All Posts (124)
Sort by
To begin I want to say that I have been thoroughly enjoying all the articles that appear to come from this book. I think often times because something, like language, is so ingratiated into our lives one can fail to see and understand the complexities of it. Very much like when people state that the English language is the hardest to learn as a second language because it has always been a part of my life it seems very hard to comprehend. I think the idea of learning language of the levels of its composition is important because there are a million and one minutia that people don’t even think of when it comes language that exist inside the different levels the article talks about. I agree with the position that sometimes separating out these levels creates a vacuum that actual language does not exist in. When you separate them out you forget that the different levels have a huge role in how language functions in our lives. In learning language, I think that the level approach is primarily useful for academics. I think that people who are studying a language and trying to learn one maybe be overwhelmed by trying to understand the complexities of language. It is important in understanding how two different language may orient their construction, but that knowledge also come with general langue study. In Hebrew I won’t say that I have observed any particular structures Hebrew but I will attribute that to my current study being very surface level. I do plan to in the future combine mixed forms of media into my studies along as a more holistic approach.
These past two weeks, I have met with my language partner to go over my goals for this class and get started on some lessons. We began with some vocabulary paired with present and past tense basic sentence structures. I have practiced them and I feel as though I understand them fully. We are also working on dissecting song lyrics since I memorize lyrics to many K-pop songs. This way, I can better remember the words and the meaning of the song. They are also a great source of useful vocabulary, phrases, and repetitive grammar structures.
We have been utilizing repetition when learning vocabulary and sentence structures. When my language partner writes something on the board, she says it, I repeat it, and I write it down and say it again. Through my experience, I find that repetition and frequent application is the most effective way for me to retain information. When studying on my own, I frequently write down what I can remember at that moment to cement the information in my brain. I find that I remember the content much better when I practice often. Because these sessions are one on one, I feel like I can get the most out of our time together. I have the freedom to take the lesson where I feel I need it to go in order to understand the content the best I can. It is also easier to skip over things that I already know and slow down on concepts that I find more challenging. I am looking forward to compounding what we have started as a foundation with more and more complex sentences and vocabulary until I can have a solid casual conversation.
During the first meeting with Kim Sumi, we went over Hangeul and pronunciation. Since I have studied this extensively in the past, this was redundant for me. However, there were two others in the class who were starting at the beginners level. Ms. Kim recognized that my level was a bit more advanced, so she tested my knowledge with a little conversation. I was able to understand most of what she said, and I had the right vocabulary, but my answers were lacking the proper grammatical structure. After talking with Ms. Kim, we are going to try a different meeting time for a more intermediate level.
I definitely feel like I can take on some more material to study throughout the week, but this was just the first time meeting with my instructors. I'm sure that as the semester progresses, we will find a good balance of material. I also believe that I will have some good opportunities to work on my conversation skills with both my language partner and Kim Sumi. I'm also looking forward to delving deeper into some cultural aspects. Ms. Kim mentioned that she would be incorporating cultural tidbits in our lessons, which we both think are very valuable. Culture and language intertwine closely together, so it is important to learn them side by side.
On the first week of class, my language partner asked us about what did we learn before and gave a simple test to us to make sure which level were we at. We did self introduction in Korean first to know about each group members. I introduced my age, birthday, hobbies and major in Korean. After finding out our Korean level, she also asked us to write down what we exotic to learn in this class. We made a list for things that we are going to learn during this semester.
First of all, we are going to review hangul since we are still not familiar with it. It is still kind of hard for me to spell words correctly and quickly. And I also always forgot the pronunciation of hangul. In light of this, reviewing hangul is really important.
Secondly, we are going to learn grammar. My language partner Evelyn used handout to help us understand grammar before. For this semester, Brenda decides to use textbook so that we can learn grammar systematically. I actually have already known some basic grammar. This semester I will learn more about harder grammar.
Thirdly, we will learn as many vocabularies as possible. Our primary goal for this semester is to learn more daily vocabularies. For example, fruit, food, and place.
Last but not the least, we will also watch Korean movie once. This will help us improve our listening skills. For me, I watched a lot of Korean drama. So I can understand some easy Korean conversations without subtitles.
On the second week of the class, we learned grammar about how to say the sentence politely and formally by using “i ta”. It is used to express the identity or state of a subject, or to designate an object. We used a lot of examples to help us remember. For instance, this is my desk. And we also write “I am a student in University of Richmond” in Korean. We also learned informal ways to speak to the listeners. We learned when we should use “nn” and when we should use “en” in the sentence as well. “nn” and “en” is particle that is used with a noun to denote the topic or theme of a sentence. When the noun ends in a consonant, we use “en”. When the noun ends in a vowel, we use “nn” And we also learned how to use it to express comparison or emphasis in Korean by writing example sentences. For example, I wrote “I like meat. But I don’t like fish.” What’s more, we also learned how to say colors in Korean such as red, yellow, orange, blue, purple, black, white and pink. We also learned how to ask people that what their favorite color is and how to answer this question.
This week, I worked on learning about history in South Korea. Because Korean history was never taught in American schools, I was never knowledgeable about the history of my heritage and wanted to learn more about it. In one of the videos I saw, I learned about four significant historical figures. These historical figures all played an important part for the independence of South Korean from Japanese colonialism. The first figure was Kim Gu. Kim was a politician and a leader of the Korean Independence Movement against Japan. Kim was a major player during the Korean Independence movement and a major proponent of education for all Koreans. He was eventually forced to flee due to the Japanese government silencing all opponents through violent means. The next person I learned about was Ahn Jung Geun. Ahn was responsible for assassinating Prince Ito Hirobumi who was a proponent of Japanese expansion in the Korean territory. Ito was known to be responsible for the assassination of the Korean Empress Myeong Seong and also forced several unfair treaties onto Korea. Another was Yu Gwan Sun. Yu was educated in a women’s university at a time when it was very uncommon for women to be educated in Korea. She was heavily involved in peaceful protests against Japanese presence in Korea. At one of the demonstrations she organized, Japanese forces opened fire into the crowd of peaceful protestors and killed 19 people including both of Yu’s parents. Yu was arrested and tortured. Despite being imprisoned, she never gave up her demonstrations and was actively protesting with the other inmates. Yu eventually died due to the tortures she endured for a long time.
Learning about these Korean figures made me very proud of my heritage since their independence was hard fought. I think learning about important historical figures was a very good strategy to learn about the Korean history because learning about the heroism of these figures sparks my interest further. I eventually did more research on my own time to look into the historical background behind these protests and assassinations. There was also a long list of movies that were based on historical events that I was encouraged to watch by my Korean language partner.
Lastly, I think learning about the history between Korea and Japan is also important in the context of current events. South Korean and Japan always had a less pleasant diplomatic relationship because of the many years of colonialism. Very recently, the South Korean government declared a trade war against Japanese goods due to tension between the two countries. Since much of Korean citizens agree with the government being against trading with Japan, most of the nation has been taking strides against buying goods from Japan. Watching a news clip in Korea, I saw that Japanese merchandise are labelled as such and were left on the shelves in supermarkets. However, the news speculated that this would also harm the Korean economy due to the many Korean companies’ dependence on Japanese electrical machinery. To build on what I learned in this week’s class, I will continue to do more research on my own time about the Korean-Japanese history.
So far，I learned the pronunciation of letters, the greetings, and basic grammar. I think this plan works well for me. Because the pronunciation rule of Turkish is straightforward compared to that of English, once you learned the pronunciation of each letter, you can read almost any words even though you do not know the meanings. Thus, it would be easy for me to learn the greetings since I can easily pronounce the words in the conversations. Turkish grammar is unique. They put the verb at the end of the sentence after the nouns. Also, In English and Chinese, people use different auxiliary verbs, like "am", "is", "are", "was" and "were" to show whether it is present or past and whether it is single or plural. However, in Turkish, people only use verbs to show time, personal pronouns and even negative form. They will add suffix at the end of the verb according to different situations. For example, "oku" means read in Turkish. If ones want to say "I read", they need to say " Ben(I) kitap (book) okurum". If ones want to say " I don't read", they need to use "Ben kitap okuman".
Overall, I think, for Turkish, the pronunciation is the foundation for words, and words are the main components for grammars and sentence. Just like D. Crystal states in the "how to investigate the language structure": the sound of speech we study via phonetics are, after all, the substance through which the patterns of grammars and vocabularies are conveyed. Besides, I agree with the point that D. Crystal made in the book that the whole language structure cannot be broken down into its constituent parts since it would create discontinuity and loss. we should always place the individual level of learning with the more comprehensive structure. For me, I should link every new verb I learn with the grammar instead of learning the pronunciation and meaning of the verb along. Otherwise, the verb would lose its practical function of constructing sentences and communicating ideas.
I have begun taking Korean language classes at the Lord Jesus Korean Church, which are taught by Prof. Sumi Kim. At my first class, there were around 10 students of all ages, and we were all at different levels in our language abilities. At that class, I learned how to formally introduce myself, but some of the other students were able to have long conversations with the professor. One thing that Prof. Kim emphasized in the first lesson was the importance of hearing Korean in order to familiarize ourselves with the sounds. I was encouraged to hear her say that because I have been hearing Korean throughout my entire life, so I am very familiar with the sounds, and I can recognize Korean being spoken anywhere. My next step is actually learning what those sounds mean and being able to say them myself.
The second week’s class was much different than the first because we were divided by level. There were five students in my class, including me. My classmates were all older adults, so I was by far the youngest one. One of my classmates is Korean and the other three are white. We are all complete beginners, so we started by learning the Korean alphabet and the different sounds. It was not the most entertaining class for me, because I think I have an easier time distinguishing the sounds than my classmates. They were very confused as to how to make some of the sounds and how some sounds differed from others. To my surprise, Prof. Kim was using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to teach us the Korean alphabet, which we learned in SDLC 105. There were many other overlaps to topics we covered in SDLC 105, such as how to make certain sounds with your mouth. We spent most of the class time distinguishing sounds that are not used in English. At the end of the class, Prof. Kim gave us a handout with some Korean vocabulary, but without the English translations. So far, she has placed a much heavier emphasis on us being able to listen to and speak in Korean than read and write. I also have more interest in being able to hear and talk in Korean because I think I will be communicating verbally more often than through written text.
Overall, I am enjoying my Korean class. I like learning alongside the adults from the community because they create a more relaxed environment. Furthermore, their motivations for learning Korean are similar to mine. One of the students is Korean but does not understand it, like me. Another has been attending the Lord Jesus Korean Church for about a year, so he wants to finally learn the language. The other two students are a married couple who have adopted a young daughter from Korea. They, along with their middle school aged son, are learning Korean in order to be able to communicate better with her. I have similarities to all of my classmates, as I am Korean, I attend a Korean church, and I have family whom I wish to be able to have conversations with in Korean.
Moving forward, I hope to learn more about Korean culture and current events. I am hoping to study abroad at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea next semester. I want to not only learn the language, but learn more about the culture before I become fully immersed in it.
So far my study of Hebrew has been through hearing and repeating with my language partner rather than reading into the definite mechanics of the language. I find this is a better starting point for me, to quickly begin to feel like you can speak the language, rather than going from the ground up. That said, I have noticed a couple of similarities and differences between other languages. Because Hebrew is Semitic, it shares many common roots with Arabic. The Arabic alif ا and hebrew aleph א are basically the same letter, with the pronunciation of "a". Depending on stress, the letter can change to more of a "i" or e" however, and that is shared by both languages. Also similar is how vowels are written. طالب is "talib" in arabic but is written with only one vowel, the other one is dropped and not written although it is still pronounced. לחם is "lechem" in hebrew but has no vowels written. One difference between the two is how male/female and conjugations work however. Arabic has up to 13 different conjugations based on who/what the speaker is referring to! Hebrew only has a couple, and the general bluntness of Israelis means that sometimes they don't bother addressing people at all.
Through my research about the Korean language structure, I found that Korean sentences consist of either a “subject + verb” or a “subject + object + verb.” And because the verb comes at the end of the sentence, there is a saying of “you need to listen until the end of the sentence” to understanding its meaning, which is very different from English. Korean sentence cannot be translated word from word to English, therefore, in order to comprehend the Hangul translations of the sentences, I should break down the sentences and familiarize with the words first. I would keep this language structure in mind when trying to understand and translate a sentence in Korean.
In “How to Investigate Language Structure” by David Crystal, the author mentioned one language might only use small part of sound we could produce. And the study of phonology, which is the pronunciation system of a language, is important in understanding the language. Korean has 19 consonant phonemes and it has eight vowel phonemes at varies length. I also found the North Korean dialect use the vowels differently from the South Korean dialect. I consider speaking to be the most aspect in learning a new language, therefore, understanding phonetics and phonology of the language would be helpful in providing a guideline in learning Korean.
So far in my study of Bahasa Melayu, I have noticed many of the same linguistic structures as English, particularly with regard to syntax. While Malay is romanized and for the most part lacks special characters, accent marks, etc., phonologically speaking the pronunciation of certain consonants and vowels can vary (e.g. ‘c’ is pronounced ‘ʧ’ like the ‘ch’ in “church”). This has not been too difficult of a transition for me as a language learner, however I am still getting accustomed to the sound and rhythm of the language, as well as the two nasal sounds (‘ɲ’, written ‘ng’, and ‘ŋ’, written ‘ny’) that are less common in English and harder for me to pronounce correctly at this point in time. This is a table on the Malay alphabet:
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I greatly value strong and accurate pronunciation from an early stage so I do not have to relearn it later or risk not being understood because of this rocky foundation. As such, I have yet to delve too deeply into semantics or pragmatics in Malay.
In terms of combining different, interdisciplinary perspectives in this process of language learning, I have become interested in possibly incorporating basic poetry in my learning plan. I liked the idea from class of learning the cadence of a language through this means, and culturally speaking it can be a fascinating gateway into fostering deeper understandings of another culture. In addition, I would like to incorporate music as a way of increasing my listening skills and, again, finding a different approach to penetrate Malaysian culture. All this being said, I do not necessarily plan to prioritize one approach over another, given I am still formulating my plan and seeing what works best for me overall. In the end, I am positive that being cognizant of the existing methodologies from these disciplines and structures of language writ large will help me be more efficient and successful in my language learning endeavors.
This week we had our first Korean lesson with our language partner. Since it was the first one, our language partner focused on teaching the basics. We started off learning how to introduce ourselves in Korean. This included saying the greeting and names. We practiced saying it aloud. Since I already knew how to introduce myself in Korean, I added other details in my introduction such as my age, where I came from, etc. Even though I can already speak Korean to a certain degree, speaking in Korean with those other than my family made me a little bit nervous. It seems a bit awkward and difficult to suddenly speak in another language especially when you are used to speaking in English with those people. But this is just the beginning, so I am sure that I will become adjusted to it soon.
After leaning self-introductions, we moved onto learning some vocabulary, which consisted of the Korean version of words like Korea, China, Japan, weather, cold, hot, warm, dog, cat, and more. I have already learned these words when I was a child, so this wasn’t much of a challenge, but watching Maggie, the other student in our class, also learn was an enjoyable experience.
After vocabulary, we learned basic grammar. The grammar structure was the Korean way of expressing am/is along with the negative counterpart and also like/dislike. Like earlier, this was anything particularly new, but we were told to write down some sentences using the grammar points, and it was a great refresher. I haven’t handwritten something in Korean since about 4 or five years ago. As I was writing down the sentences, I asked my language partner a question about the spelling of the word for vegetables. After she told me the correct spelling, she also explained that usually for most nouns, they typically use the ㅐ vowel instead of ㅔ , which is commonly used more for verbs. This was eyeopening. I never realized it. I was always terrible at writing in Korean because Korean spelling can be very confusing. Doing this grammar and writing exercise was easy yet meaningful.
Also, we watched a YouTube video clip from a Korean variety show. It incorporated some of the vocabulary we learned, and it was just a very funny video that showed natural Korean conversation. I thinking watching videos is a great way to learn a language because being able to listen to the language and consciously or even unconsciously pick up details about some word that was used, a pun/joke, etc. gives insight about the culture and also tests my level of understanding. Even though the video we watched had English subtitles, I realized that I would have understood it the same without them.
After the lesson was over, I talked with my language partner about learning about things I already knew from the lesson, and she decided that she would get some reading comprehension material for me. I also thought about checking one of the Korean books at the Global Studio. I think incorporating other learning materials with the class would be a good challenge and practice.
Korean grammatical structure is subject-object-predicate (SOV) structure, which is different from Chinese subject-verb-object (SVO) (in fact, Chinese has three structures: subject-verb-object, subject-object-predicate, and subject-object-predicate). For example, "to" can be seen as the structure of subject and object, "by" can be regarded as the structure of subject and object.
I remember our teacher mentioned it when he talked about grammar before, that Korean language belongs to Altai language family, one important point that shows Altai language is different from other languages is its stickiness. That is to say, of the altaic languages, including Korean, is adhesive types, this type of language is by sticking in the stem at the back of the large, rich suffix changes to express meaning, for example:~갑니다,~갑시다,~ 가십시오, ~가요. On the other hand, English, Russian and other languages belong to the Indo-European language family. They are inflectional languages, which rely on the inflections of words to express their meanings, such as picture--pictures, go--went, come--coming, etc. However, Chinese belongs to Sino-Tibetan language family, which is a kind of isolated language, and it expresses semantic meaning by word order.
In the history of China, many dynasties adopted the system of enfeoffment, while Korea was a fief of a prince in ancient times, so the language at that time was interlinked. Later, when the dynasty changed or the imperial power declined, Korea became a small autonomous country. King sejong abandoned the then Chinese language and created Korean by himself. Although the language structure has completely changed, many words have been retained, and Korean has also absorbed many English words over time, which has helped a lot in the process of learning Korean.
During the past two weeks, I improved my vocabulary by watching Korean television shows. I’m very proud of how far I’ve come as I can watch shows without the use of subtitles. I understand a majority of the words and phrases that are used in Korean media and make note of the words that I have not learned yet. However, I do not believe that this method will be as beneficial as it is currently because I am starting to look for only specific words that I do not understand. When I first used this method, I was able to improve my vocabulary, listening, and speaking skills exponentially because I knew very few words in Korean.
I am currently considering several options such as learning Korean songs to improve my use of Korean. I think that I will see many improvements through this method for several reasons. First, I will not only learn the lyrics, but also repeat them several times. Second, I will learn to pronounce the words flexibly. Since there are a myriad of artists who sing with varying degrees of clear pronunciation, this is inevitable. I think I will enjoy this process because I will not only understand the nuances of Korean pronunciation, but also learn to sing some of my favorite songs. Since I’m already somewhat advanced in speaking Korean, I will try to learn one song every week.
I am also giving some of my friends some advice on basic Korean vocabulary, grammar rules, and culture. Although I am not learning anything new through this process, I am reminding myself of the fundamental principles. So far, I have given advice on honorifics, holidays, passive and active voice rules, and usage of vocabulary in sentences. The fact that I could spread knowledge and insights about the Korean language and culture made me so proud of my language and culture.
In the future, I plan on reading articles that help me to connect Hangul and Korean culture. One of the articles that I plan on reading involves the trade war between South Korea and Japan. Although this conflict in itself doesn’t reflect upon culture, it is deeply rooted during the colonization of Korea by Japan. This historical event is significant as Koreans almost lost not only their citizenship, but also their language. In addition, Korea and Japan had ongoing disputes about ownership of Dokdo Island and the bodies of water surrounding the island. Exploring topics like this will immerse me into the culture and language significantly.
I’m doing a Korean group lesson with Kate and Jenna. For our first Korean class, Jenna asked me and Kate about our learning plans and future goals. I mentioned some tasks I want to start with such as self-introduction, vocabs about animals and colors, as well as restaurant orderings, etc. I also mentioned that my future goal is to understand most of the Korean TV shows I’m watching, so Jenna suggested that we could use some clips of the shows as warmups to practice our listening or vocab prep. We also discussed our use of textbook, mostly for grammar, and we will look for it as we go.
For our last class, we worked on self-introduction, some vocabulary including animals, colors, and weather. It was a combination of my task1, task2, and task 6, and I like it as a combination of my goals. We started with a clip of The Journey to the West, which is one of my favorite Korean TV shows. We watched it with subtitles, but I tried to read the Korean sentences at the same time. Then, we worked on the handout Jenna printed out for us. I tried to read the sentences and fill in the blanks with my personal information, which was fun. I learned how to say “I go to the University of Richmond” as well.
After that, we went through some vocabs that were mentioned in the clip we just watched and in my task. We tried to form sentences with the vocabularies as well. I learned that there are different names for big dogs and little puppies, and also the different forms of nouns and adjectives of colors and weather. Then we moved on to some sentences with grammar. I learned how to state my likes and dislikes, and also how to deny something. We distinguished the difference between two hangul alphabets that could be used incorrectly as one another. We also tried to write down some examples on our own by implementing the grammar. I found that making examples on our own with the grammar points we just learned is a quite efficient way of learning, especially if we share them and ask more questions about them. We get the chance to communicate about ourselves as well as our friends or parents.
For next week, after a quick review of what we’ve practiced last week, I want to learn more vocabs around animals and colors and new grammar points. I’m also looking for YouTube videos with Koreans in them talking about their daily activities or the food they like. As we mentioned to Jenna at the end of last class, Kate and I want to have more reading exercises as well. Both of us have some basic background in Korean, so we agreed that we could move on a little bit faster for our future classes. Of course, the class last week gave us a good review and gave us a chance to get used to communicating and writing in Korean.
