂㅅㅇㅈㅊㅋㅌㅍㅎ
Vowelsㅏㅓㅗㅜㅡㅣㅑㅕㅛㅠ

For most people who are learning a secondary language, they will feel more comfortable using a script similar to the one they use in the one they speak now. So those using an alphabet will feel others that use one to be, "readable." Now all languages are readable, it's just a misconception that you can't read Greek, Farsi, or Chinese. It is just something you are not used to. To understand this, try to imagine you never learned to read (Ager, 2012). At first glance, you would have no idea how to comprehend it. It is that same feeling, and you just need to learn how to read. It's just starting all over again so do not anticipate to much about it.

Take a good look at the following samples of text in Icelandic, Russian, Greek, and Korean. Meditate on them. Evaluate all their curves, edges and overall view. Ask yourself, which one looks most appealing. There is no wrong answer. If you found what you are looking for then great! If alphabets are not what you are looking for, then look into the post on Abjads.

English: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Icelandic: Fljótur brúnn refur stökk yfir latur hundur.
Russian: Быстрая коричневая лиса перепрыгнула через ленивую собаку.
Greek: Η γρήγορη καφέ αλεπού πηδάει πάνω από τον τεμπέλη σκύλο.
Korean: 빠른 갈색 여우가 게으른 개를 뛰어 넘는.

Sources
Ager, S. (2012). Types of writing system. Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com /writing/types.htm
Ager, S. (2012). Origin of writing in Korea. Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/korean.htm
Ager, S. (2012). Cyrillic alphabet. Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cyrillic.htm
Ager, S. (2012). Cyrillic alphabet. Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/greek.htm

The Difficult Choice

What language should I learn next?

...And where do I begin?

It's not that simple of a question as you may initially think. Picking a second language involves a much more complicated decision making process than the average fast- food order. As someone who is absolutely fascinated by language and all of its aspects such as: morphology, phonology, orthography, and syntax, I can't stop myself from dabbling into various languages. This can become a stressful issue at some times. I have gone into studying a language that is so different from my own that I found myself giving up too quickly. This method, for most, usually ends up in disaster. A language like Japanese for example, has so many deterring factors that makes it one of the most difficult languages to learn. This particular language has cultural, lexicon, syntax, and a writing system so vastly different from English that it is overwhelming. These factors are what pull or push you away from what you are looking for.

First of all, to set a baseline, my native tongue is obviously English. In high school and college, I spent my time studying Latin American Spanish. During those times I was constantly looking for the next language, and dabbled into anything from Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, and American Sign Language. Most recently, I started working on Swedish, all on my own. You may be thinking, "how did I get to that? How did I make the decision to learn an obscure language like Swedish?" The answer was, " I like the sound, the melody, how it is written, and how easy it was to remember words." In fact, I was picking up Swedish faster than Spanish and that was one of the reasons why it drove me to continuing down that path of Swedish fluency.

Let me tell you why I am sharing this with you. I want to help you. When I was learning my first language, I had the choices of French, Spanish, German, Russian, Japanese and Chinese, which was increasingly overwhelming for me. I know what works. I know how to help you make the better decision. There is no right or wrong language. You have different tastes than mine and I cannot change that. Do not feel like you are alone in the world. Most people have no idea where to begin and are lost in the vast world wide web of unacceptable and unreliable sources. Such sources that speak of learning a language for the sake of popularity, dispersion, and population, are not reliable because they do not encompass the full view.

This blog is to stop those problems from happening to you. It is to educate you properly, guide you in the safest and wisest direction, keep you humored, and especially keep you encourage so that your self esteem remains high. The last thing I want is for you to lose interest in something so beautiful and wonderful. Language is fun, and enriching your knowledge with a part of someone’s culture is one step closer to communicating with them. I will be practical and easy to comprehend. Most importantly I will help you go through the thinking process of how to choose from your favorite languages, ones that seem of great interest, have pleasing sounds and an eye-pleasing writing system. All languages have these factors and many more and it is up to me to help find one that best suits your tastes and experience level. I have laboriously sought after many sources in my life and after being able to learn and understand the basics of at least two foreign languages, I can say that I am qualified to assist you in your time of need.