A very popular sport in South Korean culture and society is baseball. In fact, one of the oldest teams in the KBO League, the Lotte Giants, set a new record for achieving the highest attendance in all of South Korean sports history. This new astounding record was set during the 2009 KBO baseball season, and they drew approximately 1.38 million people to watch their games inside the Busan Sajik Baseball Stadium and the Ulsan Munsu Baseball Stadium. Let me remind you that the population of South Korea in 2009 was only 49.31 million people. Baseball is believed to have been introduced to South Korea in 1905 by American Christian missionaries. It’s actually also believed that the U.S marines played exhibitions against the Seoul Athletic club. It was the 1980s that initiated the prominence of baseball in the lives of South Koreans. In 1982, seven Korean teams were formed: the MBC Chungyong, Lotte Giants, Samsung Lions, OB Bears, Haitai Tigers, and Sammi Superstars. And eventually in 1994, one of South Korea’s own, Chan Ho Park( a pitcher), made his debut for the Los Angeles Dodgers. This was a huge deal not only for Korean Americans but also all asians as asians are underrepresented in major sports leagues in the U.S. Chan Ho Park’s success made way for more Korean baseball players to have a chance at a career in the MLB. Some of the Korean baseball players after Chan Ho Park are: Hee-seop Choi, Byung-hyun Kim, Bong Jung-keun, Shin-Soo Choo, Hyun-jin Ryu, and Jung-ho Kang. I actually remember when I was in middle school, I went to an Indians baseball game at Progressive Field and I was able to watch Shin-Soo Choo play! There was a scarcity of Korean athletes I could look up to so seeing a Korean play at the highest stage for baseball were a big deal and great encouragement. I remember even screaming out his name after the game hoping he would recognize me. Just like baseball in the United States, the game extends outside the professional leagues and into high school and college. Just like the MLB’s minor league, South Korea also has a farm league called the Korea Baseball Futures League. Baseball is significant to Korean history because the popularization of baseball allowed South Korea to get involved with international affairs like the Olympics, World baseball classic, and the Asian Games. In fact, South Korea has been very successful in these international baseball bouts. During the 2000s, South Korea has won second place twice in the World Baseball Classic. Not to mention, the South Korean Olympic baseball team also won the bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics which was hosted in Sydney, Australia. Even though South Korean baseball lacks the talent American baseball may have, people argue that South Korean baseball is more fun and exciting to watch because South Korean baseball requires more participation from the audience. There will usually be a hypeman in front of the spectators and music and chants and dances to keep the crowds entertained.
All Posts (9261)
Sort by
Hello everyone and welcome back. For those of you that do not know, this will be my last Ning Journal enter as I will be graduating from the University of Richmond on May 9th! After graduation, I will be working as a dermatology medical assistant in Alexandria, Virginia, after a year of which I will be applying to PA school. However, I still plan on continuing my ASL! Once COVID-19 has abated, I plan to involve myself in the Galladete Community and volunteer within the Deaf Community. Until then, I will continue my education by chatting with Reba weekly as a friend and teacher.
To provide a brief update, Reba and I have continued to meet twice a week. We are making our way through Barron’s “American Sign Language A Comprehensive Guide to ASL 1 and 2 by David A. Steward and Jennifer Stewart and things are going strong. I am are continuing to expand my vocabulary and with each new word learned, Reba and I generate example sentences. Most recently, we have been creating stories or reciting children’s books through ASL for greater translation and understanding practice. Last week, I had chosen to retell “The Story of Ferdinand” by Munro Leaf, while Reba recited the story of the Three Little Pigs. This has been an extremely helpful exercise as it requires me to incorporate multiple objects and conversations between characters in the story. I believe one of the hardest parts of ASL at this time is establishing different objects/characters signing space and explaining a conversation between two people that are not myself. This is because I have to set specific characters in locations and with personalities within my signing space, something that I have not really had to do before. Additionally, I have to maintain and emphasize my facial expressions while trying to set up the story and its characters.
Regardless, it feels like yesterday that I started taking ASL. I remember when I first joined the Self-Directed Language Program for ASL, I had a lot of trouble finding a time to meet with and communicating with Reba - so much so that I almost decided to drop the program. However, I am forever grateful that I did not as I now have a wonderful friend and mentor. The time has flown by, but as I review what I have learned and through my lessons with Reba, it becomes apparent that I lived and learned through this seemingly and undeniably fast time.
I am forever grateful for the SDLP and hope that all my readers know the program as much as I have. Also, I am so happy to announce that the University of Richmond is offering ASL as a course under the Linguistics classes. Although the course does not fulfill the general education requirement for language, I am beyond happy that the University allowed for the addition of this course. It will increase the University of Richmond students' understanding of the deaf community and, hopefully, if the program gains traction, could eventually be considered a qualification for the Gen-ed.
Once again, thank you to the SDLP for all the time and effort that you have given me. Michael, you are a wonderful teacher and have been incredibly patient and helpful throughout my time here. Thank you so so so much for the work you do.
Have a great life everyone!
I did my cultural research presentation on Korean dialects. There are six main dialects in South Korea.
1. Gyeonggi
2. Gangwon
3. Chungcheong
4. Gyeongsang
5. Jeolla
6. Jeju
Out of these six dialects, I focused on Gyeongsang and Jeju dialect. I focused on the grammar and lexical aspect of the two dialects. Learning about the two dialects helped me understand the language and culture of Korea as I learned about the two dialects.
Here is a link to a google drives folder with my presentation slides, and videos on how the Gyeongsang and Jeju dialect sounds like! https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ol-JOWP4ixnXSiKxK2nS_D2fIHojw4ZD?usp=sharing ;
Here are the sources I used to create my presentation:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_language
- https://www.koreanclass101.com/blog/2018/12/14/korean-dialects/#2
- https://www.90daykorean.com/satoori/#gyeongsang-satoori
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_differences_in_the_Korean_language
- https://www.dialectsarchive.com/south-korea-5
- https://www.creatrip.com/en/blog/9713
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongsang_dialect#:~:text=The%20Gyeongsang%20dialects%20
- http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2021/01/177_280951.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dol_hareubang
- https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/culture-of-jeju-haenyeo-women-divers-01068
Hi!
Attached is a link to a box folder containing my podcast with my iTalki tutor, Adriana. We have a small conversation in Slovak and later talk about my accomplishments and challenges in learning my target language.
Enjoy!
During the past month, I have studied many new concepts and reviewed some familiar topics. The Korean language has many grammar tenses ranging from informal to polite to formal. I have a general sense of which tenses are used in certain contexts. For example, when speaking to someone older than me, I should be respectful and use a formal tense. In these cases, I would use -입니다 or -습니다. If I am speaking to a peer or someone younger than me, I could use -예요 or -세요.
I am finding that I am becoming a fast learner. In the past, it would take a lot of repetition for me to remember a new phrase or concept. Now, I am discovering that I do not require as much repetition for me to remember something new. For example, the phrase for “welcome” in Korean (어서 오세요) is one that I have heard many times in the past, whether in a Korean TV show, at church, etc. It was one of those phrases that I could vaguely identify if I heard it, but if asked to say it myself, I would not be able to. This was one of the phrases that I learned this month. After a couple of times seeing how it is written and hearing it pronounced more clearly, I finally remembered the phrase.
Another topic that I had learned before but recently reviewed is counting in Korean. There are two systems of counting in Korean. However, a new concept that I learned is the suffixes corresponding to different objects. These suffixes come after the number and differ based on the type of object it is describing. There are different suffixes for things, people, animals, slices, books, bottles, clothing, days, months, and years, and more. As you can imagine, this is a confusing topic for native English speakers to learn, since there is nothing like this in English.
In addition to these topics, I also briefly reviewed how to ask how much something costs. This will be especially important to know when I am in Korea. It is a question that can be used in almost any context. Along with this question, I reviewed the Korean currency, which is called “won” (원). One United States Dollar equals approximately 1,115 South Korean won. It is still difficult for me to convert Korean won to US dollars and vice versa. However, I am sure that I will become more comfortable with this conversion as I see Korean won more often.
Overall, even though the semester is ending, I am still looking forward studying Korean over the summer and beyond. As I continue my Korean language studies, my goal is to not get caught up in the small, minute aspects of grammar or other parts of the language. I remember listening to a Talk to Me in Korean lesson in which they discussed how to sound like a native speaker. The teachers gave several examples of Korean words that Korean speakers mispronounce. It is so common to mispronounce these terms that if I were to say it as it is supposed to be said, I may not be understood. Ultimately, I want to learn Korean to be able to converse with real people and sound authentic.
This month I’ve focused on learning grammar structure and syntax to word towards my goal of creating and interpreting basic sentences in Korean! There are definitely some morphological differences between Korean and English though, so it has taken longer than I anticipated to completely memorize the different grammar rules.
Learning about Korean nouns was a much easier concept for me to grasp since they have similar grammatical rules like in English. For example, to make a noun plural, you add 들[deul] at the end of the word. Just like in English, some words that are plural don’t need 들 added at the end. It’s also interesting that when the number is specified in describing a plural noun, the plural marker 들 is not needed. For example, one student” is “한 학생 [han hakseng]” and “two students” is “두 학생 [du hakseng]” in Korean, and as you can see 들 is not added to the end for two students although students is plural in this case (medium.com). I also realized how easy it is to identify nouns through learning about verbs and adjectives in Korean, as most are just the noun form with different stem endings attached.
So far I have a very basic understanding of verb conjugations in Korean. It was helpful to begin by learning the verb 하다 [hada] which means “to do,” which is interestingly used quite frequently in Korean. In fact, most verbs and adjectives are just nouns attached to the 하다 ending. This tip is very helpful because you can remove the ending to learn the noun version of the verb/adjective. However, not all adjectives have the 하다 ending as the ending stem depends on the form of the adjective. Whenever there is a 다 ending the adjective is in the infinitive form, which is “to be (adj.)” as in to be 크다 which means “to be big.” If you just wanted to translate it as a standalone adjective “big,” then you have to drop the 다 ending and add either ㄴ to the end if the word ends in a vowel, or add 은 to the end if the verb stem ends with a consonant. So to write “big” it would be 크 (verb stem) + ㄴ (ends in vowel) = 크다 “big”. There are different verb endings for irregular Korean verbs, but I will work on learning those once I gain a better understanding of Korean morphology.
Moving forward in my language learning, I will need to learn verb conjugations as there are many different endings for different forms of the word. In terms of syntax, so far I have a basic understanding of Korean sentence structure which is subject-object-verb, which is definitely a change from subject-verb-object in English. Before I can begin forming sentences, I’ll also need to learn the different Korean participles as there are many different ones that are commonly used in everyday sentences in Korean. Over the summer, I plan to continue with my studies since this has been such a fun learning experience, so I will continue to use KoreanClass101.com and read blogs on 90daykorean.com which I found to be extremely helpful in learning about Korean morphology.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x4HYS72cJd81ucU4_hMjzGpL3ihrkMwi/view?usp=sharing
I am sad that my Indonesian studies are coming to an end this semester and also that my language partner, Farida, is going back home to Indonesia soon. I truly learned so much from her this semester and not only that, but we have so much in common and I consider her a friend rather than just a language partner or instructor.
Our last few weeks were spent wrapping up our lessons, which was the A1 unit. When I continue next semester, I will be moving onto A2. I had a midterm a few weeks ago, which went a lot better than I expected. It included multiple sections that effectively incorporated listening, writing, and reading. The actual content was fair and included several units we had studied before. My only issue was forgetting certain vocabulary. I understood pretty much all the questions, instructions, and the grammar points included, but there were a few words that I had to guess the meaning for. I used context clues and process of elimination, however, so I think it all worked out well. I was nervous before because I did not actually know how/what to study for the exam. I understood that the A1 level was derived from a textbook which Farida introduced to me and showed me the PDF for in the beginning of the semester, but it was not something we explicitly looked at. Most of the time, the lectures would be from PowerPoints she created, so I studied by reviewing those and looking at new vocabulary I had written down in my notebook.
Since we had a midterm, I assumed we would have a final exam as well, but instead we have a final presentation. This final presentation is one I had to create (with Farida’s help) all in Bahasa Indonesia, about an American topic, and presented to her Indonesian colleagues and students. I chose the topic of mental health in American universities. She prepared me for this presentation by dedicating our last few lessons after the midterm to useful things such as transition words, slang, and formal language (specifically for delivering a speech). These lessons were very interesting because I had never heard of most of the content before, and they were extremely helpful when creating my presentation. The lesson on transition words/phrases is definitely something I referred to when creating/thinking about my presentation. There were a lot of adverbs and prepositions that I had heard before in Bahasa, but never knew the actual meaning of, so it was very valuable. Learning about formal speeches was probably the most difficult one. We went over the opening, body, and closing of a speech (we later modified it to fit a presentation rather than a speech). Most of the language used in the opening/closing is extremely formal so I was not familiar with them at all. Something we also did after midterms was listen to her fellow Fulbright colleagues give presentations on Indonesian subjects. One was on Balinese culture and the other was on Ramadan practices in Yogyakarta. I had actually remembered about these presentations just now, but she may have included them to show me examples of a presentation in Bahasa Indonesia as a form of preparation. To be honest, I am very nervous to present, which is happening on Tuesday evening! I have had assignments in the past where I had to converse with native Indonesian speakers, but this will be the first time speaking in front of several native Indonesian speakers and delivering a presentation. Wish me luck!
I made a lot more progress in Slovak than expected especially when comparing my current language experience to my past experiences with Spanish and Danish. When I started learning Spanish, I was nine years old and a lot less familiar with any language, even English. I did not have a great grasp on the ideas of cognates, grammar, or speaking around unfamiliar topics. The first two years of Spanish were especially slow in introducing content as I only learned basic vocabulary and studied the present tense over and over. There was very little emphasis on proper pronunciation or practicing conversations and a lot of focus on memorization and workbook activities. When learning Danish during my junior year of college, I had the advantage of understanding linguistics and English at a fairly competent level. I knew the importance of identifying cognates, had experience with learning complex Spanish and English grammar, and understood the benefits of circumlocution. However, my Danish language professor fell back on a lot of traditional, systematic teaching methods. As previously mentioned in my past language learning posts, my Danish language learning experience mirrored the teaching methods of an early 20th century schoolhouse. My professor typically spent the hour and a half instructing us to read long paragraphs aloud in unison and focused on activities that felt more like formulas than natural language production.
With my Slovak language experience, I absorbed so much more knowledge in a more meaningful and natural way. Adriana taught me three different declension cases (nominative, accusative, and instrumental), two different tenses (present tense and preterit), how to tell time, and numerous categories of vocabulary (travel, food, city living, etc.). Despite only learning Slovak for three(ish) months, I gained so much more knowledge and confidence than I expected. Though I still struggle with pronunciation, I really feel more confident in my Slovak skills. When listening or watching Slovak media, I can better pick out familiar words and understand the general meaning of the video or podcast.
However, this semester, my proudest accomplishment is actually dedicating myself to a lingual and cultural tradition that my family completely lost as they assimilated to the United States. Though it was out of my control, I always feel great regret and sadness over the loss of my familial culture and language (both on my German and my Slovak side). Their late 19th century immigration to the United States also meant the loss of cultural and linguistic identity for their descendants. Throughout my childhood and young adulthood, I struggled with the absence of a strong cultural connection and the absence of my paternal relatives. These two losses feel like they go hand-in-hand as I lost the ability to interact with the older generations on my paternal side and lost their connection to family lore and traditions. In taking this class, I connected with a part of my ancestry and family that was previously absent from my life. In learning the language, the culture, and the cuisine, I feel slightly closer to this lost ancestry and my lost paternal connection. My connection to my ancestors and the older generations seems stronger and more tangible as I share a small part of their primary language, their cultural practices, their religious rituals, and food traditions.
There is little question why the South Korean beauty industry has been on the boom these last few decades. The rise of K-pop and globalization allows industry producers to innovate their products using new ingredients and push products with high-value commercial deals. The nearly $6 billion dollar domestic beauty industry is a reflection of the cultural shifts in South Korea but are these changes beneficial for the people or have the standards been warped so much by the materialistic market that the populace has become a victim of its own ideals.
South Korean women spend twice as much of their income on skin and beauty products than the American woman equivalent while South Korean men spend more than any other men in the world on these beauty products. This is a result of the myriad of advertisements that cover the view of commercial hubs like Myeong-dong, Seoul. The adverts usually have popular Korean celebrities showing off the products as the newest hot trend for the people to use. Thus, the mainstream beauty standard in South Korea is to have perfect skin and hair that looks like the celebrities. This also leads to extensive skin care regime with products claiming to fix or enhance your skin. I can not speak for the validity of every single product but I have heard about the popularity of South Korean skin products. In fact, many different people end up coming to South Korea to purchase these goods or buy South Korean exported goods online.
But South Korean beauty is not limited to skin care as more extreme options are actually pretty common. For example, cosmetic surgery is extremely prevalent in South Korea as the majority of South Korean women have had something augmented by the time they graduate university. Similar to the appeal of the South Korean commercial hubs, many people come to South Korea to have cosmetic surgery performed on them. It may seem a bit strange to other countries, but when the opportunity to change how one looks is so readily available, safe, and cheap, it is no surprise that many Koreans have embraced the opportunity. This is not to say that the entire society is welcome to these more extreme options however. People with tattoos are generally looks down upon as rebellious and anti-social and plastic surgery is often a controversy for the idols in the K-pop industry. In the big picture, South Korean society is pretty conservative so the beauty industry is in a weird place where many youths embrace it as a part of their lifestyle but the older generations scorn the industry.
The narrative that the celebrities and the cosmetics industry pushes is that looking good is essential and many people do not disagree. We see this happening everywhere in the world. However, right now the boom in the beauty industry has halted because of the pandemic so we may see the makeup sales stagnate enough that people's perceptions change. Though that is an unlikely outcome, it will be interesting to see how beauty standards in South Korea shift over time.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VABg3uLZEEK6ukhOl80HBz0rG6A-Nu8G2BVK9HY9v3A/edit?usp=sharing
Doljanchi (돌잔치) is a tradition in Korea that celebrates the first birthday of a baby.
Traditionally, at the beginning of the dol, people gave prayers. They would prepare a prayer table with food such as rice, seaweed soup, and water. They prayed to two Korean gods, Sanshin (the mountain god) and Samshin (birth goddess, asking for luck and long life and thanking the birth goddess. However, not many people do this because Christianity became one of the dominant religions in Korea. Because Christianity is one of the dominant religions in Korea, this tradition does not happen anymore. This tradition generally happened during the Joseon Dynasty.
The child participates in a tradition called doljabi (돌잡이), a fortune-telling tradition where the child is placed in front of various objects. There are traditional doljabi objects and modern doljabi items that are placed in front of the child. Some examples of traditional doljabi items are money (wealth), pencil (scholar), rice (plentiful life), thread (long life), and bow and arrow (military career). Some more modern doljabi items are a microphone, stethoscope, sports ball, gavel, and many more. The child's parent chooses the items for the doljabi so they can choose the traditional or modern items or a mix of both. He or she is encouraged to grab an item from the set of items, and the item selected will foretell his or her future. The child crawls over to the items laid out for him or her, and the items chosen predict what kind of future the child will have.
Doljanchi tradition began in the 18th century. During that time, Korea was not very developed, especially in the healthcare field, so the infant mortality rate was very high. Even in the 1950s, it was at 26%. Since their infant mortality rate was so high, they considered it a milestone if the infant reached his or her first birthday. Therefore, the people celebrated the milestone with a big party wishing for the child’s good future and life.
During the doljanchi, the birthday baby wears a hanbok and a traditional hat. For girls, they would wear jobawi (조바위) which is a traditional Korean winter cap with earflaps or gulle (굴레), which is a traditional headgear worn for warmth and style. For boys, they would wear a bokgeon, a hanbok head shroud young children wore, or a hogeon (호건), a traditional headgear for young boys to wear.
Dolsang (돌상) is the main rectangular table that is seen at the child’s first birthday. On top of the rectangular table, there are two circular round tables. They represent the wish and hope for the child to grow up without facing hardships. On top of the dolsang, various items have significance and meaning. Some items are fruit, rice cakes, five silk pouches (harmony), dates, minari wrapped in threads (vitality), and many more. There are different kinds of rice cakes put on the dolsang. One kind is baeksulgi (백설기) which represents the pure start of life. Another type is osaek songpyeon (오색송편) which has five different colors representing harmony with the child’s surroundings.
During the last month spent with my language partner I was able to finish up some of my lesson plans and reflect upon my progress over the semester. We had weekly meetings with Ariana and Somyung where we would watch the short films of “XX” . During some of the videos I was very engaged because it got very dramatic and interesting. I made a reflection as I was watching these films because my brain was processing on how to act and how to not act when similar situations come. I realized that people gain knowledge from watching kdrama and I did not know how much influence it was giving me on how I behave with others. But I was amazed at how I was able to learn more about the culture of Korea.
Last week my group recorded our podcast. I think I was able to reflect well as I was talking to my language partner about what we did over the semester. I achieved my goals in improving my writing and as I look back to my diaries I noticed how in the beginning of the semester I had a lot of errors and red marks but towards the end I barely had any marks to fix. I also reflected on how it is not just learning about the language because in order to engage in society or with the people you need to know their culture. A lot of teenagers in Korea would slang words and idioms in their daily conversations but these aren’t taught when you are learning about the language. I feel like just because you know the language and you visit Korea does not always mean you can blend in with the people. Since you know the language you can communicate with people in general but to be a deeper part of society you need to know the flow of the fast changing language.
These days a lot of people shorten the words to where it would once be 응응 “yes, yes” in proper form people now just use letters “ㅇㅇ” It is even crazier how they would shorten not only words but sentences or groups of words “ㅇㅈㄲㄲㅂㄹ” that would be like “왜 자꾸 까불어” which is a word I heard from one of the korean dramas I saw it could be translated to “why are you messing around”. I am sometimes afraid because I am also falling behind with the language even though I lived in Korea for 4 years. It is fascinating how the language continuously changes and I need to keep checking in with the culture so that I do not fall behind.
This semester my main goal was to improve on my writing skills and I saw clear evidence of my improvement so I am proud of my accomplishments. I would really like to thank my language partner for achieving my goals. I think if I were to continue taking Korean class next year, I would now want to write harder essays instead of short writing prompts and diaries to master the language.
During these last few sessions, my language partner and I focused on reviewing the grammar that I had studied during the most recent chapter of the textbook. In addition, I was quizzed on sentence construction using the vocabulary of this chapter as well. Although I had a good idea of how to build the sentences, I still had to look back on my notes to remember the characters. I have had trouble memorizing the words and I should spend more time on the vocabulary. Besides reviewing the chapter grammar and vocabulary, we also recorded our podcast to review the work we have done this semester and it was fun to look back on these last few months. It is a bit sad since I will be graduating this year so I won't be able to participate in these sessions anymore but I am grateful to have found such a fun and helpful department for learning about linguistics, language, and Hangul. One of the things that I really enjoyed this semester with learning Korean was that we had a textbook to look into during lessons and studying. I found that last semester I spent a lot of time on worksheets, which was still really helpful but a textbook offers structure and direction that is invaluable. With that in mind, I really enjoyed this most recent chapter on purchasing goods. One of the main uses of a language is understanding cuisine and being able to apply the language in buying stuff. Learning about Korean currency was also quite interesting and required a bit of numbers as mentioned in the previous learning journal.
My language partner also learned the deep dive on Korean grammar as well and she commented on how the Korean particles was not something she thought about but just did naturally as a native speaker. It makes me wonder about what parts of the English language I take for granted as a native speaker and may be difficult or nearly impossible to distinguish for the English learners out there. Sometimes English words can differ only by a couple letters and can be confusing and I can see similar issues popping up when learning Korean.
I hope to continue learning Korean and applying it after graduation as learning it was quite fun. I know that my career most likely will not require the use of Korean but I initially picked it up as a way of supplementing my hobbies and interests in Korea comics and variety shows. Not to mention Korean music is becoming even more popular abroad so knowing the language may be interesting when the Billboard music list is filled with Korean Artists. I might also pick up another language after Korean and strive towards becoming a polyglot though that is wishful thinking because I do not have the motivation to learn that many languages without purpose. Although my experience in SDLC was limited because of the Covid-19 pandemic, I hope that future students here will get to experience the community of the department and the engaged learning that comes with studying face to face.
For the month of April, I completed the usual work: writing diaries, watching 2 Days and 1 Night, and vocabulary quizzes, and article summaries. I had a lot of fun with the article summaries this month. I was able to find articles on celebrities and dramas that I was genuinely interested in, and it was fun to read about them, improving my Korean reading and comprehension and writing skills. I also wrote my diary entries, and my language partner pointed out how I improved on writing more complex and longer sentences, and I felt really happy about my improvement. Rachel also suggested to me to start writing on paper more despite my preference to type Korean. She gave me multiple suggestions, and I chose to choose my favorite song and write down the lyrics for it to practice my penmanship. I thought this was a great way of practicing my writing skills because it made me really think about the lyrics and their meaning behind them, and I also was able to learn new vocabulary words along the way.
Generally, I find the areas of grammar I struggle with when I write my diary entries. This month, I focused on two areas of grammar to learn about with my language partner. The first grammar rule I learned about was how to write that shows surprise or displeasure, which is expressed with 는다니. Adding this ending to a vowel would create a meaning that implies the speaker’s astonishment at what happened. I also learned how to express my surprise with nouns, which is done by adding -라니. The second grammar rule was learning how to talk about a negative result that happened because of an unexpected or unpreventable event, which is expressed with -는 바람에. However, -는 바람에 could only be used if it is described by something that has the connector 는 attached to it. I thought this rule was interesting because it uses 바람, which means wind in Korean. I found it fascinating how this could be used to express an unexpected event that happened.
I added a new agenda to my learning plan, which was learning about superstitions in Korea. As I was watching a drama in my own free time, it brought up a superstition that Koreans believed in, and I thought it would be fun to include it in my learning plan. I told my language partner about it, and we explored the different superstitions that Koreans believed in, and it was really interesting to learn about them. When we learned about them, I even remembered the superstitions my mom told me about when I was younger. Some superstitions I learned about was the evil spirit free day calendar, which is called 손없는날 달력 in Korean. This superstition is about how if you move on certain days of the month, it can be bad luck, and there is a specific calendar that shows the acceptable and non-acceptable dates for moving. Another superstition is shaking your legs shakes the wealth out of you, which is 다리 떨면 복 나간다. In Korean culture, your legs symbolize wealth and prosperity so shaking them will shake out all the luck and wealth out of you. I had a lot of fun learning about these different superstitions, and I hope to continue learning more about them.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qZWStGKhAE7ZHEOFXqcxb4eDLm5AUXwm/view?usp=sharing ;
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xbrut1URmbIs8FSiK5pvbEWbcXV61f5H/view?usp=sharing
Ahoy!
Over the past two weeks, I cooked four different Slovak dishes to gain a cultural practice that I can take with me after the end of this course and analyze their window into Slovak culture and language. I made pirohy, palancinky, višňove koláče, and hemendex. With each of these recipes, I took their ingredients, origin, or name to better understand Slovak culture and language.
Link to Video and Presentation: https://richmond.box.com/s/dszho8vez29v9emhuu4z6g14ou69d5xz
(I am unable to attach my presentation and video on the Ning. However, attached is a link to a Box folder with both the presentation and the video).
Sources:
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/slovakia/articles/10-traditional-slovak-dishes-you-must-try/
https://www.internationalcuisine.com/about-food-and-culture-of-slovakia/
https://nomadparadise.com/slovakian-food/
http://englishmaninslovakia.co.uk/2017/02/20/spotlight-on-jarmila-hlavkova-author-of-the-first-slovak-recipe-book-to-be-published-in-the-english-language/
https://slovakia.travel/en/slovak-gastronomy
https://www.cheese.com/bryndza/
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/slovakia/articles/brief-history-bryndza-cheese/
https://profil..sk/en/gastronomy/
https://cookslovak.com/2018/03/14/sour-cherry-cakes/
https://cookslovak.com/2019/05/28/what-the-first-slovak-recipes-looked-like/
Jeffery Cole‘s Ethnic Groups of Europe: An Encyclopedia
June Granatir Alexander‘s Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America
