Our class went to new grand market for dinner. Here is what I ordered: 떡볶이. It is a traditional Korean dish with rice cakes and noodles. Kinda spicy but really tasty! Korean food culture and Chinese food culture share something in common, I found a dish named Mapo Tofu, I was surprised because the name and the way it is cooked are almost similar in my hometown.
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Blackpink in your area!!!
It is impossible to not talk about K-pop when talking about Korean culture. K-pop has been trending in the world. And Blackpink is one of the most popular girl groups in recent days. To be honest one of my motivations to learn Korean is the interest in Blackpink. They have released many hot singles that went viral on youtube. One of the four members, Lisa, is especially popular. She left her home Thailand at a very young age and came to Korea alone for training. I can’t image how many struggles she had. Fortunately she made it through and achieved what she deserves.
Lecture on week 13 is interesting. We talked about some tourist attractions in Korea. All of us wanted to visit Korean but none of us have ever been, so we were excited throughout the class. Actually I was going to visit Korea in my Junior year of High school, but some disease bursted so the trip was called off. Some of the top destinations we picked are Invading Shopping District in Seoul, Evelyn told us it is the biggest commercial center in Korea, it has everything you can ever think about. Besides, Insadong is attracting to us because it has a lot of antique shops and tea places. The other location is Gyeongbokgyn Palace, it is an important cultural landmark. With in the complex, there are two big national museums, you can acquire an overview of Korean history by watching the artifacts.
In the last week of class we discussed the age system in Korea. The system is quite different from how the western world does it. Here the calculation is simple because your age is only determined by your birthday. However in Korea, the age is determined by the first day of the year. Besides, you have to add one extra year. Therefore, people are older in Korea. For example, if you are born in 12.31.1997. Your current age in US is 20. While in Korea, your age is 22.
In Week 11, we watched a Korean movie, Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds. It is a really popular movie in Korean, based on statistics, one quarter of the nation have watched the movie. While we are watching, Evelyn sometimes will pause the movie and teach us something about Korean culture. This movies talks about how a fireman who sacrificed his life saving people survived his journey in the hell. The plots are interesting and very touching.
Week 12 is Thanksgiving Break! Yeah!
We touched on some cultural aspects in week 9, we talked about some major Korean holidays. Korean also celebrates Lunar New Year, I found a lot of similarities between the rituals and practices in China and Korea. Both of Chinese and Korean people have the ceremony to worship ancestors. I am not surprised because I have learned that China and Korea has a lot of cultural interactions in ancient times, so it is reasonable that we share some similarities. There are some differences in the practices too. Koreans usually wear formal hanbok during the practices while Chinese people nowadays do not wear traditional clothing. Because cultural revolution has erased some tradition cultures.
In week 10, we continued to learn about the numbering system. As we have tabled in the previous week, there are two different types of systems used for different purposes and in different scenarios. Sino-Korean, or China Syste and Korea system. China system is inherited from Chinese culture so words sound very like Chinese numbers. People usually use this system for talking about money, times, phone numbers. While Korea system is more modern and complicated. People usually us it when talking about age and counting.
In the seventh week, we are done with learning vowels and consonants. We start to learn some phrases that are useful in a real life setting. We learned how to order food in a resultant. Evelyn wrote down some simple sentences on the board and let us try to read it with the aid of the alphabet table. We learned sentences like “What food would you recommend?”, “That is delicious” and “I ate well” and some other ones. After that, we watched a food documentary of numerous street food in a Korean city.
The next week we went to a Korean restaurant with in New Grand Mart. According to Evelyn, this restaurant is pretty authentic. I ordered the food in Korean and the waitress understood me well.
In the fifth week, we continued to learn more Korean words. The main focus of this week’s class the how to count numbers. In Korean, it is kind of different from English and Chinese, there are two different systems of count numbers. To be honest it is really hard for me tell which one to use in what scenario immediately. Besides, we learned how to count days in a week, how to describe basic emotions, and basic phrases how to introduce myself. Writing a complete sentence is much more challenging than writing the words. I have to differentiate from different sentence structures. It is really difficult to remember.
In the sixth week, we were given a short quiz on what we have covered so far. On the quiz Evelyn gave us some phonetic translation in English, and we were asked to write it down in Korean. After she graded the quiz quickly in class, we continued our learning of vowels and consonants.
In the second we we continued the learning of Korean alphabets. We learned the alphabets by matching one alphabet with its pronunciation and writing them repeatedly. This method is indeed effective, writing them down helps us to memorize much better than only reading them. We also watched Korean talk show with English subtitles. In this episode, people from different nations (Russia, China, France and so on)talked about their experiences in Korean, most of them work in Korea and plan on staying for a long time. They talked about the phonetic differences between their mother languages and Korean. Those from Europe complained the Korean phonetic patterns were too different while some from Asia found that similarities.
In the fourth week, we are done with learning with alphabets. We start to use the consonants and vowels to write real characters. We were surprised to find that we actually can write simple character easily. It is a really rewarding experience for us after only four weeks of learning.
In the first week of our Korean class, our language partner introduced herself showed us a short powerpoint of they city she is from. Then she asked us to set up our learning goals for this semester. Individually we came up with a list of ten goals that we want to achieve by the end of the semester. Besides, we talked about why we are interested in taking this class, apparently all of us have plans to visit Korean someday in the future.
The second week, we touched on the Korean alphabets. Evelyn told us once we have memorized the alphabets it would be really easy for us to do the writing and readings. Because they phonetic formations of a character is very easy. To make the process of learning alphabets more interesting, she taught us by playing board games.
On the first day of class our language partner Evelyn showed us how to write my name in Korean. My Chinese name is 段博文 (Duan Bo Wen). Evelyn struggled when trying to translate my name into Korean, she told me that my name sounds a bit weird in Korean, people rarely use this name. The meaning behind my Chinese name is “Reads a lot and knows a lot”.
While researching music in Bali during the summer of 2017, I reached out to Andy McGraw, the ethnomusicology professor at UR and my research advisor, for suggestions about what to learn. He suggested that I learn all the parts to a Gamelan Gong Kebyar piece entitled "Gambang Suling" so that I could teach it to the UR community gamelan group upon my return to the US. I loved the idea, so I began to work with I Wayan Sudirana, a member of the faculty at the Bali Arts Conservatory (ISI Denpasar) and my host in Bali, in order to learn the piece part-by-part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ui0a-LrPBM
In the traditional method of teaching gamelan, Sudi sat on the opposite side of the gangsa (an instrument that plays fast interlocking parts and makes up a majority of the instruments in a Gong Kebyar ensemble) while I sat on the normal side, and he played the harder interlocking sangsih part while I played the more basic polos part. I began by learning the gangsa parts, then learned the simpler melodic parts on the same gangsa. I learned the parts throughout 2 months, culminating with the kendang drum part.
Back in the US, I worked together with Andy to teach the piece to the ensemble to add to our performance repertoire. Although I made notation for the backing instruments, we made it so that the most difficult gangsa parts would be learned by ear. Here's a recording of a Balinese group playing the piece:
This is a typical piece of dance music played by a Gamelan ensemble in the village of Peliatan in the center of Bali, the island immediately east of Java. As you can hear, this style of gamelan is worlds away from the slow, quiet, contemplative gamelan of central Java. The gong ageng that is struck once every ten minutes in long Javanese gamelan pieces here occurs every eight beats, accentuating the short gong cycles and adding to the energy evoked by the rapid, buzzing gangsa instruments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dtF9v7MNtM
"Kebyar", meaning 'flowering' or 'explosion', refers to the large sound ("byar") produced by all the instrumentalists in the ensemble playing at once. This style of music originated in the north of Bali around the turn of the 20th century, descended from older sacred music forms. This exciting new form of music took the island by storm, and many villages melted down the metal from their older gamelan sets to create new Gong Kebyar sets.
Today, this music is synonymous with Balinese performing arts, and once a year, the best groups from around the island converge on the capital city of Denpasar for the Bali Arts Festival for Gong Kebyar competitions and showcases of traditional and contemporary musics from all over Indonesia. I was able to attend several Gong Kebyar competitions while in Bali, of all-male, co-ed, and all-female Gong Kebyar groups. The venue is a large Greek-style outdoor amphitheater with bench seating; vendors selling Quail eggs, small fried snacks ("gorengan"), and grilled chicken skewers mill about the packed venue throughout the performance. See a performance from this year's arts festival here:
I have been practicing using common phrases with other native speakers.
This is a recording of Gamelan music from Eastern Java which, while sharing a lot of the instruments featured in my first cultural post, "Ketawang: Puspawarna", has several distinctions that highlight the complex region-specific map of traditional musics in Indonesia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCv4TlnpzYQ
The piece opens with a "pathetan", a short, rhythmically free introduction opened by the rebab (the melodic leader of the ensemble) and accompanyed by the "cengkok" instruments, the quieter instruments of the ensemble that elaborate the melodies played by the louder instruments. Following this, the rebab plays the "buka" or opening to the piece, and the drum comes in to lead all the other instruments to start at the strike of the gong ageng, the largest and lowest-pitched gong.
Immediately noticeable is the relative complexity (read: funkiness) of the drumming compared to Puspawarna, and the sharpness of the rhythmic slowing down and speeding up of the tempo. Eventually the tempo settles to a pace at which the singer can join the ensemble and recite verses of sung poetry called "kakawin". Not long after, the drum speeds up the ensemble once again, and the other instrumentalists follow suit.
The gong ageng, the prominent and very low-pitched noise heard intermittently on the recording, marks the beginning and ending of a gong cycle. These cycles are circular in shape, and the melody's position within this cycle are marked by smaller, higher pitched gongs; this is easier to hear at the end of the piece, when the drummer continually speeds up the tempo to mark the upcoming "suwuk", or ending.
American and Korean makeup and fashion have subtle differences that helps us understand a lot about the cultures and how people like representing themselves in different societies. American makeup is more bold -- with darker eyes, sharper eyebrows, etc.; whereas Korean makeup is more natural and tries to focus on healthy skincare including healthier eating habits to have better skin. Everyday American style is more focused soon comfort with a lot of athleisure clothes. Korean fashion is more girly and formal. In general, Koreans dress up more for day-to-day wear than Americans do.
Here's a video that highlights the differences between Korean and American makeup:
I have been watching more Korean TV shows. One of the shows that I started watching is "The Good Doctor." There is an English version of the show based on the original Korean version. The shows follows a surgeon with autism as he starts working at new hospital. It has been interesting to see how mental disorders are treated differently in the U.S. and in Korea. The Korean version on the show focuses more on the humor and the medical issues that patients in each episode presents. Whereas, the English version focuses more on the difficulties that the main character faces when interacting with the patients and his colleagues. The show has actually helped to start a conversation about mental disabilities in Korea; in the past, they did not have a lot of programs that support individuals with mental disorders and did not provide help that was targeted towards young kids with autism. Even in the earlier episodes of the Korean version, most of characters talked about autism as an illness that could be treated and not a condition that individuals have to live with their entire lives. As the show progressed, it was very evident how the writers changed the storyline to focus more on autism awareness.
Wayang Orang, literally translated as "Human Wayang", is a performing arts form in Indonesia that is a variation on the classical Wayang Kulit, in which the carved-leather wayang puppets controlled by a dhalang are replaced with actors who sing and speak their own lines, analogous in some ways to a western opera performance. The earliest archaeological evidence of Wayang Wong is from about 900 CE, so the artform has been prevalent in Indonesia for quite some time, coexisting with Wayang Kulit and the many alternate forms of Wayang.
These recordings are digitizations of 78 rpm recordings from the 1930s which I found on eBay. It was produced by the Gramophone Company of India, Ltd., a division of a British company who recorded and released thousands of performances of world music in addition to standard commercial music of the day; these world music recordings are quite rare these days, and background historical information is hard to come by.
You can listen to these recordings here:
https://richmond.box.com/s/1klj7x4xvfplap0laicivc3qya8qhhdq
I especially recommend "Palgonadi ka 3"; it features dialogue in Javanese preceded by a short instrumental introduction, and followed by a beautiful sung performance to conclude the selection.
You can watch a short video of one of the 78s playing back on my turntable here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmu1DEO1ECE
The woody thwacking noise at the beginning is played by the dhalang, to cue the drummer to continually slow down the rhythm until it is at a tempo for singing.
If I have received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of my target language and culture, I would start from daily conversation story and history.
If I am going to teach my friends about Korean, I would start from Korean daily conversation. I would start from teaching them how to introduce themselves.
For example: 안녕하세요 yushi(name) 입니다. 처음 뵙겠습니다.
Hello, my name is Yushi. Nice to you!
중국서 왔습니다.
I am from China.
Or I will start from history. I always believe it is history that define a country’s culture. Learning the history is the best way to understand Korea’s society.
I haven’t started to type in Korean yet. For me, I prefer writing free hand. First of all, I am still not familiar with finding Korean character on the screen. Secondly, writing is a really slow progress because I am not familiar with Korean letters and characters.
For the sentence structure of Korean, it may be compound, complex or mixed. A compound sentence consists of two or more coordinate clauses. A complex sentence consists of one main clause and one subordinate clause. A mixed sentence is the combination of a compound sentence and a complex sentence.
Right now, I just start from the easiest or the most common language structure: “subject + verb” or a “subject + object + verb.” For example, 캐럴이 와요(Carol comes).
