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Since the first day of learning Korean, we’ve been learning to speak, write, and read Korean with Professor Sumi Kim. This has been extremely useful because after we properly understood and perfected the basic sounds in Korean, every time we learn a new word, seeing how it is written and writing it on my own makes pronouncing it correctly and remembering it much easier.

We’ve only recently started looking into Korean grammar in class so I don’t have a lot of knowledge about it. However, it only affects my ability to communicate properly in some contexts. If we’re looking at me texting my friends, broken Korean still does the work of me communicating my point and them understanding it. But if we’re talking about doing writing exercises in Korean like writing a letter to yourself or writing a short paragraph about something you like to eat, my lack of knowledge about Korean grammar definitely constrains me from being able to properly express myself. Due to the fact that we haven’t delved deeper into Korean grammar, the writing exercises that I’ve done so far are extremely basic and limited to alphabets, random words, and very few sentences. Here are some pictures of the things I’ve written so far:

In general, I prefer writing over typing because I find it more engaging and it helps me better retain the things that I learn. However, I’ve recently noticed something extremely amusing. When I’m typing out a word, I think of what letters and sounds are in it and I type them out correctly. However, sometimes when I writing a word, I know what letters and sounds are used in my head but the letters that I write down are sometimes completely off. For example, just the other day I was doing another sudoku puzzle in Korean, and when I was checking the answers, I realised that at some point when I was solving the puzzle wheneverI thought ‘팔’ (pal i.e. eight), I started writing ‘발’ (bal). So, my sudoku had a mix of 팔 and 발 being used for 8. This has happened multiple times when I write a word and then I realise that I used the wrong symbol somewhere. So, even though I like writing more, I’m definitely better at typing Korean than writing it.

So far the only writing I have done is typing on my phone in texts to my language partner. It isn't easy to adjust to Hebrew script as a writing system mainly because vowels aren't written and there are some letters that are basically the same as other ones, just written differently. Luckily, because of the lack of vowels, even words spelled wrong are usually intelligible, since the brain auto corrects the word to what it thinks it should be. This isn't really as possible in languages like Chinese where if you write the word wrong the whole meaning can go out the window. 

One of the tougher things is getting used to different key positions for foreign keyboards. Chinese doesn't have this problem at all, since you essentially type using a qwerty keyboard that gets switched to Chinese once the word is finished, but for languages like Russian, Arabic, and of course Hebrew, it can take forever to find the letter that you need since we have so much muscle memory pushing us to one corner of the screen. Of course, this is even worse on a laptop, since you can't see which key you are hitting as you hit - this makes phones much better tools for learning the keyboard. So one exercise I do is just to grab a nonsense string of letters and try and type it out as fast as I can. This really helps in speeding up typing, which I think is far more important in this day and age than handwriting. 

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Although I have not started using Turkish to write long paragraphs to express my opinions or make statements about some controversial phenomena as I write in English, I did write some short sentences to introduce myself in Turkish. I introduced my name, my phone numbers, my family members and my school. When I write in Turkish, I prefer to type because I think it is really difficult for me to correctly spell the words. When I use words to type, I feel more confident about the spells and, thus, could pay more attention to the writing itself. However, I do think that writing freehand is really helpful for beginners to practice basic grammars, especially for beginners learning Turkish. Turkish is like Japanese. They use suffix attached to words to show different tenses and personal pronouns. Therefore, it is crucial to spell words correctly to express meanings.

In terms of the relationship between complex and simple sentences, I think that simple sentences are the foundation of complex sentences. Based on my experience of learning English, I think that the only way to master complex sentences is to fully understand the structure of the simple sentences. For example, the sentence “I really admire heroes who sacrifice themselves to save others” is composed of two simple sentences “I really admire heroes.” and “Heroes sacrifice themselves to save others”. Therefore, as long as language learners know how to write simple sentences, they could learn how to write complex sentences as time goes by.

While it is true that I would like to focus more on speaking than writing, the latter is nonetheless an important metric of my progress and understanding of the language and one that I have not ignored. The process of writing itself in Malay is fairly straightforward, given the romanization of Malay orthography and the relatively few outliers in spelling ('c' pronounced as 'ch', e.g.). One consistent writing piece has come in the form of my assignments from Melisa, typically in the form of a 5-7 sentence paragraph detailing a certain topic or set of topics. This has been a great way not only for me to grasp my understanding of the concepts, vocabulary, and structures that I am learning, but also to connect older grammar points or vocabulary and be adventurous in trying to link everything together. Malay is a language that does not have a lot of diphthongs or the like, so writing actually helps me gain a better understanding of if I am pronouncing it correctly in spoken form (funnily enough). Writing by hand has been very effective and I have heard that it allows for a better grasp of material compared with typing, so I will keep this up. 

In terms of creating both simple and complex sentences, one word has been particularly useful: yang. This words means "which/who/that is" and can easily be included in sentences to add detail and complexity (e.g. "under the tree is a bird that is red"). I have also been learning conjunctions and words to more fluidly link two sentences or clauses together so I am not writing in short and blunt sentences, making my handle of the language stronger as well. My Malay textbook is essentially a workbook, so I write all over it and can often learn new words, patterns, or usages from simply reading the instructions preceding the exercises. In addition, Melisa and I often try to make use of typing Malay during our meetings so I can practice my listening skills and see this translates in the act of typing. Much of this use of the computer includes searching for certain words, concepts, or ideas, typically in image or video form, to further my understanding of the language.

Handwriting was a very important aspect of learning Chinese, which included a lot of memorizing and learning radicals and stroke order, but handwriting in Malay has a different function because its orthography is romanized. I will continue to use it as an effective counterbalance to my spoken language skills and as a way of gauging my grasp and understanding of key terms and concepts. 

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I think writing practice is necessary from the very beginning of learning a language. Listening, speaking, reading and writing are necessary for language learning. If you just look with your eyes, you might be able to recall it in a short time, but the letters or words in the target language won't stick in your memory.Chinese typing is input pinyin and computer will show the corresponding Chinese, sometimes even think out your next possible input words. Therefore, for the young people of my generation, they often chat with mobile phone software and do homework on the computer. When they occasionally need handwritten words, they often forget how to write the words they want to write. Similarly, in English, my mobile phone and computer often associate the corresponding words after I input a few letters, so I sometimes can't remember how to spell or even spell the wrong words when I write my homework by hand. Another reason is that there is an old Chinese saying that "the character is like the person", which means that a person's character can be known by his or her words. The words written by a person with good temperament will also looks beautiful, which was a feast for the eyes. Many calligraphers can infer the characteristics of the person who wrote the character and the mood of creation from a single character. Therefore, when learning Korean in the future, I will choose write Korean.

Unlike Chinese and English, Korean sentences have parts in the order of subject, object, and verb. Attachment are extremely important in Korean, the attachments include the particles attached right after subjects and objects, and the suffixes for a whole sentence which are added at the end of one sentence to make a sentence sound pretty, into a question, in different tenses, or something else. Talking to elders or juniors have different suffixes, as do questions and exclamations. Although it is difficult to remember so many things at the beginning of learning, it will become very easy after you become proficient. Korean input is relatively simple, because Korean is a written sound, just remember the syllables on the keyboard, you can type in Korean.

I think the idea that cultural groups can be complicit in the extinction of languages is interesting. Yiddish isn't quite dead yet, but it is certainly heading that way, which is a shame especially since it influenced English so heavily. I didn't realize growing up how many words I used and heard in normal English were just yiddish words. I was especially surprised when at home and hearing my dad (from Brooklyn) talk to me I realized that a ton of the words were not English, but I understood them by virtue of growing up with them. I had always thought of it as normal english, but then when I asked my friends if they could understand, none of them could. 

One thing that makes me hopeful about the future of language preservation is current technology. With how powerful computers and the internet are at the moment, I find it hard to believe that a current language could be completely lost short of a global catastrophe. We live in a really fortunate time, with the breadth of human knowledge available at no cost to us. Thinking about ancient civilizations that have been totally forgotten makes me very grateful to have been born in this millennium.

This week was mostly about new vocab and learning how letters function. Hebrew can be tough since Semitic alphabets work quite differently than roman ones. One of the big differences that I have noticed in both arabic and hebrew is that letters can be written differently depending on where they are in the word. In arabic, most letters have 4 different ways of writing them, since all letters conjoin in some way to letters around them. It makes writing in Arabic like writing very complicated cursive. Hebrew is much simpler, but has still has a couple letters like this, such as the letter nun (n). There is a variant of the letter called nun sofit, or final nun, which is only used when a word is ended with a nun. I am curious why this holdover from ancient semitic languages was kept in modern hebrew - it doesn't have any real use that I or Israelis can figure out since Hebrew is never conjoined.

Another interesting similarity is the letter ayin. In arabic this is a very common consonant and learning to pronounce it correctly is very important in terms of fluency. In hebrew this letter still exists, but it is always silent, with no exceptions that my language partner could think of. Again, why keep it? I think part of the reason is that when Hebrew was revived, there was a huge lack of vocabulary since the language had been stagnant for so long, so the government resorted to using ancient words to describe new concepts. But these words could only be written with ayin, so they decided it was easier to keep the letter rather than change the vocabulary. I am not certain about this though, so I think I will do more research/ ask someone who knows more about ancient hebrew. 

I think the farming the article does of languages that win the linguistic sweepstakes” makes the  fact that a language can disappear more understandable but sad reality. In the case of Siletz Dee-ni I found the story of how it survived to be fascinating, but also very sad. The fact that only five people speak a tribal language when more than five people belong to the tribe to me speaks to the realities of assimilation. Even in my own experiences with language I don’t speak the community language that my father does. I think this is in part because it makes it easier for adults to speak freely but also my father may not have seen a point in teaching my brother and I. We were born in America, went to catholic schools and outside of our family patois would not have been spoken. It was part of my Dad’s culture but in us not being immersed did not become the part that he brought with him to give to us when he moved. I see the same thing to some degree in the story of Siletz Dee-ni. Many people do not grow up with it being their first language and with the rise of the digital age it seemed to fade into the past which is quite sad when you consider the fact that it was once one of the most widely spoken native languages and that it was even adopted but other tribes as their own cultures began to fade. The article also made me think about the role that other countries, entities have in language production.  The reason that Siletz Dee-ni became integrated into other native dances is because the U.S government forced a collection of different tribal communities to live together when they often shared nothing culturally.  In this there is a forced reckoning the U.S. government grouped them all together so they then began to bleed into each other. They had a role in its erasure and I wish they would take a more active role in its preservation.

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Language is not only a tool of communication but also a unique expression of different cultures, natural environments, histories, human nature, and heritages. In order to protect human cultural heritage, one of the necessary works to do is to protect endangered languages. Language maintains the vitality of tradition, motivates us to understand and respect history and the world we live in, and connects different societies beyond national boundaries and time.

In today's society, some languages are becoming extinct in a very fast way. No matter for political, geographical and cultural reasons, the fragile environment plays a critical role in the death of language. The rise of a language is not only the language symbol itself but also covers all kinds of phenomena behind the language - economy, geography, politics, etc. A language can also be seen as the crystallization of highly concentrated human thoughts and one of the important cultural symbols. When a language becomes endangered, more things supported by the language are also facing the risk of collapse.          

The extinction of language can be either voluntary or involuntary: the voluntary extinction may be influenced by the environment of language, and the language will be reformed and changed from the inside of the language group, and involuntary extinction can be explained by the external political oppression.

Many linguists worked so hard in order to protect endangered languages around the world. These linguists deeply studied these endangered languages, go to the place where native speakers speak to record videos and sound materials and organize it into a large database for many language scholars to use.

There are many reasons that could cause a language to become endangered. Globalization is one crucial reason. Many languages are falling out of use and being replaced by others that are more widely used in the region or nation, such as English in the U.S. or Spanish in Mexico. Unless current trends are reversed, these endangered languages will become extinct within the next century. Many other languages are no longer being learned by new generations of children or by new adult speakers; these languages will become extinct when their last speaker dies. In fact, dozens of languages today have only one native speaker still living, and that person's death will mean the extinction of the language: It will no longer be spoken, or known, by anyone.
When a community loses its language, it often loses a great deal of its cultural identity at the same time. Although language loss may be voluntary or involuntary, it always involves the pressure of some kind, and it is often felt as a loss of social identity or as a symbol of defeat. That doesn't mean that a group's social identity is always lost when its language is lost. But language is a powerful symbol of a group's identity. Much of the cultural, spiritual, and intellectual life of a person is experienced through language. This ranges from prayers, myths, ceremonies, poetry, oratory, and technical vocabulary to everyday greetings, leave-takings, conversational styles, humor, ways of speaking to children, and terms for habits, behaviors, and emotions. When a language is lost, all of this must be refashioned in the new language-with different words, sounds, and grammar- if it is to be kept at all. Frequently traditions are abruptly lost in the process and replaced by the cultural habits of the more powerful group.

Last week, we were still learning the expressions of numbers and we began to practice listening. Hazal asked her friends to record their greetings and self-introduction and she played these recordings to me. It was really fun! But at the beginning, I could not understand a thing at all, because I never practiced Turkish listening before. After practicing for a while, it began to become better! Also, we used a Turkish learning tool during the class, and I found my studying result is not bad! I can get a 95 on average for some spelling and listening tests. However, I kept forgetting there are no letter q, w, or x in Turkish and I asked my friend who learned Turkish for a long time. Here are some reasons he told me.

He said this question is the same as why we no longer use traditional Chinese characters in Chinese now. In fact, most Turkish don't know much about this problem (as we do not know too much about traditional Chinese characters as well) and don't care a lot, because these 29 letters are enough, and they don't need extra Q, W, X to compose words (simplified characters are more convenient to use).

First of all, Turkish belongs to Turkic language family, and Turkic language family focuses a lot on spoken language, so how to read is more important than how to write in the Turkish language. As for letters, it's enough as long as people can read and understand. So the requirement of letters is not that high. Of course, the later Ottoman Turkic culture reached its peak, and the writing became more and more advanced.

Another reason is that the primary reason for the change from Osman to Latin in the period of character reformation was to reduce the pressure on people to read. At that time, the purpose was to be as simple and easy to read as possible, so unnecessary letters were left out, including Q, W, X.
In fact, the corresponding letters of Q, W, X are K, V, H. in Turkish, Q, W, X and K, V, H are basically homophones, for example, tavuk and tawuk (chicken) have the same pronunciation, so in Turkish view, W and V are basically the same. So why bother to have three more redundant letters.

In the past two weeks, we learned about the history of Korea. A language class is not only about how to speak, listen, write and read. It is also really important for us to learn the history background of this country.

The Japanese occupation of Korea began in 1910 and ended at the end of World War II in 1945. The empire of Korea was stripped of its diplomatic sovereignty and declared a protectorate of Japan with the signing of the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1905. This came after the Russo-Japanese War in which Russia was forced to concede that Japan had “paramount political, military, and economic interest” in Korea. On August 22, 1910, Japan officially annexed Korea. Through this time, Japanese settlers had been migrating to Korea to combat overcrowding in Japan. By 1910 there were over 170,000 Japanese people living in Korea. In Korea, the landowners were mostly Japanese, while the tenants were all Koreans.  The Japanese created a feudal state where they owned the land and the Koreans worked the fields. The Korean tenants were forced to pay over half their crop as rent which caused many farmers to send their wives and daughters to work in factories or to become prostitutes（위안부.）By 1910 an estimated 7 to 8% of all arable land in Korea had come under Japanese control.This ratio increased steadily; as of the years 1916, 1920, and 1932, the ratio of Japanese land ownership increased from 36.8 to 39.8 yo 52.7%.

The March 1 Movement was a large anti-Japanese rally in 1919. A declaration of independence was read in Seoul. Over 2 million people attended these rallies which were violently suppressed by the Japanese. The protests continued for about a year. It is estimated that 50,000 Koreans were arrested 7500 were killed. In 1939 Japan was plagues with labor shortages as a result of conscription for WWII military efforts. Koreans were recruited, first voluntarily and later by force, to move to Japan and work in the factories. In 1942, the National Mobilization Law extended to the conscription of Korean workers for factories and mines in Korea. Out of the 670,000 Koreans who went to work in Japan, 60,000 died from the horrendous work conditions. The total death toll from forced labor in Korea is estimated between 270,000 and 810,000 people. On 10 December 1941, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, under the presidency of Kim Gu, declared war on Japan and Germany. Kim Gu organized many of the exiled Korean resistance groups, forming the “Korean Liberation Army”. On the other hand, Kim II-sung led tens of thousands of Koreans who volunteered for the National Revolutionary Army and the People’s Liberation Army. The communist-backed Korean Volunteer Army was established in China, outside of the Provisional Government’s control, from a core of 1000 deserters from the Imperial Japanese Army. After the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, the KVA entered Manchuria where it recruited from the ethnic Korean population and eventually became the Korean People’s Army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

During last week's lesson, we focused on learning about words related to clothing. There were a few new words I came across. They were 상의, which means upper half or tops, and the opposite, 하의, which means bottom half, or bottoms. Many of the clothing words are easy for anyone to remember because a number of them are just borrowed words from English. For example, these include the following: 셔츠, 스웨터, 자켓, 코트. In order, they are shirt, sweater, jacket, and coat. I find it interesting that the word for shirt can actually refer to both a regular t-shirt but also to a formal button down shirt. I think in English shirt is usually used just for casual t-shirts. Another interesting one is the word for dress, 원피스, which literally means one piece. Other vocabulary words we went over were 운동화 (sneakers), 구두 (high heels/male dress shoes), 부츠 (boots), 슬리퍼 (slippers), 긔걸이 (earrings), 목걸이 (necklace), 팔찌 (bracelet), 손목시계 (wristwatch), 핸드백 (literally handbag/purse), 안경 (glasses), 선글라스 (sunglasses). We then learned some verbs that are used with the clothing/fashion related items. In English, there isn't much of a variety for the verbs associated with clothing. You can wear clothes or wear a shirt or put on a shirt. You can wear sneakers or wear long pants, or wear a hat or put on earrings. Essentially you can use wear or put on for almost any clothing item, accessory, and shoes. However in Korean, there are separate verbs for wearing clothes, wearing shoes and accessories. I remember when I was younger I would accidentally switch these up. Here are some of them. 입다 is for wearing clothes. 신다 is for wearing shoes. 쓰다 is for wearing things like hats and glasses, 끼다 is used for things you put on your hands like gloves or rings. At the end of the lesson, we watched fashion YouTube videos which used most of these words. I recommend watching similar videos for those who become confused with the several different to wear verbs.

This week, we learned about spacing rules in Korean. This was something I really needed to brush up on. Whenever I text a message in Korean, I always just guess and put a space if it looks I need or not. I was never very sure. I learned in class that there should be a space between an adjective and a noun, an adverb and a verb, a noun (with/without particle) and a verb, a noun and another noun. On the other hand, there should not be a space between a noun/pronoun and its following particle and also between longer words such as some title or organization name. However, there are a few exceptions. Words that form fixed expressions can be written together without a space like 남자친구. Also for the form noun + 하다 does not need a space. For example, the word for to study, 공부하다, does not have a space. Now, I feel more confident when putting a space or not.

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In the past, the main cause of language death was an increase in mortality. This may be the result of violence such as war or genocide, or it may be the result of large-scale epidemics or natural disasters. Now, the main reason for the extinction of languages is I think urbanization. In Kenya, two people from different places meet in the capital Nairobi. They don't speak their mother tongue. They speak Kenya's common language, English or Swahili. The children they give birth to may learn a little of their respective languages from their parents, but by the third generation these remnants will soon have disappeared. For most of history, including in many parts of the world today, it was normal for residents to speak a language with fewer than 500 speakers. Cities that can be settled for long periods of time contain more and more people, which keeps the same language stable and reduces the number of languages.

For linguists, protecting endangered languages is a big task. Not only are many languages on the verge of extinction, but there is a lot of work to be done to keep a language intact. Individual power is limited, but social power is enormous. Linguists can do this by joining forces with language conservation groups. Every language is unique and beautiful in its own way. Therefore, through propaganda of the cultural history behind the language, the public can first be exposed to the language, and slowly understand the culture behind the language.

The carrier of a language is a person, so if you want to revive an extinct language you need someone to start using it. The best candidates are the people to whom the language belongs.In my opinion, the biggest problem with the extinction of these extinct languages is that the community wants to give up its indigenous language and culture to integrate into the world. So, the main thing is to make them aware of the uniqueness and beauty of their language, to encourage them to learn and pass it on.

Last week, we had a class talking about fashion in Korea. On the handout, Jenna printed out clothing vocabs in Korean, including tops, bottoms, accessories, and coats. We met many words derived from English here too. Also, similar to Chinese, Korean uses different verbs to describe “wear” for clothing in different categories. After reading out the words and taking notes on their meanings, we watched two YouTube clips from a Korean famous fashion stylist (“코디” in Korean), where she showed her fashion taste while describing the items she saw in a store. It was really interesting to see how her style differs from others and how she introduces the clothes. We learned more vocabs such as “silk” and “scarf” when watching the video. For homework, we wrote out two sentences using the phrases and nouns we learned in the lesson.

This week’s lesson was a little bit different from the ones we had. I was watching a Korean TV show where the hosts’ spacing was checked to decide if they could go home right away. It turned out that spacing in writing in Korean could be confusing sometimes. As a result, we learned about the rule for spacing this week. While major rules are not hard to understand, there are some exceptions that we need to pay attention to, so we will do more practice on that. After that, we learned about vocabs and phrases for traveling. After going over the handout, we watched a travel vlog from a Korean. We learned that Koreans focus a lot on finding good restaurants when they are traveling, and we learned more vocabs for food as well when watching the video.