This is the first bi-weekly journal following the extension of Spring Break due to the spread of COVID-19. As Spring Break was this past week, I did not get the chance to meet up with my language partner and continued my Korean studies on my own. In the two weeks, I read over the notes I took from my weekly classes with Jimin and Tommy to review the content I learned. To further my knowledge on 속담, 관용어, and 급식체, I sought out online resources such as blogs written by native Koreans, HiNative global Q&A platform, and YouTube Videos. Naver Blogs are easily accessible that contain information posted by native South Koreans. I found a lot of lists of 관용어 and 속담 from such blog posts to add to the list Jimin had given me. There was an author’s Naver Blog who published multiple posts about 관용어 based on different human features such as the eye or mouth. An example is “입만 살다” which directly translates to “only the mouth lives” meaning that the person is “all talk, no work/all bark, no bite”. I also compiled a list of 85 commonly used 속담 and 관용어 from the global Q&A platform, HiNative. Some of these overlapped what I had learned previously, such as 코가 높다 (“nose is high” = arrogant) and 김칫국을 마시다 (“drink kimchi soup” = get ahead of oneself). The most entertaining resource that helped me remember slang or 급식체 was a YouTube video compiling three SNL Korea skits about slang. It was very informative as it was about a dad attempting to learn the complicated and fast-evolving slang language of his son. Each term was explained for understatement. It was also very funny because it was an SNL skit featuring famous Korean comedians and parodies of famous dramas and movies like my all-time favorites, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (도깨비). I can still remember 띵작/명작 because of the 도깨비 scene the skit used. Another blog I used provided the top 2019 급식체. The internet has an abundance of content I can use to expand what I learn with my language partner. Being home for Spring Break was a good opportunity to verbalize the content I had learned before coming home. I shared my SDLAP experience with my parents and discussed the terms and content I learned. Although neither of my parents uses 급식체, my mom helped me with the commonly used 속담 and 관용어. Watching TV with my mom, I was happy to point out the idioms and proverbs I studied. As I look at my younger brother who has completely forgotten the majority of his Korean since our move to Maryland, I feel a stronger urge to make sure I don’t forget Korean and also assist my brother to regain his knowledge.

Link to video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRmUzfqHWOI
Link to HiNative:
https://hinative.com/ko/questions/2142651
Link to Naver Blogs:
https://blog.naver.com/narae718/220355553902  ;
http://blog.naver.com/lllyourinlll/221435359607 ;

Here are both my presentations!

I had an issue with downloading PanOpto and an issue with saving my videos. So I've added them to my Google Drive and both the presentations can be accessed in this folder through this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vPpP2xAUBoTUX75QdT2IgK3mYHw_9zfB?usp=sharing

For the third presentation, I planned to give out a handout with Korean terms as well as links to different articles and resources used. It can also be found in the folder. :)

There are only two languages I have learned in a school setting: English and Mandarin Chinese. English is the primary and the only language I use when completing academic work. I learned spelling to grammar and how to write essays in English during my school career. Mandarin Chinese was the second language I had the opportunity of learning at school since the eighth grade. Starting out with the basic tones of the Chinese language to how to write simple sentences and how to ask for a cup of water, I slowly learned the language and the excitement that comes when successfully grasping a concept in another language. Being able to then pursue Korean as a language learner in college has been a grounding experience. Korean was primarily a language I interacted with through modes of entertainment, food, and reciting my address to a taxi driver. I had never exposed myself to the specific grammar rules of spacing and spelling; I never learned that my Korean skills were rooted in pragmatic competence, specifically the sociolinguistic competence, rather than a mixture of organizational and pragmatic competence; and I never sat down with a language instructor (since learning “가나다라”) to go over the basics of Korean I had learned unconsciously. 

Just as I had expected, I found grammatical rules difficult to pin down to memory. It takes not only memorization but practice to better Korean spacing and spelling. I hope to continue my advancement in becoming a more proficient writer in Korean by fixing my mistakes. I look forward to texting more people, perhaps more adults who can provide corrections, in Korean as well as adding Korean subtitles to the content I watch to provide a visual representation of the language in understanding by ear. A surprising topic I had enjoyed, despite the unfamiliarity, was something from the linguistic side of becoming a language learner. Learning about the different linguistic terminology––morpheme, syntax, phonetics, and more––opened up my knowledge to overall language learning. Alike to the idea that knowing more languages expands one’s ability to describe the world, knowing more linguistic concepts and terms has expanded my view on the study of languages. 

As I continue my exploration of linguistics and the Korean language, I hope to reread concepts of the life of a language (how they form, evolve, and die) and reflect more about what it means to be bilingual, specific to the Korean-English case. The first topic was compelling to me because of the vast numbers of existing languages and an even larger list of dead languages. The way languages merge, evolve, and develop before dwindling away or preserving a spot as an international language is truly fascinating. The latter issue of bilingualism and bilinguality is more appealing on a personal level as a person who identifies as a bilingual. I would like to look further into the brain development of children who learn to live with two languages as well as the different categories of being bilingual (as explained in the short video from class). 

Overall, SDLAP 105 has given me the content and time to reflect on my language experience as a whole, encompassing my goal of becoming more proficient in Korean as well as finding another interest in the world of linguistics. 

Amidst the outbreak of COVID-19 and social distancing, an appropriately humorous mantra incorporating the Korean creation myth of Dangun is being used to comfort those in isolation. 

According to the website of the Korea Tourism Organization, the Legend of Dangun (단군신화) is a “mythical story that portrays the origin of the Korean people as descendants of a bear, and the founding of Korea through Dangun” (KTO). The story begins with the prayer of a tiger and bear in hopes to become human. In response, the son of the Lord of Heaven Hwanung gives the two animals 20 cloves of garlic and a bundle of mugwort each along with the order to remain inside a cave for 100 days. Unlike the tiger who gave up in 20 days, the bear is said to have completed 100 days of cave-living while eating garlic and became a human woman. The son of this bear-woman and Hwanung was named Dangun Wanggeom, the man to build the state of Gojoseon, the first Korean kingdom in history. It is said that modern-day Koreans are the descendants of this bear turned woman. This legend of the creation of Korea has become the basis of humorous consolations like “self-separation is in the founding myth of our country, continue practicing social distancing!” 

The meme translates to “(This is) a country that has been self-purchased from the very beginning. Even worse, Hwanung said to stay in doors for 100 days." 

The flyer made by Yongin-si, a major city in the Gyeonggi Province, details the continuation of social distancing until April 19 along with the following words of encouragement: “What race are we? An ethnic group that has shown the end of social distancing since the founding myths…” 

South Korea has been able to successfully flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases with the help of a fast-acting government, but most importantly, through the widespread sense of social trust and importance placed on the larger community. South Korea was one of the countries that were infected from an earlier standpoint than some others. It also had an alarming growth in cases in the beginning, recording up to 900 confirmed cases in a day. Today, numbers of cases added daily are below 10, and death rates are one of the lowest. The government was able to act fast by beginning the manufacture and distribution of test kits and developing safe, smart ways of mass testing (e.g. drive-through stations). Most notably, citizens gave up their rights to individual privacy to make contact-tracing of paths of infection possible. South Koreans also self-initiated social distancing and quarantine with a simple warning of the virus’s severity from the government. As a whole, the majority of individuals are being careful and responsible for their actions and whereabouts to prevent the further spread of the pandemic. With this collectivist mentality and high levels of social trust, the government worked with the population to better the situation of coronavirus. This creation myth is another pointer of Korea’s homogenous, collectivist nature that lead to the slowdown of the infection.

As my time at home in quarantine only seemed to drag on, I decided to start reading a book, Kim Ji-young, Born 1982. Published back on October 14, 2016, by author Cho Nam-Ju, this novel became the first novel to sell more than a million copies in the last decade. Its popularity has spread from Korea to other countries like China, Japan, and even the US as translated publications are made worldwide. By looking at the simple storyline detailing the life of a woman in the mid-30s. There is no backstabbing plot twist, love affair, or dangerous journey. It is a straightforward plot sharing the memories and experiences of a woman named Kim Ji-young, born in 1982. To dive into the deeper reason behind the popularity of this book, I would like to highlight what I have felt reading the book as well as the news and talk about the book before I purchased it.
To begin, the name Kim Ji-young is a generic one, synonymous with the American Joe or Jane. Thus, the protagonist’s life experience from her childhood to school, marriage, and professional career is the representation of the average Korean woman. In the author's words, Kim Ji-young is a "vessel that contains experiences and emotions that are common to every Korean woman" (NPR). Taking the author only three months of writing to complete the book, author Cho incorporated self-anecdotal aspects and real-life examples and data on Korea's lack of gender equality. Of the OECD countries, South Korea ranks rock bottom for having the largest gender-based wage gap of 35%. Women make 63 cents to a man's dollar despite being as equally schooled as men in the same competitive education system. Cho wanted to make it public that almost half of working-age women are home. Women also continue to face outdated “harsh stigmas exist around menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth” (NPR).
When reading the book, I became upset, though not surprised, by the undisguised forms of sexism Kim Ji-young, her mother, and every other female character faced. The examples of oppression, ranging from the order in which school lunch was served to Kim Ji-young’s annual holiday cooking at her in-laws, and the delays in receiving higher education because of a male family member, everything was so common and obvious to me that it was also deeply upsetting and frustrating. This was the first book in which women could see the panoramic reflection of their daily, collective plights (NPR).
The feminist agenda of this novel is nonexistent. Perhaps except the fact that it was a book about a woman’s life, the book doesn’t culminate in a larger picture of growing feminism, and the radical feminism movement, of South Korea. It was, however, timed perfectly around the latest wave of Korean feminism with the emergence of #MeToo and the Escape the Corset movement against strict, unrealistic beauty standards. And so, the book became a reference point for conversations around feminism and gender inequality. In addition, it became the target for the large, brutal anti-feminist following in Korea.
Overall, I believe that Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 is a good cultural reference in understanding the lives in which half of the population lead. The book is even more interesting and important as it presents the unbiased, real experiences of South Korean culture, showing the realities of how a deeply patriarchal society shapes the lives of women in the modern day.

Sources:
Cho, Nam-ju. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982. Minumsa, 2016.
Hu, Elise. “South Korean Bestseller 'Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982' Gives Public Voice To Private Pain.” NPR, NPR, 19 Apr. 2020, www.npr.org/2020/04/19/835486224/south-korean-bestseller-kim-jiyoung-born-1982-gives-public-voice-to-private-pain.

The last ZOOM meetings I had with Tommy and our language partner Jimin were focused on the rules of grammar and spacing in the writing component of Korean. These sessions were extremely helpful in my progression with the Korean language because it was the area I struggled, and continue to struggle, the most with. Something about the grammar behind spacing and spelling is so tricky and based on a gut understanding that even native Koreans have a hard time. For my writing skills, these two areas were my two black holes. Because I had never learned written Korean after the 가나다라 alphabets, I had never seen or heard what the rules of spacing (띄어쓰기) and common spelling (마춤법) were. Spacing has rules, but 마춤법 is just spelling. To complicate things even more, the rules and spelling of words are also constantly updated based on the general consensus of the people. One rule of spacing that has been updated is whether or not there is a space between the main root of the word, 본용언 in Korean, and derivational morphemes, 보조용언 in Korean. A good example is “보고싶다/보고 싶다”, meaning I miss you. Before the revision of the rule, “보고 싶다” was the correct grammar. Now, both are accepted as correct. Apart from this rule, there are a handful of others in which some make sense while others are infinitely confusing. After learning about the rules, I always take a second before sending a text in Korean to see if I followed the rules correctly. 마춤법, spelling, is another story. As Korean has a lot of homonyms (because of the difference in spelling and/or Hanja), spelling is one of my weaknesses. One of the mistakes I made when I was younger was the difference between “안” and “않”. They are both negative morphemes that sound the same. “안” is used in the front hile “않” is integrated into the end of a root word. For example, “I didn’t eat” can be either “안 먹었어요” or “먹지 않았어요”. Even in this example, the issue of spacing emerges as well. To end the semester’s SDLAP 105 class, Jimin went over what is called 한글날, Hangul Day. It is a national commemorative day for the establishment of Hangul, also known as 훈민정음 during its creation, by King Sejong the Great. Annually, on October 9, the Korean language is celebrated. As difficult Korean may seem to a beginner learner, or myself attempting to get down the rules of spacing, Hangul was created for all Koreans to be able to simply learn and use. Prior to Hangul, Chinese characters were used in writing form with Korean pronunciation. This method was complicated and the complexity of Chinese characters also led to different interpretations. Reading and writing was so complex that only those of the upper class had the leisure to learn, leaving all commoners without the ability to write out concerns and read important government announcements. Though difficult at times, being able to allocate time to deepen my appreciation of my language has also given me the opportunity to reflect on my culture and its history. I hope to practice my spacing and spelling and improve my overall competence in the Korean language.

This past week, I was finally able to talk with my language partner Jimin and fellow learning partner Tommy via Zoom. After catching up with each other, Jimin shared a document focusing on 고유어 (Native Korean), 한자어 (Hanja, Sino-Korean), and 외래어 (loanwords). This was an interesting topic that I enjoyed because I was able to properly see how 한자 is used, and that 고유어 and 외래어 are the terms to refer to native Korean and loanwords. While I knew they existed and frequently used words under each category, this lesson provided a time for me to connect the dots. 

한자어 makes up around 70% of the daily Hangul people use. A majority of idiomatic expressions, advanced vocabulary, and professional jargon are words formed by Hanja. An example of a  four-character idiomatic expression is 고진감래(苦盡甘來) meaning a mix of "no pain, no gain", "April showers bring May flowers", and "the bee sucks honey out of the bitterest flowers". Loanwords, 외래어, are also highly conventional in daily Korean. An example of a medical jargon, which also happens to be a loanword is “인슐레이션” (insulation). A more colloquial loanword is 콘텐츠 meaning “contents”. Interestingly, loanwords are not always written in Korean to completely reflect the pronunciation. The word “contents” should be written as 컨텐즈 to read it the way it is pronounced in English. However, the spelling of this loanword is 콘텐츠. 고유어, on the other hand, is the “proper” Korean language––expressions and words that always existed only in Korean. Examples range from 어머니 (mother) and 하늘 (sky) to 꽃 (flower) and 구름 (clouds). 고유어 also tends to be used alone as its own word without the addition of derivational morphemes. An interesting characteristic of 한자어 is that alike to the usage of knowing Latin root words, 한자 (Hanja) can be used to decipher a word in Korean that is unfamiliar. For example, knowing the Chinese characters/Hanja for 人 (사람 ‘인’ = mankind) and 力(힘 '력' = power), one can come to the conclusion that “인력” (人力) means manpower. 

Learning about the three categories of the Korean language was enlighting of how historical ties and events, as well as modern-day events, affect the way a language develops and changes. This lesson was all the more interesting due to my limited recollection of learning Hanja coupled with taking Mandarin Chinese in school. I was happy to notice how I could connect my understanding of basic Chinese as well as 한자어 characters I’ve seen before (menus at Chinese restaurants in Korea, for example, use “대/중/소” (= 大／中／下 = large/medium/small for dish sizes) to come to answers to the questions provided by Jimin. I was also happy to see how easily I could understand an excerpt from a news article about COVID-19. I hope to continue studying Hanja characters to aid me in future cracking of unfamiliar terminology and jargon. I also want to uncover how much 고유어, 한자어, and 외래어 I personally use when speaking in Korean. I have a feeling that 외래어 will take up a large proportion of my Korean. 

This biweekly journal is different from the rest of all biweekly journals for it covers my SDLAP experience during the beginning of my experience of social distancing caused by COVID-19. Upon nationwide confusion, I was unable to coordinate a meeting with my learning partner Tommy and language partner Jimin. On the bright side, being home meant a more frequent usage of Korean, and inevitably Konglish. The majority of my entire family speaks both English and Korean quite comfortably and sometimes interchangeably. Both sets of grandparents hold nominal to fluent knowledge in English (one couple are immigrants while the other experienced American living for a temporary time working abroad) and long-story-short, both of my parents speak two languages. But, it is important to note that it is pretty obvious that my dad is more comfortable with English and that my mom prefers Korean a little more. This difference is nonetheless caused by their childhood. My personal relationship with the two languages is, alike to my parents’–especially my mom’s–experience, a little confusing. My first language is undoubtedly Korean as it was the language I spoke in first and the language of the country I was born and raised in. Yet, with the beginning of school taught in the English language (both British and American English), I began to develop far more advanced English skills than Korean. Since then, I have been more practically comfortable speaking in English while feeling emotionally close to the Korean language. I like to watch videos and forms of entertainment in Korean all the while writing papers and reading the news in English. I also continued to improve English through school while Korean remained by the rudimentary level (though, I was quite the talker at a young age). The inconsistency of my relationship with learning Korean as English became my dominant, academic language is what I think caused a setback in my improvement of Korean. At this point in my second semester of college, I had begun to pursue the Korean language again in a more serious matter. Being home following this pursuit, unfortunate to the typical college experience, has helped me more as I find myself in a household that can help me with my Korean practice. It also helps that I have been spending my extra time binge-watching Korean dramas. The one thing I find frustrating, and a need for improvement, is being able to verbalize words at the same speed as my thinking with correctness. To explain, I sometimes find myself tripping over a couple of words in a sentence I wish to say. Usually, I know what I would like to express in my head, but once I begin to verbalize it, I find myself stuttering over a specific form of a word to find the correct expression or tense. This is a little irksome because I know what it is that I want to say. Even so, I struggle to say it as quickly as I think it as I’m stuck between two grammatically different ways of expression. Being home, I realized I did this on numerous occasions. I hope that as we all practice safe social distancing that I will be able to pinpoint the issue and work to fix this small error in my Korean think-and-speak system. 

If I received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of my target language and culture, I would like to investigate how to better teach the usage of Hanja/sino-Korean (한자어) in terms of morpheme categories since Hanja is purely phonemic or the effects of the integration of non-native Korean terminology in the younger generation of Koreans. These two linguistics-related topics are interesting and areas of personal confusion. When studying morphemes, specifically derivational and inflectional morphemes, I struggled to label a lot of possible morphemes as derivation because of the fact that it was a Korean compound based on Hanja. Historically, Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters, the Chinese characters the Korean language had borrowed and incorporated into the language with Korean pronunciations as a form of written communications. With the creation of Hangul, however, Hanja continues to be the basis of many Korean words and phrases (thus the flooding list of homonyms). For example, 수도(水道) and 수도(首都) are both pronounced “su-do”, yet one means (water "su" and way "do") aqueduct while the other means (head "su", capital "do-eup") capital city. On the other hand, I also find the linguistic aspect of the integration of English, for example, into modern-day Korean, aka Konglish/slang (ex. 셀프 for self-anything; 버스 meaning bus; TMI used as TMI, etc.) I think the cultural influence this has is something worthy of time and research, if not done already. 

Although writing in Korean continues to be one of my top concerns, I have learned to write basic Korean as a young child. I learned how to write the language by hand while learning the alphabet and basic vocabulary before I started primary school. I had a chart of the Korean alphabet, starting with “가, 나, 다, 라, 마, 바, 사…” that I would sing and practice writing. If I remember correctly, I learned Korean writing around the same time as English. However, with the beginning of my school career at a British preschool, English became the main language of my academic experience. This background has helped me pick up writing in Korean at a fast rate in my recent years of self-improving my Korean language skills. Personally, I find spacing and spelling difficult. It is something I intend on getting better at. Also, I have improved my Korean writing in recent years through texting/typing. So, I would like to improve my handwriting more. 

The basics of Korean writing is relatively easy as it consists of simple, compoundable consonant and vowel characters (ㄱ,ㄴ,ㄷ,ㄹ,ㅏ,ㅓ,ㅣ,ㅡ) invented based on mouth shapes upon pronunciation. The difficulty arises after one begins to construct phrases and sentences as spacing and grammar/spelling rules get complicated. This is also where even natives stumble. The Korean language consists of a lot of homonyms, homophone-like morpheme, and extremely detailed expressions. Examples consist of 눈 (eye or snow) and 안/않 (not a word but a morpheme). Some helpful pointers are understanding that English and Korean don’t share a syntactic order of subject, verb, object. Korean is generally S+O+V. It is also important to note that while English sentences can be spoken with a tone or accent to express different points of emphasis, Korean sentences can exchange the object and subject of a sentence (ex. Engish can’t do this, English can’t do this, English can’t do this vs. 영어는 이거 못하잖아, 못하잖아 영어는 이거, 이거 못하잖아 영어 - may not seem correct in an academic paper, but in colloquial speech, this happens often). 

Languages go extinct when it loses active members who speak, write, and read in the language. According to the YouTube video featuring author and linguist K. David Harrison, languages are oftentimes lost and forgotten because there is no written record of the language along with the loss of native speakers. This is also highlighted in the New York Times article, Tribe Revives Language on Verge of Extinction, mentioning the extinction, and revival, of the Siletz Dee-ni language. In a world where some languages are being appointed as an international language, others face the brink of extinction as fewer and fewer people speak it. This was the case about the Siletz language. As a local, native language of a tribe located in the West of the US, there are only five speakers in the world. This once-dominant language belonged to one of the last-standing, large tribe. In the 1950s, however, the tribe was declared dead by the US. The establishment of schools taught in English, decreased tribe population, and declaration of extinction were three large threats in the extinction of the Siletz language. Two decades later, the tribe was federally recognized as a living tribe and thus, the culture and language prevailed. Since then, the language has been dwindling yet again. Differently from the past, however, with the creation of a charter school where the language has been reintegrated into the education program, the publication of a Siletz Dee-ni dictionary worked on by tribe members such as Bud Lane has given the Siletz Dee-ni language a written long-term record. A dictionary is a perfect example of the ways people can document linguistic diversity. Both the article and video underline the importance of the younger generation’s participation in the preservation of a language. To bring a language back from the brink of extinction, or from the dead, people from the outside are important agents in strengthening the content available on a language. Native speakers are necessary to provide the information on the language, but those from the outside of the young people of the population are the ones responsible for the future of a language. 

After reviewing the recording and slides of my presentation of my intended learning plan, I noticed changes in my course of action as well as success in following the plan. One of the changes I saw was that I intended to incorporate the learning of business terms into my studies this semester. I realize, however, that the lessons I did cover with my language partner are more appropriate and suitable for the level I am at with Korean. Business vocabulary can come in future semesters. I also did not get the chance to utilize the Global Studio’s online resources as my language partner prepared most of the hardcopy lesson materials. The discussions about language structures have helped me in learning my target language because it added details and the name to the different aspects of the language I have been unconsciously using. For example, I didn’t know what to refer to as when mentioning what I now know as derivational morphemes. I believe I am always culturally close to Korean. With the actual language, however, I always felt distanced from the pure usage of Korean as a native “Konglish” speaker. Through my SDLAP experience, I am happy to say that I am uncovering more about the language and will become more proficient. To further improve my communicative competence, I think verbal practice is key (for anyone on any level of learning a language). Based on the H.D. Brown reading, my plan, and what I ended up learning focused on organizational competence, specifically grammatical competence.

Here is a recording of my Podcast Interview with Language Partner Jimin and Tommy. 

The file was too large, so I add a link to it: 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mk8s_2TtPBwXnrw5u_jYYX3kYNeWLSa0

Thank you! 

In the last two weeks of 110 SDLAP, I focused on Korean idioms/idiomatic expressions with my language partner. 관용어 in Korean, idioms are typically traditional says as well as commonly used expressions. The Korean language is full of idioms. Knowing and using idioms, therefore, provide proficiency and a deeper understanding of the language as well as culture. It’s actually really interesting to recognize that human body parts are utilized frequently in Korean idioms. For example, 코가 놉다 (“nose is high” = arrogant) and 코 묻은돈 (“money with snot” = baby/toddler’s saved up allowance) both use the word 코 (nose) and have no correlation in meaning. Another example is the usage of 눈 (eye): 눈이 놉다 (“eyes are high” = have high standards) and 눈밖에 나다 (“grow outside of eyes” = to be out of favor with someone). There are plenty of non-body related idioms such as 파리 날리다 (“flies flying” = so empty there’s flies in the room). When my language partner Jimin and I listed this specific goal, I wanted to make sure I could get comfortable enough to use common idioms on a daily basis, or at least understand a large portion of typically used expressions. It was reassuring to already know the meaning of some of the idioms. It gives you a little bit of confidence to know some of the material you’re learning and also fuels your motivation. 

I like the way Jimin introduces the material to us. She writes the content up on the board (one by one) and asks the group (Tommy, Somyung, and I) what we think the meaning is. As the group throws up funny definitions and tries to understand the idioms, I take time to write down the Korean phrase as writing practice. I think it gives me good spelling (where to place the 받침 - learned in a previous week) practice as well as handwriting practice. Being able to learn cultural context with others who are learning and studying the language is really helpful. Being able to interact with not only Jimin but others like Somyung and Tommy gives more speaking practice and fun, which adds to better retention.

This past week, I sadly couldn’t make it to our weekly meeting. The group watched the four Oscar-winning movie Parasite. Luckily, I’ve watched the movie twice, so I didn’t miss out on much. Watching movies in the language you’re learning, including TV shows and listening to music, helps with picking up phrases and words. As someone who isn’t a beginner, it’s always nice to hear Korean more frequently through media since I’m no longer surrounded by family and friends who speak Korean. Parasite is a difficult movie––difficult but perfect to understand an aspect of Korean society. As it’s a social criticism and commentary on social class and mobility, it shows the reality (and sort of exaggerated reality) of Korea. Reflecting back on the two times I saw the movie, I learned culturally new things each time and also reflected on my experience growing up in the country. I think the movie really puts you off but also makes you think a lot––very vague statements, but I don’t want to spoil anything! I really think watching Kdramas and Korean films are one of the best additional resources as it exposes you to the culture and language while providing entertainment.

The language family of the Korean language is a debate and depending on different theories, Korean is part of different language families or isolate. The most prominent family Korean is linked to is the Altaic/Ural-Altaic language family. This family group includes languages of central Asia such as Turkish, Mongolian, Finnish, and Hungarian. Korea's history with China and Japan in addition to the history on the peninsula also shape other theories and the language itself. In Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula, two different groups of languages were spoken until the 7th Century when the Silla kingdom united the three kingdoms of the Peninsula and made the Silla dialect the dominant language. The modern writing system of Korea (한글 Hangul) was devised by King Sejong the Great for efficiency and accessibility. Previously, the language used Chinese characters to represent the sounds/meanings of Korean, and only the elite had the time to learn thousands of characters in the Chinese language. Because of the close proximity and shared usage of characters, modern Korean still reflects a lot of Chinese influence (i.e. vocabulary, proverbs). This understanding makes it easier for me to understand the importance of learning 한자 (hanja), old Korean with Chinese characters, when I was little. The historical events of Korea (Japanese occupation, English influence from the US, and ancient Chinese/Mongolian dynasties) also provide some insight into the creation of words following King Sejong’s innovation of the modern Korean language.

According to the previous class, languages change over time through historical events and changes in the people who speak and write the language. Pronunciations evolve, new words are coined or borrowed, new meanings are added to words or usages change, and grammar also changes. Linguists study the formation of sister/daughter languages and compare the differences between languages within a family (or the language itself). The past and present of languages are studied, and therefore make predictions possible. 

Assignment downloaded as PDF: 

110_%20Cuture%20Artifact%20%232.pdf

From the reading, I realized the type of competence I have in the Korean language is basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) instead of a cognitive/academic language proficiency (CALP) because I have the communicative capacity to function in daily interpersonal exchanges while I lack a certain dimension of proficiency outside of interpersonal contexts

The introduction of the four different subcategories of CC––grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence––in addition to the subcategories under them was useful and interesting to know while reflecting on my competence in Korean. As the reading continued, I learned more about the different necessary components of knowing a language, speaking a language, and understanding a language. One language student will not fully know, speak, and understand a language by simply studying the grammar or cultural context only. As I look back to the main part of this assignment/discussion post, I know that I want to learn and improve my Korean because of my genuine interest in Korean culture. I grew up watching Kdrama and I also listen to Korean music more than American media. As someone who is both Korean and American living in America, it is important to make sure I know the cultures I identify with. In order to deepen my language and cultural studies of Korean, I planned to study/have studied Korean proverbs, idioms, slang, and general history in addition to modern-day customs. To do this, from a language standpoint, I not only need to develop grammatical competence but strategic competence in the language and the functions of the language forms. I think my plan to learn these topics will help me understand the target culture in addition to learning new words and phrases. 

According to the inventory provided by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, Korean is made up of majority stop (plosive) consonants with bilabial, alveolar, palatal, velar, and glottal points of articulation. There are a couple of fricatives and two approximant and lateral approximant consonants. It’s interesting to know that the majority of consonants are plosive, and it also makes sense to me. Korean has a few double consonants (ㅃ [p*], ㅉ [tf*], ㄸ [t*], ㄲ [k*], ㅆ [s*] ; *=no symbol in IPA to indicate this) that I think are difficult to explain and to translate the sounds. It is noteworthy to mention that /r/ and /l/ in Korean phonology is interchangeable while in English, there is a clear difference. This difference is always something I find amusing when I type out English words in Korean. Both /r/ and /l/ are expressed by the consonant ㄹ. Because I’m not a beginner in learning my target language, I already have the ability to read and speak the phonetic differences of the language. I learned the different consonants and vowels as a child. The alphabet song (“가, 나, 다, 라, 마, 바, 사, 아, 자, 차, 카, 타, 파, 하”) was the basis of my Korean language knowledge. Being able to distinguish the different sounds and connecting the sounds to characters has helped my reading and writing despite the lack of formal Korean language education. Learning about the linguistical aspect of the language, however, will help me see the reason behind parts of Korean I just understood as is. 

(Screen%20Shot%202020-02-16%20at%207.37.51%20PM.pngAttached image of Korean Phonetic Inventory)

In the last two weeks, I learned Korean proverbs (속담) and reviewed my understanding of final consonants (받침). In the first week, I went through 47 most commonly used, or at least known, proverbs. There were a few proverbs that I have heard of before and there were also some proverbs that I surprisingly knew the meaning of. The literal meaning of the phrases was easy to understand, however, it was the figurative language that confused me a little. When I found myself already knowing the proverb meaning, I was proud that I did. When I didn’t, I was curious to understand the meaning. For example, “남의 떡이 더 커 보인다" was a proverb I already knew the meaning of. Literally, the phrase says “another person’s rice cake looks bigger” and it holds the same meaning as the widely used “ the grass is greener on the other side”. A proverb both Tommy and I had a difficult time with was “등잔 밑이 어둡다" (“it’s dark under the lamp”). This proverb is indicating that the most important thing is right in front of you, “right under your nose”. This weekly meeting was really fun and filled with laughter because we tried to guess the meaning of the proverbs and Somyung joined the session. My weekly meetings with Tommy and our language partner, Jimin, are always enjoyable and productive because we always engage in the learning process while adding some form of fun, like videos, to support our learning. 

I also reviewed the rules of final consonants (I didn’t even know 받침 was “final consonant” in English) to strengthen my spelling skills with Jenna and her group (Vivian and Somyung). My meeting with Jimin got canceled. At the second weekly meeting with Jenna, we were all given a sheet of the different rules and corresponding examples. Although I learned how to speak the language, spelling (specifically 받침) has always been a difficult aspect of Korean. Being able to learn the different rules and when to apply them formally, is helping me think about the ways I type Korean when speaking to my family members and friends. In addition to single final consonants, there is something called double final consonants. These are the rules that I always have difficulty in spelling because, in speech, the second final consonant carries over to the next syllable. An easy example is the word “앉아" meaning sit. The first syllable has both “ㄴ” and “ㅈ”. The “ㅈ” however, is not pronounced with the rest of the syllable. Instead, it substitutes the silent “ㅇ” consonant. Therefore, the pronunciation is “안자” (which means something else). 

To put the material learned into practice, I plan to practice using a few of the proverbs I learned in my daily Korean speaking. The most applicable proverbs I would like to use are: “시작이 반이다”, “가랑비에 옷 젖는 줄 모른다”, and “하늘이 무너져도 솟아날 구멍이 있다". Once I can naturally and easily incorporate these proverbs into my thinking, speaking, and/or writing, I think I can measure whether or not I learned something new. In addition, the issue with 받침 is purely practicing with the spelling of words I use daily. Because I am aware of this, I asked my parents to look over my spelling when I used Korean with them over text and I will also work to text using proper Korean instead of text-language, which allows room for mistakes masked as accents/tones. 

It was interesting to read about the two different approaches to learning languages on Aitchison’s linguistics. One way is to move from inside the circle starting at phonetics to phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The other route encourages language learners to start from semantics before diving into vocabulary, grammar, phonology, and end with phonetics. As I read about this, I thought about the different structures in my target language and what my path was to where I am with the Korean language. Because I had never learned Korean thoroughly, I never had the chance to think about the order of structures I learned first. At my level of fluency, I only know some of the different structural aspects of Korean such as phonetics, phonology, and morphology. I know the pronunciation of words, understand the different arrangements and meanings of words, and also know how the consonants and vowels of the Korean alphabet are put together. However, I learned to speak the language from a young age without grammar, specifically syntax and structure of semantics. I also cannot say I know the So I don’t really know how to explain why I structure my sentences grammatically and I don’t utilize idioms and proverbs. But I do know when to use the different subject marking particles (I didn’t even know this was a thing) and how to guess the spelling of words through my understanding of phonetics (ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅣ for example).  I'm glad that I naturally obtained phonetics and phonology by speaking the language at home with my grandparents because I think this can be one of the most tedious parts of learning Korean––sort of a building block to the language. However, I think because of my experience "learning" Korean through spoken word, I have an unbalanced proficiency of the language overall. I want to focus more on actually learning the syntax for sentence grammar structures in addition to expanding my lexicon. 

Learning about different language structures and disciplinary methodologies pushes me to look back on what I already know to categorize them into different structures. This is because I want to make sure I strengthen the foundations of my Korean language knowledge before I build on the different structures to make them equal. Although I do believe being able to speak the language is more of a priority than being able to know the specific reasons behind grammar and phonetics, my goal is to be able to use Korean in professional settings. This requires my language skills to be leveled out in all different aspects of the language.