Dr. Nakhat Fatima

Would you like to learn what those strange symbols in the Dictionary mean? Do you wonder what are units of words or why a it is difficult to pronounce the French 'R' or Italian Trill? In this module, we will take a little walk in the music of meaningful sounds, their representations, interactions and transformations. In order to "see" the sounds, we will record them and analyze their structure. This is an introduction to the musical world of Phonetics where we will listen, speak, write, and visualize sounds and learn their names. [show less]

A language that came into existence only 800-900 years ago out of need for interaction and turned into a romantic version of Indo-Aryan languages, Urdu has the capacity of beauty, sharing, absorption and depth. With an inventory of a large number of consonants and a set of simple vowels and Indo-Aryan sentence structure, Urdu has complexity which can only accompany poetic beauty and lexical opulence. We will study the script, sounds, and basic vocabulary as well as sentence structure and grammar; so next time you have tea with your Urdu speaking friends, you can have a conservation about music and food. [show less]