Discussion Post #7

[Ariana Kamiya]

My learning is going well so far. I have been watching lecture videos on Talk to Me in Korean along with reading comic books, and my language partner Jason also asked me if I would want to start using textbooks during our future meetings. The discussion that we had on language structures and learning strategies definitely is helping me understand the Korean language and culture more. I am really interested in how different language families evolved and grew so I have been looking into the similarities between Korean and other languages in the region, and trying to connect that to the history of migration patterns in East Asia and understand things like why Korean might have more emphasis on honorifics and politeness levels compared to other languages and the reasoning behind Korean's sentence structure. Additionally, forensic linguistics was also mentioned in our class discussions, so I have been exploring how language analysis can be used in criminal and historical investigations through playing games related to linguistics, which is something I'm interested in pursuing in the future too. Right now, I would say the relationship between language and culture is intertwined, as language serves as a reflection of societal values/beliefs and norms. And to improve my communicative competence, I have been doing more speaking practice with Jason and outside of our meeting with something like AI bots or to myself. From H.D. Brown's readings, I think that being competent in the different functions of a language would be beneficial, as they focus on the most basic real-life communication skills that no matter what language you are learning, you would need to be conscious of. Being able to classify and distinguish speech's formality is also in my plan. Because Korean has a very hierarchical culture, understanding the appropriate level of formality in speech is extremely important for effective communication and to just not get in trouble for unintentionally offending someone.