Blogs

artifact%20%231%20%28113%29.mp3

1. Introduction (family, what I am studying, where I am from)

2. My future plans (get a job in accounting)

3. What I did the day before

My%20Learning%20Plan%20113.docx

1. Recording:
Angella Lee-Artifact #3

2. Translation:
Hello. My name is Angella Lee. This semester, I am reading the book that I mentioned about before. Through this book, I am able to learn about South Korea’s culture and history. One of the historical aspects that I was able to learn about outside of this book is about the presidents of South Korea. I learned that the first president was “Lee Seung-Man” and he started serving in 1948. He was also the president who presided over the Korean War, which is an extremely important war in Korea.

     Both Atul's and my schedule were so packed this week that we didn't get to meet together. The week before this we talked about questions words and personal pronouns. I learned that Hindi pronouns are a little different that English pronouns, and it will take some untangling to decipher why "Main" (I) is used sometimes and "Mujhe" (to me) is used sometimes. We also talked about questions words like kya (what), kahaan (where), kaise (how), kaun (who), kyon (why), and kab (when). Thankfully they are pretty easy to use - just substitute them into wherever the word they are standing in for would have been! I also learned this week how to say "Is naksha men, ham kahaan hain?" which means "Where are we on this map?" which seems quite useful, as I tend to get lost on public transportation. :)

     This coming week is Thanksgiving break, so Atul and I will see each other the week after. Meanwhile, I am going to continue studying on my own. I have been practicing with my fiancé a little bit (text is less intimidating than speaking), as you can see in the picture below. 

I wrote (or tried to write) "the weather is good today. It is a little cold. My legs are cold. I want to wear churidar (leggings). I am wearing jeans. I want to wear jeans AND leggings. Because I am cold."

My goals for this coming week:

• Make a language-learning plan for the next 28 weeks or so until I move to India.
• Complete Mango lessons 17-29 (I would like to finish the Mango by the end of this semester if possible. I need to finish something so I can feel psychologically satisfied!)
• Sample some new Hindi resources including

            --- watch two EdX Hindi videos on YouTube

            --- look at two lessons from http://www.learning-hindi.com/

            --- look at two lessons from http://www.mindurhindi.com/

            --- Look more at Hindi Memrise accounts

• Practice communicating in Hindi at least twice with another person

     India is known for its spices and delicious foods. While I do not personally enjoy spicy-hot food, I do love otherwise flavorful food! Last week I tried a new Indian dish called khatta meetha poha, which means "sour-sweet poha". Poha is essentially a rice dish made out of flattened rice flakes, and is often eaten for a savory breakfast. The poha I had was flavored with Raisins, Peanuts, Onion, Green Chilli, Curry Leaves, Turmeric, Dry Mango Powder, Cumin, Mustard. I was a little worried that that combination of flavors wouldn't taste good together, but lo and behold - it was delicious!! Here is a picture (not my own) so you can see what poha looks like.

     For this cultural post, I made famous Indian Chai Masala! Although many Americans think that Chai refers to the tasty spices used (as evidence by American products as "chai spiced cider",) it literally means "tea" with the "masala" meaning spiced. In fact, "masala" can be used for other dishes as well to mean spiced - take for example, Chana Masala, or "spiced chickpeas."

     I decided to make chai the traditional way as I learned in India. First you must choose the spices you want. Everyone makes it slightly differently, but I choose to use ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and nutmeg. Some people make it "spicier" with more ginger and some people make it "sweeter" with more cozy spices like cinnamon.

Next I ground up all the spices with a wooden pestle and added two plain black tea (chai!) bags.

Next I added sugar, water, and milk. The proportions of the two liquids are to taste. Some people like almost all water with just a splash of milk, and some people like to use all whole milk and no water! I best enjoy the results when I use a 1:1 proportion of whole milk and water. the next step is to heat the concoction until it just starts to boil, and then turn the heat off. I like to let it steep a little longer to get more flavor, and then I skim off the milk-top layer and pour it through a strainer into a mug.

I poured mine into this handmade mug I got as a gift from an Indian friend.

Enjoy!!

SDLC%20Post%20Learning%20Journal%20%2310.docx

If I received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Korean, I would first experience and analyze the Korean culture. In Korean culture, there are different words and phrases you use for friends, elders, and strangers. Because of these different aspects of Korean culture, I think experiencing the culture would allow for better understanding of why and when to use certain words or phrases.

Another important aspect of Korean is the Chinese characters Hanja. Even today, if you look at Korean newspapers, they would jump between Korean and Hanja to explain some meanings. Korean words were pretty much derived from Hanja, so in Korean schools, students learn Hanja to better grasp where the roots of the words come from.

The different structural components from the class such as language families or where the language comes from would really show up in this work. Learn Hanja will significantly boost the understanding of words and the meanings mainly due to the language Korean rooted from.

If I were to receive a grant for linguistics research, I would start by looking into how Korean culture and traditions shape the language. I would love to study verbal cues and facial expression that have developed over years. Learn how being a collectivist society affects the language. I would also like to look at the different dialects used in different regions in Korea. For example, people in Busan use different phrases, and even have different norms, than people in Seoul. I would like to see how these dialects developed and study their origins.

     If I were given a grant to conduct linguistic research, I would love to study how emotion are verbally expressed and experienced in Hindi and Hindi culture. Cross-cultural studies of emotions show that language shapes the way we experience and express emotions. Some languages have more or less emotion-words, and some have incredibly specific emotion words that English needs 20 words to mean the same thing. Affective scientists wonder if the words we have access to in our language influence the way we experience emotions.

     I would start by doing a literature review of the existing research about Hindi language, Hindi culture, Hindi-speakers' metalinguistic awareness, and any Indian-Western cross-cultural studies of emotion. Although, if I already have the grant, that means I must have already written a well-research grant proposal. :)

     Next I would attempt to compile all the ways to verbally express feelings of emotions in Hindi. I would gather info from both the higher-SES (perhaps urban-dwelling) people and the lower-SES (perhaps village-dwelling) people. I would love to look at the differences in how the two SES extremes express emotions in Hindi. Research already does show that higher- and lower-SES Americans perceive emotional expressions on others' faces differently, so there may also be differences in linguistic expressions of emotion.

     With my study, I would also be interested in how the linguistic expression of emotions affects how culture views them - are emotions entities outside of ourselves that flow through us? Do they originate within us? I would like to look at the individual words which Hindi uses to express emotions. Do they say "I am happy," "Happiness has come to me," or "I am a happy person"? I already know that one way to express thirst in Hindi is "I am a thirsty person" and a way to say "Nice to meet you" is "Mujhe, aap se milkar, hushi hui" which translates to "To me, upon meeting you, happiness occurred." Since both of these are different from my native way of speaking in English, it gives me the idea that there would be plenty to study in a linguistic-affective study of Hindi.

I would conduct a research on the relationship between different dialects in Korean. First, I would have to define the different dialects that exists in the Korean language by traveling to different areas in Korea. Then, I would study the similarities between the dialects and see how they became to exist. I would have to dig deeper into whether there were any other dialects that existed before that have changed to what exists today or if it has become extinct. The research will consist of talking to natives of different dialects and studying the history of those dialects. Each dialect may have different morphemes that are specific to that dialect or even new vocabulary that would mean the same as another word in another dialect. In addition, different dialects would have different momentums and rhythm which is why one dialect speaker may have trouble understanding the other dialect. Phonetic articulation is the most important difference between dialects and will definitely appear throughout my research. 

These past couple weeks, we went over a handful of verbs to describe daily or frequent activities.  Then we practiced putting them into sentences and conversations.  One person would ask if we do 'x' often and we would respond either yes, or no, we rarely do 'x'; reading, working, exercising, listening to music, and taking a walk as examples.  We used the textbook that provided pictures relating to each verb and then were given a chart to fill in our partners answers to each question. We then presented their answers to the group.  It was an effective activity that repeated the grammar and vocabulary words used in these scenarios.  

We spend another class going over a lot of the vocabulary for family members.  This is another example of how the culture plays out in the language.  Most of the titles such as aunt and uncle have different terms on the fathers side depending on if they are younger or older than the father.  However, on the mother's side there is only one word for the aunt and uncle regardless of age.  Also, there is a different term for the husbands and wives of the aunts and uncles vs here in the U.S. it is either aunt or uncle.  This is all very confusing for someone very new to all of this and without a Korean family.  Introducing all the terminology was difficult to process at first and it was a little overwhelming.  Luckily these terms will only be used in certain contexts, but I think having a friend in a Korean family who would introduce you to the different members would be the best way to learn all of the terms.  Another way would be to read a Korean story or watch a K-drama that includes all the family characters to help associate someone with the term.  

The one Korean popular culture that everyone likes to talk about is its music. However, to me, even though k-pop is popular, it has several downsides. Most of the songs that are popular are hiphop, rap, and edm style, and the bands are young and stylish. I saw this Korean variety show once that critiqued this phenomenon, claiming that if you want to see if a song is a classic, come back in 10-20 years to see if it is still around. Though it is meant to be funny, it demonstrates a trend in Kpop that is skewed towards the age group of 10 to 30 year olds. 

For our first class, we had a discussion with Jimin, our language learning partner, what our class wanted to get out of this course. We gave her our learning plans and she created a cumulative schedule for what we would be going over throughout the semester to make sure our individual and aligning goals would be explored. Afterwards, she went over a topic that most of us had trouble with, which was learning about certain common spelling errors. She would write down two words that sounded the same, but only one was correctly spelled. We were given a blank sheet of paper and had to choose the correct word and use it in a sentence to make sure we knew how the word applied in the right context. She taught us a really helpful trick to use when applying these two vowels. "ㅐ"and "ㅔ" sound exactly the same, so it gets really difficult to figure out which one to use. I have been applying them based on gut feeling from all the years of Korean I have learned, which is not a method that helps me be confident in what I'm spelling. She taught us to extend the vowel for "ㅐ" into a full word and if it sounds good with the word we are trying to spell, it is correct. This has been immensely helpful as these two vowels are one of the most difficult ones to correctly apply for me. The following week, she gave us a quiz on the words we went over in the previous class and then reviewed over the ones where we failed to get right. Throughout the class, she continued to teach us more common vocabulary errors through videos she found online and from her own experience of being in Korea.

The main two topics I would like to explore is the history of Korea and spelling. In my previous SDLC classes, we usually briefly touched on a small portion of Korea's history and I always found it very compelling because all the events contributed to forming the culture that is Korea today. I hope to explore this topic through my SDLC learning partner's method of teaching. In previous classes, we had used YouTube as a great resource for learning the history of Korea. There are channels dedicated to teaching major events that happened in Korea, so I think that will be a great place to start. Korea is my motherland and I don't want to be ignorant of major events that happened there.

I also want to get more exposure to more vocabulary and spelling. There are some Korean words that get tricky with the spelling because the words use vowels and consonants that sound very similar to each other. I hope to be able to get a better grasp of why words are spelled a certain way through my learning partner. I would like to get exposed to common spelling errors that tend to happen with specific Korean words. Through the exploration of spelling and other vocabulary words, I hope to grow more confident in my spelling and be able to write at a higher level of Korean.

One of the cutest celebrations in Korea is Doljanchi or a baby's first birthday!  They are dressed in hanbok and a traditional Korean hat as they are presented with food and gifts.  This celebration is very important because it determines the future and prosperity of the baby's life.  The most significant tradition is Doljabi where the baby is sat in front of several items such as a rope, money, food, a brush etc.  Whichever item the baby picks up first determines their future.  For example, the money represents wealth, the food promises no hunger, the brush predicts a scholar, the rope represents a long life and so on.  Nowadays, some parents choose items to predict what occupation they will hold later on in life such as a stethoscope for a doctor, a gavel for a judge, microphone for a singer etc.  It was interesting talking about this in our session because one of my classmates, Sharon, who grew up in a Korean family had Doljanchi to celebrate her turning 1!  She told us that she chose the money, so we joked about her predicted financial success.  

The family prepares the 'Dol' table piled high with rainbow colored rice cakes and seaweed soup to represent the prosperous life ahead of the child.  Seaweed soup is very significant as it is believed helpful to pregnant women.  Every birthday after the 1st, the child will eat it to honor the mother and thank her for giving birth to them.  

For this cultural post, I want to explore the culture of strict formality, for anyone that is above your age. My language partner have told me that it is almost an entire language on its own, because it attaches many prefix, suffixes, new words, etc. On its own, I think being formal is a good thing, because it promotes a respectful, modest atmosphere, however, being so strict as it is in Korea, formality becomes a pressure. In the various Korean dramas I've watched, the younger person does all kinds of things for the elder, such as getting coffee, running errands, and if you don't bow 90 degrees to your elder, you get yelled at. These kinds of responsibilities placed on young people makes formality a burden, which diminishes the level of respect involved in formality.

I have recently discovered that South Korea celebrates all kinds of weird, arbitrary holidays. 

I like to watch Korean movies very much. Recently, I watched a 2012 action thriller film directed by Jung Byung-gil, called Confession of Murder, starring Jung Jae-young and Park Si-hoo. The film talked about a police officer who is haunted for failing to capture a serial killer 15 years back. He returned to the case after a novelist publishes the book I am the Murderer, claiming responsibility for the crime. The novelist cannot be sued because the statute of limitation on murder has already passed. This film is based on a real story, and because of it, South Korea decided to extend the statute of limitation on murder from 15 years to 25 years. It is really interesting to see that a country's policy is receptive to movies and changes their policy accordingly. 

I had a quick conversation in Korean with my Korean language learning classmate, Ruofan. I started off by saying hi and introducing my name. She asked me how my day went, and I answered that everything is going well. Typing in Korean is significantly harder than we expected because we are not accustomed to the Korean keyboard, it is not ordered phonetically and therefore every character is hard to find at first.