Journal Entry #3 Vivian Shon

[Vivian Shon]

For this week, Rachel and I just decided to hold one of our meetings at the local Korean church we both attend called Richmond Central Presbyterian Church. I’ve held previous SDLC meetings at RCPC in the past because it was a good cultural experience, however, for this meeting, I wanted to use this time to practice my Korean in terms of singing. For this year, the church asked me to be one of the praise leaders and the lead female vocalist which I accepted. We mostly sang praise songs in English, but for this week, I asked my pastor if I could sing one song in Korean and he approved. I asked Rachel to help me choose a good Korean praise song and we choose “여호와께 돌아가자" because it was originally sung by a female vocalist, so it seemed very fitting. At first, when I listen to this song, there were so many vocabulary words I did not understand. I knew how to read and sing all of the verses, but I knew only about 30% of what it truly meant. I tried to use context clues to figure the lyrics out on my own, but I noticed it was a lot more difficult since it was a song and not a logical flowing passage. On top of that, I think it was harder for me to understand because it was a Christian song and I did not know a lot of the religious terms in Korean. For instance, the song said “백성" which Rachel later informed me that it meant “the people.” Additionally, I did not know what “여호와" meant and my language partner let me know that it translated to “Jehovah.” It was very frustrating at first because I couldn’t necessarily connect the song to my emotions since I did not understand what the song was trying to say. However, as Rachel helped me to translate each word I did not understand, I started to appreciate the song little by little and I realized that this piece was beautifully written. After about 45 minutes of deciphering and practicing, I finally got to perform this song for a Sunday service and was very proud of the work we did. It made me actually want to sing even more Korean Christian praise songs in the future. Not only did this meeting help me to reach my goal to listen to more Korean arts, but it also helped me to learn more Christian terminologies in Korean. Next time, I hope to try and decipher Christian songs on my own without Rachel by using Google Translate and YouTube. Overall, I really enjoyed the experience, and I hope to continue to be challenged in the future with my Korean skills. 

[Peace Nyeche]

Congrats on being a praise leader Vivian! It's always interesting to hear what heritage speakers have trouble with when language learning. Song lyrics do tend to be complicated even in English I miss a lot of words or meaning when listening to a song for the first time because some can be so stylistic. At the same time Korean music has been a major part of my exposure to the language. After reading this I am inspired to double down on actually understanding the nitty gritty of what I'm listening to.