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In these past two weeks I have moved forward in both my conversational Korean and my cultural learning.  I have worked with my language partner on simple phrases such as “I want to eat Korean food” or “I have to study” that are very important, yet easy to learn and apply to daily conversation.  We also covered the different tenses of how to use those phrases and the negative version of each phrase.  For example, the particle ‘안’ is placed in front of the verb ‘want’ or ‘have’ to act as the “do not” in the sentence.  This activity was useful in practicing my verb conjugation for present and past tense.  In later sessions, I would like to extend each of these phrases to learn a more complicated grammatical structure. 

In my lessons with Kim Sumi, we have focused on vocabulary and cultural topics.  I have been able to work with two other people in the class, so it is interesting to learn about what they are wanting to learn as well.  Every class begins with each of us talking to the professor and telling her how we are doing and what we did over the past week.  Through this exercise, we can solidify some key conversational phrases and learn some determiners such as ‘many’ or ‘only’.  Then we talk about each of our cultural topics for our presentation.  This week, our professor gave us a vocabulary list that correlates with our topics.  We go around saying the words to practice reading and pronunciation and write the definition next to each term.  This is our new list to study for the next class in which we will have a quiz.  It is very helpful having the vocabulary to study, not only to increase the number of words we can understand, but also to give us terms to incorporate into our presentation. 

Something that I have failed to do on my part is the consistency of reviewing the material.  I feel like I have little time to dedicate to actually internalizing the words, grammar, and phrases instead of just memorizing them.  I will make an extra effort to study the terms every day and practice incorporating the new sentence structures I’m learning into normal, daily activities.  I have noticed my frustration in classes because there is still so much that I do not understand that is being presented to me.  Sometimes this makes me feel overwhelmed and I need to take a step back.  It is more helpful for me to learn vocabulary and grammar in small chunks and build off of it instead of learning one example of one concept and another example of a completely different concept.  I think this is why I have been having a hard time dedicating part of my day to studying the material because it seems like too much.  Moving forward, I will try my best to learn smaller bits of information more frequently than a lot of information at a time. 

We only one class for this half month due to the fall break, but the quality and content of our last class are really high and interesting. The teacher introduced us to many delicious foods in Turkey and used those foods to make conversation with us in Turkish to help us revise all the words and grammar we learned before.

Turkey sits at the crossroads of east and west and Turkish food is a mixture of cuisines that has resulted in some of the finest dishes in the world. Traditional Turkish food is among the richest cuisines in the world. The variety of Turkish cuisine comes from a rich culinary history and culture due to its prime location on the cusp of both western and eastern worlds. Turkish food is considered one of the world’s three main cuisines and it sits aside the Chinese and French traditions.

I also did some research after class about the historical development of Turkish food, which I found is interesting. The journey of Turkish has been in continuous development from the past beginning from Central Asia, Seljuk, Ottoman Empire to Republican eras and has excelled. The culinary culture of the Ottoman Empire was divided into palace kitchens and public kitchens. Beginning with reform in the Republican period, the impact of foreign cuisine has been observed in Turkish cuisine. The food culture differs from region to region as well. Such diversification and variety create today’s famous Turkish food which, according to what my teacher said in class, never lets anyone disappointed.

Menemen 

This traditional Turkish breakfast item is scrambled eggs cooked in sautéed vegetables and served hot with bread. Dip it, spread it, or spoon it up.

Köfte

A Turkish staple, köfte is balls or patties of ground beef or lamb, and can be served stewed, in sandwiches, over salads, or plain with yogurt.

Mantı

Mantı might remind you of ravioli at first sight, but the traditional Turkish dish is completely unique in taste and texture. Small beef or lamb dumplings are boiled or fried and served with yogurt or butter, and often accompanied with a range of spices.

Kuzu Tandır

The meat for this popular lamb dish is traditionally hung and slow-roasted whole, and it often served with rice or potatoes, and yogurt.

Lahmacun

This flat and crispy bread is traditionally topped with minced meat, salad, and lemon juice (though the above is a beetroot vegan option!), and can be wrapped, folded in half, or pulled apart to eat. Cheap and available on any street corner, it's the perfect light lunch or snack while touring.

Börek

Turkish savory pastry comes in many varieties, most popularly filled with minced meat or spinach and cheese. Börek can be rolled, served as puffs, or layered like lasagna, and served for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack. Any way you have it, börek is always flaky and delicious.

Baklava

Nutty, syrupy, pastry dessert is never better than when served in Turkey. Often topped in ground pistachios, baklava is sweet and unique, and should be eaten fresh!

Lokum

Lokum, or Turkish Delight, is a nougaty dessert served with a variety of flavors and fillings and often topped with powdered sugar. It's always best fresh, as pre-packaged versions tend to go too light on the fillings and too heavy on the sugar, drying it out.

Base on my knowledge about Turkish, I know that Turkish is widely used in Southeast Europe and Western Asia. Outside Turkey, with the immigration, Turkish expanded to Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, and etc.
Therefore, it is a widely used language over the whole world. Also, Turkish belongs to the Turkic family, which includes some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Aisa and Siberia. All languages in the Turkic family share some common characteristics. Specifically, The basic word order of Turkish is subject-object-verbs. Turkish has no noun-classes or grammatical gender. The language has a strong t-v distinction and usage of honorifics. Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. Despite the fact that there is no historical connection or valid interrelationship between Japanese and Turkish, I still found that those two languages share a lot of similarities. First of all, their grammar structures are pretty similar. Both are subject-object-verb structure. This feature is really different from English grammar, which is usually subject-verb-object. Also, both Turkish and Japanese are agglutinative, which means that complex words are formed by combining multiple morphemes. For example, "Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışçasına" is treated as one word in Turkish, which means that as if you were one of those whom we could not make resemble the Czechoslovakian people. Since I have learned basic Japanese before, it is not difficult for me to absorb those rules and I can really take advantage of my Japanese learning experience, which gives me a good start and solid foundation.

I always love to know the history of one language and how it relates to other languages. I know Turkish belongs to the Altaic language family, and Mongolian does too because they share noteworthy similarities in vocabulary, morphological and syntactic structure, and certain phonological features. But I found it a little shocking because I have Mongolian friends, and what they write and speak is really different from Turkish. Mongolian has much more complicated letters. But I think it was more challenging to understand maybe because I studied English as my second language and letters like these look more “normal” to me. In the beginning, I felt Turkish sounds like Japanese, but after doing some research, I found they are totally different from each other, and the most similar language to Turkish is Azerbaijani. After learning some basic Turkish, I found that French and Turkish shared a lot in common. For example, they both have six subjects, and suffix in the verb would change with the subjects. Also, the letter “j” in Turkish pronounces precisely the same as French and Turkish uses “Merci” as thank you. So based on my previous experience in studying French, Turkish is becoming easier to learn for me. However, I am not sure whether they are from the same location or language at the very beginning of history because I think it is more like Turkish borrowed these from French, and my language partner also said so. And the other day Chet and I found the way to say “hello” in Turkish and Arabian is very similar because, in Turkish, it is “Merhaba” while in Arabian, it is “Marhaban”. It is also very similar to the phenomenon mentioned in the article that different languages shared similar ways to say “mother” because those cognates are derived from the proto-Indo-European word “mehter.”

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While Fall Break meant that I missed some of my one-on-one meetings with my language partner, I worked on and learned some interesting topics nonetheless. One thing I am happy to say that I've made progress in is writing - I have been able to write short yet cohesive paragraphs and dialogues for homework, which has allowed me to piece together disparate aspects of my language learning thus far and strengthen my linguistic foundation and understanding of Malay. To this end, learning how to denote tense/condition of verbs has been incredibly beneficial. Rather than having to conjugate it as in other languages, verb tense can be implied through adverbial indicators and context. This has not been too difficult for me to grasp, likely because of the fact that Chinese has the same characteristic and sentence structure (S-V-O). The word "telah" means "already" and indicates past tense, whereas the word "akan" means "will" and indicates future tense; simply affixing these in front of a verb will denote tense, however other indicators (i.e. time) should be included to make sense of the sentence. There is also the prefixes "me" and "mem" that can be affixed to the front of verbs to indicate present tense and what is happening now rather than a declarative statement. Melissa has been very helpful with explaining to me some of the ways in which Malay does or does not reflect English grammar, which makes forming new sentences and retaining this information much easier for me. 

It was particularly interesting to learn how Malay describes seasons. The word "musim" means season and is, like Chinese, attached to each of the words for the specific season (unlike the one-word "spring" or "summer" in English). The descriptor for the season comes, as adjectives do in Malay, after the "musim" noun. The word for fall/autumn is "musim luruh" ("luruh" meaning "shed," as in trees shedding their leaves), winter is ""musim sejuk" ("sejuk" meaning "cold"), spring is "Musim burga" ("burga" meaning "flower"), and summer is "musim pasas" ("pasas" meaning "hot"). The conceptualization behind the descriptors for these seasons is fascinating because it mirrors many of American culture's own associations (e.g. flowers blooming with spring), yet goes the extra step of incorporating them into the official name. This topic came up as I described what I did for fall break ("cuti" meaning holiday would be added to "musim luruh" meaning fall to create "cuti musim luruh"). 

I am now in the process of learning to describe what I did in the past and will do in the future in terms of school (e.g. attended a class in the International Center yesterday), which will help Melissa and I to have real conversations describing my routine each time we meet that will not sound rehearsed or scripted and aid with commanding a more natural grip of the language for me. As I have noted in many of my previous posts, pronunciation remains an important milestone for me, and I will continue to incorporate what I have learned about the International Phonetic Alphabet and sounds in Bahasa Melayu into my study of the language. 

There is a consensus among linguists that Korean is a member of the Altaic family of languages, which originated in northern Asia and includes the Mongol, Turkic, Finnish, Hungarian, and Tungusic (Manchu) languages. 

Korean was originally written using hanja (Chinese characters), but now it is written in Hangul (Korean alphabet). Although Korean and Chinese are not related in terms of grammatical structure, more than 50 percent of all Korean vocabulary is Sino-Korean i.e. derived from Chinese loanwords. Just to give an idea, there’s an idiom in Korean that goes 공자 앞에서 문자 쓴다 which literally translates to writing hanja in from of Confucius (a Chinese philosopher), and it is used to refer to someone who is arrogant enough to try and teach an expert how to deal with their area of expertise.

Korea and Japan also have very similar grammatical structures, and this could’ve been due to the imperial Japanese rule over Korea. Just to give an idea, the honorific term 각하 (gakha) is reserved for high-ranking government officials, including the president; it is equivalent to His Excellency. This honorific is no longer used in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) nowadays as it serves as an unpleasant reminder of the Japanese rule.

In the past two weeks, I’ve learned a lot of new things. To begin with, there were certain vowels whose sounds I simply couldn’t differentiate, so I sat down and properly understood how they are different. The vowels are: 와 워 왜 웨 외 위 의. Another thing that I learned that’s a part of Korean basics is the numbers in the native Korean number system. In class we played a game called 뽀성 in which you say every number except the ones that are multiples of three (multiples of three are replaced with the word 뽀성). Later on I practiced the numbers by myself by doing sudoku. I absolutely love sudoku so I picked up an easy sudoku puzzle and wrote it down in Korean and then solved it in Korean; then, I solved it in English and checked my solutions. This actually helped a lot more than I originally gave it credit for because while doing sudoku you can’t just go sequentially from 1-9, you need to look at every number randomly as it is and in relation to another based on the information you have. This helped me recognize numbers even when they’re out of order, on their own. Attached below is a picture of the first sudoku puzzle I solved in Korean.

I’ve even started watching K-dramas to get a better understanding of conversational Korean. This has given me more insight into the sentence structure of Korean, and how to distinguish between formal conversation and informal conversation. This has made me better listen to Korean and distinguish between the sounds. Infact, when I went back and listened to a couple of BTS songs that I listened to long before I started learning Korean, I realised how different the actual song is from what I used to hear it as. For example, a part in their song Boy In Luv actually has the rapper reciting the first 8 Hangul consonants, and another song Blood,Sweat, and Tears has the boys singing ‘원해 많이 많이’ which I always heard as ‘money’ instead of ‘많이 (mani)’ which means ‘a lot’.  K-dramas are turning out to be one of the most helpful things in my learning plan because I’m not only getting better at listening to Korean, reading Korean, and conversing in Korean, but I’m also getting an insight into Korean culture through these dramas, and I’ve been able to think in Korean because of them. For example, due to the huge amount of anime that I’ve watched, when someone is being cute I think ‘kawaii’, and now I’m able to think ‘귀여워 (gwiyeowo)’ instead. Not only this but when I want to say sorry I’m actually able to think of either ‘미안해’ (informal) or ‘죄송합니다’ (formal) depending on the situation. This makes me really happy because it’s a good foundation for me to learn Korean as itself instead of by mapping it onto English.

Moreover, I got the Korean keyboard for both my laptop and my phone which makes learning Korean on the go super fun and has helped me get used to Hangul well. The other day, I typed out an email to Professor Sumi 75% of which was in Korean! 

Now, I’d like to start working on forming good sentences in Korean by paying close attention to the grammar and learning sentences which are more relevant to my situation as a college student like ‘do you have homework’, or ‘do you want to get lunch together?’, and other such sentences. The grammar is going to take a lot of work but I’m looking forward to it!

In the past two weeks, we learned a lot about tourism (관광) in Korea. First of all, we learned some basic conversations that might happen when we visit Korea. For example, we learned how to ask people to take pictures for us. For instance, “Excuse me. Do you mind taking picture of us?” can be translated into Korean as “실례합니다, 사진 좀 찍어 주시것어요?”.

And then, if that person responds, “네”. That means he/she would like to take picture of you.

What’s more, if you want to ask him/her to take more pictures when you are not really satisfied with the pictures that he/she takes, you can say, “한 장 더 찍어 주세요”, which means please take  one more pictures. In this sentence, 주세요 means please and 한 장 means one picture. It is also really important to learn what Korean usually say when they are taking pictures. 찍숩니다 can be translated as “I am going to take the pictures. Are you ready?” And then, they will say “하나, 둘, 셋,  김치~” which is similar with “One, two, three, cheese~”. I found different countries said different words when they took pictures. However, those words sounded really similar. For example, cheese in English, Qiezi in Chinese and Kimchi in Korean.

We also learned how to find the place that we want to visit in Korean, such as where is the restroom in Korean is 화장실이 어디예 있어요. This kind of sentence can be used to ask various kinds of places. For instance, 박물관은 어디예 있어요 means where is the museum. Also, “이 근처에 공원 있어요?” Represents  “is there a park nearby?”. This can also be used to ask the direction of a place. If you want to ask whether you can get there on foot, you can say, “걸어서 갈 수 있을까요.” There are also other sentences that will be very useful during our trip in Korea.

정보 책자를 부탁합니다 --> I would like an information booklet.

영어 가이드가 있습니까 --> Is there an English speaking guide.

여기서 사진 찍어도 될까요 --> Can I take picture here.

We also learned some related vocabulary.

미술관  Art Museum 동물원  zoo 지도 map

티켓 ticket 입장료 Adimission fee 무료 free

남산골 한옥 마을 namsangol hanok village 서울 타워 Seoul Tower

반포 대교 Banpo Bridge 이준신 A famous general in Korea

세종대왕 King Sejong 광화 멘 Gwanghwa men

경복궁 gyeongboggung 양화 대교 yanghwa Bridge

On a Korean TV show, some hosts went to a popular tourist site and rented out old Korean school uniform. It’s called gyobok (교복) in Korea. It looked quite different from Korean school uniform nowadays, not to mention the uniform I wore in junior high or high school. Once in our class, Jenna also mentioned how Korean uniforms were influenced by other countries and changed over time. As a result, I’m really curious about this topic now and thus took a look at different kinds of Korean school uniforms.

A snap of "Camping Club ep.4" on YouTube

In the 80s, the school uniforms in South Korea were influenced by Japan. The set of sailor suits as a traditional and popular item from Japan was modified and used as uniforms for girls. For boys in the 80s, they have soldier hats with black traditional uniforms. The colors of the uniform are largely limited to black, white, and navy blue.

Pic from Google by searching “Korean school uniform 80s”

There are also many different kinds of uniforms between private and public schools. For example, for private schools such as Seoul School of Performing Arts (서공예 SOPA) and Seoul Arts High School (서울예술고등학교), they have more unusual colors such as yellow on their uniform. A large number of idols study in these art schools, and thus it’s easy for people to identify their high school by the uniforms they wear.

For public schools, the uniform for each school may vary, but they usually have less bright colors as the private schools. For girls, a lot of schools have white shirts and short skirts for them as uniforms. The skirts may be in blue, red, or black, and are mostly decorated with plaids. In winter, they have grey or white vests and a black jacket to put on top of the shirt. Boys usually have similar items, and instead of shorts, they have black long pants. Some schools require ties for boys to put on. For PE class, the students will change into another uniform with baggy jackets and pants. Also, some public high schools may have longer skirts for girls. These skirts are usually all black without any patterns on them.

Reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBmUsuVzO6k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfCbAa4UmgI

https://www.mutzine.me/features/a-brief-history-korean-school-uniforms

http://officialkoreanfashion.blogspot.com/2016/11/korean-school-uniforms.html

 Hebrew is a Semitic language and belongs to the Canaanite group of languages, but its language family is the branch of Northwest Semitic languages. Its predecessors appear to be other Canaanite languages along with Amharic languages. On the language database Ethnologue it is also listed as being Afro-asiatic which would be its primary language family. The Kevin Morehouse article he talked about how the different families of languages tell you which may be similar and informs you of the relationships between them.  Additionally, understanding language family can help with mastery. It may make it easier to grasp certain language concepts if you understand where the language came from. For the article about origin of the family of languages being in Anatolia I thought it was interesting that a biologist was even entering the conversation. I thought it almost arrogant that the biologists thought that they had solved a long-standing problem when experts in the study of language had been working on a solution for years. I have recently been exposed to some of the statically methods they may have used but I do think that consideration needs to be made for the evidence that contradicts the biologists claims. I found the argument that the language had to be spread through fighting before the spread of agriculture from Anatolia. The evidence of words for wheeled vehicles makes the most sense for me because how would a language develop a word for something they don’t have. I also thought it was interesting that the words that are used to track language development and spread are the same words that are used for body parts, familial relations and pronouns because they then become cognates and you can track them to a parent language.

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In the last two weeks, Jenna and I did a lot of new things to help my Korean vocabulary. We again reviewed past week's vocab about what I like/liked and what I hate/hated. Furthermore, we learned about common and simple Korean words that are easily spelled, such as a car, dog, shoes, etc. I memorized a list of simple words and practiced spelling it. Furthermore, I have been looking up songs in Korean and watching Korean shows on youtube. This was what I hoped to accomplish the first week, to be able to recognize simple words in Korean. I also told Jenna I wanted to learn how to write a letter in Korean. She told me simple words that I would need to write a letter, such as hello, dear, thank you, sister, brother, mother, father. Jenna also talked to me about what kind of sounds I have trouble differentiating. The most problems I have had with specific sounds are eu vs I. These get confusing for me but I was able to practice learning which one was which. Furthermore, Jenna and I practiced writing full sentences in Korean. These were very simple sentences that I would be able to write. During my free time, I also used voice notebook to check my spelling when practicing writing Korean by myself. The most common problem that I had was that I would know how to say a certain word, but not be able to spell it. There are many special circumstances in Korean that spell words differently than they are said, similar to English. From these past two weeks, I hope to become better at spelling more difficult words and being able to differentiate between eu vs i more effectively. I want to continue listening to Korean music and be able to understand the song completely. As I continue learning Korean, I feel like I am becoming more enthusiastic about going to class with Jenna, because I am progressing very fast through Korean since I already knew the basics.

One thing that I need to practice on is thinking before I write a sentence in Korean. I always get ahead of myself and misspell words that I shouldn't be messing up in. I think I have to practice saying words in my head, then writing the words slowly and thinking through each word. Another thing I talked to Jenna about is practicing reading comprehension. I told her my goal was to pass the COMM2 Korean exam next year. The goal for me this semester is to be able to do reading comprehension at an advanced level where I can respond to questions in Korean and write it correctly. There are many things I hope to accomplish this semester and there are many things I have done so far that I am really proud of. I have been texting my parents in Korean as well so that has been really cool. I also received messages in Korean now and can fully read and understand most of the words they send me. I also see that my grandma and I are having deeper conversations that I probably could not have done in the past due to my low level of Korean. There are several words that I have learned that I have said to my grandma that I wouldn't have known before.

One new strategy I’ve begun to use is making flashcards to learn Korean vocabulary words. I realized that I am still relying heavily on the English spelling of the Korean pronunciations, so I made more flashcards to become familiar with Korean letters. Once I become more comfortable with reading and writing in Korean, I believe I will have an easier and more effective time learning Korean words.

The vocabulary words that Prof. Kim has been teaching us include general phrases, such as “Please help me,” “It is delicious,” and “I will eat well.” I found that I knew quite a few of these phrases already, as I have learned them from my years being around Korean speakers. However, the English spelling of Korean words is not completely accurate. There are many sounds in Korean that are not in the English language, so I simply spell it out the best I can. Also, there is a difference between hearing sounds that are unique to Korean and making those sounds. I can identify Korean sounds anywhere, but I still have difficult saying some of the sounds because I have little experience doing so.

In addition to general statements, Prof. Kim taught us phrases from a K-pop song, “Love Scenario” by iKon. I do not listen to K-pop on a regular basis, but as a music student, I appreciated hearing Korean words in a tune because it helps me remember them. However, I am not sure when I will use the words from the song in everyday conversation, as that song has some very specific vocabulary, such as “spotlight” and “melodrama.”

Over fall break, I saw my grandmother and aunt and conversed with them in Korean. Even though I only know a few sentences, they were able to understand everything I said. I also learned some helpful things from them, like when to use certain phrases and in what context. For example, there are two different ways to say goodbye in Korean. It depends on whether you are leaving the other person or if you are staying. Additionally, these terms are very formal, so I would only say it to someone who is older than me. I brought this up with my Korean friend, and she said that in Korea, peers often say “Bye!” to each other in a specific tone of voice. I thought it was interesting to see Korean speakers use an English word so often. But then again, there are many borrowed words from English in Korean.

After talking more with my friends from Korea, I have realized that Prof. Kim is teaching a very formal way of speaking Korean. I know that when I am in Korea, I would rather be too formal with a peer than too informal with someone who is older than me. However, I will be speaking more with peers, so I would also like to learn informal ways of saying things in Korean.

Moving forward, I am going to be using more books to learn Korean. I have checked out Talk to Me in Korean (Level 1) and Essential Korean Root Vocabulary. I think both of these books will be useful in helping me learn Korean vocabulary and grammar.

I practiced the lyrics of 사랑을 했다 by iKON. I have always liked this song and listened to it a lot of times. But before I started learning Korean, I did not know the specific meaning of each line in the lyrics. It was a great song with a mix of love and sadness. I think I learned a lot of new words by going through the lyrics.This song also have a lot of repeated words, so I can see the same word with different sentence structure. This helped me to learn more about the grammar and sentence structures in Korean. 

I found a great website called wattpad. https://www.wattpad.com/572623886-learn-korean-through-k-pop-lesson-6-ikon-%EC%82%AC%EB%9E%91%EC%9D%84-%ED%96%88%EB%8B%A4

This is a website that can teach me Korean through KPOP songs. The above link is the webpage for the lesson on 사랑을 했다 by iKON. It picked out a section in the lyrics and break it apart in a few parts to teach. 

This is the section it picked out of the lyrics. The website analyzed each line individually. It breaks the line into the corresponding sentence structure explains each individual part in terms of meaning and grammar. Here is the analysis of the first line in the section.

This website has been a help in terms of helping me learn this song. I think I can continue to learn more Korean using this website on other K-pop songs.

Yesterday, I went to a Korean restaurant with my friends and had bibimbap. Then I went home and wanted to learn the history of this dish. The name of Korean Bibimbap means “mixed rice.” A bowl is loaded with rice at the bottom, and topped with a selection of Sliced beef, a selection of sautéed vegetables called namul, and several sauces, usually soy, doenjang (a soybean paste that provides a salt and umami kick) and gochujang (chili pepper paste adding a spicy kick). An egg is then cracked on top just prior to serving. Bibimbap is only about a century old, but it derives from Goldongban, a dish involving the same concept, which emerged during the Joseon Period (14th-16th centuries). Goldongban had a ritualistic component. People ate it on the eve of the lunar new year, allowing people to clear out their pantries at the year’s end, throwing whatever was left over into their rice bowls, tossing it together, and considering it dinner. The first time bibimbap is mentioned by name is in a late-19th century cookbook, Siuijeonseo. Various theories suggest that it was a tradition dish for farmers during the harvest, as it could be easily made in large quantities to feed farmers. Most dishes seemed to be invented by people at the time because it best suits the situation. 

This past two weeks in Korean class, my learning partner and I mainly discussed the Korean news. Being able to watch the news in Korean has been a long-time goal for me since much of the words used in the news is formal language. The news anchors also talk extremely quick and it was always hard to understand what the news was talking about. To practice understanding the news a little better, my partner and I looked through several current news stories on YouTube. Most times, there were no subtitles, so it was difficult to understand certain phrases and words. However, I realized that some topics were easier to comprehend than others. For example, news about politics were particularly hard to understand. A lot of the news about this topic was filled with technical words and names. An example of this type of news would be the one about the current trade war going on between South Korea and Japan. There were a lot of vocab words I had to look up to understand the full context of the story. Something that helped me a lot was being able to pause and resume the video and get feedback from my language partner when I was unsure of the meaning of a phrase or a word. Some words in this story that I didn’t know at first were things like, “경제 전쟁” which literally translates to “ economic war”. Another difficult word was “속죄” which meant “atonement”. Because the trade war started because South Korea felt that Japan has yet to atone for past crime, this word came up. The story was about how Japan and Korea stopped trading goods with each other because of past relations being brought up again. Japan is withholding goods like semiconductors. Korea’s response was very dramatic as citizens refused to buy anything of Japanese origin and were smashing Japanese goods on live television. Many citizens took to the streets with signs that read, “노 아베” which meant “No Abe”. In end however, the anchors admit that a trade war will be harmful for both economies. Another current news that we watched was a very recent event. It was about pop culture and was therefore easier to understand. It was about the recent death of the Korean celebrity named Sulli. The cause of her death was determined to be from suicide. Because the topic was about pop culture, I had a little bit of an easier time understanding the news. However, because the topic was about death of a person there were still many former words since the news wanted to be formal and respectful of her death. A word that came up often was “무공개” which meant “private” or “non-disclosure”. Another hard word that came up often was “조문”, which meant “condolences”. Many believed that Sulli was driven to suicide from toxic fandom. It was known that Sulli was constantly bullied for her unconventional persona and was depressed.

Over the last few weeks, I learned a lot about new strategies on how to better understand the news in Korean. I found being able to pause and replay the news was very helpful. I also took time on my own to watch more news online and read more news stories.

Korean falls under the Altaic language family which includes languages like Turkish and Mongolian. A lot of Korean words are derived by and were influenced by the Chinese. Many symbols and sounds come from the Chinese alphabet. Although Turkish and Korean aren't exactly similar, they both use similar character word structures. For example, both languages use suffixes to create a word. Although the characters themselves might be different, the structures of the words are similar in both Korean and Turkish and that may be the reason why they belong in the Altaic language family. I researched the history of Korea and Turkey to see anything in relation to culture and language. I found that Turkey and Korea have a friendly history where Turkey supported Korea throughout its war with North Korea. This could have been a reason that the two languages have a similar structure. 

Languages can change over time based on the newer generations. So many outside factors can influence language including social conflicts, political events, and even increasing diversity. A country could invade another country and take control of all the people, forcing them to learn new languages or forget their language. Furthermore, a country could have political events that change the perspective and ideology of the population, causing them to change their language. But the most common form of language change, in my opinion, is diversity. As more foreigners enter a country, the home language doesn't stay pure. Different words and phrases may become popular that are influenced by other languages, and this may become part of the English language. Slowly and surely, different phrases and words would exist from different cultures, brought by immigrants. Linguists can track and predict these language changes by interviewing different people in a target language. Through different time, linguists will be able to track any changes in sounds, pronunciations, and vernaculars as time goes on. Similar to the experiment in the ted talk that we watched during class, we can see how someone changes their language as time goes on, due to different experiences and influences from the outside world. 

Last week we watched lots of videos of Turkish foods and learned eating habits in Turkey. I was surprised to see that Turkey has such a wonderful food culture, because I thought European foods are similar and did not know too much about specific Turkish food before. My language partner said no one complained Turkish foods, instead, everyone loved Turkish foods so much after travelling in Turkey and tasting local foods. I enjoyed those food videos so much because I am a 100% food lover and food culture in China is really important as well. I hope one day I can go to Turkey and taste all foods we saw in the video, because they looked so tasty and I have never tried any food like these before. Here are some popular dishes in Turkey.

Menemen

It was made by eggs and different vegetables. It is a traditional Turkish breakfast. This is more like a creamy sauce and you can eat it with breads. I really want to try this one because it looks so delicious and nutritious. I really appreciate how they value breakfast and eat very well in breakfast.

Köfte

It was a Turkish traditional main dish made by beef or lamb and usually made as shape of flat cake or ball. You can eat it with sandwich or salad. Some Turkish love to eat it with Turkish yogurt which is another thing I really want to try.

Mantı

It is Turkish version of “dumplings”. It looks like dumplings or wonton in China but with sauce on it. It has special flavor in it and the filling in it is chili beef or chili lamb. They often fired these “dumplings” and serve with butter or Turkish yogurt. I guess the taste of it is very rich.

Kuzu Tandır

It is roast lamb which is a Turkish traditional food. It was cooked slowly and needs a long time to be done. You can eat it with Turkish yogurt, rice or potato. I had similar thing in Mongolia before and it was so good! But I believe Turkish version of roast lamb has a unique flavor.

Lahmacun

It is Turkish scone and you can find it in in every street because it is so convenient to eat but still delicious. The bottom of it is very crispy and it has ground meat, salad and lemon sauce on the top of it. It is more like a pizza I believe. It is one of the most popular street foods in Turkey.

Doner Kabab

It is one of the most popular street foods in Turkey and it is becoming worldwide popular. I learned this food from my French class and my professor said Kabab can be found everywhere in France so I thought it was French food before. But actually it was from Turkey.

Turkish Coffee

It is the most important drink and Turkey has its own special coffee beans (and other ingredients). The most popular ingredients are not allowed to export so this kind of Turkish coffee can only be found in Turkey. Coffee is a crucial part in Turkish people’s daily life. No matter during the work, chatting with friends or after having a meal, they all need a cup of Turkish coffee.

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