All Posts (92)
Sort by
The Chinese community is going crazy over a new Korean drama show called "Touch Your Heart" (진심이 닿다). I have recently started watching the show and it have been very funny and different from the past drama shows. The show is played by two very famous actor/actress, Yoo In-na and Lee Dong-wook, who have, in the past, played as a couple in the show Guardian: The Lonely and Great God. Their performance is also very good in this show. The drama is about a top actress who is experiencing her downfall due to a scandal and meets a lawyer, and the ensuing romance between them.
I have been practicing Korean with my classmate Amber Shen, we use Korean keyboard to practice some basic greeting sentences such as how are you, and my name is .... This helps us reinforce our knowledge and practice even when we are not in class.
My love for Korean food grows everyday, yesterday I visited New Grand Mart again for a combination bowl of 탕수육 (sweet and sour pork) and 자장면 (a noodle dish with a sauce of pork, chunjang and vegetables)
It has been a challenge learning Korean without a teacher or language partner. After all, the purpose of language is to communicate with other people. I have deviated from my learning plan to account for this. Instead of learning vocabulary terms for specific topics, I have been learning more general phrases that are used in everyday conversation. This is because my goal is to converse in Korean. Rewatching my presentation also reminded me that learning a language can be fun! A lot of people learn a different language by watching TV shows or listening to music. I may need someone to teach me the technical aspects of Korean, but I can watch Korean videos/listen to Korean music on my own. I won’t understand all of the words, but it will help me become familiar with Korean sounds.
The in-class discussions about sound have been helpful in learning how to pronounce Korean words. The Korean language contains many sounds that are not used in the English language, so learning about how different sounds are produced is helpful. However, overall, I feel like there are several areas in which I have not seen the connection between what we have discussed in class and my efforts learning Korean. Similar to music, I hope to see how studying theory and playing an instrument relate to each other. I want to focus more on discovering and developing learning strategies. I think this will be very useful in connecting the abstract aspects of language and the practical language learning we do outside of class.
I have learned that language and culture have a closer relationship than I previously thought. There are many areas in the Korean language that are dependent on the speaker’s age in relation to the listener. This reflects the cultural value of respecting one’s elders. This also relates to the connection between language and culture in Spanish, which uses masculine and feminine words. Lately, people have been using neutral-gendered words instead. For example, the term “Latinx” arose as a gender-neutral alternative of Latino or Latina. Therefore, learning about Korean culture in addition to the language will help me improve my communicative competence.
I am focused on improving my basic interpersonal communicative skills because there are people in my life who only speak Korean who I wish to communicate with. I have learned the hard and embarrassing way that my grammar does not need to be absolutely perfect in order to be understood. (When I was in Peru, I made a very silly and amateur grammar mistake. The person I was talking to laughed at me but was still able to understand me.) Hence, discourse competence is emphasized in my learning plan, but sociolinguistic competence is also important, particularly for Korean. My goal in learning Korean is simply to be able to converse with Korean speakers, so that I may have more meaningful relationships with them.
Recently visited Gogi Bibimbap in Richmond. The food was really good and I prefer the bibimbap here because they allow me to choose my own vegetables and meat in the bowl. As most Korean restaurants I visited put kimchi or onions in the bowl, which I don't like eating as much, this option of putting my own choice is much better.
Some taboos in Korean culture are:
- Do not wear your shoes in places of worship or peoples’ homes
- Do not put your feet on furniture
- Do not eat or drink in public places while walking
- Do not place your thumb between your middle and index finger while making a fist as this an obscene gesture
- Do not use red ink. This is a symbol of death and is reserved only for writing the names of the deceased. It is considered unlucky and suggests you wish death to the recipient
- Do not use the number four if at all possible – if giving gifts, do not give four of something. It is considered unlucky due to the similarity between the Korean word for death and the pronunciation of the word ‘four’
- Do not stand too close to people you are meeting for the first time – keep an arms length between you
Some of these taboos are the same as Chinese culture, such as using red ink and using the number four. The number four taboo, I would consider to be the most important. I know that in some Chinese buildings, they avoid putting a fourth floor just to avoid the number. I don't know if the number four is to be avoided as much in Korea.
I have been reading about the proper etiquettes to follow when entering a Korean family home. There are some restrictions that are very different from Western culture. First, it is always the case to remove your shoes when entering someone else's home. Being invited to a Korean's home is an honor and politeness and respect is expected highly. Some ways of demonstrating this respect is to never pour your own drinks as the host will do so for you, and to bring a small gift as expression of your gratitude. Some of these restrictions are unsurprising because it is generally universal to treat the host with politeness and respect.
In class, my learning partner Evelyn gave me a Korean name that has similar meaning to my chinese name 경태 (gyeong tae), means admiration and sunlight. Like many other Asian culture, the Korean naming convention goes in the order of Family name first, and then given name. I recently read an article that states it is generally considered impolite to refer to people by his or her given name. Instead, they should be referred to by their professional titles, such as Mr, Mrs, Ms. etc, until permission is given otherwise. I think the extent to which this is true is another extension of the strict formality in Korean culture.
After I watched my presentation, most parts of my plan are on the pace and I am satisfied with the progress. The issue deviated most is that we did not have a non-English language environment in class since I am still in the beginning level and my teaching partner need to explain almost everything in English. We have finished learning Korean alphabet in two weeks and I used the methods of recording me and Seonghye reading Hangul to compare, correct my own pronunciation, and imitate her.
I like the idea about the relationship between different languages, and I gain the benefit in my process of learning Korean. Since more than half of the Korean language is made up of borrowings from Chinese, the learning is not so difficult for me personally. Take the word ‘library’ as an example. In Korean it is written as 도서관 and read almost same as 图书馆 in Chinese. After I can use Hangul to read Korean vocabularies, we can keep going to learn daily greeting and basic conversation in specific situation such as to order food in restaurant, to ask direction and to check in in the airport. My learning plan is emphasized on the practical usage of Korean in daily life.
The sometimes burdensome formalities in Korean culture is largely influenced the strong ethics codes set out in Confucianism. Confucianism is one of the formal religions practices in Korea, among these major religions also consist of Buddhism and Christianity. But Confucian thinking influenced ancient Korean culture the most and therefore the fundamental values of Confucianism, such as filial piety, ancestor worship, and humanness, are most reflected in Korean culture. The formalities system, expressed through language and greetings, reflect these values. It is interesting to see a culture so dependent on Confucianism as guiding philosophy in politics and social live.
In my opinion, my Korean class is going really well so far and in general, I follow my learning plan. I learned and improved a lot during these 8 weeks. In these 8 weeks, there were a lot of change happening including I can read Korean alphabet smoothly now. Moreover, I learned grammar in the class. Now I know how to ask questions such as “What did you do?”,”What will you do today?” in Korean using past tense and future tense.
At the same time, the materials used in class also were really helpful. My language partner sometimes will give us worksheets which have a great number of new words on it. We need to remember every word before the class so that we can understand the class material better.
Also, my language partner will always use videos to help us understand Korean culture. For example, on March 1st, she showed us a picture of a status and told us that day was a really important day for Korean people. And she told us the history about that day. This made learning process more interesting and also help me know more about Korean culture.
I believe the language structure is important to understand.I am still trying to find a way to apply what we learned in SDLC105 like language structure and language family to help me understand the target language and culture. But since I knew Korean was created basing on Chinese, as a Chinese, I feel like I can learn Korean more easily. And I find my best way to learn language efficiently.
I currently am not in SDLC 110, but I have thought about my learning plan and have made some changes to it. The overall change I have made to my learning plan is just to be more detailed. I think my goals have remained the same. I still plan to follow all 10 of the steps I had in my learning plan, but I now have more things to think about and have specific resources I want to use. Instead of vaguely saying "Youtube videos" I have identified a few channels/online resources for Turkish language such as nur77akaltun (Youtube Channel), Learn Turkish Online, Turkish Basics, Turkish Language Class, and İngilizce Türkçe Hikayeler. With our class discussions and the videos we watched in class from TEDtalks, have given me ideas to expand my learning even further. For example, the video from Benny Lewis and readings about linguistic families encouraged me to look up Turkish-English cognates, since that will provide me hundreds of words that are already in my own vocabulary. Some words such as cigarette - sigara, ironic - ironik, million - milyon, music - müzik, surprise - sürpriz, vision - vizyon, to name a few. These just a handful of the many other words that exist in the language that overlap with ours. In finding familiar words like these, I am already much better off, even though I may not be needing these words for many situations, having them in my vocabulary is already benefiting me.
I think relationships between language and culture is very important to understand. There often are many norms in language that non-native speakers may not understand/recognize until we are put in certain situations. In improving my communicative competence, I hope to grow a better understanding of the norms and meanings in words/sayings/grammar in Turkish, in order for me to better grasp the language and also communicate effectively with other individuals. My Learning Plan incorporates grammatical competence in a sense where I hope to learn all pronouns and all the cases in Turkish, since language is not language without grammar, rather it would just be words. My Learning Plan does not involve discourse competence yet, since I do not think I will have ability for me to construct more than 3 sentences at a time. I have not reached the level of competence or proficiency in Turkish for me to be able to think more than using a handful of sayings in the right grammatical form. Sociolinguistic competence is something I hope to learn more about through interactions with the culture and native speakers since I will be better able to understand things such as power distance in language/behavior/culture.
Reflect on your language learning so far. How would you describe the relationship between language and culture? What do you need to do to improve your communicative competence? Based on the readings by H.D. Brown, what kinds of competence are emphasized in your learning plan?
My language learning process has been going pretty well. I have worked on all four goals that were mentioned in my learning plan: improve listening skills in the northern dialect, be able to fully comprehend tonal marks, increase comfort level in speaking, and expand my vocabulary. As stated in my learning plan, I starting off with learning the tonal marks and have increased my vocabulary through learning a new set of vocabulary each class. I also am doing the free-talk which has helped with improving my speech flow and vocal competency. I haven't worked on improving listening skills in the northern dialect as much as the other goals however. Additionally, in my lesson plan I mentioned that my language partner and I would meet 2-3 times a week, but it's been mostly just 2 times as we are both very busy. Furthermore, we aren't sticking so closely to the timeline I provided in my lesson plan for every class period. For example, sometimes our lesson practice would take longer than expected so our free-talk would be cut short. Other than that I think I've learnt a lot and have made immense progress.
In terms of incorporating SDLC 105 material into my language learning efforts, I've used materials on what type of learner I am to make my learning plan. I also personally found the research of language families informative. For example, that certain sounds in Vietnamese is only used in borrowed words from French. Besides that I haven't really incorporated much of the materials into my language learning as most of it is more theoretical.
I think that language and culture is closely interrelated. Language is used to convey and maintain various elements of culture including ideas and thinking and culture helps shape and mold language. For example, how one refers to themselves differs depending on their age in comparison to who they're speaking with, demonstrate the age hierarchy prevalent in Vietnamese culture.
To improve my communicative competence, I need to expand my communication pool; I need to simulate various situations where I would use the language. Since I only speak to my language partner, I am very used to a more relaxed speaking style. To improve I would need to practice speaking to someone who is a stranger, in a professional setting, to the elderly, to young children, etc. Based on the reading, my learning plan emphasizes discourse and sociolinguistic competence (from most to least in the order listed). It doesn't include though, grammatical or strategic competence. For grammatical, it is because I am at the advanced level in speaking so I didn't feel it necessary to go through the grammar structure of Vietnamese. For strategic competence, it isn't explicitly included, but can be practiced through the free-talk sessions in my lesson plan.
At the time of the recording I was very broad about my goals and strategies. I have since become more specific in defining my objectives for each week, as well as for the entire semester. This has helped me to more accurately track my progress and to be better at assisting my language learning out of class. Overall, I have incorporated the general goals and strategies from my original learning plan to improve the quality of my learning plan and my learning itself. The insights and experiences other people have shared during our class discussions have helped me a lot to have a better view on how to best learn a language and it has helped me to develop new strategies myself. The material covered in class itself is helpful as a foundation of language, but it has not directly furthered my learning yet. Especially because I am not very far in learning the target language, I have not been able to incorporate a lot of the materials covered in class. So far, in my tutor sessions, we have not talked about a lot of cultural aspects of Korean, so I have not been able to draw a lot of connections between culture and language. Regardless of this, I am aware of the incredibly important combination of language and culture and will ask more questions in order to understand this link. This will help me to understand the structure of the language better, as well as learning concepts and vocabulary necessary to be culturally competent when visiting the country. I am currently in the process of learning more about grammatical competence in Korean and am slowly also moving toward discourse competence. These are fundamental in learning sentence structures and being able to have a coherent conversation. In addition to this, I am emphasizing sociolinguistic competence, however, I am still lacking some of the basics I need to properly learn about and execute this competence. I have added learning more about these competencies as goals in my learning plan.
I really enjoy poetry, so this post is dedicated to analyzing one of the most famous poems in Maltese history: Il Kantilena. Il Kantilena, written by Pietru Caxaro, is the oldest known literary text composed in the Maltese language. It is dated back to the 15th century but was not recovered until hundreds of years later. The original text is written in Medieval Maltese (Latin script), which is very antiquated but has many times been translated into modern Maltese and English. Kantilena translates to il cantilena (Latin root), which is defined as follows: a smooth flowing style in the writing of vocal music (British Dictionary). Specifically, this style of poetry is rhythmic and utilizes a number of literary elements to produce song-like verse. The original text was written before the Italian language influenced Malta, so the sounds and words are particularly Semitic-sounding.
Literary scholars have proposed various meanings to this poem, but have largely struggled due to the levels of translation and various cultural changes in society. For example, the modern Maltese text varies significantly from the original Maltese text due to the fact that it was discovered and translated 500 years after being written. The Arabic language and tradition were woven into the poem, while modern Maltese language and culture are more heavily based in Western European culture. Literally, the poem references the collapse of a building or house due to the use of loose clay. Caxaro cites that he thought he built the walls with rock, but he was, in fact, wrong and now faces responsibility. While it is speculated that there is a deeper meaning behind the poem, historically the physical walls of Mdina (a city in Malta) began to crumble in 1454. It is often questioned if this event is being referenced in the poem, and if so, what is the deeper significance of the city deteriorating?
This poem was quite challenging for me to read through and understand in Maltese. After attempting to read through it on my own, I found an audio version of the poem, which I have included below. One of the most beautiful, prominent elements of this poem is the soft and melodic sound. It is often noted that many smooth m and n-sounds are used to create humming behind the words. Additionally, there is alliteration such as nitla' u nerġa’ ninże. The poem repeats phrases for emphases, such as waqgħet hi (it fell) and merħi (clay) to central meanings. These two words are fundamental to the poem, which centers on the importance of a solid foundation (physical and metaphoric). The beauty of the poem is also carried through the rhyme of the final words of phrases. For example, la mula/muħ sula, ibniha/jewtiha, ħamra/tmarra, and nħadditkom/f’għomorkom.
https://vassallohistory.wordpress.com/history-of-the-maltese-language/the-cantilena/
Below is the modern translation (Maltese) and English translation of the poem:
Xidew il-qada, ja ġirieni, tale nħadditkom,
Ma nsab fil-weri u la nsab f’għomorkom
Qalb m’għandha ħakem, sultan u la mula
Bir imgħ ammiq irmietni, b’ turġien muħ sula,
Fejn ħ ajran għ all-għ arqa, ninż el f’ taraġ minżeli
Nitla’ u nerġa’ ninżel dejjem fil-baħar il-għoli.
Waqgħet hi, imrammti, l’ ili żmien nibni,
Ma ħtatlix mgħallmin, ’ mma qatagħ li tafal merħi;
Fejn tmajt insib il-ġebel, sibt tafal merħi;
Waqgħet hi, imrammti.
Waqgħet hi, imrammti, niżżlet hi s-sisien,
Ma ħ tatlix l-imgħallmin, ’ mma qatagħ li l-ġebel;
Fejn tmajt insib il-ġebel, sibt tafal merħi;
Waqgħet hi, imrammti, l’ ili żmien nibni.
U hekk waqgħet hi, imrammti! w erġa’ ibniha!
Biddilha inti l-imkien illi jewtiha;
Min ibiddel l-imkien ibiddel il-vintura;
Għaliex l-iradigħ al kull xiber sura:
Hemm art bajda, w hemm art sewda u ħamra.
Aktar minn hedawn hemm trid minnha tmarra.
Witness my predicament, my friends (neighbours), as I shall relate it to you:
never has there been, neither in the past, nor in your lifetime,
A [similar] heart, ungoverned, without lord or king (sultan),
That threw me down a well, with broken stairs
Where, yearning to drown, I descend the steps of my downfall,
Climb back up, only to go down again in this sea of woe.
It(she) fell, my edifice, [that] which I had been building for so long,
It was not the builders’ fault, but (of) the soft clay (that lay beneath);
Where I had hoped to find rock, I found loose clay
It(she) fell, my building!
It(she) fell, my building, its foundations collapsed;
It was not the builders’ fault, but the rock gave way,
Where I had hoped to find rock, I found loose clay
It (she) fell, my edifice, (that) which I had been building for so long,
And so, my edifice subsided, and I shall have to build it up again,
change the site that caused its downfall
Who changes his place, changes his “vintura”!
for each (piece of land) has its own shape (features);
there is white land and there is black land, and red
But above all, you must stay clear of it.
As suggested by my language partner, I focused these two weeks on retaining vocabulary that I learn from my new textbooks and practicing speaking with the digital EuroTalk Now program on my computer. I created both hand-written lists for the vocabulary and downloaded a Chegg Flashcard app on my phone that allows me to create categories of vocabulary lists with pictures. For example, categories that I have created based upon my learning resources are colors, greetings, transition words, relationships, and body parts. This app has been helpful because I can review my Maltese on-the-go even when I only have a couple of free minutes.
The EuroTalk Now program has been an extremely useful tool for me because it includes real audio clips of Maltese speakers pronouncing each vocabulary word. In addition, I am able to practice saying a word, then hear my audio recording compared to the recording of native speakers. This helps me to improve my intonation and accent. There are ten primary categories for vocabulary in the program: first words, food, time, colors, phrases, body, numbers, shopping, countries, and miscellaneous. Within each category, there are learning sessions (speaking and reading), games, and a picture dictionary to print. On Sundays, I try to set a couple of hours to practice my Maltese using this program. Overall, I find it a great resource because I always have my laptop with me and it is very interactive.
Moving forward, I would like to focus more on reading and speaking in sentences. I am retaining vocabulary well and can start to recognize bits and pieces of phrases, but want to work on a more holistic understanding of dialogues and texts. For example, in writing my last cultural post, I watched a Maltese cooking channel with subtitles and understood small bits. As I accumulate my vocabulary base, I would like to take these next steps in putting together longer strings of words.
