If I received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Korean, one of the first things I will do is move to Korea and live there for a period of time and travel around in Korea. When I first studied English, I did not learn much when I was in China, but after I moved to the U.S, my English got a lot better. I believe the best way to study a language and culture is to go there and live there for a period of time. While I am in Korea, I will travel around Korea and find out the cultural similarities and differences between people in different areas. Find out their honorific system’s relationship with their culture. I am also going to study Korean history, to learn about Korea’s relationship with China and Japan. Even nowadays, I see a lot of Chinese influences in Korean culture, there are a lot of Chinese characters in Korea and most of the Korean people’s names can be translated into Chinese. I believe, by going to Korea and live there, I am able to find more connection between Korean and Korean culture.
You need to be a member of The SDLAP Ning to add comments!
Replies
Thanks for the sharing, Sam. I find that in order to learn the language and its culture, one has to be embraced in that environment and I think your first move is very useful and reasonable. Similarly, I would want to include some historical and linguistic comparison between different Korean dialects. And your thought on finding out the relationship between the honorific system and the culture is very interesting as well and I think it's an important element of Korean definitely.