What is your interest in 'your' language and the culture(s) where it is used? What do you hope to learn this semester? this year? in the future?
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What is your interest in 'your' language and the culture(s) where it is used? What do you hope to learn this semester? this year? in the future?
You need to be a member of The SDLAP Ning to add comments!
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I have grown up with the Korean language and culture all my life since my parents are both from Korea. But while I did grow up learning the elementary parts of the Korean language, such as how to read and write simple sentences and how to speak informally and formally, my passion to become better in Korean only truly began when I got older and I realized my Korean was becoming less and less adequate for my age. I became more interested in the Korean culture when my older brother introduced me to my first Korean song, “Wedding Dress” by Taeyang that is still to this day, one of my favorites. As I got more into K-pop I quickly discovered other Korean entertainment such as Korean dramas.
Before my senior year of high school, my mother had promised for years that we would be visit Korea the summer after I graduated. I patiently waited and waited with this trip in mind, since the only other time I visited Korea was when I was five years old. Unfortunately, when the time came around we were suddenly unable to go due to complications. So as I began my first year at UR last semester, and learned that there was actually no Korean class but instead an independent study option, I immediately decided that learning independently was better than keeping my Korean skills at an elementary status. Through this program, I am hoping to become proficient enough in Korean to carry on a conversation with any person (elder, friend, stranger, etc.) while also improving my reading and writing skills, expanding my vocabulary, and gain more knowledge of Korea’s history and culture.
I exchanged to Korean high school when I was sixteen years ago and home-stayed in a traditional Korean family. However, I went to international school so I didn't learn Korean at all. We always talked in English in class and also at home. I listened to Korean a lot in daily life, but I was shy to speak Korean to most of people. It was my loss not to learn Korean in high school. Luckily, this semester I get the chance to study Korean in college.
In this semester, I hope to master basic Korean alphabets and to be able to introduce myself and say formal/informal greetings and so forth. I will pay more attention on listening and speaking skills. At the end of the semester, I wish I will be able to have a 5-10 minutes presentation in Korean.
I'm mostly interested in Korean because I want to be able to talk to my Korean-speaking friends in their native language. Because of that, I want to focus on conversational skills and listening comprehension. I want to be able to ask basic questions, like "what's your name?", "how are you?", "where are you from?" and other things like that. I also want to be able to respond to those basic questions, as well as possibly learning the alphabet.
I am studying linguistics and Turkish is always used in the examples in textbooks. I know Turkish is an agglutinating language, which is different from every other language I have ever dabbled with. I am currently in Arabic 302 and I have heard that Turkish was heavily influenced by Arabic, but we will see just how many similarities there are as the semester progresses. I find the language, as well as the culture, beautiful and definitely unique. Turkey is interesting because it sandwiched in between the Western world and the Arab/Islamic nations. I am looking forward to learning Turkish on my own time for 110, as well as gaining valuable language learning skills in 105.
My interest in Urdu arose from making many friends from Pakistan at University of Richmond. I major in computer science and many of my friends in computer science classes have been Pakistani's. I also noticed that many of them tend to be more logical than the average American and very eloquent in the way they speak despite some of them being unfamiliar with English. I also realize that when I enter the field of computer science outside of school, I will potentially come across many more Pakistanis and it would be advantageous for me to know their language and culture and better understand their roots. By the end of the semester, I hope to explore basic Pakistani culture and be able to have a very basic conversation(greetings and such). I don't have high expectations for myself since I've never spoken or try learning this language before but I am excited to find out.
From the beginning of my college career (freshman year to senior year), I have been fortunate to room with several Koreans. They’ve become really close friends of mine and introduced me to so many aspects of their culture: films, food, holidays, practices and families. I absolutely love the Korean culture: the history, the society, the customs and traditions. It reminds me a lot of some Hispanic cultures. My Korean roommate parents (who speak limited English) have shown me great kindness by giving me home cooked Korean meals or taking us to delicious Korean restaurants. My goal for this semester is to obtain a descent level of Korean, enough to communicate and impress my Korean friend’s parents. My future goal is to become more proficient and attain another language in my arsenal of communication. I currently know English, Spanish and French. Having a fourth language, especially one from Asia, would help me in multiple ways. One day, I hope to visit some of my friends in Korean and be able to survive/get around in Korea with little help from them.
Korean was my first language. However, over the years, my Korean, particularly in speaking and reading, became staggered and slow after I started school in the U.S. I was never really interested in Korean dramas or K-pop (Korean pop music) when I was young, but when I moved to the States, I fell in love with them. Watching Korean dramas and TV shows were some of the ways I kept in contact with the Korean culture, and one day, I hope to fully understand everything without English subtitles on.
I plan to visit South Korea next summer, and until then, I hope to develop a further understanding of the language's major social and cultural contexts by being able to be participate in lengthy, daily conversations. I want to be able to watch Korean TV and be able to grasp the general idea. I also want to focus on spelling and grammar.
I was first introduced to Korean culture around middle school when I made my first Korean friends. It was also the time when my close cousin started showing me Korean pop (Kpop) music videos, which I often found pretty catchy. From there on, my curiosity about Korean culture grew and I started watching Korean dramas and variety shows and, more often nowadays, Korean cooking and lifestyle channels on YouTube. I also enjoy reading weekly webtoons made by talented Korean webtoon artists and writers. After all these years of reading English subtitles, I’d say it’s about time I learn a thing or two about the Korean language.
I like the sound of the Korean language, and its Hangul writing system seems very systematic and clever. I think Hangul actually requires less memorization than Chinese, because it’s an actual alphabet so words can be sounded out from the alphabet characters they contain. In other words, I think I’ll need to learn Hangul first to build a strong foundation.
By the end of this semester, I hope I’ll be able to hold a 5-minute conversation with a Korean speaker and to build a decent vocabulary that will allow me to pick up on basic Korean conversations. I’d also like to master Hangul and to be able to sound out characters even if I don’t know the meaning of the word yet. But, one baby step at a time.
My interest in Korean started from the koran dramas and pop songs. However, while getting along with my Korean friends, I found that Korea is more than kpop and barbecue. Their culture of respecting the old, focusing on family relations, as well as advanced technology and political system all make it stand out of countries in East Asia. As the saying goes, "If culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, to all the rooms inside." I firmly believe that culture reflects people's way of thinking as there are special words in some languages that do not exist in another language. For example, Korean people use different forms and words while taking to peers and elder people, showing the respectiveness to the old in their country.
I really hope that through learning the language of Korean, I could develop a deeper understanding of Korean culture and customs, from people's daily life to the history and development of the country in a wider level. As I know that Chinese culture had had a big influence on Korean culture and language, it would be more interesting for me to compare the similarities and differences between these two cultures, and reflecting on how a culture develops based on the country's geographical location and historical impacts. I hope that after this semester, I could have a command of basic conversations of Korean and I could start talking to my Korean friends in their language. Also as a international business major, I am expecting to go to Korea or doing business with Korean people in the future. I hope that next time, when somebody asks me about Korea, I could introduce the culture and history to them instead of only talking about pop songs and TV dramas.
I chose to learn Hindi for some very simple reasons. Mainly my boyfriend, his family and all of his friends speak the language or some other Indian/Pakistani dialect. I have spent literally years trying to figure out what him and his friends are saying and there is really no other way for me to understand other than actually putting in some effort and learning from the start. By the end of this semester I hope to be able to say key conversational phrases and mostly to understand what is being said. I know I will never be able to pass for a native speaker but I at least would like to be able to understand what people are saying. Through trying to learn basic words I have found that Hindi has many sounds that English does not and that I find very difficult to pronounce. I hope to master at least the basic sounds perhaps by going over the alphabet but not necessarily.
I just got back from a trip to India, perhaps the journey that pushed me over the edge into deciding that learning Hindi was a must. The country is the most foreign place I have ever been. Although I have travelled to Europe and Latin America, India was completely different from anything I had ever seen. There are SO MANY PEOPLE EVERYWHERE. In the US you will sometimes have long stretches of road for miles and miles where no one lives. This is not the case in India. Everywhere you go has people and it has a lot of them. Along with the people are numerous animals (which I will most likely elaborate on in a future blog post) you see the expected cows and also numerous stray dogs as well as monkeys and goats. There is also an alarming amount of pollution (also subject for future post).
Along with basic conversational skills I think I plan on focusing on learning various medical terms like itchy, pain and body parts. This is because I am currently on track to becoming a doctor so if I ever get the chance to return to India for any sort of medical mission trip, I will be semi prepared (at least in terms of the language barrier).
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