This week, my goal was to start familiarizing myself with verbal aspects in Ukrainian. This is the most difficult thing that I have done so far because there is really nothing similar in English, so it is hard to know exactly when to use which aspect form. There are two different aspects: perfective and imperfective. Each Ukrainian verb comes with a pair in the opposite aspect. I am familiar with aspect verbs because Russian uses them too, however, aspects have been the most challenging thing for me to get right in Russian as well. I did the practice questions in my textbook and still had some trouble with deciding when to use which aspect, but I am getting more right than I thought I would. When I was learning Russian, I thought that in real life, someone would understand what I needed if I used the wrong aspect of a verb, however I learned this summer that that is really not the case. I am assuming that it is the same in Ukrainian, so I really want to try to gain a better understanding of Ukrainian aspect verbs before I move there next year.
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As in most post Soviet countries, is very important to be on time in Ukraine. While it is customary to be "fashionably late" to events and parties in America, being late for things with a set starting time in Ukraine is considered very rude. This attitude about time carries over into multiple different aspect of life in Ukraine. For one thing, train schedules are incredibly precise. If your train ticket says that you will depart at 5:03pm and arrive at 8:17pm, those are the exact times that you can expect to leave and arrive. The same thing usually goes for public transportation as well. It is in fact more common for a bus to not show up at all than it is for a bus to be off schedule.
upfile_271377493%20%281%29.mp3
Translation:
What are you by profession?
I am a student.
Where do you study?
I study at the University of Richmond.
What do you study?
I study history.
This week, my goal was to learn how to talk about professions. In the corresponding chapter in my textbook, there was a list of professions that I wanted to learn. This will be an easy way for me to make conversation with people when I am living in Ukraine next year because it is common small talk. My exercise for learning this is to give someone a list of professions and ask them to make sentences from it. For example, if I wanted to make a short dialogue asking about my friend Oleg's profession, I would say: -хто Олег за фахом? -Він журналіст. (who is Oleg by profession? He is a journalist). This could be the example for someone on a worksheet about asking about professions. I would give lots of different examples of professions and ask the student to create different dialogues.
For my fourth artifact, I decided to have a texting conversation in Korean with my mother. This was the primary learning task that I wanted to accomplish.
For this week, I will mainly focus on my cultural presentation. For my cultural presentation, I decided to switch to the topic of the education system in South Korea. I am already going in depth on why it is so successful and what effect the rigor has on the Korean students. Diving deeper into this, I realized that although the Koreans have a very successful country based on their knowledge and innovation, the education system needs to be changed and is borderline abusive to the students.
This week, I will dive deeper into the Korean education system and see what that tells me about the culture in Korea along with its history.
For my third artifact, I am going to summarize a short newspaper article in English with limited help from an online translator.
I will translate: http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=shm&sid1=105&oid=032&aid=0002744352
This article is basically saying that Samsung Electronics will be releasing a new color for their Samsung Galaxy S7 line with a new black. The new released color seems to play a factor in the domestic sales of the Galaxy S7, even beating the iPhone 7. Samsung Electronics is hoping to expand the availability of choices for their consumers with the new addition of the black models. It has also been established that the Galaxy S7 sales has surpassed the iPhone 7's sales by a substantial amount. They plan to try and raise the sales of the S7 as much as possible to clear up inventory for their new S8 that will be coming out next year. However, because of the Note 7 recall situation, it decreased their sales by 14.2%.
Family plays a big role in the Korean culture. As I may have mentioned before, Korea is not an individualistic culture, but rather a group-oriented culture. Often members represent their family name, and others will judge the family based on that one member's personality, behavior, and etc. Stating to be from a certain family line creates a pre-set generalization of the person's identity. In this sense, Korea can be seen as a little pre-modern as the world moves towards an individualistic society, but I think this aspect of their culture sets them apart and creates a different, possibly more bonded environment. Although it gives room for certain judgments, and has a negative connotation, I think this aspect also has its upsides. Being part of a family brings great care, and a very intimate relationship with each family member. Even if individually, two family members do not get along, at the end of the day, because they are family, they will do whatever for their family. I believe this insight comes from having been born in Korea, but growing up in America, because in America, I'm being taught to fend for myself, and all about individuality, and becoming my own. But when I go to Korea to visit my grandparents, or my dad's side of the family, I am no longer just Jinhoo, but rather Jinhoo Bong. And this difference brings about loving grandparents, and a close-knit family line. I meet with family members who I either have never met before, never knew existed, or met when I was very young and therefore they essentially don't exist. But each encounter has always been welcoming and inviting because we are family. Maybe America is like that as well, and I just haven't had an opportunity to experience it firsthand, but from my personal experiences, I enjoy Korea's take on family, and what it brings about.
Coming from a Korean background, and coming into this class with a relatively well-versed knowledge of Korean, I can't say I struggled immensely. However, the process of learning the language in a formal setting and actually practicing weekly has helped me to build a stronger foundation, and has helped me fix some of the common mistakes that I had previously always made. Before this, I have not really had a formal class to learn Korean other than when I was in pre-school which I do not remember any of, so having the opportunity to learn in a formal setting has helped develop my knowledge of the language much better. Reading has become a bit smoother as I got more practice. And writing as well, as I sat down and wrote sentences and wrote in a formal setting. Before this, the extent of my knowledge was whatever interactions I had with my parents, which was mostly speaking. I had little experience with reading and writing although if forced to, I could have done it. So with just the opportunities provided through this, I have been able to definitely improve in my reading and writing of my native language. Although I do have to admit, I had much bigger goals in the beginning. Mastering the language has proved harder to do than I had previously imagined. But overall, I think I've improved in the use of the Korean language in more formal settings, which had been essentially a main goal of mine.
I thought the readings were quite interesting as I have never questioned whether being bilingual makes one smarter or not. But the articles brought up interesting points. I have concluded that although being bilingual can make you seem smarter or eventually make you smarter through certain learned traits, the act of being bilingual on its own does not make one smarter. Although it may make you smarter in the sense that you know another language, I don't think it can be use so broadly as to say that bilingualism makes one smarter in a general sense. I do agree with the points that the article pointed out such as that being bilingual can help one to exercise their executive function and therefore create a stronger mental strength in that aspect. And that executive function can assist in deciding quicker and with the ability to switch between two languages quickly creates a sort of seamless interaction within the two, allowing a bilingual person to be able to multitask more easily than those that only know one language. A negative factor that the articles brought up that I agreed with to a certain extent was that by having to learn two language simultaneously, one is limiting their depth of knowledge in one language. That is something that is very plausible, but I still don't think this fact alone is sufficient to overcome the benefits of being bilingual. Maybe in the early stages, such a fact might play a role in the growth of that person's knowledge of both languages, but in the long run, I don't see it playing as big a role. Overall, I found it interesting to see the scientific backings as to how bilinguals think differently, even if it is in the slightest sense, than those who know only one language, and to see how that can lead to one claiming that bilinguals are smarter.
I have learned roughly 25-30 new words in my target language which is Korean. I learned them through the videos that I have been watching which teach a couple words related to a certain subject, some of which I already knew, and some of which were new. Also, I have been learning some trendy vocabulary which is a cultural use of slang in Korean with my language assistant. I don't think that I'll be able to use these newly acquired words as seamlessly as I do with the words that I already know, but I do hope to incorporate them into my knowledge of vocabulary so that I have it ready to use whenever an opportunity may come.
- Learning Journal 12: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
Goals:
- To finish my final task, outlined in the learning language plan as:
Application: Think about context in which you would tell time — transportation — busses and Ojek, and taxi. How to pay, how to ask for price, how to exchange within these circumstances.
- To continue research on my culture project, which examines the use of "kin" terms when addressing others. This research topic, moreover, will provide insight into Indonesian culture more broadly.
- To Finish my culture project
- To rehearse the pronunciation of the Indonesian alphabet
Accomplish:
- This week's agenda was straightforward, so:
- I researched the norms associated with Balinese transportation. There are four main transportation methods: taxi, bus, shared taxi, and a motorbike-type taxi
- I learned how to approach each means of transportation
- I learned how to ask "How much does this cost?"
- I learned how to say "Stop here, please."
- I learned how to say "Can you take me to..."
- I rehearsed the Indonesian alphabet
Finally, I met with my language partner to practice what I have learned as well as to ask for advice concerning my culture project.
The culture, the local knowledge, traditions, the religious of the people might go away with the language. The uniqueness of the culture will no longer be passed, learned, understood or comprehended by people if the language is gone. In the reading, language experts try to save the Siletz Dee-ni by creating online dictionary for people to learn. But the problems is, there is not enough people who speak the language on a daily basis. People who are not born with this language, can never comprehend the culture behind it or merge into the language and its culture because they don’t live with it. Language learners can only know how to pronounce the words and directly translate the words. But the meaning of those words in the real life is hard to apply. Thus, the culture, knowledge, local people’s traditions and religious, cannot be preserved by dictionaries. When the language is gone, all of the things will go away with it.
In the context of globalization, a single language being lost seems not a big deal, after all there’s very few people speak it. And small group of people has to keep up with the globalization by speaking the more common languages, English, Spanish, Chinese, etc. People seems to lose the language inevitably. However, globalization is damaging the cultural diversity by forcing people to communicate in common language. Some might lose the native language by practicing too much of the adopted language and not passing the native one to the next generation. Thus, even the descendants of the language still exist, the culture might disappear as well.
The history of a language influence the grammar, the logic, the structure and the culture of the language in a lot of ways. For example, the French colonization of places in African has left a lot of people in African speaking French. But local Africans speaking different French than people in France because they incorporate local knowledge, social, geographical aspect into the language. When learning a language, it’s important to pay attention to variations within a language because of the colonial history. I once had a Spanish professor from Spain, but then when I had another Spanish professor from Argentina, I could not understand the Argentinian professor at all because of the different way of pronunciations. Argentinian style of Spanish is different from Spanish-Spanish possibly because of the colonial history. The logic and the structure of language can be different because of the history as well. The logic, structure and culture can be affected by the history of the language as well. Some words and use of words are unique in certain languages, but don’t exist in others, because of the different history of living in different places, interact with different things. Some language as a lot to do with the ocean, some are more familiar with the mountain, some has to do with tropical forest, etc. Language reflects on the life of the people, in another word, the history of the traditions and culture.
I can resonate with a lot of things that have been mentioned in the video. For example, the newness that came at the beginning when I first came to the U.S and the school. I felt excited about almost everything. But then as the newness went away, I started to feel difficult about dealing with academic and social life. I felt alien from this very different world than my home. As a lot of people said in the video, the first few weeks were very tough and were packed. I had to get used to everything within a short amount of time. I had to spend two or three times more effort on the work that U.S students, etc. I was stressed out. But then, as I interacted with professors more, tried to take the initiative to reach out to other people, and got more involved in class, things started getting better. In small schools like U of Richmond, I think it’s really an advantage to have a small community where I can always find help from my professors and faculties. There people who are less interested in me and my culture, but there still are a lot of people who cares about me and my culture, who want to talk to me and get to know me, which has been a great encouragement in my life here at Richmond. One thing that I think would be great is the host family program. It could be a great support to international student as one of the girl talked in the video. We don’t have host family program that has student actually live in the host family now, instead, we have host family that could take student to dinner, local places, holidays, etc. It has less interaction with the host family, but still a good way to get familiar with Richmond and in some way, the American culture.
For this week, I plan to work on expanding my last week's task of being able to read Korean by reading news articles. I read several business news articles but found out that it was too dense and specialized for my level, so I tried to look for new, easier articles to work on. I found some articles that were around my level of comprehension. I understood about 70% of the article and attempted to Google translate the rest. This was only somewhat successful because of the poor accuracy of Google translate. However, it allowed me to use context clues to help me engage in learning new vocabulary along with learning how professionals use the Korean language. Business articles might not have been a good place to start because of its specialized language that I do not even know in English, but it is a field of interest for me and I believe it will be easier to understand something that I am actually interested in. Because of this, I will continue on trying to read more news articles and try to understand it with more ease. I believe that the more I read them, the more my vocabulary will increase, making the readings go easier each time.
My learning goal for this week is to practice ordering food at a Korean restaurant. My attempt at this goal could help me develop my interpersonal communication skills. I plan on accomplishing this goal by going to a Korean restaurant at Grand Mart, an international market, which is located near our campus. I hope that this kind of practice would prepare me for my interactions in a restaurant in Korea, since I plan on studying abroad my junior year of Spring semester. At the restaurant I could accomplish my goal by reading the menu and deciphering what the food is. I would also be practicing phrases and words I learned that relate to interactions that would happen when ordering at a restaurant. I would know I have accomplished my goals when I feel confident with ordering and requesting services.
Reading and writing Korean is surprisingly easier than many other languages. Since there is a limited number of characters you need to know, reading Korean is simple. However, understanding it is completely different. Since I grew up in Korea, I can read Korean at moderate speeds, but I will rarely understand what I am reading. This is because of my low vocabulary level in Korean and the lack of practice reading professional, presentational writing. After reading some business articles, I realized how complex Korean is and how hard it is to understand some of the structure and syntax of Korean. Especially with the highly specialized vocabulary that is used to describe certain things in the business world, I had a hard time understanding.
However, writing is much simpler than reading and understanding Korean. Similar to many other languages with alphabets, it is not difficult to write in Korean. There are certain times when I do get confused about which vowel to use, but even with the wrong vowel, most Korean speakers can understand what I was trying to say. There are different vowels that sound the same but have different meanings. These vowels can make it difficult for new or novice Korean speakers to write, but it can be acceptable for people who are just trying to get by. Overall, reading in Korean is easy but difficult to understand, and writing in Korean is easier to understand.
