During these past two weeks I learned about the complexities of the Korean language regarding the names of relatives. One thing that greatly differs between Korean and English is that the relatives have different names depending on which side of the family they are on. This process goes all the way back to the grandpa and grandma status from what I have learned about.
Another topic that we touched on again was the importance of conversational Korean phrases. I learned some essential phrases such as excuse me and you are welcome. Though it is interesting that you’re welcome is implied in Korean and rarely used. This is similar to how I already speak so that was nice. The conversational phrases are also affected by who you are speaking to. The informal and formal usages are extremely important here as to complement the prose of the person you are talking with. One aspect of Korean culture that naturally arose from this conversation is the ritual that Koreans have before eating a meal. They often say ‘I will enjoy this food’ and ‘I have enjoyed this food’, respectively before and after eating a meal. This process is absent in American culture and in Chinese culture to my knowledge but is present in Japanese culture though it is out of my scope of study. We also learned how to say it's delicious and it is not particularly good. This is especially important as I can use the phrase in practice during a meal. I extrapolated from this to learn what tastes bad was in Korean.
Another topic that I really enjoyed learning about was food. I think that food is an essential part of understanding a culture and by extension a language. Additionally, I was hungry so learning about food helped prepare me for lunch. We learned about the basic types of food such as meat, rice, noodles, egg, vegetables, and more. A couple of interesting facts here is that the side dishes are very common in Korean meals and are often irreplaceable. Additionally, some important words that we dived into are red chili paste and salted seafood. Thus I learned the importance of rice, spice, and seafood in Korean cuisine. In terms of learning planning, food is an effective avenue of learning a language since it is useful anytime you go out to eat that culture’ food. It is a bit sad that right now eating out is not appropriate for health guidelines but I hope that next semester there are more opportunities to use food vocabulary to study Korean. In line with that, I heard that in previous years language partners would go out and eat together to study that culture’s cuisine and practice the language they were studying. I hope that Somyung and I can share a Korean meal before I graduate next semester.
So far repetition has been an effective way of keeping up with my growing list of vocabulary. Although I can’t use all of them, slowly I will incorporate certain words into my Korean inventory.
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