Course Description: Presents the principal branches of linguistic study, as it pertains to Spanish: the sound system (phonetics and phonology), the structure of words (morphology), and the structure of sentences (syntax). Additionally, attention is paid to bilingualism, especially Spanish in the US, and how Spanish is spoken/written differently by various social groups (sociolinguistics) and in various Spanish-speaking countries (dialectology).
Course Narrative: In this course, I was able to learn about the phonology, phonetics, morphology, and syntax which is something that I was not familiar with. It was a bit challenging to learn and understand each term since they are somewhat related to one another. I never payed attention to the sound and structure of words even though I've spoken Spanish since I was a child. It was truly interesting to see how words are classified based on the sound of the consonant that has the most powerful sound when you pronounce it. Also, it was satisfying to learn about the structure of sentences, how there are different ways to write something you want to write. Another important process I learned was morphology, within this system, there are ways or strategies in which words are formed. Something very interesting that I learned was how to effectively use an online dictionary to correctly translate the words that I was trying to translate from English to Spanish or vice versa. It's very important to understand the meaning of every word you want to translate in order to produce the correct translation in the target language. With the completion of this course I was able to fulfill the MLO of linguistics through practice assignments during class and outside of class. Also, I was able to practice all the linguistics concepts I learned through written assignments and presentations, this helped me practice my Spanish linguistics both orally and written.