One of the goals that I listed in my PanOpto recording is being able to have basic conversations in Korean. And this is what my learning partner and I have been focusing on during our tutoring sessions. I have already learning a lot of commonly used phrases -- I can introduce myself, ask others about them, their names, where they are from, etc.. I have also continued to listen to Korean recordings to work on my pronunciation. One of the things that I have experienced the most difficulty with is learning the alphabets. In fact, I understand Korean grammar rules better than I can remember the alphabets. A lot of the times I need to refer back to my charts to remember which letter is which. One of the things that I did learn a lot about is Korean culture -- which isn't something I was planning to focusing on this semester. However learning more about the culture from my language partner has helped me understand why certain phrases and certain grammar rules are used in the Korean society. I want to continue to doing this to improve my communicative competence. I believe having more interactions and conversations with native speakers will help me understand, and remember, the vocabulary and their context better.
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I have studied the holiday Chuseok 'Autumn Eve' and discovered many of its very interesting and intricate traditions. Some label Chuseok as the Korean Thanksgiving, but it is the celebration of the 8th full moon that usually takes place in the middle of September. It's a big harvest festival where people travel back to their hometowns with their entire family. There are two main rituals to show respect to the ancestors. First, people travel to their familial grave sites and pull the weeds around it and sweep/dust it to make it very neat and tidy. This shows society how dutiful they are to their family. Untidy graves are seen as embarrassing and dishonoring to the family. Then, the family will prepare a food and drink offering to their ancestors including a bowing ritual. The ideal of filiality traces back to the Confucian Analects that stress familial piety as one of the core values.
One of the dances by women in hanbok (traditional Korean dress) is called Gangangsullae. They form a circle holding hands and transition through various formations to a song appointed to one person to sing. This is traditionally done around a campfire under the full moon, but groups will perform the dance on stage or in other areas of the city. Its historical significance dates back to the late 1500s when Japan attempted to take over China through invading Korea. The Korean military ordered women to dance around the campfires scattered throughout the forests to make their army seem bigger.
One of the main foods prepared on Chuseok is Songpyeon, a crescent shaped colored rice cake filled with a sweet paste, usually beans. Well-prepared songpyeon predicted a handsome man in a woman's future or a beautiful daughter in a parent's future. They rice cakes are presented on a bed of pine needles which are believed to fight off sicknesses and lower stress.
My main learning goal for this semester is to improve my reading skills, which I am working on with my learning partner through reading a book called “괭이부리말 아이들.” This title is hard to directly translate into English, but the first part is the name of a location and the second part is “children.” As a result, it can be roughly translated as “the children in this location.” This title may not be super descriptive, but this book details the stories of children who grew up in this poor community and how it affected them.
Through reading this book, I have been able to increase my vocabulary and learn about the history that has shaped South Korea. I learned about the extremely descriptive language used in Korean, for instance, they use “살아 숨쉬는 과거” to describe “alive and breathing history.” Instead of just saying “alive history,” they also described it as “breathing,” which relates to how they use a lot of metaphors to provide visual depictions of what they are trying to describe. Although metaphors are used in the U.S. as well, I noticed that this was a specific theme in the book that we are reading to allow the reader to truly feel as if they are apart of the story. Therefore, it was a little hard to understand certain parts of the book because of the complicated metaphors, but this is when my learning partner and I would stop to try and understand what I am confused about.
So far, this book is very interesting and I am excited to see how the story continues. It is a little on the sad side, but it allows for a good and meaningful story.
Through one of my weekly sessions with my learning partner, we learned about the importance of the number 4 in South Korean culture. In Korean this is called “sa-ja-seong-euh,” where the first part represents the number 4. One example of this is shown on the South Korean flag, where there is 1 group of stripes on each of the 4 corners of the flag. The representation of the 4 corners are the 4 seasons and/or the 4 directions.
The 4 directions in the U.S. are typically known as North, East, South, West, which I remember through the acronym NESW aka Never Eat Soggy Waffles. In contrast, the directions in South Korea are remembered as East, West, South, North. These directions in Korean and in this order are “dong, seoh, nam, boouk.” It is interesting to see the theme of the number 4 in Korean culture and how it can be different to similar concepts in the U.S.!
My first artifact talked about the general things that I learned in SDLC 111. Since I was preparing for my semester abroad at Yonsei University during this semester, I learned about the terms that a typical student would use at a Korean University. I think I did well in remembering these vocabulary terms because I was about to recall them and make connections to why I learned about these words. However, I can always improve by being able to remember more of the terms. I can make these improvements by reviewing and practicing what I learned in previous semesters during this semester.
- Recording: Artifact #1 (Angella Lee)
- Translation:
Hello! My name is Angella Lee. Last year in SDLC 111, I learned about the terms that are used at a Korean university. For example, I learned about major, exchange student, professor, GPA, and etc. This semester in SDLC 112, I want to learn about the cultural aspects of South Korea and that of the United States, so that I can compare them. Thank you!
I think I've made some substantial progress in my learning plan thus far through both my lessons with Jimin and my own independent study. The most important aspect of this was the communication between Jimin and I when we first started lessons. I explained what I wanted to accomplish by the end of the semester and gave a rough outline of activities I thought would be useful in achieving that goal, and Jimin helped me polish that into a structured learning plan. So far, we've watched clips of Korean variety tv shows that have really helped me understand the cultural environment around the usage of certain idioms and Korean slang phrases. Although I have a relative understanding of basic vocabulary of Korean, I'm unfamiliar with a lot of the colloquial language of Korean, and that makes it difficult to truly grasp the meaning of a conversation at times. By learning the contexts of certain sayings and their meanings, I was able to then use that meaning in the context of webtoons and other forms of media that I stated wanting to be able to understand in my learning plan.
I still have a long way to go before I fully accomplish all the goals I talked about wanting to achieve in my PanOpto recording, but I think that continuing on my current path will get me there. I think in particular, gaining competence in grammar along with a firmer grasp of colloquial language or slang language will really help in my attempt to reach these goals, especially when reading webtoons. While most of the text in webtoons are split into short speech bubbles, an advanced understanding of Korean grammar structure is needed to understand this, arguably more than regular sentences in a novel or any other traditional form of Korean text. The shortened forms of words, slang and irregular grammar structures used in many popular Korean webtoons may seem easier to understand than "regular" Korean, but in order to understand this abnormal Korean grammar and wording, I need to have a clear grasp of what "normal" Korean grammar and wording looks like and then work my way backwards.
So far into my learning plan, although I am not where I necessarily want to be, I'm surprised of the things that I've learned in the casual way that I've approached it. That said, I've realized how important and convenient having a learning partner would have been in terms of keeping me accountable in continually practicing my Korean and giving me more structure in my learning. With my schedule, I've been mostly learning Korean through language apps that practice writing and vocabulary and listening to Korean songs. These apps have been very convenient in their repetition as well as the verbal exercises. I feel that I'm gradually building my basic vocabulary such as days of the week, food, and people as well as pronunciation. In practicing, I've found myself trying more intentionally in my mind to think of Korean words in my conversations. However, this practice has been very scattered and not consistent. Because of this I will be signing up for a Korean course online and use a Korean textbook to give more structure to my learning plan.
As I try to learn Korean, understanding and immersing myself in Korean culture has shown me the great importance of it in order to learn Korean. As I listen to more Korean songs and watch more Korean shows, I find myself more interested and motivated to learn the language. You want to understand more of this culture in which language is a huge part in understanding it. It is an interconnected relationship.
I believe that my Korean class has been quite productive. So far, we learned how to fix commonly made grammatical mistakes, how to use and write Korean slangs, and learned some proverbs and learned a list commonly used four lettered idioms. It's mainly a lot of pure memorization, so nothing has dramatically changed, but I think I will improve later in the future once I start to apply those in everyday life by using them in daily conversations. I've been watching a lot of Korean variety shows and specifically the Korean language quizzes on those shows that include questions about grammatical mistakes, slangs, proverbs, and idioms. while these battles are entertaining, I felt that I was learning from those because the people on those shows were making similar mistakes to those of mine, and I was somewhat glad I was on the same boat as they were. The relationship between Korean culture and Korean language is quite prominent, and I believe it can be seen with slangs. The youth In Korea use a lot of slangs, and they are so different from actual Korean, and because the number of youths using slangs was so vast, it eventually ended up being a big part of the Korean language culture. In order to improve, I need to start applying what I learned into everyday conversations, since repetition is the best way to practice and memorize. I believe in order to make advances in my linguistic abilities, I need to approach the path of sociolingustic for my next goal, such as learning polite forms. It is very important on how you approach elders in Korea, and by attaining sociolingustic competence, it will be very helpful.
My initial interest in learning Korean starts from K-pop music and Korean TV series (of course). When I was in middle school, the first time I started to watch a Korean drama because all the girls around me were watching that. I can still remember the name of the drama is City Hunter. Girls call the main male character as “oppa” and that became our favorite chatting topic after school. Then I totally became a K-pop fan. My favorite K-pop band is CNBLUE. It used to be an underground band in Japan and then they successfully transferred to one of the most famous stars in Korea. I listened to its music, watch its show and even went to the live concert. At the same time, I watch other Korean dramas as well. Gradually I found out that these habits really help me to build up a good “ear” because I was able to catch several vocals and understood what they were actually talking about. Thus I decided to learn Korean at school. I hope I could be able to understand the lyric of my favorite songs. I hope I could be able to dive deeper into culture through the language learning .
There are 21 vowels and 19 consonants in Korean. When it comes to combinations, each syllable starts with a consonant and ends with a vowel. And vowels by themselves can happen too. Each syllable in Korean is pronounced for the same length with equal stress. This is quite different from English. For example, If you’re a typical American English speaker, you’ll say it as “Caa-me-ra.” Most of the stress is on the “Ca” and the least is on the “a.” When it comes to Korean pronunciation, the syllables in camera are pronounced with equal stress for the same length of time. So the way you’d say it would be “Kah-Meh-Rah.”
Compare Korean with Japanese, there are more vowels in Korean. (only 5 in Japanese). For me, the pronounce Japanese is easier than Korean. I don’t if it is because Japanese sounds more similar to Chinese so that they pronounce sometimes the same. However, for Korean, I could barely pronounce the sound eu perfectly as I could in Japanese.
Three days ago (10/9) was Hangul Day, a celebration that Seonghye taught us about during our class yesterday. She showed us a video that explained the origin of the holiday and typically how it is celebrated. In 1446, King Sejong of the Choson Dynasty invented the common native writing system of Korean. Previously, Chinese characters had been used for reading and writing, but was spoken using original Korean phonetics. Learning these characters was very difficult and required an education, which was not accessible to most agriculture workers due to the time and the money. Thus King Sejong created a simple writing system that was easy for everyone to learn. For the vowels, he utilized three basic configurations, a vertical line representing a human, a horizontal line representing earth, and a dot representing the sky. When put all together, you get all the vowel characters. People celebrate Hangul Day to show gratitude to King Sejong for his contribution to the native Korean language. On 10/9 those in Korea often go to the King Sejong museum and visit his golden statue. His picture is even on the 10,000 won bill.
https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/happy-hangul-day
Over these past couple weeks, we have been learning how to navigate a train/subway station in Korea. We followed the same structure as the past lesson about ordering food where we learn the terms first and then go on to conversation. We learn phrases as well, such as "Where is...?" or "How do you get to...?". Also the vocabulary terms were very specific to a system in Korea vs a system in New York. We learned about transportation cards, the subway lines of travel, and asking how to get to Seoul station. Seonghye showed us a video of these two guys from Spain who spoke little Korean, navigating a subway station after their flight. They made some mistakes that taught us what we should be prepared for. It was really interesting to see the process and this lesson will definitely come in handy when I travel.
We played a couple of games this time, one of them being the little competition game on the vocabulary. The other was a battleship type game that required us to write the Korean word on a board when given the translation in English. And if we got it right, we could pick a coordinate of our opponents board. These games are really fun and help us bond with each other as we learn.
A key goal that I have done well maintaining throughout my study Malta is better understanding the complex political and cultural influences that have impacted the language and society, as a whole. I expressed in my original learning plan presentation that I wanted to learn about the history and I feel as if I have done this through research in English and the target language. As I study the Maltese language, I try to pick up on linguistic subtleties that connect the Maltese to the Italians, French, and Arabs. When I write out the vocabulary words in Maltese, I try to compare them to the Italian words that I know. I have found that there are a handful of cognates in Maltese and Italian, which is very interesting, but one challenge I did not foresee is the unpredictable nature of the language. For example, some vocabulary words are the near-same to French and Italian counterparts, but other words have completely unfamiliar roots and sounds. I believe this challenge stems from the fact that I have not studied Arabic, but hopefully, it is a skill that improves over time as I see more vocabulary.
In addition, the last blog post I wrote really inspired me to do a lot of research about the Maltese political system and economy. My classes this semester focus on international business issues and the economics of developing nations, so I tried to apply what I have learned towards an analysis of Malta. Beginning to research the HDI, GDP, and natural resources of the country led me to want to become more of an expert on the subject. In order to continue this theme and apply the subject with my language studies, I am going to focus this week’s vocabulary on geography and basic economic terms. Conducting this type of research was really interesting for me because it is relevant to my larger college studies.
At this point, I have focused a lot on studying basic phrases, vocabulary, and culture/history. One element that I think I can begin to focus more on is understanding the grammar of Maltese language through reading. One problem I have run into is contradicting basic grammar structures online The language is not widely spoken, therefore there are fewer resources than I expected for learning. I have been able to memorize certain phrases for basic communication and recognize vocabulary, but I think the missing link is truly understanding the syntax. As I write this post, I am considering that this week I should read basic texts about the geography of Malta. This would be extremely interesting for me, considering I traveled to all parts of the island and visited the capital city. In addition, I mentioned in my learning plan presentation that I wanted to be able to talk more knowledgeable about the places I visited in Malta last year. For the presentation, I envisioned pulling up some of the many beautiful pictures I took of the country and being able to describe the history behind each location.
As I have discussed, in order to strengthen my Maltese linguistic abilities, I need to make a strong effort in improving my abilities to put together sentences. After reviewing some of the original language exercises I outlined in my plan, I want to start applying the idea of reading interesting texts in the target language to learn faster. I am making it my priority this week to find a couple of unique writings (poetry or historical) that highlight the geography or political climate of Malta. At the start of the semester, I identified myself as a very tangible and visual learner, so I want to continue incorporating learning elements that are unique and keep up my interest.
I am pleasantly surprised with how much I have learned from Turkish so far. Listening to my PanOpto recording, I listed a lot of goals I had that I thought were way too idealistic and impossible to achieve. I did not think I was going to reach a good number of them properly. I have actually achieved a lot of those goals already, though! I know how to introduce myself, know the numbers of the Turkish alphabet, etc. because of the same sources I listed in my recording and learning plan. Using those sources, my language partner, Turkish music, the website resources I listed, the Turkish textbook I am using, the Turkish dictionaries I listed, etc., as I had planned to actually helped me in achieving a good amount of my goals.
A huge part of my language learning that has undoubtedly helped is the repetitive exposure to and usage of Turkish. Hearing Turkish music and singing along (or getting the lyrics stuck in my head), going through the Turkish textbook with my language professor and fellow Turkish learners, studying the vocabulary and grammar, doing all of these several times a week has culminated into actual understanding of what I am studying, no matter how basic of Turkish it is. I want to continue this track in order to achieve my communicative competence, as I believe it is helping a lot. I do, however, want to gain knowledge of colloquial understandings in Turkish as Brown noted, in order for me to interact not only in the Turkish language itself properly, but in my actions and mannerisms while speaking to a Turkish person or being in Turkey as well. To do this, I want to finally achieve getting to know a close Turkish pen pal. I also want to connect with members of the Turkish-American community if possible.
Since I am not taking the actual self-directed Korean language class this semester, I am not learning Korean, so it's difficult to say whether anything changed or not. But, after watching my PanOpto recording, I think I realized how ambitious I was because realistically, the tasks I mentioned would be hard to consistently complete especially with other classes and work. Even now, I haven't been able to practice and keep up with learning Korean. It's difficult to call my parents everyday, and when we do call each other, phone conversations are usually not that long. Also, I just don't need to speak the language here. It's interesting how sometimes I think I speak more Japanese than Korean. Even though I'm not actively learning through textbooks or with a teacher, I continue to watch Korean dramas and variety shows to immerse myself more into Korean culture. I also frequently watch Korean YouTubers and attempt to read more Korean comments. I think passively learning a language through entertainment can help one not only understand more of the language, but also the culture because language is the core of culture. By watching funny variety shows, you can learn about jokes and puns along with Korean humor. Through dramas, you can see what family relationships are like while learning the terms people use to call each other.
Learning through entertainment is enjoyable, but to really improve my communicative competence, I want to focus on grammatical competence and discourse competence. Learning passively and only listening to the language will only get you so far. To really use it, speaking is essential, so I want to learn more grammar and have a stronger foundation in order to speak fluently one day. Because I have never learned that much grammar, I realized that I tend to make more mistakes, sometimes questioning myself if what I said made sense or not or thinking about a different, simpler way to phrase my thoughts. I think knowing grammar would be very helpful for creating sentences and going farther than just simple conversations.
I wouldn't say that I made any major changes to my learning plan, but I did find some focuses in my study and learned what I lack the most. I've noticed that I needed to work a lot more on my writing and proper spacing in grammatical sense than speaking and learning new vocabulary. In order to make the most out of my time, I chose to distribute more time towards my writing exercises and less on my speaking, listening, and vocabulary. I been having some trouble learning all the confusing vowel spellings and spacing rules which are common mistakes for most native writers as well. My tutor has helped a lot by giving me tips to remember those rules, and having those extra practice exercises helped me practice applying to my writing.
Other than writing, I have been watching Korean tv shows on Korean language battles where they have a competition on earning points by answering different Korean language related questions. I really enjoy using the TV show because it is really fun and effective in improving my listening, reading, and vocabulary. It hits so many of my learning objectives all at once. In addition, having to talk to my tutor only in Korean boosted my comfort level in speaking. I would always talk in English with my other Korean friends, but after having my tutor to practice my speaking skills regularly, I feel more comfortable speaking Korean to my other Korean friends as well.
Language is definitely a part of culture, and on the other hand, culture is conveyed through language. They seem to be co-dependent on each other. Many language conventions exist because of a particular culture element. For example, slangs in Korean expanded so much due to the way young Koreans talk. In addition, this specific language value was conveyed through language and became a big part of the culture. There is a cycle between culture and language and one affects the other all the time.
With prior knowledge in Korean, I think I need to focus on grammatical competence and sociolinguistic competence. I think there's always room for more higher level vocabulary and syntax mastering. By focusing on sociolinguistic competence, I can improve my sensitivity to dialect and naturalness. In addition, it exposes me to a lot of cultural elements which allows me to get to know different cultural references and figures of speech. Even though I am Korean, with little native experience, I'm not too familiar with different cultural references and my slight uncomfortableness shows through my unnaturalness. When I visited Korea two years ago, I had friends telling me that I definitely have a foreigner vibe and I hope to be more natural after being exposed to various cultural cues and standards in my study.
Study has been going well. Our class has finished learning the alphabet, and I feel somewhat confident remembering the basic vowels and consonants. Also, we learned several basic words for greeting people and making short conversations. Nothing has changed yet but I want to learn more about Korean cultures. I would say that culture and language are very much related, in Chinese, there are even new slang phrases as popular culture evolves. I think similar situation happens in Korea. To improve my communicative competence, I need to learn both the Korean language and the nuances that happen because of contemporary popular culture. Other kind of competence I want to attain is sociolinguistic competence. As I understand, Koreans care a lot about etiquette and addressing their elders properly in the correct suffixes, and that is important in knowing the language.
I am extremely interested in Korean K-pop music. I am also happy that K-pop has become a truly global phenomenon because of the distinctive blend of addictive melodies, slick choreography, and production values and an endless parade of attractive South Korean performers who spend years in grueling studio systems learning to sing and dance in synchronized perfection. Looking at the girl group and the boy group dancing on stage, I can feel their passion and energy. In China, the idol group does not attract public attention and there is a little stage for them to show their talent.
Besides K-pop music, I start to watch Korean shows when I was in middle school. In Korean, gagman is a respectful job for they bring joy to the audience in Korean tv shows. Korean shows are really funny and sometimes it teaches me Korean culture. For example, from the tv shows, I start to learn what food Korean eats, what is hanbok, what is Korean’s history and etc. I still remember in a tv show called ‘Two Day and One Night’, the gagman made kimchi by themselves and explain why Korean’s traditional dishes is kimchi. I found it fascinating to learn a new culture and understand it.
