biweekly post #7

[Yewon Son]

During Thanksgiving break, I went back home and then went to a family friend’s house to celebrate Thanksgiving with them and my family. While I didn’t watch the tv shows while I was back at home during break, I did get to talk to my parents and their friends a lot in Korean. I usually speak in Korean at home, so it was not a big surprise that I would be doing so when I got back home from break, but it was really to be able to be back home with family and friends. I talked to my parents about everything that was going on at school, from my friends, to how my grades were doing, to whether I was eating enough food or not. It was really refreshing to be back home, and I was surprised at how constantly different it felt like to come home for Thanksgiving break every year. Unfortunately, I was only able to stay in the guest bedroom at my house for one day and then we just drove down five years and stayed with our family friends. During our stay there, I was also able to get another person to practice with me besides for my parents. The mom of the family friend whose house we stayed at was the perfect candidate to both increase my language comprehension and increase my own speaking and my vocabulary. One of the biggest reasons for this was because my family friend’s mom speaks extraordinarily fast. Even when she speaks in English it is relatively faster than most people, but when she speaks her native language Korean, she speaks extremely fast to the point of sometimes not being able to understand her. Especially when the family friend’s mom got excited, she would kind of slur her words together from speaking quickly as I noticed sometimes happened with some of the guests in the korean variety show. People would sometimes put two words together (I guess a similar concept in English would be like saying gonna instead of going to). Noticing a speech pattern that I had noticed in a tv show happen in real life was really interesting. I was also able to speak in semi-formal terms with her that I was not used to speaking in. Usually when I speak Korean it is either with family or friends where I speak in a completely informal way, or it is with complete strangers where I speak in a completely formal way. Because the family friend’s mom who I was speaking to was a kind of in between, the language that I used with her was a reflection of that. I would not have gotten the chance to notice this change if I had not tried talking to her in Korean first, since I have almost always only talked to her in English before. Overall, it was a really interesting experience to talk to an adult who I knew in Korean for one of the first times and I was happy that my language learning activities before this helped me.

[Lidia Amanuel]

Being in the home environment almost instantly pushes me to be more proactive about my language usage. I definitely relate to your experience. The lines between formal and informal conversation are also really interesting to assess in different languages. I imagine it can also get you into some hot water if not used correctly! Interesting thanksgiving experience :)