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For this post I wanted to talk a little about the paradox that is multiculturalism in Israel, and my experiences with it while I traveled there last summer. Israel as a country was created for a very explicit reason - essentially to create a home for the Jewish people. In theory, the mainly Ashkenazi (European Jewish) founders of Israel wanted to create what would be considered by today's standards an ethnostate - one country, one religion, one people. But this didn't really work, perhaps because after the holocaust there were far too few Ashkenazi Jews left to populate Israel. What actually happened was the creation of an although majority Jewish, extremely pluralistic and multicultural nation that encompasses a massive range of different people and cultural identities. Immigration was the main factor in this, with large swaths of people coming from Ethiopia, America, and the former USSR. Maybe more relevantly to this class, multilingualism is high as well, with a huge amount of Israelis speaking English or Russian as an auxiliary language to Hebrew - there is enough Russian to have prompted Putin to call Israel a Russian speaking country.
My personal experience was even more extreme. In my group, out of 5 soldiers, two spoke Russian as a first language, and one spoke English with no accent having lived in the states for a long time. Walking around in Jerusalem we went into stores that had absolutely no Hebrew spoken - only Russian/English/Amharic/Arabic. It reminded me a lot of America - in San Francisco I spent a lot of time in Japantown (called Nihonmachi I believe by the residents) and it was always a lot of fun to be able to travel in one city and see an area that felt almost like another country. The same things is possible in modern Israel. So even though by it's founders standards Israel could be considered a failed state, something else has grown in it's place - and it is far more fascinating, in my opinion.
So far I think things are going according to plan, especially in terms of pronunciation and fluidity. Oftentimes during sessions I will be able to respond and express my feelings on something through Hebrew instead of English, for instance if my partner uses a word that I haven't learned I will first say "I don't know that word' in Hebrew. So far I haven't said anything that hasn't been understood so I take that to be a good metric for analyzing basic pronunciation and accent. Since I have learned the alefbet and studied many of the words for common foods in Israel such as bread and olives already, I think I have hit my goal of being able to read basic menus, although looking back I think these kinds of words would help more in a grocery store setting than a restaurant one, since I can't imagine ordering straight olives and bread in a restaurant on the regular. I have used the radiogarden.com website a couple times to listen to Hebrew while doing other things a couple of times, but have found Netflix to be a better resource for this as I can get the translation of what exactly people are saying much easier, and Israeli radio plays way too much Taylor Swift.
As for the relationship between language and culture, I think both these things support and take from each other. Language comes from culture, and vice versa, culture comes from language. I think neither can be built in isolation, whether isolated from each other or more literally by a human isolated from the world.
In the last culture post, I discussed korean food and its cultural importance. In this cultural post, I would like to concentrate on Korean gaming culture since it’s a big part of contemporary korean culture and what I would like to focus on for the final research project.
The artifacts I am using for this post are an article from NewYork Times, an article from BBC news, and a documentary made by Red Bull.
Gaming is a huge industry in Korea. In some other countries, gaming is still in progress for getting recognized as a real sport and regulations are developing to support professional leagues, but South Korean esports has already made its progress that younger Koreans view gaming as a legitimate career path.
“Pro gaming exists in its current form and size in large part thanks to the people who made it possible in South Korea,” said Manuel Schenkhuizen, a Dutch pro gamer. “Other countries took years to catch up and are to this date trying to mimic some of their successes.”
Esports players have become role models for younger people in Korean and as an equivalent of a K-pop or K-drama celebrity. Gaming is THE leisure activity in Korea. Statistics show that 28.9 million people play games in Korea, more than half the population. Twenty percent of the Korean population watch esports tournaments several times per month, and sixty-four percent are permanent esports viewers.
The bbc reporter was able to score an interview with Lee Sang-hyeok (이상혁), better known as his game id--- Faker. He is recognized as one of the best professional players of the game League of Legends. He dropped out of high school to join a professional league team-SKT and has won many awards and honors since then. Professional gamers’ life is actually not as interesting as people would imagine. Faker said in the interview that his day was composed of mostly just eating and repetitive practice. Players must practice relentlessly, spending their days in front of a screen. In the New York Times article, the coach of CJ Entus, Kang Hyun-jong, said he tried to encourage players to enjoy themselves, the real goal was clear. “The best way for players to enjoy themselves is to know how to win,” he said.
One of the most famous members of CJ Entus, Hong Min-gi, said he still enjoyed playing the game, despite the commitment. In part, he said, it was because he usually won. “I still get motivated when I beat someone,” he said. What faker said in the interview also comfirms this. Faker started his career for the awards and prizes, but gradually, it’s more for the sense of achievement.
Though gamers and industry insiders have different theories about how e-sports became so popular in South Korea, nearly all versions start in the late 1990s.
At the time, in response to the Asian financial crisis, the South Korean government focused on telecommunications and Internet infrastructure. By 2000, a vibrant community of gamers emerged, largely thanks to PC bangs that used the new connections. South Korean currently has over 20000 PC-bangs, where people play games together and learn how to play games better. A lot of professional players’ career started with playing the tournaments hosted by these PC-bangs.
The government also became involved, creating the Korean E-Sports Association to manage e-sports. Cheap television stations took off as well, a result of the new infrastructure, and it was only natural that one, then more, would focus on e-sports.
Companies also started to sponsor teams since they see the potential for business profits.
sources:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180329-inside-south-koreas-intense-gaming-culture
So far I’ve learned Hangul and I can read Korean now, and I’ve expanded my vocabulary quite a bit in the basic words realm. After reading H.D. Brown’s work, I realized that my current learning plan places emphasis on organizational competence and sociolinguistic competence. I think these are important parts of communicative competence so my learning plan seems good. However, a key aspect of communicative competence that I haven’t given a lot of importance to is strategic competence. While building up my organizational competence and sociolinguistic competence is important, it is also very slow, and I need to keep practicing the language everyday without knowing everything about this. This requires strategic competence. Knowing how I can use the words I currently know to convey a message about something outside my vocabulary is a skill that I need to develop and it falls under strategic competence. I’m going to try to modify my learning plan a bit to include goals that advance my strategic competence.
Korean food is a big part of Korean culture, and another big part of Korean culture is behaviour. In Korea a lot of importance is placed on how a person looks, acts, and talks. In order to successfully navigate through or embrace Korean culture it is important to inculcate behaviour that is perceived as good within the culture. So, I decided to delve deeper into good table manners in Korean culture, how exactly a typical Korean meal looks, and how one should eat it.
A typical Korean meal consists of the rice and, as in most Asian countries, it is considered the hero of a meal and all other dishes are served as accompaniments to the rice. A bowl of rice is usually served with a stew or soup on the side. Note that it is crucial to make sure that the rice is always to the left of the stew/soup. Apparently the rice bowl is only to the right of the soup to signify someone’s death. There are usually a bunch of side dishes that are served alongside the rice and the stew/soup which are referred to as banchan. They’re there to offer some variety and they consist of dishes like kimchi (spicy pickled vegetables), gyeran mari (rolled omelette), and namul (seasoned vegetable dish). Along with this, a meaty side dish can be served to be had with the rice or with ssam. Ssam is a dish where meats and other sides are wrapped with leafy vegetables like lettuce or cabbage. This is usually had in one bite so it is very important to ration your ssam such that you can eat it all in one bite.
The cutlery to eat all the delicious food mentioned above consists of metal chopsticks and a metal spoon. The fascinating thing is that Korean chopsticks are flat! It is important to note that unlike cultures in Japan where it is considered normal to pick up your bowl or rice and eat it, in Korean it is considered rude to lift up any bowl while eating. Hence, the spoon is usually used to eat rice. It is also important to note that it is considered rude to use both the spoon and the chopsticks at the same time. So, while it may seem reasonable to use both the spoon and chopsticks while eating the stew, apparently one should remember to not do it!
Other rules for proper supper table etiquette include maintaining good posture while eating, chewing quietly, and not showing the food in your mouth. Also, because Korean culture places a lot of importance on honoring your elders, it is essential for younger people to not pick up their cutlery until their elders have picked up theirs, and the younger people should only leave the table after their elders do.
This is all the information that I found through my search through the internet. Truth is, I never actually had Korean food in a Korean household or any other traditional Korean settings, but if the opportunity presents itself, I will gladly accept it and try to make sure that I display good table manners.
For this cultural post, I will talk about Korean spicy food. I think Korea is known for some of its spicy food. I really love eating spicy food even though my tolerance for spice isn't that high. It is almost like an addiction. I always crave spicy food especially Korean spicy food. I'm sure there isn't anyone who doesn't know about the Korean fire noodles. The fire noodle challenge was very popular on YouTube, and even now you can see many YouTubers even non-Korean YouTubers eating them. The fire noodles are by Samyang, and in Korean the noodles are called Buldak bokkeummyeon. The regular one looks like this.
These noodles are very spicy. There's actually an even spicier version called nuclear spicy noodles, and there are also a bunch of different flavors. Some of the most popular ones are the cheese and carbonara. My brother eats the regular ones all the time, but I don't like it that much anymore. You can get these at any Korean grocery stores and online like Amazon. Also, there is now a Buldak dipping hot sauce.
Another well-known dish is Yeopgi Tteokbokki, which is just spicy Korean rice cakes, but this place puts it into a giant bowl, and drizzles cheese on top. This is also very spicy. I don't think I can ever try the challenge level, even the normal level is pretty spicy, and I have heard that for some people, even the mild level is extremely spicy. Before I had Yeopgi teokbokki, or yeoptteok for short, I never realized how good cheese with spicy rice cakes is. It is a great combination. Yeoptteok is based in Korea, but they have two locations in Los Angeles, and I think another one in New York as well.
The next one is something I have never tried. It seems too spicy. It is called Songju Fire Naeongmyeon. A few of the pictures I've seen scare me a bit. In some pictures, the color of the sauce looks extremely bright red. Here is a picture of a Mukbang YouTuber eating it. Naeongmyeon literally means cold noodles, and there are various types like there is one with cold broth and one without broth and just sauce you mix and even Pyeongyang (North Korea) style naeongmyeon. The spiciest food I have ever had was actually naeongmyeon not the Sonju one though. I think the place I went to was in the Jamsil area in Korea. I searched it on Google and found it. It is called Haeju Naengmyeon. Don't add in too much of their red sauce. It is very spicy. I added too much, and I almost died, but it was still very good. I really want to go there again. It was also the best naengmyeon I've had in general. Their hot self-serve broth was also extremely good. It was perfect with the naengmyeon, and sometimes I think about how good it was and remember that I can't eat it unless I go to Korea.
This one isn't exactly traditionally Korean, but I still want to mention it since I'm sure only Korea has extremely spicy tonkatsu, or pork cutlet. Here's a picture.
I don't think I could ever handle this.
These are some of the Korean vocabulary words that I’ve learned and practiced for the past couple of weeks.
- 공휴일 (Gong-hyu-il) noun: government holiday
- 훈민정음 (hoon-min-jung-eum) noun: a term used to describe the first form of hangul.
- 개칭되었다 (gae-ching-dwae-ut-da) verb: changed
- 구강구조 (gu-ghang-gu-jo) noun: shape of the mouth when speaking
- 애민정신 (eh-min-jung-shin) noun: love for a country’s citizens
- 문맹률 (moon-meng-ryu-eul) noun: illiteracy rate
- 개천절 (geh-chun-jull) noun: a holiday that celebrates the founding and birth of Korea
- 제헌절 (je-hun-jull) noun: a holiday that celebrates the creation of the Korean constitution
- 광복절 (gwang-bok-jull) noun: a holiday that celebrates Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonialism
- 한글날 (han-gul-nal) noun: a holiday that celebrates the creation of hangul.
These were some of the more interesting vocabulary words that I learned because they are directly linked to specific historical events. For example, the word 개천절 is directly linked to a Korean fable. In this fable, a tiger and bear searched for the deity of Korea because they wanted to be human beings. Once they completed a task given by the deity, they transformed into human beings and founded Korea.
The word광복절 is comprised of three parts. 광 (gwang), 복 (bok), and 절 (jull) mean “light”, “return”, and “festival day” respectively. Literally, this means that Korea has restored its light from Japan. Korea was colonized from 1910 to 1945 after Korea was forced to sign the Japan-Korea Treaty in 1910. This treaty soon transformed into terms for colonization after Japan prevented Korea from developing its political, military, and cultural status. For many years, Koreans resisted the rule of the Japanese by forming demonstrations and creating resistance forces. After the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan signed the Potsdam Declaration, surrendering control over Korea.
한글날 (hangul-nal) celebrates the birth of hangul. I learned the rich historical facts behind this event. I learned that before Korea started calling this holiday 한글날, it used to celebrate the day as 훈민정음 (hoon-min-jung-eum). The language was created by King Sejong out of his love for his people. In Korean, a leader’s devotion to his country and people is called 애민정신 (eh-min-jung-shin). During King Sejong’s reign, his country’s 문맹률 (literacy rate) was close to 0%. In order to increase this rate exponentially, King Sejong designed the language so that it would closely follow the sounds and the shapes we make with our throats and mouth. In essence, hangul is a commoner’s language and can be learned by anyone in a short amount of time.
Learning so far, I have a deeper understanding of the connection between language and culture. Firstly, language is part of the culture. Like other cultural phenomenon, language is also a social phenomenon, it occurred with the production of society, and develops with the development of society. Language has all the attributes of culture, so language is also a kind of culture. The language is with nationality, different nationalities often have different language. It is the most important spiritual wealth of human society.
Secondly, language is the main carrier of the culture. Although language is a part of culture, other cultural phenomena generally cannot exist independently of language. Only through language can culture be preserved, continued and spread, just like the inheritance of history and the spread of religion.
Also, language is a mirror of culture. Language reflects a nation’s culture and reveals the contents of the national culture. Through a national language, people can understand the nation’s customs, lifestyles, ways of thinking and other features.
To improve my language communication skills, I think I can try to communicate with my friends who can speak Korean. Although it may be difficult to express ideas accurately because of a small vocabulary, it is a valuable opportunity to practice and correct pronunciation.
In one of my Korean classes in the past two weeks, my language partner brought in a surprisingly short newspaper article that I was surprised about. I thought that since I spoke Korean at home, I would be able to tackle much longer articles with ease. However, I quickly learned that speaking skills do not necessarily translate to reading/writing skills. While my limited vocabulary did not seem to affect my everyday conversations with my parents, it made a large impact when I tried to read that short newspaper article. In the narrow sphere of topics I talk about with my family (e.g. school, friends, health, etc) I essentially didn’t need anything past a middle school, or even elementary school level vocabulary. At first, when I skimmed the article I felt very disoriented and lost. I didn’t recognize almost a third of the words in the entire article and felt immediately frustrated. However, my language partner suggested we go through the article slowly, word-by-word. She also suggested that we stop at each word I did not recognize, and had me first try and figure out the definition by context clues and hints within the word itself (e.g. when a word had the root of another word that I knew). In this way, I found that I could figure out a surprising number of words and the initial feeling of dejection started to fade. My partner provided both the definition and context for the words that I could not figure out by deduction. She explained the context of the word within the article, along with its cultural context in Korean society.
I not only learned the boundaries of my Korean through reading this article, but also learned a lot about the Korean government’s influence in deciding national holidays. The article discussed the Korean public’s discontent about a national holiday being cancelled. In Korea, there are certain policies that allow the government to add a couple days or subtract a couple days for a holiday. For example, if a holiday like Chuseok happened to land on a weekend, when it usually lands on a weekday, the government has the power to suggest additional days off for the time employees “lost”. I learned that these extra days are commonly called Red Days because they are marked by red ink in calendars. Being assigned this article acted as a kind of wake up call to show me just how much I still had to learn about both the Korean language and the Korean culture.
While I am Korean-American, the American side of me is what dominates my idea of culture and society. While I do sometimes watch Korean dramas or variety tv shows, I still have a ways to go in order to understand what modern-day Korean society and culture are about. I will continue to read short, relatively simple articles as suggested by my language partner. I will also continue to use the method of slowly combing through the article and making sure not to skip over words I don’t recognize.
Pictures:
In the recording, I said that I want to learn the basic conversation in Turkish and more cultural background about their food, music, and fashion. I also said that watching videos in Turkish is a good way to learn how to speak and think like a native speaker. So far, I learned the basic greeting, family tree and all kinds of food in Turkish. I also watched many videos about Turkish culture. For example, I saw a documentary about a transgender in Turkish, through which I have a more comprehensive understanding of how Turkish people, especially the people in small villages think of genders. I also watched some videos of American teen's reviews on Turkish music and food. I am really surprised how similar Turkish music is to American music, including their melody, lyrics and MVs. I think the discussion in class about the different dimensions of culture really helps me to understand Turkish culture.
Language and culture are intertwined. A particular language usually points out to a specific group of people. When you interact with another language, it means that you are also interacting with the culture that speaks the language. You cannot understand one's culture without accessing its language directly. Language and culture developed together and influenced each other as they evolved. In other words, If culture is a consequence of the interactions of humans, the acts of communication are their cultural manifestations within a specific community.
As an art history minor, I am really interested in Turkish history and art objects, especially the Sasanian silver plate, which is famous for its delicate decorations and political manifestation in the world. The Sasanian Empire, also known as the Neo-Persian Empirewas the last kingdom of the Persian Empire before the rise of Islam. At its greatest extent, the Sasanian empire encompassed all of today’s Iran, Iraq, Eastern Arabia, Egypt, large parts of Turkey and much of central Asia. Most of the royal scenes on the silver vessels that have been preserved are in the form of hunts. Some of the silver plates with hunting scenes are clearly related in design, iconography detail, and style. For art historians, it is crucial to date those silver plates in order to study its historical and social context. In the nineteen-thirties, a famous historian, Kurt Erdmann analyzed the scenes in considerable detail and divided the hunting plates into three main stages in an overall chronological. The first includes vessels of the third and fourth centuries. On these, there is a two-figure composition: the kind is hunting a lion (see the photos below). On all these plates in the first stage, the hunt is conceived of as an enlivened chase or dramatic combat. The sense of direct conflict is heightened by the eye to eye contact between the hunter, whose head is in pure profile, and the animal sought. In Erdmann’s sequence, the second stage begins in the fourth century and reaches a high point in the mid-fifth. The major change is from a representation of the hunt as a contest to what Erdmann described as “Treibjagd”, in which the animals no longer confront their attacker, but flee away from him. The animal at this stage increase in number while diminishing in size. There is no longer a dramatic hunt but a picturesque scene almost free from the flat surface of the plate. In this second stage, the gliding was applied to the figural design. In the third stage, on the Sasanian vessels o the sixth and seventh centuries, Erdmann noted an almost total absence of relief, likening the designs to drawings with strong contours. A variety of animal species are represented. The gilding is more carelessly applied, appearing in the background, not on the design. In addition to these Sasanian hunting plates, Erdmann listed a large number of pieces that he considered to be post-Sasanian. For the most part, these were, in his opinion, imitations of original vessels belonging to the first and earlier stage. He observed that in all instance the kinds wore crowns later in date than those of the early Sasanian period they were intended to imitate, and the designs included details such as the strong contours apparent only in his latest Sasanian group. Overall, so accurate are his observations and so convincing many of his arguments that It is almost impossible to consider the royal hunting vessels entirely afresh, free from the influence of Kurt Erdmann’s work. I attached several photos of the silver plates of hunting scenes below for people to better understand his theory.
Ge’ez and Amharic belong to the Semitic language family. Growing up I was told that Ge’ez is the parent of a couple of languages on the horn of Africa such as Tigre, Tigrigna, and Amharic. This is because it spoken much less now and the languages like Tigrigna and Amharic are said to come later. Ge’ez is also the sister of Aramic, Arabic, and Hebrew. According to the Semitic Language Family Tree from the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition, it shows Tigrigna, Ge’ez, and Amharic on the same plane along with Aramaic and Arabic. However, Hebrew is on the next plane (5th). By plane I mean number of generations from the proto language. I am tempted to think number of planes indicates time period, though I am not sure.
Languages in this same family have similar phonetic inventories that are unique to this area like the throaty [k] sound. These are also languages that are deeply rooted in Abrahamic faith traditions and thus many similar cultural traditions. The Proto-Semitic family came from the Proto-Afro-Asiatic family.
Linguists make language family trees and document the known languages. As of 2017, there were 7,099 documented languages and 145 language families according to Ethnologue. It is interesting that my perception based on oral tradition may be a little different than what is documented regarding the relationship between Tigrigna/Amharic and Ge’ez. However, maybe it is just that the period of time between Tigrigna/Amharic and Ge’ez is not significant enough, relatively, to be categorized on a different plane.
The Semitic Language Family Tree
(from the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition)
