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During our language class, our language partner helped us translate our Chinese name into Korean Name. My name (Jiang Ruofan) is translated to Jang yakbeum. (sounds really weird)...And the image below is from my instagram story. 

I went to new grand mart with my friends. I ordered a combination of Jjampong (짬뽕) and Fried rice. It was so good. 또 올께요! 

I think that it is interesting to see the connection of the language to the culture. 

I also appreciated having a Fulbright scholar as my teacher because she had an insider's perspective at the Korean society and how it differed from American society. 

This semester, I think that I've come to appreciate how South Korean culture aims to be inclusive and respectful. The language used describes relationships that aim to create connection without offense. Everything seems to be made sure to be mindful of others. I learned this through learning about how we address elders in the smallest ways, such as asking them for something, referring to them, or taking directly speaking to them. I also learned that this inclusive nature is also universal to not only their language and relations, but also to their societal system as a whole. For example, Koreans put an emphasis on taking care of their parents as they grow older and feel a responsibility towards their health and well-being. 

I think one thing that I admire about Korean culture is their hardworking nature. Once a third world country, Korea has advanced to become one of the world's richest countries. Maybe that is why South Korea puts an emphasis on education. I also learned that the reason why Koreans work so long at work is because there was an economic recession in the 20th century that shook the country to become afraid and unsettled about their job security. Ever since, there has been an emphasis on working long hours, possibly to show their superiors that in the chance where someone needs to be laid off, it should not be them. This trend is also apparent in education, with students going to school for 16+ hours a day. As an outsider, I was first appalled, and to be honest, I still struggle to understand it. However, through learning about what events cause these trends, I begin to understand why this is. 

I think that it is easy to criticize another culture for being different from your own, especially if it contrasts from your culture. We don't like ideas and beliefs that differ from ours. We think that our way is the superior way, and other cultures ought to follow it. I think that learning about other cultures teaches us to change this perspective and realize that cultural enrichment adds to the diversity of our world. 

If I was granted a research funding to study Korean linguistics, I would go with the culture. The reason why I choose culture is that personally, learning a language is because of the interest of that culture. Just take myself as an example, I am learning Japanese is because I have interest on Japanese food and animations. I am learning Korean is because I like Korean music and dramas. First of all, we gonna start from the history of Korean because history is a part of the culture, too. Also, learning from the origins helps learning a language more structured. After researching on the history and origins, I think we then can go to the interesting part. Students could research on whatever they are interested in, such as food, music, drama, etc. From my perspective, Interest is the best tool to learn a language.

Actually, when we were learning the alphabet, we learnt a little bit of writing under the instructions from our language partner. We also did a little bit of writing recently. For Korean, if I have to choose between typing and writing free hand, I will definitely go with writing free hand because it is hard to use a new keyboard that I have never seen before. Moreover, when writing Korean on paper, you need to arrange the letters (consonants and vowels) into square-shaped clusters (syllables). But on a computer keyboard, you can simply type the letters in a linear sequence. The computer will automatically assemble them into syllabic clusters. It does help typing to be easier but as a language beginner, I would want to practice more on arranging the letters especially I am weak in this part. Well after discussing with my classmates, we agreed that the very subtle nuances that make two completely different words. Thus, it is very hard to listen and write the words. Also, when doing more complex sentences, the grammar needs more attention.

The history of the world's languages is largely a story of loss and decline. it is quite realistic to expect that half of these languages will be gone, their last speakers dead, their words perhaps recorded in a dusty archive somewhere, but more likely undocumented entirely. What causes this? How do languages come to be spoken only by elders and not children? There are a number of bad answers to these questions. One is globalization. Because when globalization starts to appear, people are more likely to choose to learn the international language, for example, English and then abandon their own language for convenience. For instance, nowadays in China, there are a lot of kids, when they were born, their parents sent them to the called “international school”, which actually is a English school. They will be taught by English and they also talk in English, too. This makes these children are unfamiliar to their mother tongue, Chinese. As a Chinese speaker, I think this is really pathetic. We should be proud of our own language, at this base, we should learn other language.

Korean is one of the world's oldest living languages. Originally written using “Hanja” (Chinese characters), Korean is now mainly spelled in “Hangul”, the Korean alphabet. “Hangul” consists of 24 letters – 14 consonants and 10 vowels – that are written in blocks of 2 to 5 characters. Unlike the Chinese writing system (including Japanese “Kanji”), “Hangul” is not an ideographic system. The shapes of the individual “Hangul” letters were designed to model the physical morphology of the tongue, palate and teeth. The Korean language may be written using a mixture of Chinese ideograms (“Hanja”) and a native Korean alphabet known as “Hangul”, or in “Hangul” alone, much as in a more limited way Indo-European languages sometimes write numbers using Arabic symbols and at other times spell numbers out in their own alphabets or in some combination of the two forms. Because of its greater variety of sounds, Korean does not have the problem of the Japanese written language, which some experts have argued needs to retain a sizable inventory of Chinese characters to distinguish a large number of potentially ambiguous sounds.

My Korean studying is going well. We’ve finished learning the alphabet and our language partner gave us a game to review the alphabet at the beginning of every class. And I also memorized by myself after the course. Therefore, I could say it not that hard to read Korean out loud (although I still do not understand the meaning, lol). Moreover, we learned some basic greetings and short conversations. Thinking about the communicative competence, it refers to both the tacit knowledge of a language and the ability to use it effectively. Recent publications emphasise the significance of the intercultural dimension in language teaching because it helps language learners to communicate or interact with people of other languages and to be aware of their own identities and those of their interlocutors. Language learners who become ‘intercultural speakers’ will be successful in communicating information and also in developing human relationships with individuals of other cultures and languages. Therefore, in order to improve my communicative competence, I should get involved more into Korean culture.

These past few weeks, we focused on listening to and comprehending Korean in discussions. We focused on a recording of someone describing their hometown, and we strove to answer questions about the topic. I enjoyed this activity very much because this is an area of learning Korean that I would like to improve in. I would like to be able to better comprehend spoken Korean and respond intelligently in Korean in my responses. 

In addition, we also practiced a grammar topic (고). 고 is a word we use to say "as well as". For example we can say My mom is pretty as well as/ and smart. Using 고 there can cut down on multiple sentence and add to the complexity of the sentence structure. In addition to being used to say "and", it can also be used to indicate sequence in an action. For example, I could say: do the laundry and then walk the dog. In this case, 고 would be "and then". Before you do this, you should do this. 

We learned how to listen to sentences using 고 as well as answer questions with 고. Lastly, we had a review of everything we would be tested on our final. I enjoyed being in an interactive class where we got to practice the concepts we learned with our classmates. I felt that it added to my learning experience.

For my final project, I will be sharing about my experiences as a Korean-American in the USA.

I think that as someone with two cultural identities, it often feels that I don't belong in either one fully. When I am with Koreans who immigrated recently/ identify as Korean fully, I feel out of place because I do not know the language and culture fully. However, when I am with Americans, I also feel out of place at times when we differ in our norms and cultural traditions.

I think that my realization of how difficult it was being Korean-American came from being abroad and having discussions with people from around the world. While I was an American to non-Americans, I was a Korean-American to those who came from the USA. It felt like I was not fully welcome by either group, and I was in the middle trying to find a sense of identity.

It is a sad feeling to feel that I am not allowed to be fully Korean or American by the people of the society who identify fully as one or the other. I think that it makes me feel that I have to prove myself at times to both groups that I am Korean or that I am American.

Therefore, in my project, I will be discussing this in depth. My Korean presentation will have the following elements:

1. moments that made me feel like I was not one or the other

2. some examples of where Korean and American beliefs contrast, and the struggle of picking which one to follow

3. my continuing realization that culture is ever-growing and that it is possible that peace may never be found- however, I will be sharing the strategies I use to try to overcome the struggles of a bicultural identity

4. My appreciation and gratitude for being someone who has had the opportunity to grow up culturally enriched and have the chance to understand culture in an in-depth way

These past two weeks, we learned in class about how to share about our family. We learned how to say the various family titles (mother, grandma, uncle) in Korean, and it was interesting to see that the family titles for the mother's side are different from the titles for the father's side. I was fascinated because this is the opposite case for English. Whether it is your dad's or mom's sister, the family member would still be called aunt. In Korean, the word for grandma and grandpa are the same. However, there were front characters that differentiated the two sides. 

We also learned how to describe the actions they were doing. If they are significantly older and are deserving of more respect, we used the formal verbs to describe their actions. However, in the case of older brothers and sisters, they were given informal verbs. I thought that this was interesting because the idea that elders all get formal language was not universal. As elders are revered in Korean society, they are honored through the changing of the verbs to formal. However, though siblings are older, the level of closeness may possibly be taken into account (closeness in friendship, age), and there is a lack of a hierarchy in this way. 

Lastly, we learned how to say our family members' occupations and where they currently reside. The same concept applied- elders were respected, but if they were closer in relation/ age, they could be referred to in an informal way. I think that this is interesting because I would also assume that this would apply to parents. At home I speak to my parents informally, but I think that it makes sense that when speaking about them with others, they are spoken about formally to add a level of respect. 

To practice, I have changed all of my family members' names on my phone to their Korean title. While it comes naturally for my immediate family, it takes a few seconds for me to make the connection what the terms mean. However, it is a nice challenge. 

This past weekend, I was able to teach a friend how to respond when asked how often they do a following activity.

I asked them the following questions:

1. How often do you brush your teeth?

2. How often do you study at the library?

3. How often do you exercise at the gym?

4. How often do you go to the movies?

5. How often do you skip class?

6. How often do hang out with friends?

Overall, I had two realizations when teaching my friend how to answer these questions. The first was the interesting cycle I noticed when my friend had to change their response from English, think in Korean what the response would be, and say it in Korean. It is a difficult feat- remembering and saying phrases that are not in your language. When we say phrases that aren't in our language, they essentially have no meaning to us. They are just new sounds. It is interesting to see how someone can change those words from being just random sounds to meaningful words that they will be able to recall in the future when asked this question again. 

My second realization was that language is often something that we take for granted. We don't realize that in our respective languages, we produce and make sounds and meanings that may not be universal or applicable to another language. It was interesting to hear my friend try to say some sounds that were not familiar for them. While it is something we may not realize on a daily basis, the concept of languages is interesting and there are often small details that we don't notice about them until we are shown a new perspective.

I can now confidently conjugate all Portuguese verbs in the future tense. The future tense is relatively easy because you can just take the unconjugated form of any verb and put the word will in front of it. For example to say I will go I would say “eu vou ir”, vou being the will. There is also a conjugation for the future tense, but I prefer to use the vou form because in my mind it makes more sense.

I can now use por and para in the correct situations in Portuguese. Both mean through, but para is used more in the context of for something, while por is used to say through something. For example to say I used a pen to write I would use para, but to say I got to school through car I would use por.

I can now confidently conjugate all Portuguese verbs to present tense. Although the situations are different for ar, ir, and er verbs I feel that I can now conjugate all these situations into any present form necessary to describe what I am saying. Although there are many more tenses for me to learn in order for me to speak Portuguese fluently I feel this is a step in the right direction.

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To explore more about Brazil as a country I explore the current government setup of Brazil. Brazil is a federal republic and consists of 26 states. Brazil has a legislative body which is made up of a Federal Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. Like the USA the chamber has representatives for each state depending on the population of the state. The senate is made up of 3 representatives per state. Interestingly from 1964-1985 the government was actually controlled by the military. During these years generals ruled Brazil and suspended multiple constitutional rights of the people. Each president and vice president has a 6 year term in Brazil.

To explore more about the Brazilian culture I did some research about Favelas. Favelas are recognized as unruly shantytowns of Brazil. Interestingly there are very few rules in these Favelas, and because of this there is a lot of crime, but also a lot of creativity. The lack of restrictions has allowed people within the city to be expressive and not worry about any laws or rules. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjHxc_Y9pDfAhXotlkKHXzYBEMQyCkwAHoECAcQBA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dc3BRTlHFpBU&usg=AOvVaw22UoMvxPjXTv3BpvFI607T

While home for thanksgiving I ate a restraint called Café Brazil. I ordered the Feijoada as I was familiar with it from my cook out with the Brazilian students. During the time between when I ordered and my food arrived, I tried to translate the menu. I did so with mediocre success. I found that many of the basic ingredients I had no trouble translating however, the more unique ingredients I had a hard time with.

This week my language partner invited me to a Brazilian cooking event amongst the Brazilian students on campus. We made Pao de Queijo and Feijoada. Pao de Queijo was a kind of chesse bread and Feijoada was a black bean pork stew. I enjoyed seeing the Brazilians converse with each other and how they brought their culture from home to Richmond. I did speak a little bit of Portuguese with the other students; however, I could not keep up with their conversational pace.