Words

Session Activity- Write words digitally

Item Produced- Digital spreadsheet of all words, pronunciation, and gloss from the last 13 days.

Summary-  I took each day and made it a sheet in an excel workbook. I then typed five columns (Day, date, word as it was in transcribed, orthographic transcription, and the descriptive meaning of the word or phrase as transcribed). I then took all of these individual day sheets and copied their info into an inclusive list of all days. This list was sorted alphabetically by the orthographic column to make a rudimentary dictionary. If I want to look for a word and only have the English, I can re-sort by the meaning (gloss) Column to get this information.

Linguistic Effective-  re-reading and typing the words in a few sittings was a chance to review the words and make connections I never saw before. This review produced a list of words I had not yet asked

Linguistic Ineffective- Penmanship, pronunciation changes, and incomplete inquisition all contributed to the large patches in the vocabulary list.

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Penmanship

Cultural Effective- None of great impact

Cultural Ineffective- Not a cultural experience

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  None

Tomorrow- I should write the list of the words I want to ask and bring them back up with the speaker

Further Comments- I had procrastinated this for a while, but now that it is done, I feel much better and more prepared. I am eager to see my speaker's reaction when I present him with this list. I also and eager to get on with my next homework assignment of transcribing the story.

Guest Visit

Duration- .0:56:10

Session Activity- Talk in a group with another french speaker

Item Produced- Follow-up data on pronunciation

Summary- This meeting was out of the regular lessons as another speaker joined us for conversation. I asked both for help repeating words to aid with orthography corrections. In all it was a pleasant evening, and I believe both speaker and guest enjoyed their time.


Linguistic Effective- Composing the list of known consonants, in order to make a list of unknown consonants and words in which the unknown appear greatly streamlined this process. Would highly recommend filling in the word charts

Linguistic Ineffective- Having two speakers, one entirely new to the established interview milleau, was difficult to make forward motion within the activity.

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Stress the importance of following the steps in the orthography process

Cultural Effective- It was very cool to see my speaker interact with another fluent speaker.

Cultural Ineffective- I do not know if my speaker welcomed the opportunity as much as I did- it seemed like he felt the other speaker to be intrusive on our learning time

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  maybe I should ask the speaker less definitely before inviting the guest

Tomorrow- Nail down orthography and begin transcribing into a database

Further Comments- Although my speaker was hesitant, the guest was quite eager. In fact, the guest called me back to ask to attend the next session. I am in a strange situation where I do not know if the speaker would enjoy a constant third person. I also do not know how to tell the third that they may not always be welcomed though they were welcomed this time

Uhhhh.....

Session Activity- Sit and talk- lost research notebook, which makes it difficult to move on to orthography. So today I just showed up without a plan.

Item Produced- Some personal narrative about boat work

Linguistic Effective- Listening to prose was a good review to point out the holes in the noun and verb collection of the past sessions.

Linguistic Ineffective- I should not have been doing this today. I desperately need to review notes and rewrite vocab in the orthography so I can cement what I have learned

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Maybe I need to let people know what to do if they forget something and cant move on

Cultural Effective-The story time was great. He gave me a massive increase in boat knowledge.

Cultural Ineffective- None

Cultural Provisional Improvements-None

Tomorrow- Get the book and trace out orthography, try to make headway in digitizing notes

Verb

Duration- 0:56:42 

Session Activity-we went over the recommended verb list, trying to isolate the form when possible, and using in a sentence as needed.

Item Produced- list of verbs categorized by verb type

Linguistic Effective- the verb list really helped us stay on track and get a good overview of the different forms. The systematic approach helped me later when reviewing my notes to compare different verbs and contrast their actions

Linguistic Ineffective- I could feel that I was missing some particles. This is the first exercise where I felt like the interaction would have improved by being mediated (book, dictionary, teacher, etc)  I could tell there was a helping verb in the diatransitive and copular forms, but I could not get to it. It was a bit scary to look over a cliff like that and see there is something beyond our grasp

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- I think I should have slowed down and taken the list a little slower, but then again, this exercise is just a first survey, and not a verb study. I do need to add some information on how to deal with this feeling though

Cultural Effective-  A song! Recanting verb made him remember a song that was sung to him as a child. It was not an "unknown" song, but it was the first time the speaker had ever sung in a session. It was very special.

Cultural Ineffective- I feel like the repetition is grueling. Then again, maybe it was the repetition that put our speaker in the mindset to access the song.

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  The book is designed to keep things from becoming too repetitive, but I wonder what would happen if there were some repetitive parts? What could be unlocked by accessing the mundane recanting part of the brain?

Tomorrow- I am looking forward to challenge one! Next week we will begin with the orthography

Boat and Prose

Duration- 00:50:48

Session Activity- Go over a boat diagram

Item Produced- list of nautical terms

Linguistic Effective- The speaker has worked most of his life on boats. The terms he uses are centered on this lifestyle. Getting more boat terms helped me better understand what my speaker was talking about

Linguistic Ineffective- Though effective, it was not very organized. I am afraid I jumped ahead of myself on this exercise. The boat terms were not as useful as they could have been as we have not gone through verbs. Most of the terms could not be implemented as I am still missing critical verbs

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Let this be a lesson to myself and everyone else using the system that the challenges should be taken seriously. Don’t skip ahead until you get past the first part!!

Cultural Effective- my speaker lives and breathes boats. Knowing boating terms helps with the Ola! weather talk and also general conversation. I am finding I am learning new niche terms in English also

Cultural Ineffective- the third member of our group came for a lesson and I feel as though we didn’t take them into account enough. They had missed quite a few sessions and had difficulty keeping up. We should have slowed down and allowed them to ask more questions

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  make sure the pace is always even to include all learners

Tomorrow- VERBS VERBS VERBS! This has to happen before we take on anymore cultural activities!

Further Comments- My speaker seems to be gaining ease a fluency also. I told him this, and he mentioned that he re-reads the book at night using the charts to strengthen his vocabulary and memory of the language. I never envisioned the book also helping speakers improve themselves, but this is a welcomed outcome!

I Want it Now!

Ola! making it to the community!

Duration- 00:58:47

Session Activity- Began to look at syntax through the modification charts, skimmed possession, plurality, and modifiers.

Item Produced- basic theory on modifier and possession syntax, questions about plurality

Linguistic Effective- the charts kept us on track. Although they did not follow them directly, using different words than those in the examples, the charts helped to keep track of our progress, and keep us on the right track.

Linguistic Ineffective- the time was ineffective when we jumped around. A lot of the jumping happened because of guilt of wasting the speaker's time. I felt today he was so eager to work that I did not want to make these exercises a drudgery and dampen his perception for further session. we covered alot of different areas this way, and I have a strong instinct about how things are working within these rules. But I cant say I could make any grammatical conclusions.

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- I need to reconcile the balance of speaker interest and learner value. One thing I noticed in the Ola Weather talk is the speaker talks a lot about boats (he has worked on ships since the age of 14). Understandably, the breadth of ship terms was not covered in Ola. Maybe look into butting a "roll your own" chart in this section to encourage users to gather the vocab in the genre they detect the speaker using often in the weather talk

Cultural Effective-  Also effective is the "homework terms" the speaker researches. When we cannot find a word in our sessions, the speaker will ask the french speaking men at work the next day. This outside support group has so far been able to answer all of our outside questions. They have also invited me to visit the shipyard.

Cultural Ineffective- Although my speaker was not keen on his family terms, he was keen on explaining his boss' family structure, and the history of the boats.

Cultural Provisional Improvements- If we are stumbling on context, try and put things in boating terms

Tomorrow- I want to bring a diagram of a ship to our session and get fundamental terms for things. I also want to base our verb inquiry on ships.

Further Comments- I assumed I understood which culture I was gaining access in with the study. I guess I misjudged my speaker, his experiences, and his ship-based lifestyle

We Are Family

Packing and Shipping, check your mailbox soon!

Duration- 46:00.00 

Session Activity- Go through kinship list, Swadesh Vocab, Greeting Phrases

Item Produced- Greeting Phrases, Kinship list, Geneology information

Linguistic Effective- Greeting phrases effortlessly merged into use. The kinship chart did work

Linguistic Ineffective- I did not take my own advice and copy a version of the chart in my notes before starting. The result was the chart was very hard to follow.

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Write charts in notebook before going to the session.

Cultural Effective- the chart made it easy to ask sticky questions. A "how do you say," is very easily turned into a "Who is your".

Cultural Ineffective- my speaker isn't too keen on talking about the family tree.

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  try and work in more family questions.

Tomorrow- We seemed to be done with most of the noun vocabulary for now, start moving to modifiers and verb vocab.

Further Comments- I didn’t realize this while writing but the speaker seems more attached to using the book than I am. I am not sure why the speaker is hesitant about cultural family tree questions- is it a personal hesitance, wrong approach, or a disinterest in the process. The speaker seems to be able to get into the french roll faster than when we first began these lessons. I think he enjoys speaking, and is frustrated by the slowness of the process.

Describing the Sounds

The books have arrived!

Duration- 45 min 

Session Activity- Make a consonant list of the past few days

Item Produced- consonant list

Linguistic Effective- Went through the words I had gathered through the sessions and made a list of all the letters or symbols I used to describe the sounds. I then went through again and tallied how many times each letter had been used. With this, I made a list of sounds and letter I will try to use when explaining that sound

Linguistic Ineffective- I was kind of fever-y in a doctor's office. If I want a professional consonant list, this cannot be the final attempt at this product.

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Maybe try and do this again in a few sessions.

Cultural Effective- n/a

Cultural Ineffective- n/a

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  n/a

Tomorrow- In my next session, I will try and observe if any new sounds appear beyond what I described in this list

Further Comments- In my next session, I will try and observe if any new sounds appear beyond what I described in this list

Get Vocab

Duration- 1:07:48

Session Activity- Go through Swadesh List

Item Produced- vocabulary, Conversation, Story

Linguistic Effective- Although I was interested in straight listing, we were not able to accomplish much of this. What we did get was quite helpful in understanding phonemes and their interactions.

Linguistic Ineffective- The speaker seemed bored of the Swadesh list- and I wouldn't hold it against him. After three sessions, the Swadesh words are getting pretty old. So instead of plain Swadesh, we tried to get related words, build scenes and recall memories and tell stories as a way to get words. We did not get many words, well, we got ample words, but we really didn’t get to many structured lists. Most of what we got was not what was needed to communicate, but what was said in the session.

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- I think instead of the Swadesh list, maybe we need to come up with a communication list. Like a list of words most often used in communicating, not just words used in general

Cultural Effective- using vocab to tell stories was extremely rich. With just a few related words we were able to transport into the speaker's memories. Through this we saw many vocabulary we would have never thought to ask (breadbox?). The story format was easy and enjoyable for the speaker. It seemed he was easily able to channel thoughts in the language when given a few vocabulary words.

Cultural Ineffective- The speaker would switch in and out of the language. Curiously, it was very controlled. Many of his narratives were recalling work processes. These were very linear tales. When I asked for language vocabulary, he would provide, then begin the story in french; however, if I asked a question about the story in English, he would provide the answer in English, then continue speaking in English until I asked another question about the french vocabulary. I do not know if it was voluntary or involuntary, but I tried this several times during our session with the same results. With a french question, he would narrate in french. With an English question, he would narrate in English.

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  Try and tell more stories

Tomorrow- We are going to move on from Swadesh in the next lesson. I am not ready, but I think my speaker wants to move, and I believe I can get much of the vocabulary through story questioning

Further Comments- I feel very comfortable listening in the language. I have taken a lot of french in my life (4 high school, 3 college courses) but was never able to understand Louisiana french. Through the past few lessons, I am now able to pick apart what he is saying and see how his fast, compacted pronunciation is related to the french I studied. I still feel awkward speaking,  and I do not think he understands much when I try.

Day Two.Two

Publishers Proof arrived today!

Duration- 1:08:28

Session Activity- Go through Swadesh List

Item Produced- Words for Swadesh list, The origin of Cut Off, 3 idioms, and a history story

Linguistic Effective- Because of earlier jaunt with nouns, I was able to spot and not a few different consonants I did not note in the first session. The list system went well, and the speaker was comfortable with questions and able to provide 95% of answers. After the session, I summarized what I thought was happening to the sounds. He didn't seem too interested in the content, but he seemed relieved that what he was doing was helping someone

Linguistic Ineffective- Sandwiches are still not possible. Connection words are difficult to grab as the speaker cannot isolate them (i.e. at, in, and on were not answerable questions.). The speaker was sleepy, and at times seemed lulled. He was also disappointed when I did not answer the greeting phrases in french

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Step my game up when It comes to the greeting phrases. My speaker wants to see me implement the words used into our Ola Weather Talk. On the way to the next lesson, I will try and construct answers to the weather talk to share. Also, encourage users to make a list of words their speaker does not know. Encourage users to let their speaker in on what is happening.

Cultural Effective- When the speaker was not able to isolate the word in question, he would give me the word used in two or three phrases. These phrases were usually culutrally idioms, 80% of these I had never heard before. There were three words my speaker could not think of vocabulary for (Rug, zero, and Pie Crust). After the session, he approached his wife to ask for these words. With this four cool things happened all at once:

1. She tried to think of the answered, and involuntarily switched into talking french. 
2. Both her and the speaker began to tell me stories of french memories. 
3. They brought me to a painting and began to describe the cultural significance, their experience with it, and locational history associated with the piece. 
4. Both began to form lists on who they knew who spoke french, and they could ask for help finding these words for me. 

I am going to say that this is Jan Vansina's theory in action! This makes a strong case for linguistic memory designing cognitive architecture.  I still don't know how to say pie crust, but this linguistic gap is ok. Culturally, trying to think of these missing words brought so much into their minds that spilled out. Much of what they told me I could have never  elicited. Most exciting is the ripple effect this will create as three to four french speakers who they will ask these words to will hopefully share similar oral memory experiences.

Cultural Ineffective- Daylight.Savings.Time. My speaker goes to sleep at 8pm each night. I arrive for lesson at 6pm for an hour of conversation. Daylight savings time made it so our lesson was not as dynamic as it could have been. He was groggy. Also ineffective was the monotony of the Swadesh list. I could tell he was uninterested in material with so little "use."

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  watch personal clocks, and not federal ones

Tomorrow- Ask if they found the words they were missing, and get my weather talk together. I also need to compile the words I do have together to start a consonant/vowel list.

Further Comments- The speaker seemed proud of what he was doing. He told me that he told his friends what he was doing, and that they thought it was a very good thing. At another point he mentioned that maybe he will start giving french lessons to other people. The process of me learning from him seems to be showing him that his language skill is valuable

The Call

Duration- 00:04.32 

Session Activity- called speaker to let him know I could not come

Item Produced- trust in schedule, speaker read Ola!

Linguistic Effective- Speaker read the book that day instead of having a lesson. This was IMMENSELY helpful. He described over the phone that he had a better idea of what I was trying to do, and how he could help me. In the next session he was prepared and understanding to my method of asking questions.

Linguistic Ineffective- still no luck with understanding sandwiches

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Encourage user to let the speaker read the book

Cultural Effective- In the next session, the speaker seemed more in tune with why language is important.

Cultural Ineffective- Skipping on the second lesson degraded trust with the speaker.

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  Things to consider changing in hopes to increase cultural communication in this activity.

Tomorrow- Make sure to increase trust and stick the schedule

Day One!

First day of Ola! being beta test by the Houma Language Project

Duration- 0:23.25

Session Activity- Met for the first session, asked for a few nouns.

Item Produced- Established form with speaker, established form with learner, list of 20 nouns, better understanding of speaker/learner communication issues, and language sound issues.

Linguistic Effective-Using the Swadesh list help the new learner ask and receive simple words. There was not one word we asked the speaker did not know. It also reduced the anxiety of the speaker, as they seemed validated in their language knowledge with each question answered. 

Linguistic Ineffective- in a cultural situation, some of the things the speaker says will be things that you have heard before. In this session, I had a hard time breaking out of what I knew of the language and writing only EXACTLY what the speaker said. For example, Houma French is based off french. I know in french, the article is gendered, and often learned with the noun. For the first set of words, I would instinctively drop the article and only write the noun stem in my notes. I did not even notice I was doing this until 10 or 12 words in. Because the language is familiar, I assumed comprehension and missed opportunities to learn the language nuances.

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Unlike a school environment, there needs to be a section on clearing your mind of previous knowledge to truly listen to the dialect difference. I need to add a section on assumptions.

Cultural Effective- The speaker was eager (maybe over eager) and was delighted to be asked questions. The weather talk in the beginning of the session made both the speaker and the learner more comfortable, and did a great job on eliminating conversational distractions. The speaker steered learning into areas he was comfortable by teaching us words associated with his lifestyle (boat, horn, deer, legs). These conversations steered off track, and we were able to get some family names and history no one ever spoke of before. I learned the names of three generations above the speaker, along with a little information about each. To me, it seemed like the speaker was introducing us to the characters of his language memories. Exciting stuff!!!

Cultural Ineffective-The speaker was totally not able to make a sandwich. they were also not on board with saying things slow and repeating them. I think because I knew him, he expected a higher amount of understanding when he spoke. This was untrue, Being a new language, I had much difficulty understanding what he was saying. He seemed disheartened and unwilling to repeat words.

Cultural Provisional Improvements- There has to be a diagram or a better way to get the concept of a sandwich across to the speaker.

Tomorrow- Next session, I will try and do a clearer job on communicating how we need to hear words (i.e. slowly, space between them, loudly, and maybe sandwiches).

Further Comments- This is was an exciting moment for me. This book is an architectural plan for an interaction. It seems I have spent 4 years researching, and the last 9 months drafting the plans for this interaction. Today was the grand opening, and I was able to watch people move through the conversation space I designed. It was kind of surreal to watch them flow, in their own way, through the path. It was a relief to watch them flow through with such ease. The boundaries prevented the dangers, the accessways led to information, and the experience left all sides with a type of memory I set out to create. It was a great day.