Skip to main content

YES

Yes, I did go to the seminar yesterday.

The seminar turned out pretty interesting. It was a lecture about a language spoken on the island of Vanua Lava. The language which was discussed is called Vures (the "e" has two dots on it). A one hour lecture won't be able to cover the language's idiosyncrasies, so the speaker only talked about adverbs, specifically directions. We all know how in English directions work in a 'logical' order, e.g. what is in front of me might be behind you; what is on my left may be on your right, etc. The directional adverbs in the Vures language works on a different system, unfortunately. What is behind, above, in, out, etc. are dependent on how far you are from the sea/land. All these directional adverbs are dictated by the island itself. Talk about how language and WHERE THE LANGUAGE IS SPOKEN are so closely related.

Comments

jc said…
You had me in suspense about your class. The lecture sounds interesting. Yeah, it makes sense too. If you live on a an island, use adverbs in relationship to the sea. Now, what would have been more intriguing would be if this language was spoken say in Switzerland.
2:55 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Exactly is ICC?

Arasaratnam and Doerfel's (2005) study on defining intercultural communicative competence (ICC) may be dated, but I believe their discussions are very relevant to the current situation of ICC.  Their study aimed to define ICC from a grounded exploratory approach.  Their reasoning behind this is because of the subjective understanding of what intercultural is, and what competence is.  Communication, from an intercultural perspective, is typified as spoken discourse. To come to a definition of ICC, the study interviewed a group of international and local students studying in an American university.  The students were asked what they thought ICC is, and what they thought are key components of a person who is interculturally competent.  Though responses were diverse, a common thread was induced. But would this common thread still be applicable to different cultural contexts?  Probably from a qualitative perspective it would be, but perhaps not if viewed wit...
Post a Comment
Read more

Unwelcomed

Picture taken from the bus stop I was waiting at.  The structure with the curved roof is the bigger bus stop. Since arriving here, I’ve heard a lot of stories about International Students getting beaten up or mugged or both.  At times I was skeptical when I was told about stories like this, but I believed it, most of the time.  We can’t deny that word of mouth is sometimes sensationalized.  On Thursday nights, shops all over Newcastle will open longer than usual.  This is to give students as well as other people the chance to do some late night shopping or simply hang around.  Last Thursday night, Bill, Jen, and myself were at the bus stop waiting for Bill’s bus to come.  It was half past eight and we were at a bus stop waiting for Bill’s bus to arrive.  We talked for a bit, and realized that we were supposed to wait at the smaller bus stop facing the larger one.  We crossed the road and walked towards the bus stop.  There were on...
6 comments
Read more

now i know how it feels

to be the one standing near escalators, or on the side walk, trying to grab people's attention. Today I was promoting the International Students Volunteer at the orientation program the uni had for the new students. I volunteered to run around the courtyard and wait at the entrance for people who were passing by. I did manage to get quite a number of flyers out. However, I had many futile attempts in getting people to grab a flyer. A girl literally ran when she saw me extending my hand out to her; a guy said his hands were full; another guy took the flyer and left it at the table behind me; another guy (who was from the goon society) came up to me and started dancing... I asked him, why are you dancing, and he said: why not? then it dawned on me...yes, it's the goon society, all they do is drink and be merry (they did drink a lot, i saw them going back and forth refilling their table with booze from the godfrey tanner bar right behind the expo room where we were - and th...
3 comments
Read more