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A language’s history can help me learn the language, because I will have context for why certain words are used more often than others or why some words don’t exist in the language. For example, I know that Koreans follow Confucianist principles heavily in their daily lives, which explains the existence of honorifics and formal speech that Koreans use to show respect for elders, strangers, and family members. If I didn’t know how important filial piety was in Korea, I could probably still train myself to say honorifics and formal speech in the right situation. But, it’ll be a thousand times easier if I knew the history, because then I would probably understand cultural mannerisms and infer the right things to say. And, I'd much rather prefer improvising my conversations than remembering a fixed dialogue from a textbook. 

Learning about the history of Hangeul allowed me to discern when to use hanja and Hangeul. I now have a greater appreciation of Hangeul, because I learned that it’s an alphabet that persevered through times of power and class struggles. The fact that nearly 100% of Koreans are literate now amazes me because that’s a wonderful status for any country. So, in that case, I think learning about the history helps motivate me to learn the language as well. In the end, you can’t separate language from the culture. You have to learn them both to be a truly proficient language learner.

For the most part, I think Korea is mostly a polychronic country. Although they acknowledge the importance of time, Koreans also don’t let it confine them. Of course, this may not apply to the corporate realm, where businesspeople in any country are expected to be timely and efficient. But, I’m talking about the greater masses. The Korean people's’ attitudes towards life is probably not unanimous, but in general I think Koreans are flexible with time.

But, I also don’t think it’s totally black and white. I see a bit of monochronic behavior in Korea depending on the situation. For example, trains have to follow a strict schedule. Most people with jobs understand to be timely. People with appointments are expected to show up on time. I feel like this is the basic necessity for being a respectable member of society. The Westernized Korean society is showing increased awareness for time which is apparent in institutions such as schools, companies, factories, hotels, and stores. So, in this case, punctuality and diligence is a basic criteria for being a respected member of a specific community.

It's a different case for traditional Korean society, however. Back then, there were no such modern institutions so punctuality and diligence were mainly things that women, servants, and manual workers had to worry about. High-class men, or yangban, were not expected to show diligence because they did not do much (or any) physical labor. The servants and women were given those jobs, which included preparing food, sewing, cleaning, and washing.

In general, Koreans like spending time together especially with the family, which further supports my claim about their sense of polychronism. It’s more obvious if I compare Korea to America, which is a country that highly values punctuality. Korea appreciates leisure time and it shows in their sense of community and collectivist mindset.

My learning goal for this week is to ask for the date and learn the months in Korean. I would need to learn how to ask “what day is it today” in Korean and learn how to say January-December. I accomplished these goals by looking at:

YouTube videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Le2OdXZnk
Practicing with my Korean friends
Practicing with my language partner
BYKI
Mango Languages

The reading talks about the American-Indian language Siletz Dee-ni that is on the edge of extinction with only 5 people speaking. While after persistent effort by tribe members and linguistic professionals, the language is now being protected and taught by local schools. This article reminded us the importance and urgency of protecting extinct languages because language is a carrier of culture, and the death of a language is actually the death of a culture. We have 56 races in China; each of them has their own unique language and culture,although some of them only have less than 10 people in the tribe. However no matter how few people are speaking the language, they are representatives of their history and culture. It is terrifying if a language died with no records or dictionaries left since this race would probably be forgotten by future people and wiped on the history forever. Therefore, although it is necessary for us to learn most spoken languages like English under the globalized society, it is also important for us to know the significance and trying to protect minor languages since they also represent the history of human development. There are more important or less important among languages and all of them are worth treating equally in research. 

For my culture project, I’d like to research on traditional Korean houses, or hanok. I became curious about hanok when I first saw them in dramas. They appear very cleverly built from natural materials and they’re aesthetically pleasing too. I also like being resourceful and lead the green effort in my own home, so I'd love to learn about the architectural design that makes it such an efficient home. Anyways, I’ll talk more about hanok in my presentation. My learning goals for the project include the following: 1) learn about the history of hanok houses up to present-day, 2) use at least 20 relevant Korean phrases/terms in my presentation, 3) extract some cultural insight from the history of hanok and share it with the class.

 A home in Bukchon hanok village

The reading on the revival of the Siletz language and culture was very interesting because it was temporarily a dead language and through great effort, it became a language once again. This is important because language is what defines a culture and a persons' identity. 

Most of the world’s languages that are dying are oral languages that have no written tradition. However, just because these languages have no written existence doesn’t mean they are less advanced. A changing culture is also responsible for the demise of oral language—humans increasingly live in an era where the preferred medium of communication is through written words and even symbols such as emoji.

Language is one of the things that defines a culture, both through who speaks it and what it allows speakers to say. Words that describe a particular cultural practice or idea can never be translated exactly into another language. Many endangered languages have rich oral cultures, with stories, songs, and histories passed on to younger generations, but no written form of the language. Without speakers of these languages, an entire culture is lost.

Most endangered languages are spoken by indigenous groups that have interacted closely with the natural world for thousands of years. These languages have developed words that hold huge amounts of information about the natural world, with information about species or natural phenomena that has not been recorded by scientists. Learning from these groups may be key to preserving species and ecosystems.Therefore, when a language dies we lose knowledge about the natural world.

Each human language teaches us about how the human brain can work. Without studying each language spoken in the world, we will never understand all the ways humans can communicate and store knowledge. Every time a language dies, we lose part of the picture of what our brains can do.

The term language encompasses reading and writing. Historically, the Korean language was heavily influenced by the Chinese as demonstrated by their Hanja, meaning Chinese characters, which was an old way of writing. Hanja was predominately used by the wealthy high class. One day, King Sejoung the Great wanted a language that could be learned and used by all classes so he established the Korean alphabet, termed Hanguel. The history of the Korean language is interesting, especially how it still influences modern day Korean. Currently, modern literature is heavily written in Hanguel but academic writing still uses a mix of Hanguel and Hanja. There are a lot of debates on whether to only use Hanguel or have a mix of Hanja and Hanguel. The history of the language has helped me learn the language more by understanding why they emphasize certain words. Korean is a language with dual form within the language: formal and informal. This is due to the social division and hierarchy from the past and Confucian ideals.

      In my journey to learning Korean, I have found it to be extremely interesting and challenging because of how different it is in sound and formation compared to the previous languages I have been or currently exposed to such as French, Spanish, and English. At first, I started learning some random words that are used in daily conversation like “Please” and “Thank you” (“Putak-hamnida” and “Kamsa-hamnida”). However, eventually I ran into a road block when my mind began to overload on words. This is when my language partner helped me by demonstrating some connections in words. In other words, he began to break down phrases and words to basic meanings in order to show me commonality and differences. For example, I thought the only way to say “I” in Korean was “J/chen” because I learned “I am well” (J/chen chal ji-nae yo). However, if someone wants to say “I am sad”, they do not start the phrase with “j/chen” but rather “chun”. The whole phrase is “chun k/gi-bbo-yo”. One can use “chun” as “I” for other emotions besides “sad” like mad and happy. So in Korean, there are exceptions and rules that many who are unaware can easily commit. My language partner and other articles have explained the importance of Korean language to the culture. There are different ways of speaking or addressing someone who has more power (social standing) or older. The language is very intertwined with honorifics which are a grammar formation to convey honor and respect. There are special nouns and verbs used to show respect and honor to social superiors. Without honorifics, one can offend a lot of people in Korea. An example of this can be seen in the way you greet someone. The formal (honorific) way to say hello to someone older or higher socially is “annyeong haseumnikka”. Meanwhile, a way to greet others while still maintaining a level of formality is “annyeong haseyo”. The complete informal way to greet a love one or friend is “annyeong”.

      One aspect in learning a language for me that makes it difficult is my mind makes to many connections with phrases or words that I learned. However, through the help of my language partner, I can stop myself from making these false and erroneous connections and stick to the proper and correct way to speak Korean. A technique that has helped my communicative competence is writing down the phrases or words several times in a notebook. Another aspect that I can improve my communicative competence is pronunciation. This can be difficult for me because Korean uses a lot of sound that are hard and different for me. Compared to the other languages in my arsenal, Korean, I think, requires slightly more discipline in enunciation and annunciation. I think listening to my friends speaking Korean and Korean music can elevate my speech pronunciation as oral listening is a technique that helps drill sound and noise into my mind. Conditioning my ears to familiarize the Korean vocal is a way to increase my communicative competence.

Reflect upon my Korean learning progress to date, I think that everything goes pretty well and satisfied with my learning plan. I have looked and save a lot of valuable resources such as videos, pictures and websites about learning Korean. Every weekends I will go to Youtube to see if there is any videos update and learn the new topic; if not, I will keep looking back the old stuffs and practice. Every week I will try to remember at least 2 new sentences and six new words in Korean. In leisure time, I will watch some Korean dramas or TV shows in order to get more familiar with the Korean. For the next following time this semester, I may add more time to learn Korean and try to accomplish my final goal, which is learning the daily Korean conversations to the level that I can travel to Korean alone. 

My goal of this week was learning the grocery shopping in Korean. I want to go travel to Korean this summer, and shopping in grocery is one of my favorite things to do.  I searched online and happened to find this interesting picture to learn about grocery shopping in Korean with specific vegetables. I think this picture served as a good study tool for our Korean language learners because it not only has English meaning, Korean pronunciation and words, but also some interesting facts. 

I really enjoyed watching the Cultural Shock video because I have a lot of international friends in UR and friend that have gone abroad. It taught me a lot about what my friends and other international students experience in the U.S and vice versa for those that went abroad. One is an expert of their culture, but not of others despite having taken courses or knowing people from it. I have many Korean friends and currently enrolled in a Korean class, but interestingly I learn something new and shocking about the Korean culture almost every day. I can’t even imagine the huge culture shock I would experience if I were to visit Korea today. I definitely agree that most people view the idea of traveling to a foreign country or studying abroad as exciting and wonderful at first, but reality kicks in later. Not trying to discouraging studying abroad programs or traveling abroad, I think that many people neglect or forget the difficulty in integrating to a society or culture different from ones. However, I have noticed in every case (from my friends and sister that went abroad) that they come back slightly different: more mature and well-rounded. Culture shock occurs to everyone and helps grow this appreciation for one’s culture while comprehension of another culture. I think it’s one of the best ways to educate and foster global awareness and understanding of diversity. Everyone knows the world is diverse, but can’t fully grasp it unless thrust open a situation or encountering that diversity. This comprehension attained from culture shock is different from learning about it in a classroom. I can say I have experienced culture shock in many levels: from different parts of the U.S to my vacation in Europe and Dominican Republic. I liked hearing how the faculty and international students advice the viewers (potential international students or study abroad candidates) of the difficulties as well as the joy in entering a different culture, as well as their experience with culture shock and dealing with it. 

I am doing quite well following my learning plan especially on making notes and watching Korean culture youtube program. Through watching Korean Englishman, I gained knowledge of Korean food culture and daily life. I also made notes every time I learnt a new Korean word while reading articles and talking with my Korean friends. In this way, I could review easily by myself and I found some simple rules of Hangul system while pronouncing words with similar components. However, there are also some difficulties and goals that I did not achieve. For example, since we have not got our language partners yet, it is hard for me to know if my spoke Korean is correct. In my learning plan, I said that I would try to learn and speak Korean to my Korean friends, however we did not meet that often and it is hard to learn something systematically from your friends. Most of the time, they just taught me one of two funny words instead of explaining thoroughly to me. Thus I think the biggest challenge for me and for self-learning a language is that it is hard to persevere and learning systematically without guidance. Since I have realized these difficulties, I will try to adjust the plan and make a special "Korean learning time" for myself every week so that I could keep track of my progress instead of "learning only when I have time".

As I said, I kept reading articles and watching TV shows about Korean culture as well as the daily Korean news. I think the purpose of learning a language is not only to be able to speak it but also to get to know the culture and history behind the language. These two things also help and facilitate each other. For me, by watching Korean TV shows, not only did I gain the knowledge of Korean food culture and daily life behaviors, but I also learnt the vocabs and pronunciations of the food and Korean festivals. While doing research on the Korean language history, I realized that although it has developed very differently from Chinese now, Chinese once had very deep impact on it in the history. Before Koreans had their own Hangul writing system, they used Chinese Hanzi writing system for a long time. And it is very impressive that the King in the 15th century was already thinking of the literacy rate and commissioned the invention of a more efficient and more accessible phonetic script to the common people.

As I mentioned that one of my biggest problem now is that I am not learning Korean in a systematical and organized way, but only when I am free and meeting with my Korean friends instead. So in order to improve my learning plan and communicative competence, I am going to make every Friday 1:15-3pm as my “Korean learning” time and try to meet with my Korean friend once a week to ask her about the questions I have in Korean learning and to show her the records of my spoken Korean. I hope that I could keep track of my learning progress by doing so, instead of learning in a random pace only if I have time.

For this week, my learning goals are to go over easily misspelled words and common grammar mistakes in Korean. I hope to improve my spelling and writing skills by practicing writing easily misspelled words list from Berkeley's Online Intermediate College Korean. There are 13 listed on the site, with explanations and ways to differentiate two similar sounding characters and words. Although I think the Korean is fairly easy to read, spelling is difficult because there are a lot of silent characters (homograph). So there are many words that sound the same but are spelled differently. Comparing it to English it would be something like: flower vs. flour. Also, in Korean, spacing between words are crucial, especially in writing because it could change an entire meaning of a sentence. There's a classic example of this in Korean where "My dad went into the room" can change to "I went into my dad's bag" by changing just the spacing in the sentence. I'm hoping to improve on these areas by trying to message my parents using just Korean so I can become more familiar with spelling with help of autocorrect. 

For my learning activity, I decided to go over kinship terms for family members. It's slightly confusing in Korean because the terms differ for maternal and paternal side of the family. I had to review a lot of these for myself and thought it would be useful for others to learn. 

Mom: Umma

Grandma (mom's side): whae-halmoni

Grandpa (mom's side): whae-harabuji

Uncle (mom's side): Yimobu 

Aunt (mom's side): Yimo

Dad: Appa

Grandma (dad's side):chin halmoni

Grandpa (dad's side):chin harabuji

Uncle (dad's side): Go-mobu

Aunt (dad's side): Go-mo

For males: 

Older sister: noona

Older brother: hyung 

For females:

Older sister: unni

Older brother: Oppa

As I mentioned in the last post that my biggest problem now is that I am not learning Korean in a systematical and organized way, but only when I am free and meeting with my Korean friends. So I am going to set up a special "class time" for my Korean learning. That is, every Friday 1:15-3 PM is my Korean learning time. I will use this time reading Korean learning articles, watching Korean learning Youtubes and record my speaking. Every time, I will also write a summary recording what I have learnt each time. In the next following two weeks, I am going to focus on the writing parting since I have spent a lot of time on speaking part in the past of the semester. I will start from copying the words and phrases first and try to memorize while practicing. Also, I will keep watching Korean dramas and TV shows that I like to keep myself in the language environment and gain more knowledge of the culture and lifestyle in Korean. 

I am doing quite well following my learning plan especially on making notes and watching Korean culture youtube program. Through watching Korean Englishman, I gained knowledge of Korean food culture and daily life. I also made notes every time I learnt a new Korean word while reading articles and talking with my Korean friends. In this way, I could review easily by myself and I found some simple rules of Hangul system while pronouncing words with similar components. However, there are also some difficulties and goals that I did not achieve. For example, since we have not got our language partners yet, it is hard for me to know if my spoke Korean is correct. In my learning plan, I said that I would try to learn and speak Korean to my Korean friends, however we did not meet that often and it is hard to learn something systematically from your friends. Most of the time, they just taught me one of two funny words instead of explaining thoroughly to me. Thus I think the biggest challenge for me and for self-learning a language is that it is hard to persevere and learning systematically without guidance. Since I have realized these difficulties, I will try to adjust the plan and make a special "Korean learning time" for myself every week so that I could keep track of my progress instead of of "learning only when I have time".

Knowing the history of the language is no doubt very useful for my learning of Korean. While doing research on the Korean language history, I realized that although it has developed very differently from Chinese now, Chinese once had very deep impact on it in the history. In the ancient time when Koreans did nit have their hangul writing system, they used Chinese hanzi system and almost all the Korean literatures at that times were written in Chinese character. And although we have very different characters now, I can still find the Chinese origin in many Korean words pronunciations. Learning a language is  not only learning how to speak it, but also to know the history and culture behind the language. The reason why the hangul writing system is so important is that it contributed to one of the highest literacy rates in the world. And it is very impressive that the King in the 15th century was already thinking of the literacy rate and commissioned the invention of a more efficient and more accessible phonetic script to the common people.

  Respond to the readings, reflecting on what is lost when languages die. 

   A language contains words and sounds that represents a particular group. The particular group uses the language interacting with the world, and the language helps the world to identify the specific group. If the language dies, the identity of the group disappears and as a result, no one will know or remember there was a particular group existed many years later. 

   Also, language guides people's thoughts. It is a bridge to share our experience and knowledge. Lost of a language is the lost of knowledge, creativity and imagination. Every language may have its unique way of expressing emotions, ideas, logics and myth. It is a medium of expressing human soul and different languages portray various pictures. When a language dies, the cultural picture lost a color overall. So the richness and diversity of human linguistic lost when a language dies. 

  Furthermore, I think language is a gift from the elders. Language allows new generation to receive benefits from the knowledge by the elders. It is tool and a gift from adults to children. Therefore, children should cherish the treasures from their parents. 

Reflect upon your progress to date, consider the effectiveness of your learning plan and activities, and discuss what changes -- if any -- you will make to finish the semester 

   So far, the learning progress is good and I follow the schedules I made earlier. I keep listening Korean conversations, studying vocabularies and trying to order and ask questions in Korean restaurant. Spending some time every day reviewing and continue study the new materials. I think the learning plan is very useful to keep the learning progress. 

  If there is any changes need to be made, I will pay more attention on Korean conversations. Vocabulary is important as well, but for now, I'd like to learn as many daily conversations as I can. I want to understand and be able to answer when Korean people greet me, ask questions and request my answers. Therefore, in later on study, I will change my focus on daily conversations such as ask directions, order food, greetings, and identify somethings. 

We all have probably heard about “dead” languages - languages that used to exists, but are not spoken anymore. This usually happens due to the influence of other languages that are spoken by a wider range of people and due to the globalization of the world. Tribe languages seem to be on the edge of existence, because of the popularity of the primary language in a country. For example, English has pushed many languages to the brink. Although other countries and national languages have been resistant to the “English revolution”, languages spoken by a smaller group of people within an English speaking country have been vanishing. That happened to the Siletz language in the States. There were less and less people who spoke Siletz and it almost disappeared. Luckily, those that spoke the language found a way to maintain it. One tribe member worked on a dictionary for Siletz  in order to create a record of the language. That enabled other tribe members to practice it, but also enabled them to spread of the language to other countries and waken the interest in learning it. But what if they did not do it, if the language died. We would have not only lost the language, its vocabulary and grammar, but also a part of language history and history in general. For example, Latin is also a dead language that is not spoken, but has been maintained in script. Today it allows us to trace back the roots of modern European languages and find the connection between them.

I have learned many words in Korean, but a lot of them I already knew from music, watching Korean dramas, and going to eat at Korean restaurants. Thus, I know a lot of food words and words if I were to get angry at someone and start yelling or if I were falling in love. I do want to learn more practical words though, so words that I can use daily to get through life or at least be able to survive for a couple of days in Korea.