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During my first session with my language partner, we planned out the semester and decided what days and times to meet, what we will cover, and what format to use to exchange learning materials. We decided to alternate among learning through music, TV shows, and news articles. Each week, I will answer questions (in Hebrew) written and asked in Hebrew by my language partner over the phone, and respond to a discussion post in Hebrew before the phone call on our shared Google Drive document. 

This week, I listened to "Zahav" by Static and Ben El Tavori and responded to the discussion post my sister posted on our google document. The week after, I watched my first episode of Srugim, an Israeli TV show, often referred to as the "Jewish Friends." It was a bit difficult to watch the episode and follow along while the actors were talking so quickly, but it helped me to pause and play the episode often to give myself time to look up words with which I was not familiar. This also allowed me to expand my vocabulary and even learn more casual, slang terms. 

If I were to receive a grant for linguistics research, I would start by analysing the similarity and differences between Korean culture and Chinese culture in aspects of etiquette. Li, a concept often rendered as “ritual,” “proper conduct,” or “propriety.” Originally Li denoted court rites performed to sustain social and cosmic order. Confucians, however, reinterpreted it to mean formal social roles and institutions that, in their view, the ancients had abstracted from cosmic models to order communal life. From customary patterns, Li came to mean conventional norms, yielding a new concept of an internalized code of civility that defined proper human conduct. In South Korea, etiquette or the code of social behavior that governs human interactions is largely derived from Korean Confucianism and focuses on the core values of this religion. In addition to general behaviour, etiquette in South Korea also determines how to behave with respect to social status. Since both etiquette culture embraces Confucian, they share a lot of similarities in different social aspects. I would love to do more research and conduct surveys to see how it influences people's lives.

This week, I learned the Korean numbers and learned how to ask birthday and answer what day is my birthday. I also learned how to describe today's date.

• 생일이 언제입니까?  What day is your birthday?
• 오늘이 몇월 며칠입니까? What day is today?

MONTH:
일월 January

이월 February

삼월 March

사월 April

오월 May

유월 June

칠월 July

팔월 August

구월 September

시월 October

십일월 November

십이월 December

DATE:

일일1 이일2 삼일3 사일4
오일5 육일6 칠일7 팔일8
구일9 십일10 십일일11 십이일12
십삼일13 십사일14 십오일15 십육일16
십칠일17 십팔일18 십구일19 이십일20
이십일일21 이십이일22 이십삼일23 이십사일24
이십오일25日 이십육일26日 이십칠일27 이십팔일28日
이십구일29 삼십일30日 삼십일일31

For this cultural post, I would like to share a little about traditional Indian music.

There are two main schools of Indian classical music: Hindustani (from the north) and Carnatic (from the south). They are both built upon two elements: raga (melody) and taal (rhythm). Often a piece will start very slowly/gently as if the musicians are warming up, and gradually increase in complexity, energy, and dexterity until the end. The musicians can include a singer, who sings the ragas with very intricate, free-flowing trills and vocal ornaments, and/or a main instrument such as a sitar, a complex plucked string instrument. (Sitar also makes that overtone-filled droning sound that is so familiar to India music.) Also common is a percussion instrument called tabla, which is struck with the fingers as a drum. Unlike some other drums, however, it is played with incredible dexterity of the fingers, with each finger striking the drum separately to form complex rhythms.

Indian classical music, and especially singing, is often seen as a way to connect with the divine, rather than simply an art form. It is believed that Indian classical music will aid the listener in meditating or experiencing a divine presence.

Here are two of my favorite Indian classical music videos: the first one is a morning meditation raga, and the second one is a beautiful example of south Indian Carnatic singing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG9HcnkXIB0&t=535s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfBvz2rG-NI

This week I have so busy with other classes that I Hindi went on a back burner. I did make a tentative plan for next semester. I plan to continue learning during winter break (and probably even more than during the semester), since I am studying Hindi for a practical reason and not just as an academic subject.

Atul and I had a "practice" skype call, to see if it will work for next semester while he is studying abroad. I decided I want to keep meeting with him on skype rather than finding a new language partner.

This coming week Atul and I are going to make plans for a final assessment, and so after we decide the material for that, I will study for it. I would like to be able to do a simple presentation in Hindi for Atul, as a demonstration of my speaking ability.

This week, I learned some nouns about things in a classroom, and also learn to ask basic questions.

This week I learned some common verbs and learned how to use them in basic sentences.

I practiced speaking, writing and I also used flashcards to help me memorize.

쓰다 write

글을 써요.
I’m writing.

말하다 speak

한국어로 말해요.
I’m speaking Korean.

보다 watch

영화를 봐요.
I’m watching a movie.

타다 take

버스를 타요.
I’m taking the bus.

사다 buy
책을 사요.

I’m buying a book.

가다 to go

This week we learned consonants. I practiced pronunciation and writing and created flashcards to help memorize.

Consonant

vocabulary

• 왜 = Why
• 여기 = Here
• 오빠 = Girl’s Older Brother / Boyfriend
• 년 = year
• 오늘 = today
• 어제 = yesterday
•  주 = week

This week I learned some basic vowels and practice both the pronunciation and the writing. I also learned some basic vocabulary composed by these vowels.

vocabulary：

• 우유 = Milk
• 아기 = Baby
• 어디 = Where
• 여기 = Here

For my cultural presentation I decided to research on the infamous demonstrations that took place in 1987 in South Korea. During my research I learned about the Gwangju Uprising, also known as the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement. This movement occurred in Gwangju, South Korea, from May 18th to the 27th, 1980. An estimation of 606 people died during these protests. During this period, the citizens of Gwangju rebelled against the government by robbing local armories and police stations in response to the government troops' brutality towards a demonstration led by local Chonnam University students. These young students were shot at, killed, raped and beaten by government troops.

The students had gathered together and were demonstrating against the successful coup d'etat of the South Korean government by Chun Doo Hwan, who would soon become president. He forcefully overtook the government and took control of Korea like a dictator. Although Chun Doo Hwan was not officially the president during the time of the demonstration, he had become the de factor leader of South Korea since coming into power on December 12, 1979.

I was getting angered and frustrated when I was reading about Korea's political history. I think I would have joined the demonstrations myself if I was under a corrupt political leader who forcefully made himself the president and prevented the citizens of having a real democracy. My dad told me he was in college during Chun's reign as president and actually participated in the multitude of demonstrations that would soon occur in 1987. I now understand why my parents do not trust the Korean government. The political system is always found to be corrupt and no matter the change, something always goes wrong. Hopefully, the new president in this term will be different.

The first week I learned basic greeting phrases in Korean and we watched "Korean Unnie" Youtube channel together to explore how to study Korean in spare time.

The phrases learned:

1. Hello/Goodbye – 안녕하세요 – An-nyeong-ha-se-yo
   1. Bonus variation: For situations requiring a high degree of respect, such as meeting your boss, speak more clearly: an-nyeong-ha-shyeo-sum-ni-ka?
2. Nice to meet you – 반갑습니다 – Ban-gap-sum-ni-da
3. Thank you – 감사합니다 – Kam-sa-ham-ni-da

Korean Drama

According to the Korea Creative Content Agency, are estimated to be fans of Korean TV. More than 35%, the largest slice of the pie, were young women between the ages of 16 and 25—and likely the same group that is propelling the rise of (K-pop) and elaborate in the United States.

What kinds of stories? Love stories.

“K-dramas focus primarily on the relationship of the leads,” said Liu. “There’s a very interesting world that can be built around this storyline: it can be fantasy, it can be history. But what makes us stand out from a content point of view is we focus on the development of the lead characters’ romance. That, coupled with interesting world-building, offers a reason for fans to get really interested in and ‘ship’ the characters. That, in a nutshell, is the secret sauce of our content.”

2018 Popular Series

Something in the Rain

When a single career woman reunites with her best friend's younger brother after he returns from three years of working abroad, their efforts to reconnect grow into romance.

My ID is Gangnam Beauty

Kang Mi-Rae had a timid personality due to her ugly appearance. She was teased by people and even bullied when she attended school. Now, Kang Mi-Rae is beautiful after undergoing plastic surgery, but she still has her timid personality. Kang Mi-Rae starts her first year at a university. People are still mean to her and call her "Gangnam Beauty" in a derogatory manner. Meanwhile, Do Kyung-Seok attends the same university. He does not judge people by their appearance. He cares about what's on the inside rather than outside. Do Kyung-Seok begins to like Kang Mi-Rae.

What's Wrong with Secretary Kim

Revolves around the narcissistic Vice President of a major corporation, Lee Young-joon, and his highly capable secretary, Kim Mi-so. Misunderstandings arise when she announces that she will resign from her position, after working for Lee Young-Joon for nine years.

All of them are love stories.

Korean Food

Facts:

• South Korean labels were the big winners in FT Confidential Research's latest survey of China's most popular cosmetics brands, as they catch up on the dominant US and European companies.
• Their popularity is strongest among young consumers, supported by the fashion for Korean pop music and television. We expect global market leaders to continue to tap into this trend with more acquisitions in the Korean cosmetics industry.
• Online cosmetics sales look set to continue to grow faster than the overall market and established brands will increasingly focus on this sales channel to drive revenues.

Beauty is now one of the country’s largest industries, rivaling technology, and is a major export area. In the past five years alone, exports have grown from $1 billion in 2012 to $2.64 billion in 2017, a record high, according to the Korea Customs Service.

South Korea’s leading brand Amore Pacific has joined the top ten biggest beauty companies at number seven and, despite its demographic decline, the country is now ranked among the top ten global beauty markets, with a market size of $13 billion, according to Mintel.

We have the South Korean people to thank for creating conditions for a market where competition is ferocious. The country’s deep-rooted belief in personal cultivation is twinned with a skin-first, fast-fashion approach to beauty.

“There is a fundamental belief, anchored in a philosophy of well-being, pervasive in all of Asia, that you should take care of yourself spiritually and physically as a show of respect to yourself and others, and to your family,” Ms. Wang explains.

This cultural milieu, magnified through the social media panopticon of the most highly-connected society in the world where internet speeds are faster than any other, provides perfect tinder-like conditions for new trends to spread like wildfire.

In recent years, US's top cosmetics store, Sephora, has brought in a new K-beauty section. An increasing number of beauty brands were introduced, and soon attracted popularity in North American buyers.

The rise of KPOP Culture

The South Korean music industry is a 5-billion-dollar industry because the music culture is taken incredibly seriously. Before idols are put into groups and debut, they must make it through training camp that could last 1-10 years depend on their performance. Aspiring artists audition at the major entertainment agencies such as YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment or SM Entertainment, and if one has a successful audition, one becomes a trainee at the respective agency. Being a trainee does not guarantee becoming an idol, trainees must work hard on their vocals, choreography, acting, language skills and appearance in order to debut in a group. Since the competition is extremely fierce, trainees are expected to work until perfection, which stems from a generally principled and result-driven society.

The result of these intense training camps is world-class vocals, style, visuals, and choreography. In order to grow globally,  idols record albums in more than one language in order to attract a larger audience. EXO sings in Korean, Mandarin and Japanese, this has allowed them to be one of the biggest K-pop groups in the world. A lot of pop songs includes a lot of English phrases, and raps are sometimes composed completely in English. Although BTS songs do not have the English version, they get so popular that their fans are willing to use subtitles to understand the lyrics.

I attached the BTS performance in the Billboards Music Awards 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LnEhbdAMcI

We have not covered this topic in the class, but as far as writing versus typing in a foreign language goes, I would presume typing is easier, but writing is more helpful and enjoyable.

When a language dies, a number of things happen as a result. 

First of all, the people the language belonged to lose their mother tongue. This, in turn, leads to the loss of contact with the culture that spoke the language. I am a firm believer that language gives great insight into culture and vice versa, which means that by letting a language die, we close an important window into that culture.

What is even worse, in time, we may even lose memory of the culture. Potentially not all languages and cultures in the world have been documented, which means if one of them were to go extinct right now, with no record of it, the culture would die with it.

This is a dangerous game because, if a language dies and there are not sufficient records of its structure and the culture surrounding it, it is extremely difficult, if possible at all to revive it.

That is why linguists should do what they can to immerse themselves in the cultures, learn and record as much as they can, and help teach the language to others to spread the knowledge.

Greek belongs to the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European language family.

There are a lot of words in Modern Greek that have been borrowed from Turkish during the Ottoman occupation in the late 1900s. These mostly include food names like 'ιμάμ μπαϊλντί', 'γιουβέτσι', 'μπριάμ', 'κεμπάμπ', and others.

Similarly, Greece has borrowed some more modern words from French, like 'κρουασάν', 'ασανσέρ', which mean croissant and elevator respectively. The latter is an interesting case because the Greek language already had a word for elevator which is still in use, but the French version is simpler and prevails in everyday speech.

Of course there are English terms for technology-related objects like 'laptop', or 'playstation'.

This interchange of labguages is very significant historically, in my opinion, as it shows the interactions of the countries throughout time. 300 years from now, perhaps people will be looking into how globalization will have affected languages around the world.

I am interested in the culture around drinking coffee in Greece. In Greece, besides being at the beach (only in the summer), going for coffee is probably the #1 pastime. So much so that, most of the time, when people want to arrange a meeting they don't really say "let's go out". Instead, they say "let's go for a coffee". Coffee is also really big in Greece because of smoking. The majority of the Greek population over 20 years old are smokers, and coffee is directly linked to cigarettes for almost all smokers. 

There are a lot of different types of coffee in Greece, and they are labeled differently than in the US. Initially, this was not in our learning plan, but Dan and I decided to devote a class to learning how to order at a coffee shop. 

There are a few sounds in Greek that do not exist in English, but for the most part, the Greek sounds may consist of combinations of sounds common with English, but which English speakers would not normally combine in speech.

For instance, my name, Smaragda. This is the closest English spelling for it, but it is still not accurate. The 'g' is actually pronounced more like the 'w' in 'wire' but without the 'ou' sound following it. Phonetically, that would be 'ɣ', a fricative, velar consonant.
The 'd' would be pronounced more like the 'th' in 'then'. Phonetically that is the 'ð' dental, fricative consonant.

Even though both of these sounds exist exactly or approximately in the English phonetic inventory, and therefore English speakers are able to make them, they are not found in any words together, which makes it hard for English speakers to make those sounds.