Because I am becoming ever more interested in linguistics, I am trying to learn simple phrases in as many different languages as possible, and bulletining them here in the language lab. Here's what I've got so far:

How to Say 'Hello' and 'Goodbye' in Ten Tongues

ENGLISH	Hello	Goodbye
FRENCH	Bonjour	Au revoir
ITALIAN	Buon giorno	Arrivederchi
SPANISH	Buenas dìas	Adìos
GERMAN	Guten tag	Auf wiedersehen!
CZECH	Dobrý den	Na schledanou!
HUNGARIAN	Jó napot	Viszlát
RUSSIAN	Zdravstvuyte	Do svidaniya
JAPANESE	Konnichiwa	Sayonara
CHINESE	Ni hao	Zaì jiàn

Notes:
1. The 'j' in 'bonjour' sounds like 'sh'; 'au revoir' is often pronounced as one word: "are-voir'.
2. Italian is a phonetic language: "bwOn-gyore-no"; "ah-rive-ah-dere-chee'.
3. If you live in California, you've used these Spanish phrases already. (Hint: the 'i's are stressed.)
4. Fairly phonetic in the German, I think...
5. For the Czech, I'm guessing stress on the 'y', and "na schledanou' is pronounced similarly to the russian 'da svidaniya'.
6. Like many Slavic languages, in Hungarian 'j' sounds like 'y'; otherwise, pretty phonetic.
7. Transliterated from the cyrillic alphabet, "Zdravstvuyte' sounds like "strass-veet-yuh"; you've heard 'do svidaniya' in the movies before...
8. Do I even need to bother with an explanation for the Japanese?
9. 'Ni hao' is pretty phonetic; 'zai jian' is like "sai-shin".

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Feel free to offer any corrections...

I just got back from my Writing Seminar final (for the final time, the full title is, "Just a Girl (in the World): Contemporary Women Writers)". I innumerated my problems with the teacher (Rehn) in my last post. I'm here to inform you that I have now just done something that was at once inadvisable and absolutely necessary (for me, anyway).

I did better on the final than even I was expecting, so I don't think she can fault me--that is, until she reads the end. I didn't deliberately disobey the assignment, I simply ran away with it; I did what it was asking first, and then digressed into expressing my disappointment with the way she taught the class--or in her case, didn't teach it. I justified this by lieu of the fact that the prompt I chose was asking how my perceptions had been changed about feminine experience by the class, and I was perfectly honest. Here's a summation:

When I found I'd gotten into my first choice of writing seminar, I was thrilled; it sounded like a really interesting subject, impinging on both feminism and writers I liked (Cisneros, Morrison, ecc.). My most burning question was, "What does it mean to be 'just a girl in the world'?" However, the No Doubt song (and Gwen Stefani) were never discussed, though this would have been a prime topic.

In fact, not true discussion ever occured. She would tell us to express our analyses/understandings, but never shared her insights, or expressed herself in such a way that disparaged our own. She came off as trying to force her opinions on us, without ever telling us what those opinions were. This disappointed me; I expected to come into this class and get my mind expanded by, hopefully, feminist thought, or at least a greater knowledge of women's experiences.

Well, the reading gave me some idea of that, by my without the context needed, my understanding was limited to a literary context, which gave no feeling of a wider social significance, as it was fiction. And this was a writing class; why did she not talk more on literary theory, which would've been helpful? Why couldn't she just trust our intelligence and help us become true scholars? How can we, as teachers, rest at night knowing that we have failed at our moral responsibility to share our knowledge and worse, have barely made an effort to expand our students' understandings of themselves and society?

That last was how I ended it, signed "Respectfully and Imploringly". I know this was not professional; it may not have been wise. But I had to do it, out of my own sense of moral duty. Even if it fails or was the wrong approach (an e-mail or actual letter might have been better, not in a final), it was a natural progression of my immersion in the topic, that she failed at teaching it, or didn't make the effort. I wanted to make it clear to her. I hope I did.

Either way, it's done now and there's no taking it back. I did what I felt I had to, and as always with my rash actions, it may backfire, but at least I followed my gut, and it wasn't just ranting or bitching, but a truly disturbed expression of my moral discomfirture.

Teaching to me is a very serious buisness; I consider it the noblest and most necessary of professions, the very pinnacle of our civilization and the basis on which our entire existance rests. That is, learning. One must learn to walk and to speak, and for that, imitation is necessary. But this gets into what I've been learning from reading Aristotle's "Poetics". Then again, half of my education has come for my own reading, and I veiw this education as a guide for that continued expansion. *shrug*