Pop Quiz!!
Did I:
a. Really enjoy SDLC and learning Korean
b. Really REALLY enjoy SDLC and learning Korean (but still struggle sometimes)
c. Learn a lot more about Korean culture than I expected and have a fantastic experience with my language partner, Jannette
d. All of the above
The correct choice is D.
As I sit here writing my last journal post for the semester, I still don’t think I’ve processed that my undergraduate college career has come to an end. I know the pop quiz was probably kind of weird but I’m trying to keep it light so I don’t get too sad about the end of my time at UR (especially given the circumstances). That being said though I’ll try and wait until the end of this post to get too sappy. Instead, I’ll talk about my past last weeks of my Korean studies.
Pri, Jannette, and I had more successful Zoom meetings during these weeks! As we prepared for our final podcast Pri and I made a shared google doc where we typed up our notes and recapped what we learned over the semester. The doc ended up being much longer than I thought it would be and I think we really learned a lot over the semester. I have a stronger grasp of Hangul and even added the Korean keyboard to my iPhone to try and type out words. It takes me an embarrassingly long time to type but I still think it’s progress! Trying to type words was new to me and I have a good friend from high school who actually majored in linguistics at his school and is very proficient in Korean now so I have been trying to send messages back and forth with him to practice. To recap some more I also reviewed the topic particles, common words/greetings, basic honorifics, pronouns, and all of the temporal vocabulary we went over.
In addition to review, I have been using online resources and Jannette to try and build some sentences and have been trying to learn some verbs and adjectives. As Jannette taught us, the Korean sentence order is different than in English. In English sentences are Subject-Verb-Object (She eats a hamburger) but in Korean sentence, order is Subject-Object-Verb (She hamburger eats). Building off of this since I already knew this I started to learn some verbs and adjectives to make more complex sentences. Adjectives also go at the end of a sentence in Korean. In fact, every sentence in Korean must end in either a verb, an adjective, or a special word 이다 which is not a verb or an adjective but it acts like them grammatically. Adjectives and 이다 cannot act on an object but verbs can. All verbs, adjectives, and 이다 end in “다” (da) as it is the only word that can be conjugated in Korean. I thought that was really interesting since there is only one word that can be conjugated. Most other languages have multiple verb endings like in Spanish there are -ar, -ir, and -er verbs with each ending having its own set of conjugations.
With this in mind, I tried to start conjugating words in Korean starting with the versatile verb, to be (이다), that I had learned about before. Korean conjugation proved to be much harder than I thought it would be. This was a bit more difficult than I was expecting and I asked Jannette about how to conjugate and kept referring to websites for help. I also learned to have (있다) but in this case, it is used as an adjective and not as a verb. This verb can mean to have or to be at a location. Since 있다 is not a verb and cannot act on an object in this situation we must use it in conjunction with a topic particle (이/가). If I want to say I have a pen then I need to write 나는 펜이 있다. This is when I realized that learning to conjugate in Korean was fairly advanced and I might need to take it slower than learning how to conjugate in a language like Spanish. I also learned that most verb and adjectives end in 하다 (do) and if you remove the two syllables then the verb turns into the noun form of that verb. For example, to speak is 말하다 but if you remove 하다 then the remaining word 말 means speech/words. This will be very handy to know to rapidly increase my vocabulary!
I also read that there are a couple of different ways to conjugate. One method of conjugation is more commonly used in written language. The other form of conjugation is more often used in speech. These conjugations for speech change based on who you are speaking to (honorifics). Even learning this much about the basics of conjugating in Korean made me realize how complex conjugation is. I will continue to try and read about how to conjugate and ask Jannette. For now, I have just tried to memorize a list of common verbs and adjectives. This website has been great for teaching me small units of grammar: https://www.howtostudykorean.com. These topics will certainly keep me busy!
Now onto the sappy part of this journal entry...
Being at home, while strange, has given me plenty of time to reflect, study, and reflect some more on how this semester’s SDLC class has gone. I think about how I actually ended up in this class. Originally, I actually wanted to take Intro to Linguistics (a class I’ve wanted to take since freshman year) but it didn’t fit in my schedule and I stumbled upon the SDLC program instead. I am so glad I did. I remember when I first chose Korean as my target language that I was really excited but also nervous because I had tried to learn a little Korean on my own before and found it really difficult and became disheartened since I didn’t have a teacher to help. Coming into SDLC I was really unsure of how my semester would look but it turned out to be such a great experience.
Words cannot express my gratitude to Jannette, Michael, and the SDLC program. Thank you so much to everyone in the program who has made this as successful as it has been and will continue to be. I am incredibly grateful to Michael, Jannette, and Pri for making this the incredible and fun experience it has been. I especially love the SDLC 105 class and am so glad I took it in conjunction with the 110 class. I loved our mini linguistics class which I suppose was not that surprising since I absolutely love learning languages. This class has shown me where I struggle and thrive while learning a language and reignited my passion for languages. For that, I am forever thankful. I always used to say if I didn’t become a doctor I would be a linguist or a translator. I truly believe that everyone should learn another language or try to be bilingual and this program allowed me to do that.
Moving forward I will treasure my Korean notes and try to keep up with the online resources I have been using since. Jannette also said we can always ask her questions. Writing this post is very bittersweet for me and my only regret is that I cannot take any more SDLC classes. Regardless, I feel so much more confident in how to go about learning a language and this program reminded me again why I love UR.
Super good luck to everyone else in the SDLC program! If you’re graduating congratulations and if you still have time left at UR I wish you so much luck in your studies and am also extremely jealous of you. My education at UR has been such a gift and this class only proved that. To Michael, I have never had a more knowledgeable, passionate, or genuinely caring professor. Thank you for being the heart and soul of this program. Best of luck to everyone! 안녕히 계세요 (annyeonghi gyeseyo)! :)
Replies
Mallory! Your pop quiz was really cute!
It takes a lot of courage to learn a new language and by reading and commenting on a lot of your posts, OI can really tell that you put so much effort into learning Korean! Korean grammar is really difficult but I really think you have it down!