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I hoped to learn about conjugation and also about particles. I think I was able to accomplish these learning goals over the past two weeks. We had a week off for Thanksgiving break, so I was only able to meet with Professor Kim once these past two weeks.

One activity that we did was learn about particles. We learned about the topic and subject particles. Professor Kim gave us a couple worksheets that explained the concept to us and also had some examples. I thought that this concept was pretty hard to grasp. The particle you use is very dependent on the situation and context you are in. Learning the rules wasn’t hard, but the hard part was learning when to use it. We asked a lot of questions in order to get a better understanding of when to use the topic particle and when to use the subject particle.

I think my strategies have been effective so far. I think that I have a pretty good understanding of the basic grammar rules. Now we are able to get into some of the harder things about Korean grammar. I definitely still have to continue practicing the basics of Korean, so I will continue using the methods I have been doing. I will continue talking to friends and practicing. I plan to study some more vocabulary over winter break, so hopefully going into next semester, I will have a little head start when it comes to vocabulary, and hopefully it will make the learning process easier.

In terms of my future plans for Korean, I am already registered for SDLC 111. I will continue my studies of Korean next semester with Professor Kim and possibly another language partner. Going forward, I want to expand my vocabulary. As I advance, knowing more vocabulary will be essential if I want to continue learning and learn more of the complex sentences. This is something that I’ve been working on and hopefully will continue to work on. I am also hoping to learn how to express my thoughts and ideas. This semester I learned a lot of basic sentences and phrases. The next step in my learning journey is to learn more complex things, such as how to express my ideas. I am really excited to learn this since I think it will be a huge milestone. From the beginning, I have wanted to learn Korean since so many of my friends are Korean. I’ve always found the language and culture interesting and figured this was a great opportunity to learn it. Learning Korean has made me more knowledgeable about Korean culture. I have a deeper understanding of the culture, and so I am able to understand my Korean friends a little more. Beyond just my friends, I think that Korean can have a possible impact on my career. Although I am very far from getting to this point, I think that if I continue my Korean studies and get to a proficient level, it may open up some doors for me in terms of my career. I am majoring in accounting and have a general interest in business. Korean can be useful for me, possibly allowing me to work with Korean speaking clients, if I choose to have my own accounting firm. Business is a very wide career path and Korean can possibly have a positive impact on it in the future. I look forward to continuing my studies and learning more about Korean and Korean culture.

Gavin%20Foo%20Podcast%20with%20Professor%20Kim.m4a

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A4YWwsAtUGVvGGaVvjd83UWq-kKM-MoB/view?usp=drivesdk

After we learned Korean idiom last two weeks, we came to Korean slang. Similar to idiom, slang is widely used and has become one of the popular trends in Korea. By learning some slang and used it during conversation, we can better understand the Korean culture and sound more native. The following is the nine slang we learned in class.  

얼죽아：얼어죽어도 아이스 아메리카노 

It means that even if die in winter, Ice Americano is indispensable. Brenda told us that Ice Americano is the most popular drink in cafes and it is a fashion if you order that.

I drunk it in Starbucks but Brenda said it is different from Korean style Ice Americano. Koreans take their americano with one shot of espresso and at least 200 mL hot water. A buttload of ice if they want it cold, so they are translucent pale brown. However, the Americanos in the US are almost always served with two shots of espresso and they are an opaque near-black.

꾸안꾸: 꾸민듯 안꾸민듯 

Translation: when you look like you didn’t try but you did. It refers to someone who is naturally fashion whose outfit looks like did not try too hard but really stylish.

졌잘싸: 졌지만 잘 싸웠다

Translation: It’s a good play, but still lost.

~피셜

Translation: According to 

비담: 비주얼담당 

Translation: the person who is the most good looking one in K-pop group and literally translate as the best face of group.

안물안궁：안물어봤고 안궁금해 

Translation: I didn’t ask, so I am not curious and I do not care what you said.

핵인싸- very insider

Translation: It refers to someone can gain many information from “inside” within a group.

워라벨- work-life balance

This is a word borrowed from English and it is pronounced as wolabar which pick the first syllable of work-life balance and combine them to a new word. There are many other combination Korean words which are very interesting such as 불꽃 fireworks = 불 fire + 꽃 flower.

댕댕이- 멍멍이 

This is a bob-tailed dog breed originating in Korea and it is also a slang because it is invented when too many people write it wrong as 멍멍이. This is so interesting!

For the last class, we reviewed a lot of things we learned this semester and I am satisfied with my progress in Korean learning. My goal for this semester is to improve the skills of communication, especially to learn the conversation that I can truly use when I travel to Korean because learning is for using and I did learned the topic about tourism and how to order food in restaurant. I began to looking forward my future language learning already!

As I am reflecting on the past semester, I now realize that the most difficult part about learning a new language is taking the first step. Since I will be around Korean speakers and text for the rest of my life, I will not forget how to read or write in Korean. Knowing the Korean alphabet is the most essential step because it will help me practice my Korean and learn more vocabulary words.

I will continue to study Korean. Next semester at Yonsei University, I plan on enrolling in a Korean course. I also plan on continuing my Korean studies through the SDLAP at UR once I return. In addition to Korean classes/tutoring, I will enhance my Korean language skills by conversing with my grandmother and other family members. In addition, I hope to expand my knowledge of Korean culture through the language. I want to learn more about Korean history and current events. I am also interested in Korean popular culture, and I want to listen to Korean music and watch Korean television shows and movies. There is a lot for me to learn about Korean culture.

It would be amazing if I could incorporate my personal history and cultural interests into my scholarly research. I appreciate how the SDLAP offers opportunities for me to do that through cultural posts and presentations. I enjoy these unrestricted assignments because I can choose to research whatever interests me.

I do not know what I want to do after graduation, but I hope that knowing Korean will be an asset for my professional career. I believe my vision for my future will become more refined after I study abroad next semester. I truly cannot imagine what Korea is like because I have never been to a place like it.

I wish I could tell my younger self that learning Korean is not that intimidating. I am glad that I first learned the language with the help of native speakers, but I believe that someone can learn the language on their own. All it takes is repetition and practice and anyone will eventually become more comfortable. It would have been easy for me to practice and maintain my Korean language abilities because my mother speaks Korean.

Learning a new language is often compared to opening a new door and seeing a world that you have never known before. I have already seen glimpses of this new world, and I already love it. I recently downloaded KakaoTalk, which is the most popular messaging app in Korea. My grandmother messages me on KakaoTalk and so far, I have been able to understand everything she has sent me. She sends very simple, easy to understand messages, and I recognize them because I grew up hearing them. Obviously, being able to communicate in a common language makes me feel so much more connected to her.

Overall, I am thankful for the opportunity to have studied Korean with two great teachers this semester. I look forward to discovering more about a world I was always connected to, but never got to know.

For the last week of class, I finished the podcast interview with Jenna, Kate, and Christiana in class. We’ve discussed some questions that we wanted to know. For example, we discussed typing on computers with an English keyboard. For me, it is not hard to type Chinese on the keyboard since we have pinyin for every character, which represents the pronunciation of the character using the English alphabet. We then discussed the typing for Korean. While some friends of mine use a Korean keyboard cover, I use the touching keyboard in Korean. With it, I can see the hangul instead of the English letters. Jenna mentioned that when she first started typing, she used a virtual keyboard on Naver.com that corresponds to the hangul to the English keyboard.

We’ve also discussed the elderly system in Korea, the school and cram school there, as well as people’s perspective on K-pop and idols. We then watched a video of 펭수, a giant toy penguin that is very popular in Korea recently.  We watched the video without any subtitles, and I am very surprised and happy to find that I could understand most of it. It was a fun class.

Maggie Podcast

I did the podcast interview with Jenna, Kate, and Christiana.

This semester has been insightful to me on several fronts. Most of all, I understand the importance of having both a strong foundation in elementary linguistics, grammar, etc. (from the 105 class) as well as previous language learning experience prior to going the Self-Directed route. This offers the dual benefit of on one hand knowing the abstract rules of languages and contributing to learning that way, as well as knowing my own personal style, tendencies, etc. and tweaking (or even compensating) accordingly. I have noticed that, in my study of language, I constantly have a desire to relate this to something larger and to aid a larger understanding of culture as a whole, which I believe can be attributed to my previous experience studying abroad and learning Mandarin Chinese. In addition, I noticed that the very way that I am learning Malay is drastically different than how I learned Malay, not in the obvious self-directed and less classroom-oriented regard, but rather in how I came to internalize and familiarize myself with the two languages. In Chinese, so much of my foundational study depended on rote memorization and, frankly, regurgitation, which in retrospect I realize was completely necessary because of the difference in orthography and the fact that the language is tonal. Malay, on the other hand, does not have these two components, and the sentence structure was already quite familiar to me as an interesting mix of Chinese and English styles. I am learning Malay through far more numerous mediums and outlets than in Chinese, and have gained different insights because of it. 

As straightforward as it may seem, I found it difficult to not get too caught up or grounded in my learning styles. Some of the questions consistently posed in the bi-weekly language learning journal prompt are how I have revised my task list, built upon what I learned, and evaluated the effectiveness of my strategy. These are difficult questions to answer, and some weeks felt like I was not sure whether making these adjustments would effectively hasten or hamper my language learning. That said, this is one of the aspects I have enjoyed the most in my SDLAP experience thus far, as well as the cultural exposure to my language partner and the innumerable insights that has yielded for me. I recognize that I will not always have Melisa to guide me as I continue my Malay journey, however I am confident that I have amassed a strong enough foundation to carry me through over the break and into next semester quite fluidly.

Among my favorite learning activities from this semester were the small-group presentations because I was able to both convey my interests, insights, and developments to classmates as well as hear their own respective ones. I particularly enjoyed reading about the Hinga tribe and delving into the intersections between language and culture more broadly. I was also really interested in the New York Times article on the tribe that revived the previously "dead" or extinct language. The discussions in class that we had on hegemonic languages versus smaller ones, the necessity of preservation, and some different approaches or methodologies to preserving was one of my favorite ones of the semester. Looking back, I would have liked to learn more about some of the more neuro-science related linguistic topics (e.g. psycholinguistics), as well as exploring somewhat less Euro-centric figures and models that have contributed to our understanding of languages writ large. Overall, my first semester in the SDLAP program learning Malay was not exactly what I had expected going in (to this point refer back to my earlier posts and reflection), though I have learned a lot about myself and about languages writ large in the interim, even with the previous language learning experience and linguistics coursework in my college career. I am excited to continue learning over the winter break in a (hopefully) less jam-packed and stress-induced environment, as well as to continue with this pursuit next semester and beyond.

These past two weeks have largely focused on the new topic of family, or keluarga, as well as a substantive review of past content I have learned because of the Thanksgiving break. While family structure and conventions in Malay are roughly similar to English, I was surprised to learn that Malay follows a Muslim convention in naming that indicates that one is the son or daughter of their father using the words bin or binti, respectively. In this sense, a typical name would read [Personal name] bin/binti [Father's name. Melisa informed me that this convention surprisingly also carries over to non-Muslims in the form of [Name] Anak Lelaki/Permpuan (Son/Daughter) [Father's name], though this is changing and the government is allowing non-Muslims to change this name officially if wanted (as it would go on your birth certificate). To learn the names for family members, Melisa provided me with a worksheet that depicted a family tree with characters from the Simpsons. It was really interesting engaging in foreign language learning using a familiar, American cultural icon. Overall, the terminology is somewhat more specific than English, with specific words for older brother and older sister, but not as specific as Chinese. 

The indicating words for 'boy' and 'girl' are, as alluded to above, lelaki and perempuan, respectively. These are used after the noun (as all adjectives in Malay are) to modify it, but can also be nouns themselves, as in the case of permpuan tua (old woman). This is something that takes a little getting used to and has only been a little confusing in oral Malay. I was surprised to learn that 'girlfriend' has its own form that does not use perempuan, but instead wanita (woman) to form the word teman wanita. Funnily enough, 'boyfriend' does use the standard lelaki in teman lelaki rather than the word for 'man' or the like. This might have some cultural connotations, e.g. that a girlfriend should be of a certain older age since it is spoken as 'woman.' These subtle linguistic notes are often not recognized by native speakers, but can carry some significance nonetheless.

My language learning goals for this period were somewhat more modest because of both the break (my first one home all semester) and the fact that I have been inundated with schoolwork as of late. The experience taught me that it is important to remain consistent in language learning, and that, whether I like it or not, some concepts or lessons take drilling and rote memorization to master (especially names). I realized that, over the break, I did not take the time to practice my spoken Malay and, as such, struggled with pronunciation more than I would have anticipated upon returning. This is something that I absolutely will need to keep in mind as I wrap up the semester and head into the extended winter break - I cannot merely practice reading in the language when on my own, but have to take the extra effort to speak and recite words, phrases, and sentences orally as well, since this is where I will be able to challenge myself and improve my understandings the most.

While deforestation in the Amazon, particularly in Brazil, has gotten a lot of attention in recent months, much of the world has overlooked how the process is happening in another one of the planet's most biodiverse rainforests: Borneo. This is not a uniquely Malaysian phenomenon (given that a good portion of the island is a part of Indonesia as well as, to a far smaller extent, Brunei), however logging is a major industry in both Sabah and Sarawak and has contributed to this destruction. I wanted to use my final cultural artifact to reaffirm the allure and importance of East Malaysia and attempt to connect this oft-forgotten bastion of bio-ecological, cultural, and linguistic diversity to a larger global context.

(Image source: Borneo, ravaged by deforestation, loses nearly 150,000 ...)

Borneo has reportedly lost upwards of half of its entire rainforest coverage over the past century, with most of this loss occurring in the past three decades and due to the rampant practice of logging and the pursuit of palm oil, a major industry on the island. In Malaysian Borneo, this impact is far larger, with an estimated 80% of the rainforest "degraded" by such logging practices. Sarawak in particular had the "fastest rate of deforestation" in the entire Asian continent as of 2012, which, accordingly, amounts to a real and grave problem for the people and wildlife living there. The gif below comes from a video recording of a local orangoutang in Borneo - one of the island's most prized possessions - confronting a bulldozer razing this entire section of forest.

Loss of land has also greatly effected indigenous peoples and has disproportionately rewarded a small circle of wealthy business moguls. The administrative government at the state level has been slow to implement laws to protect the environment or regulate these practices. The effects on a local level are catastrophic, and the unsustainable logging industry has purportedly been financed, at least in part, by large global banks such as HBSC.

(Image Source: New forest map for Sarawak reveals large-scale deforestation ...) 

Despite all of this, deforestation has slightly declined in recent years. This can likely be attributed to a combination of different factors at both the local and global levels effecting industries reliant on logging, e.g. local outcry, pressure from the U.N., and changing global commercial flows. Sabah alone is home to upwards of 96 different languages, and its extremely rich and biodiverse rainforest is something I had the fortune to witness firsthand in my visit there last Fall. My Malay instructor this year, Melisa, is from Sarawak, and she has relayed anecdotes about the detrimental effects of logging and the land loss that has followed, as well as the complicity of some local officials and companies. When most people think of Malaysia, they think of the bustling city of Kuala Lumpur or the white-sand beaches and savory food of Penang, however there is another part of Malaysia beyond 'Malaya' that demands equal attention and admiration. The people were among the friendliest I have met in the world, and I think that this looming problem of deforestation is a global one, just as it is with Brazil.  I hope this post has offered a modicum of insight into this issue. All things considered, the world cannot afford to lose such a natural habitat, just as the local Malaysians cannot either.

Sources:

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2012/11/03/log-tale ;

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130717173002.htm

https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/forests/deforestation_fronts2/deforestation_in_borneo_and_sumatra/

During the past two classes, we learned Korean idioms. I find some Korean idioms has great similarities with Chinese idiom and that might because of the great influence of ancient Chinese cultural to Korean. The Korean idiom is even more commonly used in daily conversations than Chinese idiom. I have seen a Korean variety show called New Journey to The West, which contains a game about idiom, to test whether the participants are familiar with them. It makes people more aware of traditional culture.

갈수록 태산.

translation: The further you go, the more mountains you will meet. Things are going to be harder and harder, and there will be many barriers waiting for you in the future. It is often used when you get a small success and the elders advise you not to be complacent.

그림의 떡.

translation: Pie in the painting. It referring to untouchable things or something one can only see.

누워서 떡 먹기.

translation: eating cake lying down. It means you can get it without paying many effort.

미운 놈 떡 하나 더 준다.

translation: give one more rice cake to your enemy. The more you hate someone, the better you should treat them. I guess it means “spoil” the one you hate so that he or she will be more and more annoying so that nobody will like them.

믿는 도끼에 발등 찍힌다.

translation: Be chopped in the foot by the ax you trust. It refers to one was betrayed and hurt by someone he or she trust.

병 주고 약 준다.

translation: to give illness and then medicine. It means at first you did not treat one well but you give them a reward after then. There is a similar Chinese idiom and its literal meaning is slap your face then give you a sweet dates.

작은 고추가 더 맵다.

translation: the smaller the pepper, the spicier it is. It means people that look shorter might have larger energy and more skills.

지나가던 개가 웃겠다.

translation: a passing dog will laugh. It means the joke is so boring that only the dog passing by will laugh.

혼자서 북 치고 장구 친다 / 혼자서 모두 일을 알아서 한다.

translation: doing everything by yourself.

하나를 보면 열을 안다.

translation: See one part, it shows ten more aspects.

하룻강아지 범 무서운 줄 모른다.

translation: a puppy isn’t afraid of a tiger. A genuine and ignorant one will not be afraid because he or she did not truly understand the situation. There is a same one in Chinese idiom: a calf is not afraid of a tiger.

On October 19th, Sulli (Shirley), a member of girl group F(x), was found dead in her home in Seongnam by police. Her death put spotlight on a worldwide conversation about in South Korea misogyny and cyberbullying in South Korea.

After Korean pop singer Shirley ended her life last month, Goo Hara, also a singer, who was best friend of Shirley, was distressing. Goo Hara said that she hoped that Shirley could live in freedom in heaven. "I will work harder to live after you leave," she said, "Dear fans, I'll be fine. Don't worry about me." However, six weeks after Shirley's death, Goo Hara was found dead at her home in Seoul, and police claimed she committed suicide. The two of them are among the most popular stars in the Korean, and their suicide has caused Korean music fans to reflect on what ’s wrong with K-pop, the country ’s most successful cultural output.

Shirley debuted when she was very young and she was famous for her cuteness and innocence like a princess. Three years ago, she became fickle and did things that everyone does not understand, including the photos which were sexy and slightly exposed. As early as 2013, the fame started to turn dark. Rumors spread that Shirley was dating Choiza, a rapper whose stage name slickly alludes to sexual organs. Shirley ‘s fans preferred to think of her as single and refused to accept that she is dating with such a sordid man. With the media record continued to speculate about their relationship, including a false story that Shirley was pregnant. All the things subverted her image of a good girl. Many haters have begun to curse her online, claiming that she did not love herself or even asserting that she was mentally abnormal. Previously, Shirley shared a photo without wearing underwear on her Instagram and was attacked and scolded by netizens. It is even more annoying that every time after Shirley posted some photos of herself, vicious comments came. She responded that "I wear it or not is my freedom." 

In the months before her death, Shirley was criticized for a long list of supposed missteps, including: posing in a sweatshirt which prompted accusations of promoting pedophilia, posting a photo of herself going braless, kissing her friend Goo Hara on the lips at a birthday party and Dubbing live eels in the oven.

The recent news always makes me feel uncomfortable, and I hope every girl can be treated well. "No snowflake is innocent during an avalanche", “You guys are murderers”. After the incident, countless similar remarks spread on the internet, which I find ironic. It looks like a complaint, but in fact it is more like shirk responsibility. Cyber ​​violence exists and is very common for a while. As observers, should we be innocent downright? We know that a lot of people hurt others online, but we just flipp through the comments and choose silence instead of fighting back.

Attached is my second reflection paper.

Reflection%20paper%202.docx

SDLC%20110%20Podcast.m4a

SDL%20podcast%20with%20Brenda.m4a

Bi-Weekly%20Learning%20Journal%20%281%29.docx

Cultural%20Post%20%281%29.docx

Sunday, November 17 

110 Reflection

These past couple of weeks, I have seen my Ge’ez sessions change to be more interactive. Our lessons call for more of a conversation/discussion style between my language partner and I. Because now I have the tools to construct grammatical sentences, be they simple or moderately complex, our discussions have served as a window to more learning and a way of assessing my progress as well. As such, written and oral conversations in Ge’ez and Amharic have been a growing part of the class periods. In each class period we have also been learning at least one grammatical concept and honing in on it. Some new concepts that we have gone over are future, subjunctive, and imperative conjugations of verbs. The subjunctive, as was the case when learning Spanish, is the hardest one for me to grasp. The imperative and subjunctive forms are also similar in some conjugations as they are in Spanish. In Spanish, you use the subjunctive to make a formal command. Similarly, the subjunctive and imperative are only different in the 2nd person in Ge’ez conjugations. However, the subjunctive almost always requires another verb to be conjugated in the sentences (another clause?). It was also a bit confusing to be how the imperative form could be conjugated in the 3rd person, because in English and in Spanish I believe imperative or command conjugations are only seen in first and second person. However, my teacher put it in the context of a sentence for me and it made a little more sense. I definitely need more practice on it though. 

Another concept that we’ve been learning is the system of verb organization. There are 8 categories of verbs that are similar in conjugations and reading styles. This one was also a hard topic for me to learn as it requires a focus on intonation which is hard to gage. Intonation of words in Ge’ez is very important and there are 4 types of reading in Ge’ez. Knowing these 8 categories and their characteristics helps to keep track of how to read any type of word. This was less of a focus before but now with more oral activities this has become a bigger focus. My teacher helps me grasp this concept but exaggerating his own speech so I can detect the intonation. I find that I almost have to shift my mood in order to say some words correctly. To me, they sound more excited or even more serious. It’s interesting for me to now see the technical parts of reading, as I noticed it before when hearing scriptures being read but didn’t know that it had this level of technicality. 

110 Artifact #3:

the Aksumite Empire:

I found a really interesting series on Khan Academy that talks about the Aksumite empire. The main source used for the compilation of articles on the history, art, and impact of the empire was the British Library. There is also an article on contemporary art by Julie Mehretu and ancient Christian art (Ethiopian Iconography). 

Beginning with the history, the article noted that the Kingdom of Aksum was one of the 4 greatest powers of the world and matched the development of the European powers at the time --- Roman and Greek empires. Aksum served as a big trading post between Europe and Asiatic countries. The following excerpt harps on the impact and connections that this empire had economically and in terms of academics. “Research shows that Aksum was a major naval and trading power from the 1st to the 7th centuries C.E. As a civilization it had a profound impact upon the people of Egypt, southern Arabia, Europe and Asia, all of whom were visitors to its shores, and in some cases were residents. Aksum developed a civilization and empire whose influence, at its height in the 4th and 5th centuries C.E., extended throughout the regions lying south of the Roman Empire, from the fringes of the Sahara in the west, across the Red Sea to the inner Arabian desert in the east. The Aksumites developed Africa’s only indigenous written script, Ge’ez. They traded with Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean and Arabia.” Christianity and Judaism have very deep roots in this area which is now Eritrea and Northern Ethiopia. 

The article remarks that not much is known about this empire today but I believe that this is due to a lack of research into the non-english resources there are about this empire. In fact, scriptures and artifacts from this time period are plentiful within the Church and though I am not certain, outside of it too. Take the story of Kings Atsbeha and Abreha or Kings Ezana and Saizana, there are books written about them and churches dedicated to them. They are attributed as the kings who brought the wide spread practice of Christianity into the land. 

I also found it really interesting how the contemporary art of Julie Mehretu was analyzed. The deeply symbolic and modern painting called “Stadia II” was created in 2004. In it, Mehretu aims to take a familiar place, a stadium, and express in it the emotions and chaos of the world. “In her monumental paintings, murals, and works on paper, Julie Mehretu overlays architectural plans, diagrams, and maps of the urban environment with abstract forms and personal notations. The resulting compositions convey the energy and chaos of today’s globalized world. Stadia II is part of a triptych of works created in 2004, and explores themes such as nationalism and revolution as they occur in the worlds of art, sports, and contemporary politics.”

The comparison between this art and the ancient Ethiopian Christian art is stark. In this series, there is also an article of Ethiopian Christian art through the 4th-20th centuries, through different leadership, empires, and societies. It is fascinating and though this article is brief, I would love to go into it deeper in my future studies.

Source: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-africa/east-africa2/ethiopia/a/the-kingdom-of-aksum

If I could conduct a linguistic study of Ge’ez I would study the history of the different manuscripts and the efforts for the preservation of the language. I find it really inspiring to read on and hear about all the good work that is being done and can be done to make sure this language is preserved. Language preservation in general is a very altruistic cause that just moves my heart. In order to study this, I definitely would search in to the history of semitic languages; their morphological and lexical patterns as well as the political boundaries that tie different languages together (for example the phonological and typographical similarities). I would start broad with semitic languages in general to get a good background and then use current scholars of Ge’ez to go into the specifics. I am not sure how many peer reviewed journal articles and books there are on this topic at large that specifically focus on the Ge’ez language. I think there would be more sources in Amharic than in English or any other Western language.

To get a modern perspective on the aging population in South Korea, I looked at a Telegraph news article and some statistics that illustrate the conditions in which the elderly exist.  It seems that South Korean society is becoming more individualistic as more seniors live outside of family homes.  Because South Korean society has had a history of elders relying on their children for providing housing, food, etc., the state does not have a very strong pension system.  This system is underdeveloped as it has not been a high priority.  Seniors living solely off of pensions receive about the equivalent of $600 per month.  This is hardly enough to provide comfortable housing, so the standard of living for the elderly is fairly low.  Many experience “nursing problems, economic anxiety, psychological anxiety or loneliness” from the pressures of self-dependency (Smith, 2018). 

One of my main questions while reading this was why are so many elders living on their own and why are their families no longer providing for them? One answer is that the seniors do not wish to be an economic burden on their children who have their own kids to provide for.  Additionally, the birth rate in South Korea is concerningly low which has made the country considered an “aged society” (Smith, 2018).  This label is given to any country with more than 14% of its population over the age of 65.  There isn’t a large enough working class to pay for the pension system in place.  The president is undecided as to how best to solve this issue.  He does not wish to pull funds from other sectors yet taxing the already overwhelmed working population would lead to a possible increase in poverty and unrest in the younger generations.  Because of this, many elders are forced to continue working to support themselves. 

I looked at a second article, written in 2014, that provided statistics for the elder society in South Korea expressing that “28.1 percent of all suicide victims in South Korea are over the age of 65.  And about two-thirds of the elderly suicide victims endure extreme poverty before deciding to end their lives,” (Koo, 2014).  Koo (2014) attributes this development as to the weakening of filial piety that stemmed from Confucianism thousands of years ago.  This idea is portrayed by the image of the elderly picking up pieces of trash on the side of the street in hopes to sell them to recycling.  The fact that some have to rely on this method for supplemental income supports the theory of the deteriorating Confucius ideologies of utmost respect for elders and filial piety. 

Reading these articles and statistics was very saddening because there is a very obvious downward trend for the elders in South Korean society.  The ideals that were analyzed in the first journal article I read about the importance of filial piety have been completely shattered as an overarching belief across the nation.  Suicide is a prominent issue in South Korea with rates that ranks 10^th worst in the world.  Finding that a large portion of suicide victims are part of the elderly community represents a potential worsening of the issue as time goes on and the population ages.  There’s not much hope for the betterment of this issue besides the president finding a way to improve the lives of seniors by increasing the funding of the pension system or through other means of public spending.

Koo, Se-Woong. “No Country for Old People: South Korea's Dire Problem of Elderly Poverty.” KOREA EXPOSE, 24 Sept. 2014, http://koreaexpose.com/no-country-for-old-people/.

Smith, Nicola. “Old People Struggle to Survive as South Korea Becomes 'Aged Society'.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 7 Oct. 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/07/old-people-struggle-survive-south-korea-becomes-aged-society/.