Maha Nasher

Hometown: I was actually born in Edinburgh, Scotland but grew up in Sana’a, Yemen. I left Yemen and moved to Canada for college and eventually made it to Oxford. So I guess for the linguistic relevance I learnt Arabic in Sana’a Yemen, where we spoke it at home but learnt MSA in school as a language class since I went to an all English school.

Experience in the Lab

My experience in the Lab has been enriching, interesting and unique. I was responsible for coding Spanish data of native Yagua speakers. I was nervous at first because I do not speak Spanish. Dr. Fafulas guided me throughout the experience during our weekly meetings. I also had to rely on Google translate, which was surprisingly accurate most of the time. I used Word Reference, as advised by Dr. Fafulas, for Spanish verb conjugations. Despite having no background in Spanish, I began to understand Spanish verb conjugations, subject pronouns, discourse markers and sentence structure. I believe this unique learning experience was facilitated by the fact that Spanish and English are cognate languages. As an adult learner, I found myself making constant contrastive analysis between Spanish and English, and between Spanish and Arabic. Dr. Fafulas always made comparisons to how we speak in English. Linguistically, the experience at the SoCIOLing Lab exposed me to what adult language learners experience but in the context of work or real-life situations. I got to experience in reality what some of the theories and models in linguistics address. Socially, I was able to connect with the distant people of the Amazon who as parents shared their concern and hopes for maintaining Yagua and having their children learn their native language.
 

Fun facts about yourself/interests/hobbies

My academic journey has taken me from a more scientific field, engineering, to a BA in Economics and currently to an MA in linguistics. I enjoy travelling, cooking and recently hiking.