Korean fried chicken, a movie, and particles! What do these all have in common? My language partner Jannette and my fellow Korean student Priyanka and I all consumed the Korean-style fried chicken, watched a Korean movie, and learned about Korean particles in depth over these past two weeks. These two weeks of SDLC have been extremely fun and rewarding. I can tell already that Hangul is becoming a bit more familiar to me. From watching youtube videos on Hangul and using quizlet I have a better understanding and grasp of the Korean characters. Although, I’m sure I’ve said it before after you learn Hangul you can really go places in Korean in terms of pronouncing new words. To give an example, water in Korean is written as 물 but when you break the word down the word is made by placing the character mieum (ㅁ) (which gives the “m” sound) on top of the character ㅜ (which gives the “u” sound) and both over the consonant rieul (ㄹ) which all together can be sounded out as “mul”. This is how I have been slowly learning how to read Korean. With my continued effort, I can now sound out written Korean words! Although I still don’t have the best vocabulary and can’t translate many words I am thrilled to (kind of) be able to read in Korean!
In this period we mainly focused on the basics of grammar. It was really cool since Jannette actually brought a Korean textbook and she read it and went over it with Pri and me. This teaching style reminded me of how a teacher would read a book to their student and then ask them if they had any questions. Personally, I really like this learning method as it gave a sort of organization to the grammar we were learning, allowed Jannette to supplement the text, and gave us time to ask questions. We learned a lot about particles including both topic and subject and how the grammatical equivalent of “to be.” There are two ways to translate “to be” in Korean and their usage depends on if the last word of the sentence ends in a consonant or a vowel. If the last word ends in a vowel then 예요(yeyo) will be added and if the last word ends in a consonant then 이에요 (ieyo) is used. In the lesson, we went over how to ask what something is using the particles and answer with the correct particle too. I may be wrong but I read somewhere that using these particles is an example of inflectional morphology (I read that information here: https://lisatravis2012.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/inflectional-morphology-in-korean-2/). It was really interesting to see these different parts of linguistics used in the Korean examples I was learning.
Next, we learned about more topic marking particles like 는/은 (neun/eun). Again choosing the correct particle depends on if the preceding noun ended in a consonant (use eun) or a vowel (use neun). These topic particles are placed right after the noun they refer to and are used to mean “is/to be.” More specifically, these are examples of the subject particles in Korean. If I wanted to say “I am a student” I would use a particle to identify myself as the subject of the sentence and I would say “나는 학생이다”. As we can see the subject particle “는” is placed directly after the subject “나” which is the pronoun I. The use of neun here shows that the topic and subject of the statement is “I” or the preceding noun. Learning the basics of this grammar actually allowed us to start making sentences!
The hardest part of this new subject was trying to grasp the concept of topic marking particles as English does not use these. Also choosing the correct particle is a bit difficult. I have no doubt with time and more practice this will become easier though. We continued to review these basics of grammar over these couple weeks to build a strong foundation for our Korean learning. The textbook was very helpful in teaching examples and the concept but Jannette was the real helper when helping us build sentences and knowing when to use which particle.
Now to the chicken and the movie! Jannette, Priyanka, and I all agreed at the beginning of the semester that we wanted to do some fun cultural activities. As part of our lesson before spring break we all watched a very popular Korean movie called 200 Pounds Beauty. The movie is from 2006 and focuses on Korean beauty standards. In an effort to not give away too much about the film I’ve included the link to the Wikipedia page here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/200_Pounds_Beauty). Essentially, this movie was a dramatized story about the narrow and high beauty standards and pressures to be thin while looking a certain way. It is well-known that plastic surgery is a popular practice in Korea and the movie made it very apparent that by changing one’s look one can change how they’re treated. Watching the movie was also fun as Pri and I would always look at each other when we heard a word we new like no(아니), really(진짜), and yes(어).
This movie honestly shocked me and the amount of plastic surgery procedures the main character underwent was new to me. Jannette did mention how plastic surgery was very normalized in Korea. Jannette’s own mother asked her if she wanted plastic surgery as a graduation present. It is kind of shocking to see different beauty standards in various cultures and the ways in which individuals go about achieving the desired look.
My favorite part of the cultural lesson was the Korean-style fried chicken we ordered from Bonchon we ordered to eat during the movie. I had never had Korean fried chicken before and it did not disappoint! I would eat this every day if I could and it was great to get a peek into Korean-style food. I will say Korean spice is very real and I could barely eat the spicy chicken. Check out their website to see the amazing food: https://bonchon.com. This was another very successful period of SDLC learning! I am a bit sad we are going on break but I will just have to do more independent study this time.
Replies
This week sounds like it was quite enjoyable! I think it is awesome that you, Jannette, and Priyanka agreed to incorporate different elements of Korean culture throughout your learning. Food is an amazing aspect of culture, and Korean food is scrumptious, so it is awesome you were able to try some! Your detailed journal entry demonstrates how in depth and thoroughly you have learned about the topics you have covered. I hope you can continue to learn after this year :)