SDLC 110 Cultural Post #1

[Jessica Crouser]

My interest in Korean comes from the fact that my mom and her family are from South Korea. I grew up knowing a couple key phrases in the language and eating the food, but I never learned to speak the language. This keeps me from understanding everything that goes on at family gatherings with her side, because even though all of her siblings speak English, they all still speak Korean when they're together. My mom was the only one of her six brothers and sisters who married a non-Korean and had kids, so all my cousins speak it as well. Learning more languages has also been something on my agenda because I want to have as broad of a perspective on the world as I can, and not miss out on opportunities or people I could meet just because of a language barrier. Out of this class, I hope to make enough progress in the language that I can incorporate some Korean into my conversations with my mom, while I'm here at school and back at home. I want to visit the country with her soon and don't want to be completely lost. I also hope I develop language-learning skills that I can apply in the future to continuing to study Spanish and Korean, and possibly other languages.