Korean.m4a

This is a really short clip of me saying "I've been learning Korean for a semester" in Korean, which I figure might be a phrase that will come in handy for me.

I thought this would be a good artifact to show my handwriting in Korean. I liked finding videos of word sets, such as ones about food and restaurants like this one and practice writing them before I made online flashcards of them. My handwriting in Hangul has improved a lot over the semester.

It has been a really fun semester as an independent language learner. It reinforced that I love exploring new cultures and that learning new languages can really help me do that. Knowing a language gives you a unique insight into the culture with which it coincides rather than trying to learn about it from a more distant point. I found out that there are many ways to learn a language. I obviously learned English without much thought, it was the language spoken in my home and school growing up. I started learning Spanish in a classroom taught by American teachers in an American school. We used textbooks, flashcards, etc. I started learning Korean using primarily online resources such as Duolingo and Mango, which are different than the traditional textbook method. I also worked with a language partner, whereas with Spanish I didn't have the same exposure to native speakers at the beginning of my language learning.

            As nice as it was to have the flexibility to learn Korean on my own, I would be lying if I said I didn't struggle with prioritizing it with my other school work. Sometimes it was hard to sit down and devote the hours needed to learning this language when I had deadlines in other classes. It was also more difficult to keep up with my weekly goals without a professor making me. One the other hand, I enjoyed this freedom because I never felt I was wasting my time learning something I would not find useful. I focused on Korean vocabulary I found relevant, and only learned using tools I enjoyed and found productive. If I were in a traditional classroom, this may not have been the case. I may have been doing assignments I wasn't as interested in just because they were part of a textbook or something.

            I did enjoy learning about the linguistics part of language learning. It helped me recognize that different languages have different parts of speech and sentence structures, but they can still be broken down. Breaking down sounds and grammar rules helped me recognize patterns in Korean that I was able to apply to my learning and help me become a more adaptive and communicative learner. I especially liked the readings about bilingualism and how becoming a polyglot is not as daunting of a task as one may think. This encouraged me that it would be possible for me to make significant strides in learning Korean even as an adult autonomous learner. I hope to continue my Korean studies and eventually visit the country with my family and experience the language and culture firsthand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0

This is the link to the song Gangnam Style that came out a couple years ago and got really popular in the U.S. I thought it would be a good artifact to show my listening skills because this came out when I was in high school and didn't know any Korean. Now I can read the translation of the title (Gangnam Style / 강남스타일) and even though I can't understand the lyrics I now recognize that (Oppa / 오빠) which is sung a lot in the song is the word for older brother, but also used for male friends or boyfriends in Korea. Also he sings about a girl a lot and uses the word (Yeoja / 여자) which I now recognize as well.

The in-class cultural presentations were very interesting and it was cool to see which elements of their respective languages' cultures my peers were interested in. Some were socially focused (gender roles), some more historical (Turkey's alphabet transition), and some more cultural (holidays in Bangladesh). It reinforced the fact that culture is such an integral part of a country or group of people who speak a language. It adds daily elements to their lifestyles that make their group unique. It also showed that there are so many elements to each culture and the entire culture cannot be summed up in one presentation. For example, I did mine on university life in Korea, but I could have also done gender roles, history, holidays, etc. like my peers did for their target languages, which would have shown a totally different element of Korean culture. This was shown in the other Korean presentations, in which the focus was so different from mine that I learned a lot even though I was studying the same target language. There were also similarities, as in Yixi's presentation on Korean work culture, she showed that the terms for elder/more experienced worker vs younger/less experienced worker were the same terms I used in my presentation that refer to upper- and underclassmen.

The family is a very important element of Korean culture. Most households are two-generation because children usually live with parents until marriage. In addition, many people live with their elderly parents. Traditionally the eldest son inherits the largest portion of any inheritance in the family, but a law was past in 1989 making family inheritances split equally between all sons and daughters. Marriage is a very important institution in Korea. Many people meet spouses through school, work or arrangements from relatives and friends. A marriage is a union not only just two people, but also their families. Divorces and remarriages used to be very uncommon in Korea, but have become more common over time. The family hierarchy is crucial as Korea is an elder-focused culture. Utmost respect should be given to parents and grandparents, whereas in some Western cultures, these relationships can be more casual.

Eastern culture stresses cyclical time more than Western, that usually values a linear timeline. Nations rise and fall, people go in and out of good and bad times, etc. As Korea has become increasingly Westernized, there has been an increased emphasis on schedules in schools and businesses. The American idea that "time is money" does apply in Korea as they are notoriously hard-workers, but they often put in extra work to keep a competitive edge rather than earn more money. Punctuality is very important in Korean culture as people tend to work long days and keep very busy.

This artifact shows a text conversation between me and my mom. I say "Hi mom" to her and she answers with "Hi, how was your exam today? Love you!" and I say "It was good. Goodnight!" I think this demonstrates both reading and writing ability. I had to break down her answer and use some WordReference in order to fully understand, but I recognized the word for "today" and "exam." Texting has been a cool way to write in Korean online without using a Korean keyboard I have to copy and paste, like on my computer.

The language teacher workshop was interesting because I had to come up with a concept that would show what I had been learning, but in a way that the other students might actually take something away from it. It was hard to explain a concept, even if it was as basic as the one I did, and expect that any of it would stick for them. I taught basic vowels, which was the first concept I learned, so I thought it would be a good thing to teach for my workshop. I think the biggest difficulty I ran into was time. It took me a while to learn the concept myself, even though it is very basic to me now. To try to relay these concepts to my peers, I first taught it to them using both visuals and sounding out the vowels. Then I had them try to write out the symbols and sound them out as they did it. I figured this was a way to appeal to different types of learning. Then I used Kahoot to see if they remembered any of the concepts, which added pressure to the learning process. If I were to teach a semester-long course, I would probably try to adopt the strategy of teaching the concepts in many different ways to try to appeal to different types of learners.   

            Learning to read and write in Korean has been a huge focus of my language learning this semester. Learning a new alphabet and writing system is a big hurdle that you can avoid as a language learner when learning another Romanized language. Instead of being able to jump write into vocabulary and grammar like I was able to do with Spanish, I spent a while just memorizing the alphabet and learning how to read and write in Hangul. However, it has been a cool way to track my progress because I remember in the beginning sounding out every word and needing to look at my notes on the alphabet in order to read. Now, I'm starting to recognize common combinations of letters and being able to process what sounds like make much more quickly. I'm not sure if I would say that I'm bilingual; I'm definitely not with Korean, but my Spanish skills are much more developed. Even so, I still can't think quickly in Spanish and can definitely still improve how fluidly I speak it. However, I guess being bilingual isn't necessarily being fluent in two languages, but rather just proficient. My Korean will need a lot of work before I can say I'm trilingual. 

            I think the articles make some good points about the benefits of bilingualism. It's hard to quantify intelligence, but I think that knowing more than one language can broaden your scope of thinking, which in my opinion, makes you smarter. Different languages force you to think in different ways, and that can only boost your intelligence. Also, bilingualism opens you to new cultures, and having a greater global perspective and understanding contributes to intelligence I believe. Knowing more than one language also forces you to be able to switch gears quickly and be more active in your thinking in order to know which language, vocabulary, grammar rules, etc. to process and speak in a certain context.

Ten weeks into my self-directed language study I think I have learned a couple hundred words. By this I mean I've been exposed to them through my online study or with my language partner, not necessarily that I'm a master of all these words. I learned these primarily using Mango, Memrise, KoreanClass101.com videos, the internet, and my language partner. Mango teaches lots of words and then helps build grammatical structure by putting them together. I've used KoreanClass101.com videos because they have some specialized ones like "25 Important Nouns" or "How to Talk about Food." I like these because it uses visuals and I get to hear the words pronounced by a native speaker. In addition to this, I've looked up a couple vocabulary sets like "50 Important Nouns" or "Introductory Phrases" to try to specialize my vocabulary learning. With these new words I've been putting them into flashcard form on Quizlet in an attempt to master them. Quizlet is great because it is able to read many different languages so I can have it pronounce the Korean word for me while I'm studying. It's hard to have a realistic goal of an exact number of words I want to learn. Also, in my learning plan I have certain sets of vocabulary I hope to learn such as food or weather or families, but it isn't realistic to believe that I can learn every word regarding food and drink in one semester. That's why I like the specialized lists made by native speakers about the Top ___ Words about ____, because that way I can try to learn at least the most important ones. For example, I think mastering the words for popular Korean dishes and drinks is more important than learning how to say nearly every word for a type of food at a very surface level.

Language learning is definitely an uphill battle. I felt very confident in my progress as soon as I had mastered the alphabet, only to feel discouraged when I realized that was only the preliminary step to even begin learning to read, write and speak. However, it is going well. It can be hard at times to find the motivation to study hard and dedicate all the time I need to in order to make significant progress in learning Korean. I really enjoy using Mango to help my language learning; it nicely builds off itself and makes sure you don't forget certain phrases just because you already "mastered" that chapter. It also makes you learn more complex sentences, which has helped me learn the sentence structures of Korean and notice patterns within the language. I think this is more helpful than just memorizing sets upon sets of vocabulary. That being said, I have been trying to do more flashcards and general vocabulary building, to give me more breadth when speaking the language. I really want to be able to get a point across if I try to speak Korean, and so I think knowing more words will help me more than having perfect grammar. I believe communicative competence, like H.D. Brown talks about in his article, is more important than linguistic competence, especially when learning a language without the purpose of using it in a strictly academic sense. If I were planning on writing academic or professional essays in Korean, I would probably focus more on proper grammar and whatnot. Learning grammar is very important when learning a language, but for me, I want to put more emphasis on the discourse, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence that Brown talks about. Grammatical competence is important for creating discourse, but mastery of grammar is not necessary. I don't even use perfect grammar when speaking in English, but I can obviously converse interpersonally because I know the sociological rules of the U.S. and how to get around my imperfect knowledge of the language in order to get my point across. I think learning a breadth of vocabulary across different topics will help me advance toward communicative competence.

            Also there is definitely a relationship between culture and language, so learning more about my target culture can only help me improve my cultural competence. This is especially important for the sociolinguistic competence that Brown talks about because it is important to know how to talk properly given the setting and to whom you're talking. For example, knowing that Korea is a hierarchal society with a lot of emphasis placed on respect for elders, I know that learning the formal tense is a crucial part of learning the Korean language if I want communicative competence. It's also important to learn about the target culture so that you learn the most valuable words and phrases in the language. It wouldn't do me as much good to learn the word for "pizza" in Korean as it would to learn the word for "rice." Languages are created and developed from within a culture, so there is a strong relationship between the two.

The topic of my cultural project is going to be daily life of a young adult (college student or 20-something year old) in Korea. I want to focus on a lot of different aspects of Korean culture, and this way I can do that and through a lens through which I can compare Korean culture to my personal experience with American culture. My learning goals for this project are to learn the different areas of vocabulary and culture that a Korean person in university of recently in the workforce would know and use. This would include talking about school, jobs, transportation, work ethic, pop culture in younger generations, formality and colloquialism, relationships, and more. Since my overall goal with learning some Korean would be to help me get around if I were to go visit, hopefully this project and my goals around it would assist me in conversing with others my age. Since my topic is so broad, I won't be able to go too in depth with any of the specific areas of vocabulary or culture, but that's okay because I would rather build a breadth of knowledge to start out with this semester.

Languages go extinct when not enough people find value in continuing to teach it. In the case of Siletz and other American Indian languages, a big part of the languages' demises was that Indian children were sent to government boarding schools where they were not taught the language. This also happens because certain languages are more popular and useful to learn such as English or Spanish. When a language dies, it takes a lot of effort on the part of native speakers in order to preserve it. In the case of Siletz, one speaker took it upon himself to create an online dictionary for the language with thousands of recordings of himself saying the words. By crossing into the digital world, it makes it easier for a language to persevere; it won't necessarily die with the native speakers, it can be accessed online even after native speakers are nearly gone. K. David Harrison talks about his job as a linguist to document languages, as a large portion of the 7,000 languages that exist will go extinct with their last native speakers. So, he can make recordings of these last speakers to try to preserve parts of the language. It is very difficult to bring a language back to life because it takes a lot of effort and commitment; many people simply don't care enough about small languages to put in the effort to revive them. Siletz is an example of a tribe who went from non-existent to federally recognized, and with this the language had a better chance of surviving. With the digital age, it is increasingly possible to preserve a dying language by documenting it online, but it is very unlikely that a dying language would be revived to the point that it is widely spoken.

Since most languages are at least somewhat interconnected, it can be very beneficial to know a language's history. Languages in the same family often share many roots and cognates, which can give you a big advantage when learning another language within that family. Languages will oftentimes adopt words and sounds from other cultures that it has historically interacted with, whether it be through geographical proximity, colonization, etc. This can give you, as a language learner, an insight into why certain words are borrowed or why the roots of words are similar across languages. Korean has its own Koreanic language family. However, like most languages, it does draw from others. For example, Korean has two forms of counting, the Korean one and the Chinese one. The Chinese one is much simpler to learn, in terms of pronunciation, but Koreans use both number sets just for different purposes. Also, I've learned that a lot of words were adopted in Korean after already being translated into Japanese. This adds an extra element of difficulty in understanding these words because they've been slightly altered along the way. Some words, for example juice, apartment, Spain, France, dragons, and more are pronounced in English, but with a Korean accent. This means that "juice" is spelled in Hangul, and ends up being pronounced "joo-sah."

A topic that interests me the most, which also combines many elements of Korean culture, is the daily life of a college student or 20-something year old in Korea. I want to know how they perceive school, relationships, popular foods, movies, and music, transportation, social life, etc. This will require special vocabulary knowledge because it will involve learning about specific Korean businesses (such as popular clothing stores, restaurants, etc. for young people). Also, this topic covers a wide range of topics meaning I'll need to learn specific words to talk about transportation, university, pop culture, and more. If I were to go a step further, I could try to learn the very colloquial phrases that young people use, as I assume that exists as it does in the U.S. I've also heard that texting among young adults in Korea is nearly a new language, which is also similar to how some young adults in the U.S. text. I have included these objectives in my learning plan as I give myself a different topic of vocabulary to focus on each week. As there are infinite words to learn about "transportation" or "food," I can focus on ones used in big cities and university campuses, that a 20-something year old would actually want to know when visiting Korea.  

Hangul is the name of the Korean writing system and even though other Asian languages like Chinese and Japanese are character sets, Hangul is actually an alphabet. Even though it's not as complicated, in my opinion, as character sets, it has been an extra hurdle to learn the new alphabet before even beginning to learn vocabulary and grammar. The writing system was actually not too hard to learn, but some of the letters don't translate perfectly to English sounds, so it's still a challenge to try to make these new sounds, such as the sound in-between a "g" and a "k" or an "r" and an "l" in English. Also, there is a concept called the last consonant, which is that only a few sounds can be at the end of a word, so some words are spelled differently than they are pronounced, which creates words that may sound the same, but their distinction is in their spelling. Despite these few difficulties, the writing system is pretty straightforward. Each consonant has to be paired with a vowel and words are split up syllable-by-syllable. Obviously there are exceptions to rules in every writing system that just need to be memorized. However, when I thought about it, there are very minimal exceptions in Korean compared to English, and I couldn't imagine the difficulty of learning English and all its grammar exceptions this late in my life, so I appreciate Korean's relatively simply writing system. Also, the grammar is very simple because it's a contextual language, meaning most verbs aren't conjugated, so the subject is just implied. This makes it a lot easier to begin speaking sentences, not having to think about whether I'm talking in the first-, second-, or third-person.

Food is an integral part of any culture and Korean culture is no exception. If you ever go to a Korean restaurant, you will order your entree, likely made up of noodles, meat, and vegetables, and then a bunch of little side dishes will come out as well. There will be kimchi, radishes, vegetables, and more. Rice is also an essential part of Korean cuisine and typically eaten at every meal. Korean food has typical seasonings such as garlic, sesame oil, red pepper powder, scallions, and more. Korean barbecue and kimchi are probably the most well-known Korean dishes in the U.S. Table manners are very important in Korea; you must have good posture, you should not show food in your mouth, and you shouldn't start eating until your elders at the table do so. Although less meat, especially red meat, is eaten in Korea in comparison to the U.S., special diets such as vegetarianism aren't as popular as here. The food preparation style makes pretty healthy food, so obesity is not a huge problem there. If anything, being overweight is a sign of wealth, while in the U.S. it tends to be a sign of lower income, because those with less money may need to sustain themselves more often on cheap fast food. Drinking during a meal, alcoholic or not, isn't as common as it is in the U.S. I notice that my mom never drinks while she's eating, but instead will have her glass of water, milk, tea, or whatever it is, after she's down eating. This is especially the case when eating soup, which is very common in Korean cuisine. Also, like I said that rice is served at every meal, this includes breakfast. Savory foods are eaten for breakfast much more than in Western cultures.

Korean has 19 consonant phonemes, 8 vowel phonemes, and 12 diphthongs. For the most part, the letters in Hangul transfer pretty well to sounds that exist in English. Many of them are pronounced as a sound in-between two English letters, however. For example, there isn't really an "r" sound, but instead something in-between an "r" and an "l," which can be difficult to do. Also, there are a lot of Hangul letters that sound very similar to me, but are very distinguishable for native speakers. For example, there are different characters for a "j," "ch," and a double "j" sound, which are very hard to tell apart. Similarly, there are different characters for "b," "p," and double "b" sounds. This makes it difficult to spell words perfectly, even when you know how they're pronounced. Besides these distinctions, there aren't many sounds that are very difficult to pronounce for an English speaker, which makes learning how to read and speak easier than some other languages. A transcription of the word meaning "to go" is [kada], even though the letter used to spell it in Korean is the one that is supposed to translate as a "g" sound. Another example like this is the word for "fire" which is transcribed as [pul] even though it's spelled with the "b" letter in Korean. If I were to try to write this just by sound, I would probably use the Korean letter that translates as a "p" sound. However, if I were to this, I would accidentally be spelling the word for "grass," not "fire," which are obviously very different. That one is transcribed as [pʰul].

I was able to acquire the knowledge I needed to learn the structure of Korean through my online practice on Duolingo and with my language partner. It was pretty easy to learn the structure; the words are just broken up by syllable. I've been learning along the way about the grammatical structure of Korean, which is different than English. Learning the writing structure was a very important task for me, so I identified the materials I needed to learn this structure right away, because I couldn't move forward at all in my language learning before I knew the alphabet.

According to the Hofstede Index, South Korea is a slightly hierarchical society, meaning people tend to have their place in society and accept it. It is also pretty far on the collectivist side, as opposed to individualistic. This means loyalty is very important and people take responsibility for other members of their in-group, whether that be family, co-workers, etc. As for the masculinity dimension, a highly masculine country being one that values competition and being the best, South Korea is more on the feminine side. Feminine countries tend to focus on "working to live" rather than "living to work." Also, managers value equality, consensus, and quality work life. Status is not as important as well-being. Another dimension is uncertainty avoidance in which South Korea is one of the highest scoring countries, meaning it maintains strict values and behavior, and are intolerant of unconventional ideas and actions. Rules, security, and precision are highly valued to attend to these codes. Despite this adherence to strict values, it is one of the most long-term oriented societies, meaning it values efforts in modern education to prepare for the future over upholding time-honored traditions. South Koreans are guided by virtues and good examples rather than an almighty God as a guidance. The last dimension is indulgence, in which South Korea scores pretty low on, meaning it is more one of restraint. It doesn't place as much emphasis on leisure, but rather has some restraint by social norms on their actions.

            Most of these dimensions are in line with the little that I know about Korean culture. Some of them are slightly contradictory, such as it being a feminine society, but not being indulgent. Another thing that stands out to me is the high uncertainty avoidance score along with the high long-term orientation score, which say that Korean society values rigid rules, but doesn't pay much attention to time-honored values, respectively, which seem to be slightly contradictory. From what I know about Korean culture, I would have guessed it to be a more masculine society, because I know they value hard work and success in school and career very much. As for body language, like we talked about in class, I know certain body language signals are very important. For example, I've heard that it's impolite to stare right at an elder or superior when they are speaking to you, but better to look slightly down. This is very different from American culture, in which it's rude to not make eye contact with someone. As for time, I would guess that Korean value punctuality because of their hard work ethic and value of time as money. Overall, Korean culture highly values family, strict moral behavior, hard work, and a social hierarchy.

            I wouldn't really say I've experienced culture shock. The majority of places I've traveled have been pretty Westernized, or on the trips that weren't, I was in a very touristy area. Obviously I noticed things in these places, such as Morocco or Jamaica, that were extremely different from the U.S. or Western Europe, but since I wasn't fully immersed in with locals, I didn't feel culture shock to the extreme that I know is possible.