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For the last week of classes, we recorded the podcast and talked about our most memorable lessons and asked some questions to our language partner. I mentioned how I liked the time when we read the news report on the weather in Korea and when we read through the dialogues our language partner created for us. Reading the news report was a great reminder of how much Korean I have forgotten. I also realized how different it is to read something in your head compared to reading something aloud. When you just read in your head, I think it’s easy to gloss over the text quickly and not pay attention to the pronunciation of the words. When I read the article aloud, I realized that I suddenly became more self-conscious. Not only do you focus on the pronunciation, but you also become aware of where the natural pauses are and when to raise your tone. I think it’s good practice if you don’t have someone to talk in Korean to. If you do have someone to practice with, I recommend going through scripted dialogue for a variety of different scenarios. I think these could benefit those who want to try to get a better feel of practical conversation.
I think this semester even though I at first wanted to use a textbook to learn harder vocabulary and grammar, I think it was a rewarding experience to also just take a step back and review the foundations of Korean. I learned a lot more than I expected to. It was also fun to learn in a group setting. Seeing through the eyes of others gives a whole another way of learning.
But there were times when I thought that I should be learning more. Compared to back in high school when I studied for the Korean SAT subject test, I have forgotten so much. Now reading long passages and articles are not very pleasant to look at it. Sometimes it feels like a mountain of text, and I also tend to run out of patience. It becomes easy to give up. I also felt this way when I was practicing my Korean typing skill. I was extremely slow at first. Even typing a sentence was very difficult and time consuming, but compared to now, I think I somewhat improved. Typing in Korean became a little bit easier. I still type relatively slowly, but I have memorized the layout of the Hangeul characters on the keyboard.
I think my original goal, which was to use textbooks to improve vocabulary, grammar, reading comprehension, and writing can be my long term goal for the next semester since I will not be taking Korean. I have a change of plans this fall semester, but for next year, it might be a good idea to use a textbook so that I don’t have to constantly think of and find something to learn. Using a textbook can be a good way to keep myself in check.
It has been getting more and more complex and I find that this knowledge has helped me in constructing sentences but it actually has been harder to decipher when translating sentences to English because I over think the conjugations and am trying to process it all at the same time. The hardest concept I want to highlight was the use of case. I realized that with this skill I am able to more correctly translate actions in a poem or story. Because the object and subject can be in different orders when used poetically it is important to use this indicator to see which is doing the action and which is being acted on. The whole deeper meaning can be misconstrued if you don’t keep that in mind.
This week’s homework is to conjugate the leading verbs in the 8 categories of verbs in the tenses that we have learned already. As I stated last time, verbs falling under the same category share similar patterns like pronunciation and conjugations. However each category has a slightly different way of conjugating in the 4 different forms that we have covered. It could be as slight as a shift from “e” to “ie”. I definitely need to practice more on this area in order to get it down.
I am looking forward to the final project in this class. I am thinking to do it on the Axumite empire. This topic is going to be really interesting to learn about, because I hear about it a lot but I have never read up on it as much as I’d like. I want to look into sources that I wouldn’t typically use on a presentation. I know there are a lot of sources that aren’t known and are more of a blog style or even those in different languages that are typically not appropriate for a class project. But for this topic I think I need to use resources that are outside of the box in order to cover the topic because there aren’t a lot of sources that cover the stories that make this one whole. Like I spoke about previously, some academic sources say things like “the story is unknown” but especially from native sources these gaps can be filled. If not for the presentation, I think the information I gather will really inform me as an individual and aid my own understanding of the ancient Ge’ez culture
110 4th Artifact
Ethiopic Bible:
One thing that is really well known about the Ethiopic-Ge’ez language is the version of the Bible that is held. Instead of the standard 66 book King James Version or even the more abundant Catholic Church version there are 81 books in the Ge’ez Bible. This is due to the different history of Christianity that occurred in the East versus the West. There were different influences and even different ways books were canonized.
The Bible is a central part of the church service and specifically the gospels.
Once the Gospel reading is done during the service, it is wrapped in an honorific wrap and the young boys who are learning to be deacons walk around with the book so that people can kiss it. There is one boy who holds the large book and one who follows behind the first holding an ornate umbrella. The gospel is large and also adorned with icons of Jesus Christ and a goldish metal cover. People wait in anticipation to touch it and older women bow down for the boy to lay it on their back. Others lift their shawl from their head as a sign of respect before they kiss the book.
Many older versions of the Bible have many paintings and drawings in them that depict the happenings of the bible. The oldest versions are kept and guarded in churches in Ethiopia and Eritrea but also in museums around the world.
Likewise partial manuscripts are kept. In the British Library there is one manuscript that is part of the Magdala Collection, which was given to the British Museum Library in 1868 by the Secretary of State for India. The volume retains its original wooden bindings covered with stamped leather and lined with silk. Images like these lay hidden in them.
Most of the 81 books are with the addition of Old Testament books vut there are some in the New Testament. In more detail: “Some sources speak of the Broader Canon, which has never been published as a single compilation but is said to include all of the Narrower Canon, as well as additional New Testament books said to have been used by the early church: two Books of the Covenant, four Books of Sinodos, an Epistle of Peter to Clement—also known as "Ethiopic Clement," and the Ethiopic Didascalia. These may not all bear close resemblance to works with similar titles known in the West. An eight-part, Ethiopic version of the history of the Jewish people written by Joseph ben Gorion, known as the 'Pseudo-Josephus' is considered part of the broader canon, though it would be considered an Old Testament work.”
As we can see there is a lot of discussion around this from international scholars and the topic is vast.
The last couple of things we cover this semester are objective pronouns (accusative) and possessive pronouns/Adjectives in Ge’ez and Amharic. Examples of object pronouns are me (kiyaye), us (kiane), them (kiyahomu), her (kiyaha). Examples of adjective pronouns are our (ziane), your (ziake), their (ziahomu), my (ziaye). There is another way to show possession that I learned earlier in the semester which is done by specific suffixes and surprisingly, in the examples that I saw you can use both the possessive pronoun and the suffix in the same sentence and it isn’t grammatically incorrect.
We also covered numbers up until 50. Ahadu (one), kilietu (two), selestu (three), arbaetu (four), hamistu (five), sedestu (six), sebaitu (seven), sementu (eight), tesatu (nine), asertu (ten). The way to you make double digit numbers in Ge’ez is by saying ten and one, ten and two, twenty and one, etc. There is still so much to cover but I think this semester has taught me a lot.
Final Paper:
Reflect on your learning experiences this semester.
(a) What insights have you gained about yourself as a language learner and cultural explorer? What did you find difficult?
What have you enjoyed? How will you continue your learning?
(b) Which readings and learning activities did you find most useful? What would you like to learn more about?
This semester, I have had a great experience with self directed language learning. Even though I actually ended up controlling less of the subject material, I was able to be lead in a very flexible way by my language partner. I didn’t expect my teacher to have as big of a role that he ended up having and to be honest, that was a great advantage for me. I was able to craft my own study habits and applications of the lessons we learned and that flexibility enhanced how I used this program. I really appreciated the fact that my language partner would compile just the right of information I needed to delve into the topic of the week. Consequently, I spent the week drilling that material on a schedule that worked best for me and I also homework assignments from my language partner that I could use as a basis of my work. I didn’t spend as much time translating as a part of this class as I expected I would in the beginning. However, I did continue that in my personal endeavors.
Through this experience I learned that I like having structure when learning and I wouldn’t have been as successful without the guidance of a regular class period. If I was “self taught” I would have not had as much motivation to continue. My language partner constantly encouraged me and invited me to look at the world of Ge’ez not only as a personal spiritual endeavor but one that could benefit the academic research world and the legacy of ethiopic people. He informed me about research endeavors and showed me that if I worked hard I would have the tools to explore those.
The part of the class activities that I liked the most was when we were given a chance to share what we have been learning with our classmates and they did the same. These were simple lessons that helped me test my understanding of them when I practiced and eventually shared with others. I also really enjoyed crafting the last research project because it really reflected what I wanted to learn.
I will definitely continue where I left off with the last bits of content that my language partner has shared with me. I will aim to spend my winter break reading more in Ge’ez and also creating sentences now that I have the tools to do so. Additionally, I am hoping to enroll in a Ge’ez class with other students this upcoming summer after graduation so I can have a similar classroom style feedback as I received while learning this semester. These sessions will also be held online rather than in person, but I think it will still be helpful.
Overall, this experience gave me a great introduction to what self directed learning looks like and though I required more guidance this time around, I think I will eventually be able to propel my learning individually.
The process of moving or travelling for the holidays, is already an established facet in the culture and modern history in Korea. Just as Thanksgiving time is famous for people traveling to go see their families, Chuseok (Korea’s thanksgiving) is famous for this phenomenon. People travel from all over the country to be with their families and it is a national holiday. For this cultural artifact post, I chose to post a screenshot of a text message conversation I had with my parents. I was coming back home for Thanksgiving break, and they had not seen me all semester until then, so they were very anxious to see me. They were also really worried because the bus I was on kept running into traffic.
The first text in the conversation is my mom responding “okay~” to something I had said earlier. The next text was me saying “I should have about two hours left” to my parents to let them know when the bus was going to get to my destination. The next text was my mom sending the letters o and k in korean (literally meaning ok). This is a common abbreviation and slang used in texting in Korean. I then said “looking at google maps, I have about an hour and a half left” to my parents to let them know my estimated arrival time. I then said complained to my parents saying “I think there is actually a surprising amount of traffic” because I had not expected to be so late. My mom then responded saying “even at this time?” because I had left fairly late and had expected to avoid the traffic. She then sent a sad face emoji. The letters ㅠㅠ are often used as sad face emojis in Korea because they look like someone crying. My mom “alright…” after her sad face emoji because she was sad about the traffic and how late I was going to get home. About an hour and a half later, I texted them saying “hi~ I’m arriving in about 47 minutes” with the 하이 in the beginning of the text literally being the phonetic spelling of how hi is pronounced in Korea (ha ee). I then complained saying “the bus is arriving almost an hour late..” with three more of the sad emoticons that my mom had used earlier because I was upset that the bus had been delayed and that there had been so much traffic on my way there. My mom then said “dad will leave the house to match your schedule” meaning he would time when he left the house to pick me up to my schedule. This was a fairly standard conversation that seems very commonplace that I would have with my parents around this time. Since my family and I have been living in the United States, we do not celebrate the Korean Thanksgiving of Chuseok as much as our other relatives do in Korea. Instead, we celebrate with the American Thanksgiving and so the normal feelings about traveling for Chuseok were put for the American Thanksgiving. It is interesting to consider how living in a different country can make a holiday like Chuseok, which is so central for most Koreans, so easily replaceable.
We didn’t have classes for the first two weeks this semester, so I’m not sure what to write about. Here are some basic words and sentences we learned in the first class.
Welcome - Hoş geldin
Hello - Merhaba, Selam, İyi günler
How are you? I'm fine, thanks. And you? - Nasılsınız? İyiyim teşekkür ederim, siz nasılsınız
Long time no see - Ne zamandır/kaç zamandır görüşmedik
What's your name? My name is ... - İsminiz nedir? İsmim ...
Where are you from? I'm from ... - Nerelisin? ...lıyım
Pleased to meet you - Tanıştıǧımıza memnun oldum/Memnun oldum
Good morning - Günaydın
Good afternoon - Tünaydın, İyi günler
Good evening - İyi akşamlar
Good night - İyi geceler
Goodbye - Hoşçakal/Güle, güle
Good luck - İyi şanslar!
Cheers/Good health! - Şerefe!
Have a nice day - İyi günler!
Bon appetit - Afiyet olsun!
Bon voyage - İyi yolculuklar! Güle, güle!
I understand - Anlıyorum
I don't understand – Anlamıyorum/Anlamadım
Please speak more slowly - Lütfen daha yavaş konuşun
Please write it down - Lütfen yazınız
Do you speak English? - İngilizce biliyor musun?
Do you speakTurkish? Yes, a little - Türkçe biliyor musun? Çok az Türkçe biliyorum
This is a picture of a popular Korean dish called 두부김치 which translates to tofu kimchi. It is a fairly self explanatory name because usually, the dish just comes with fried kimchi and large chunks of tofu. It is often eaten as a 술안주 which is the name for a drinking snack. Korea has a huge drinking culture: partially because of the lower drinking age and partially because of its easy availability, among many other factors. In Korea, the drinking age is 20 years old, which is roughly 18 or 19 depending on your birthday because your age in Korea is essentially one year above your age in the United States. Because Korea operated on the lunar calendar for a while, there are some complex situations where you could be two years older in Korea than in the United States, but it is usually a year older. In Korea, you become an adult at 20 years old, whereas in the United States the age is 18. The fact that the drinking age is the same as the age you become an adult, makes it a very common occurrence to start drinking once you turn 20. The extremely easy availability of alcohol is another reason why there is such a huge drinking culture in Korea. In Korea, the most popular form of alcohol is soju-- a clear liquor that is roughly 15%-20% alcohol content. In Korea, soju can be found at nearly every single convenience store, and it is usually around one dollar a bottle. Most restaurants in Korea that are meant for group settings (e.g. korean barbeque restaurants, traditional Korean food restaurants, etc) also serve alcohol. This widespread availability and the sheer cheapness of an alcohol that is one dollar per bottle contributed to the huge drinking culture in Korea. It is also very typical to get several dishes and eat while you drink in Korea, and these dishes are called 술안주. I personally really like this dish and always get it just as a meal. At this restaurant, they had fried spicy pork along with various vegetables like onions and scallions in the dish as well. It was delicious and I will probably visit again. I ordered and talked to the waitress in Korean. The experience of ordering food in your non-native language is always a little nerve-wracking but I was glad I got to try this new food and interact with a native speaker. Our conversation went something like this:
I said 안녕하세요 (hello) and the waitress said 네 안녕하세요 주문하시겠어요? (hello. Would you like to order?). I responded 네 저 두부김치 하나만 주세요 (yes, just one tofu kimchi please) and the waitress asked 음료수는 물로 괜찮으세요? (is just water fine to drink?). I said 네 괜찮아요 (yes that’s fine) and the waitress said 네 알겠습니다 (okay) to which I said 감사합니다 (thank you). After a while, the food came out and the waitress said 여기 두부김치 나왔습니다 (here is your tofu kimchi) and I said 와 맛있겠다! 감사합니다! (wow this looks great! Thank you!). The waitress said 네 맛있게 드세요 (enjoy your food).
For this cultural post, I decided to try and text my boss in Korean. I have worked at a korean cafe and bakery for the summer and winter breaks for the past couple of years, but all of my bosses were older than me. This difference in age made me a little nervous at first, but after the first couple of months of working there, I started to relax a bit. It also really helped that there is a kind of “take care of younger employees” culture at a lot of Korean restaurants and cafes near where I live. I know that this culture is not always the case, and that it can even be the opposite a lot of times in the workplace in Korea and in Korean owned businesses. All of the other employees are extremely nice and after working there for a couple years, they have become a kind of family to me. While I am still unable to use a completely informal form of speaking to them, I am not as absolutely formal in speaking with them like I used to be before. I also noticed that it is common for younger people to type with typos on purpose. This is somewhat similar to the abbreviations and slang used for texting in English (e.g. lol, omg). However, a lot of times they are not typos that have typos, they are just typos for the sake of having a typo. Apparently, having perfect spelling and grammar can give the impression of being boring or too strict, and that having one or two typos can give a nicer impression. These typos are also used for the purpose of cuteness. While one or two typos does not mean that you’re trying really hard to be cute in the sense that cuteness is interpreted here in the US, it is just another way of saying that typos give a softer impression through text.
In this text conversation, I was pretty much asking my boss if I could work during the upcoming winter break, but I said hello with a typo to soften the impression it would give. My boss replied that she would look at the schedule and let me know, but asked if I could work on the 24th. She also included a common typo people make of writing 잇어 instead of 있어. I replied that I was not sure if I could work the 24th but I could probably work the morning shift which we call 오픈 which is just the phonetic spelling of open (meaning opening shift). She replied that she needed someone for the closing shift not the opening shift and included this letter ㅜ as a sad face emoji. In Korean, people will use this letter or the ㅠ letter as a simple sad face because it kind of looks like tears. I then said I’m sorry but I can’t do the closing shift that day and included two sad face emojis. She said okie haha let me check the schedule first (to see if I could work) and I’ll let you know. I replied okay~ thank you, with another intentional typo on the okay.
For the past two weeks I continued watching the variety show but since finals week was coming up, I recently started watching some short Youtube videos of a comedy show that is apparently really popular in Korea called Comedy Big League (often called cobic for short because big would be pronounced like bic in Korea). While the variety show was definitely an introduction to comedy in Korea and the social norms in Korea, watching a comedy show really helped solidify my image of it. Not only did the comedy show feature common jokes and other common comedy tropes that most Koreans would know, it also acted as a kind of real-time update to the cultural moments going on in Korea at the time. It was also much more convenient because the clips were only 15 minutes each. Because comedy is often used as satire or as more easily digestible social commentary and critique, I was inadvertently able to learn a lot about what was currently an issue in Korea. I feel like I was able to learn a lot more about the current social and cultural moments occurring in Korea through SDLC. I was also able to improve my reading and writing skills significantly. Even though I have been wanting to improve my reading and writing in Korean for a while now, I never had the initiative to go out of my way to read a Korean book or write anything in Korean. However, I was able to get the motivation to try and improve my Korean reading and writing skills with the help of language partners, and was able to become more culturally and socially aware and educated through watching korean dramas and variety shows. By watching clips of comedy shows on Youtube, I was able to see just what exactly most Korean people right now think is really funny, and what they think is a problem. Along with these new developments in my language learning career, I’m really satisfied with the progress that I’ve made through this whole process. I’ve learned a lot more vocabulary, read and wrote in Korean significantly more than before, and my social interactions in Korea will be much more socially informed than before. I think that these new skills will really help me when I’m talking to my parents, or even when I need to talk to anyone in Korean in the future. I haven’t had much experience talking to people my age in Korean so it will be a really interesting and rewarding endeavor to try and approach younger Koreans with my newfound cultural knowledge. I also gained a new appreciation for Korean celebrities from watching the variety shows and comedy show. They endure so much pressure and scrutiny and I had no idea how intense it must be to have to be funny in front of so many people and so many cameras. Occasionally, both the variety show and the comedy show clips would show the amount of cameras facing the celebrities or the size of the audience.
During Thanksgiving break, I went back home and then went to a family friend’s house to celebrate Thanksgiving with them and my family. While I didn’t watch the tv shows while I was back at home during break, I did get to talk to my parents and their friends a lot in Korean. I usually speak in Korean at home, so it was not a big surprise that I would be doing so when I got back home from break, but it was really to be able to be back home with family and friends. I talked to my parents about everything that was going on at school, from my friends, to how my grades were doing, to whether I was eating enough food or not. It was really refreshing to be back home, and I was surprised at how constantly different it felt like to come home for Thanksgiving break every year. Unfortunately, I was only able to stay in the guest bedroom at my house for one day and then we just drove down five years and stayed with our family friends. During our stay there, I was also able to get another person to practice with me besides for my parents. The mom of the family friend whose house we stayed at was the perfect candidate to both increase my language comprehension and increase my own speaking and my vocabulary. One of the biggest reasons for this was because my family friend’s mom speaks extraordinarily fast. Even when she speaks in English it is relatively faster than most people, but when she speaks her native language Korean, she speaks extremely fast to the point of sometimes not being able to understand her. Especially when the family friend’s mom got excited, she would kind of slur her words together from speaking quickly as I noticed sometimes happened with some of the guests in the korean variety show. People would sometimes put two words together (I guess a similar concept in English would be like saying gonna instead of going to). Noticing a speech pattern that I had noticed in a tv show happen in real life was really interesting. I was also able to speak in semi-formal terms with her that I was not used to speaking in. Usually when I speak Korean it is either with family or friends where I speak in a completely informal way, or it is with complete strangers where I speak in a completely formal way. Because the family friend’s mom who I was speaking to was a kind of in between, the language that I used with her was a reflection of that. I would not have gotten the chance to notice this change if I had not tried talking to her in Korean first, since I have almost always only talked to her in English before. Overall, it was a really interesting experience to talk to an adult who I knew in Korean for one of the first times and I was happy that my language learning activities before this helped me.
This is the last week of this semester and I do not want to say goodbye to my learning partner Brenda and my talented classmates, Yuting and Amber. We reviewed what we learned during the whole semester including advanced version of self-introduction, conversation we can use in restaurant, the names of scenic spots and how to ask direction. We also discuss the Korean history during Japanese colonial and idioms and slangs that are commonly-used in Korean. What I learned in this class not only meet with my expectation at the beginning of the semester but even beyond that and brought me many new aspects of Korean culture that expand my horizon.
Instead of keep using Yonsei textbook to learn grammar and vocabularies, Brenda applied a more interesting method to teach us by choosing different topics each classes and letting us learn vocabularies and sentences while doing conversations. All the topics we chose are interesting and useful. For example, when we are in restaurant, something we must know how to say is “What would you recommend?” and in Korean, it is “어떤것을추천하세요?”; or when we take a tour in Soul, we want to ask “where is the museum?” we can say: “박물관이 어디에 있어요?” 박물관 means museum and we can replace it with any other places we want to ask. After practicing with Brenda and my classmates, I can fluently ask and answer questions related to theses topics.
One of my favorite class this semester is idioms and slang. Korean idioms have great similarities with Chinese idioms and that might because of the great influence of ancient Chinese cultural to Korean. The Korean idioms are even more commonly used in daily conversations than Chinese idioms. Similar to idioms, slang is widely used and has become one of the popular trends in Korea. By learning and using some slang and idioms during conversation, we can better understand the Korean culture and sound more native. Idioms and slang show me a different aspect of Korean culture because they keep up with times and they are something I cannot learn from text book. I believe that taking students to learn grammar and formalities, they can produce great coherent sentences. However, take students out of the classroom and away from textbooks, they will encounter a world of language that break those rules. Thus, I think taking time to learn slangs and idioms allow students to get to know a language and a culture faster and deeper.
I gained invaluable insights appertaining to myself as far as learning the Korean language and exploration of culture are concerned. As what I said last semester, developing advanced skills in a new language is quite a slow and incremental process and learning Korean, in this case, requires some sufficient amount of time. I feel that every small steps forward makes me more confident about my learning process.
These two weeks, I watched some different korean tv shows to try and widen my range of both cultural understanding and language comprehension. I sometimes watch korean variety shows on television if my mom is watching them at home, but I had never gone out of my way to watch one on my own. I thought it would be a great way to not only continue listening to native speakers for at least an extra hour or two a week, but also to finally understand why my mom thought they were so funny. I remember when I was most likely in elementary school, my family and I would all sit and watch some of these korean variety shows on television on the weekends, so watching them now in college was a really interesting and nostalgic experience. I started watching episodes from a very popular korean variety show called knowing brothers because they had a lot of episodes on Netflix. Knowing brothers is essentially a talk show, but the main theme of the show is to kind of emulate a korean high school. All the celebrity guests who come on the show wear school uniforms and the group of comedians who host the show also wear school uniforms. Each week, there is a new group of celebrity guests who range anywhere from actors, to kpop idols, to comedians--pretty much all entertainment industries were welcome. The show’s set was a classroom and the celebrity guests were introduced as transfer students. I thought the concept of the show was really new and unique, and added even more of a kind of fun informality to the typically relaxed atmosphere I remembered variety shows having from my childhood. I think watching the variety show helped my language comprehension skills because the speed at which people talk in variety shows is completely different from how people talk in korean dramas. While this may seem like an obvious point given that one is scripted while one is not, this difference in not only the speed but the speech patterns themselves was also really interesting and insightful. Because there would not be nearly as much need for suspense or a proper way of speaking, I was able to see different dynamics and different speech patterns in action (in fact, one of Knowing brothers’ unique characteristics is that they forbid everyone on the show from using the formal or respective form that is usually used when talking to elders). Watching the korean variety show was also really helpful in increasing my cultural awareness and understanding. Watching professional comedians and really clever celebrity guests joke around with each other and play games together, gave me a chance to see what slang is popular in Korea these days, what types of jokes are trending and more. Most importantly, I felt really confident after watching these shows (not only because I felt happy from laughing so much) but because I felt like I could understand the current culture in Korea just a little bit more.
I started watching a relatively recent korean drama during these two weeks called Hotel del Luna, which stars a very famous korean singer named IU. I remember listening to the singer’s top hits when I was much younger and watching her act in a kind of cheesy teen korean drama too. I had this image of her as a really young, peppy pop singer and was surprised to see her acting performance on the drama. During these two weeks, I watched one episode each week because each episode is an hour long. I tried watching without subtitles because I figured I could really challenge myself that way. Unfortunately, there were a couple of scenes in each episode where the actors and actresses spoke in a dialect (which is called 사투리 in korean) and it was really difficult to understand at some points. I think this issue is one of my biggest concerns in my language learning journey because although Korea is a fairly small country, it is divided into many different districts. A lot of those districts have very distinctive dialects that sound completely different from the standard korean dialect. These dialects not only sound different, but also have different vocabularies. Sometimes different words will be used only for slang, but a lot of times, commonplace words will have completely different pronunciations, spellings or just be completely different words altogether. Along with hearing a different dialect, I was also able to listen to native speakers talking in a variety of different situations about a variety of different topics that I normally would not have the chance to casually listen to. For example, I was able to listen to people talk about committing a crime, running a hotel and many other uncommon topics for conversation. I felt simultaneously proud of myself and kind of discouraged with language learning these two weeks. I could sense that my reading skills in Korean were improving from the newspaper articles my language partner gave me, but I was also a bit discouraged because I was having such a hard time understanding the dialects. I’m sure that is a goal I can tackle later on, since I probably will not have to talk to people with dialects so strong that they are incomprehensible. The family members I have on my mom’s side live in an area in Korea where the dialect is either not that strong, or does not exist at all. The family members I have on my dad’s side also live in an area in Korea where the dialect is either not that strong, or does not exist at all. I realized that this frustration and concern of mine will most likely be an aspect of my Korean language learning that will not be used very often. However, the practice I got through watching the korean drama in listening and understanding standard Korean was very useful. Since all the conversations I heard were done by actors, it helped to listen to people having conversations in clear, understandable sentences.
As I progressed through this semester, I learned a lot. The freedom to learn Korean in whatever way I saw most fitting gave me a lot of room for experimentation. After a lot of experimentation I’ve really grown as a language learner and cultural explorer, and have been able to identify what works best for me.
One thing that I learned was that I’m usually very excited to learn about the music, dance, food, and games of a culture. This is why I really love playing the 뽀숑 game in class to learn the Sino Korean numbers. I also loved learning a Korean traditional dance that goes with 아리랑 (Arirang, a Korean traditional folk song). I find it very easy to learn new words and expand my vocabulary by listening to K-pop. Also, learning about Korean food was extremely fun and I was even able to make 비빔밥.
Another big thing that I understood is that I learn best when I’m learning directly from another person who is present by my side, and I retain information best when I’m able to use what I learned to interact with someone by my side. So, having someone as approachable as Professor Sumi Kim teach me Korean and knowing that she will answer any of my questions to the best of her ability without any judgement really helped. Also, at the start of every class she would ask us how we had been and what we had done during the week, and we had to try to use what we had previously covered in class to figure out what she was asking and reply appropriately in Korean. This simple activity at the beginning of every class really helped with my vocabulary retention. I also observed that I would be most enthusiastic about learning something that I can put into use immediately. This was because every time I learned something I could immediately use it with my friends, my friends would praise me, and then I’d want to go and learn more, and come back and impress them more. While this was really motivating, it sometimes drew my attention away from learning the fundamentals of the Korean language like particles or grammar. This would be fine if I solely intended to learn conversational Korean, but a part of the reason why I’m learning Korean is so that I can lay the path for possibly having a job in Korea in the future. So, just learning sentences that I can use with my friends is not enough. I need to be able to have formal interactions with professionals and that would most likely require a good understanding of grammar. Therefore, while receiving instant gratification was amazing, moving forward I need to reorient myself towards my career goal and keep learning Korean with it in mind.
Reflecting on my language learning journey so far, I still feel like I struggle with strategic competence in Korean. I personally think that developing strategic competence very important for one to be able to comfortably and effectively communicate in a language. Every time I don’t know the specific word for something, I get stuck and become unable to form a sentence instead of trying to find other words within the range of my current vocabulary that can be used to communicate the same idea. Therefore, going forward in my Korean language learning journey, I will develop a plan with a good balance of goals that are dedicated to furthering my strategic competence, satisfy my willingness to immediately communicate with my friends, and properly prepare me for possibly having a career in Korean.
All in all, I’ve come a long way since I first started learning Korean and I really loved learning. I hope that I’ll be able to continue making a lot of progress towards achieving my goals.
