This past weekend, I was able to teach a friend how to respond when asked how often they do a following activity.
I asked them the following questions:
1. How often do you brush your teeth?
2. How often do you study at the library?
3. How often do you exercise at the gym?
4. How often do you go to the movies?
5. How often do you skip class?
6. How often do hang out with friends?
Overall, I had two realizations when teaching my friend how to answer these questions. The first was the interesting cycle I noticed when my friend had to change their response from English, think in Korean what the response would be, and say it in Korean. It is a difficult feat- remembering and saying phrases that are not in your language. When we say phrases that aren't in our language, they essentially have no meaning to us. They are just new sounds. It is interesting to see how someone can change those words from being just random sounds to meaningful words that they will be able to recall in the future when asked this question again.
My second realization was that language is often something that we take for granted. We don't realize that in our respective languages, we produce and make sounds and meanings that may not be universal or applicable to another language. It was interesting to hear my friend try to say some sounds that were not familiar for them. While it is something we may not realize on a daily basis, the concept of languages is interesting and there are often small details that we don't notice about them until we are shown a new perspective.
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