남의 떡 더 커 보인다

So Chapter 6 of our textbook (I can't believe we're already on Chapter 8 and that finals are next week, ah!!!) was about 속담, that is, proverbs/sayings. We had to share proverbs from our own languages too and it's fun to see how different and farfetched proverbs can seem! The title of the post is the English equivalent of "The grass is much greener on the other side," in Korean, that's "Someone else's rice cake looks bigger," which is a cute image haha.

To my class, I explained "It's not over 'til the fat lady sings" and "The poop's (ahem) hit the fan," both of which my class found very amusing ^^. My favorite Japanese ones were "It's like eye gunk laughing at a booger," meaning that there are two people in similar bad situations but one still laughs at the other, and one that made us all laugh because the connection seems to bizarre: "Ignorance is Buddha." The Korean equivalent is "Not knowing is medicine," better known to English speakers as "Ignorance is bliss." The idea that Buddha is peace and goodness in general is why the saying goes "Ignorance is Buddha" but it seems so random that it's funny hehe ^^.

The chapters we've been covering lately have been very geared on having us explain, narrate, and describe, all skills that are definitely required for advancing to an "advanced level" (which I guess are what Level 5 and 6 are meant to be). Maybe this is the next flat level of language learning, boo. Sometimes I feel so proud when I can explain something without too much trouble and then other times when I do so I hesitate so much or have so much trouble with grammar/vocabulary that I feel super disappointed in my ability. And especially when narrating a story or movie or whatnot, applying even the simple grammar we learned in level 1 and 2 to connecting sentences and spreading the conjunction phrases throughout to sound natural is a tremendously difficult task! Argh. Language learning is such a neverending process!

Really though, I'm so glad I've made Korean friends that I regularly hang out with and can practice telling long stories and describing and basically applying all the skills I've been learning in class to conversations with them. After hanging out for a few hours or so with them I feel much more confident in my ability and excited for the next time! It's a nice thing to know though that I can basically circumlocute and pantomime, with a little help of the handy-dandy electronic dictionary sometimes, super-difficult topics and that with my other-country friends, it isn't horribly difficult to get what we mean across! I also feel much more comfortable using 반말 (the less formal speech) and sounding rather natural with some sentences. Working on subtleties and naturalness is my next goal, and I've been trying to get my Korean friends to help me speak more natural and more well-used phrases so that I can actually start sounding like a Korean! It's hard, though, because when you get caught up in conversation, you don't really want to correct every little thing the other person says!

As for subtleties, the intricacies between different grammar structures in languages and especially the subtle differences between words is so fascinating to me! Allow me to be a linguistics geek again and note the beautiful remnants of vowel harmony that the Altaic languages (assuming Korean is an Altaic language) left behind in Korean.

For those who don't know what vowel harmony is, it's when vowels in morphemes (the smallest unit of meaning--such as -ed meaning the past tense in English--so "discontinued" is made up of "dis-" (a prefix meaning not) + "continue" + "-ed" for example) change to conform to the vowel quality of the root. The most touted example of this is Turkish, in which vowel often conforms to the "roundness" (basically whether your lips are rounded or not--so in English the vowels in "eat" and "ask" are not rounded but the vowels in "boot" and "code" are rounded.

So for example if the root had a rounded vowel, every morpheme following the root would conform the vowel to be rounded (but maintain the other qualities). Yeah, it's a bit hard to explain the meaning .-.;;.

In the Korean example, the "light" vowels are ㅗ (o) and ㅏ (a) and the dark vowels are the rest. Light vowels go together in conjugation and so do dark vowels (most canonically ㅜ (u) and ㅓ (eo)--pronounced sorta like "uh"). So for example "녹다" (melt) becomes "녹아" when conjugated--both having light vowels, whereas "울다" (cry) becomes "울어" when conjugated.

The more interesting part of this, though, is when you get to native Korean words, of which a LOT follow vowel harmony, especially onomatopoeic words. What's even MORE interesting is that you can have words that have a "light" version and a "dark" version, or something of the sort! I find this fascinating, and the example in English I could liken it to is adding the "-ish" morpheme to something.

So as examples:
동가랗다: very round VS 둥그렇다: very round (and large)
빨갛다: to be red VS 뻘겋다: to be deep red
파랗다: to be sky blue VS 푸르다: to be deep blue (like the sea)

Not being a native Korean speaker, it's very hard for me to quite sense these words but I can get a faint idea that will hopefully grow with time. A few other words escape my mind as to what the difference could really be and I'd need a Korean person to explain to me again!

살금살금 VS 슬금슬금 (both a coloring of "stealthy, furtively, secretly"

Also notable is that virtually all (that I know of) the onomatopoeias follow the verb conjugations in the light and dark conjugations, remnants of Korea's linguistic history ^_^!

껌충껌충 (with a leap)
찐득찐득 (sticky, muddy)
팔딱팔딱 (hopping--like a frog)
꼬물꼬물 (squirming)
물렁물렁 (soft, fleshy)

And etc. I'm also pretty amazed by what specific words Korean has! Phew! Of course, though, English has plenty too ^^--it's just crazy to see how when you get to super subtle differences! My language partner taught me a while ago the differences between words that barely have any difference.

미세하다 - delicate, fine, "minute difference," subtle
미미하다 - very small, insignificant (in a small way)
사소하다 - insignificant, trifling
근소하다 - small (in the sense of "by a tiny bit" when speaking of differences--like "winning a race by a hair")
미묘하다 - delicate, fine, in a sort of beautiful way

If you notice, a lot of these words have the morpheme "미" in it, which is from the hanja 微, meaning "subtle" or "minute." It's interesting how when the words are derived from Chinese characters, looking at the individual parts (as Chinese words work completely in morphemes) is what's important whereas native Korean word meanings are more dependent on the shape of the word (as in the vowel harmony).

Okay, time for the end of geekiness and pretty pictures yay! This Friday we took our trip to Bukhansan 북한산 slightly north to see pretty fall leaves! 10 kids from our class showed up and we went with 구은미 선생님, our 말하기 speaking teacher. Needless to say, the scenery was beautiful and it was an awesome bonding experience :). Enjoy the clear pictures from the new lens that my friend Kyunghee helped me buy yay!
At 대흥역 waiting for the train.
We get out at 구파발역 to catch a bus to Bukhansan.
One of the mountains!
단풍! Autumn leaves :D!
A dried up river.
Red leaves are my favorite.
Sunlight peeking through the trees~
Yay group picture and pretty fall leaves!
Just before we ate lunch!
Raised the shutter speed to capture the water movement ^^.
Everybody's got a big leaf ^_^!
Yay detailed pics!
Red red red!
After the mountain we headed to a cafe near Gyeongbok Palace.
Cute cute ^^.
Yay slow shutter speeds!
Afterwards we went to 구은미 선생님's home and bonded with her wooo! Such an awesome teacher :). And she got us fried chicken and pizza for dinner haha (I also explained to her that Americans don't eat pizza or fried chicken for dinner very often hehe ^^).

Oh and by the way, our class was invited to 구은미 선생님's marriage! Yay! :D

소원을 말해 봐~

The lyrics of a recently popular song (well considering how fast Korean pop moves maybe it's not even that popular anymore!) called "Genie," these lyrics mean "Tell me your wish."

This was the first song we sang at karaoke yesterday, that is, that Yukiko sang, doing the dance along with it as well haha! (which I believe Dana taught her haha).
Class bonding is really one of the best parts of Sogang :). Sadly there will always be people who never come to any of our events ;\, as is the case with some people in our class. Alas, the rest of us can have our fun :).
Unfortunately we didn't do much this week :(. It was one of my classmate's, Yuki's birthday though, so we surprised her and celebrated her in class :D.
Quite funny the process we had to go to to surprise Yuki haha. First, our teacher thought her birthday was the week before so we had a card with the wrong date that we ended up having to rewrite completely XD. And when the time came to surprise Yuki, our teacher during the break time asked Yuki to go with her to her office. It was funny how much she had to stall though, because apparently she began to ask Yuki questions like "So...what do you think of the teaching materials?" Hahahaha.
Our makeshift cake made of Dunkin Donuts hehe. It was really yummy! Celebrating Yuki's birthday made me think of how sad it'll be that my birthday is on the day of the final test of Level 6 T_T!

Continuing with the theme of adding food pictures to my blog--here are some more...but this time it's a bit different because none of this is Korean food haha.
That's risotto from an Italian restaurant Sneha took me too. Koreans and their cheese! I guess Italian food must be pretty popular in Korea. It's crazy how expensive cheese is here though. Getting cheese added to anything (weird to think of it in rice and noodles and tteokbokki [rice cakes] right? but I guess it's not any weirder than putting cheese in spaghetti since that's a carb too!) adds at least 1000won to the price--and that's for like a slice of Kraft singles lol.
And before karaokeing, the "meal" we had at Naoko's house. They had bought pizza and fried chicken and spiced chicken. It's funny how this is other countries' perceptions of "American food"! At the same time, it's kind of ironic that most Americans (at least that I know...) would not eat this for *dinner*--that perhaps it would be more of a lunch meal? Regardless it's super popular in Korea. It's also interesting how Korean pizza has SO many toppings on it--it does make it quite delicious though :) (I think I might have mentioned Korean pizza the last time I was here too--how fancy it is haha).

Ahh, I can't believe finals are approaching so fast--two more weeks! Eek! Time sure moves by fast. At the same time I can't believe I've only been here for two months--it feels like it's been forever. Funny how time can move so fast and slow at the same time.

Okay, our mountain trip was moved to this weekend instead, so I'll take lots of pictures! And, I'll try to get a new lens by this weekend to make up for all these awful blurry photos!!!

네가 남자이건 외계인이건 상관없이 좋아해

"Whether you're a man or an alien I don't care--I like (love) you."

Shoot, that line sounds so lame when translated into English haha. It's a line from the famous Korean drama Coffee Prince that [SPOILERS] Han Kyul says to Eun Chan just before he kisses her, saying that he likes (loves) her even though she is a man (little does he know that she's actually not haha).

The reason for this line is that Bob and I visited the real Coffee Prince shop, yay! :D We went with our friend Margaret and her friends 건희 Kenny and Ryan. Sadly, as a lot of realities (but not all!) are, the place wasn't too amazing and the coffee wasn't any better than other shops. And most disappointingly, the designs on the coffee were so subpar! Sure I didn't expect crazy cute designs like in the show, but c'mon, what is this, a mushroom???
Here are some pictures of the Coffee Prince though, as after all, it does have celebrity status ^^.
That is not a very flattering exterior lol.
Viewing Bob and Margaret from outside like a creeper. And the cute figures that Eun Chan in the drama drew!
최고 means "The best"!
The flower mural that Han Yoo Ju painted!
Where all the customers sit. You can see other people are going camera crazy too.
Sorry for the blur :(. This is an autograph from 윤은혜 Yoon Eun Hye--the actress of Eun Chan.
Kenny, Bob, Margaret, and Ryan.

Maybe I'll go to the Coffee Prince again since our stay was kinda rushed. Considering how many people go to it though I dunno if it's the best place to study haha. It is really nearby (about a 10 minute walk). Fun experience though!

Last Saturday, I met up with 경희 Kyunghee, the girlfriend of my friend Greg, who I studied Korean with last year in Level 3, Susie (Greg's other friend), and some of Susie's friends to eat Shabu Shabu, mm! I've always wondered what country Shabu Shabu originally came from. No one I've asked seems to know haha [according to Wikipedia, it came from China, which makes sense, as it basically reminds me completely of hot pot 火鍋].
Thursday, Leng, Xue Qing, and I met up with Leng's 도움인 친구 ("help friend"--that is, a language partner assigned to her by Sogang--but only to speak in Korean, not to exchange languages). We went to Hongdae to see this art festival called the "Wow flask festival." I wish I knew what the flask symbolized...
There was really interesting modern-art like stuff too
A heart made of...plastic pipe-like things? Pretty detailed ^^. I can see the aorta and veins and arteries and vena cava and whatnot (phew, 9th grade Bio rushing back to my memory haha).
A person made out of candy. Mm mm, maybe? XD
Leng, Xue Qing, and Leng's 도움인 친구 Dae Gyu 대규.
Yesterday before going to the Coffee Prince, Bob, Margaret, Kenny, Ryan, and I ate at a Chinese-style restaurant. This is delicious 자장면 jajangmyeon, which you might know if you've eaten "Chinese-style Korean food." Granted, this is very different from Chinese zha jiang mian. What's fun is that the noodles here are green! Never seen green noodles used for jajangmyeon before haha.
And last night Bob and I met up with Sneha to eat at a yummy Indian restaurant. It was fun listening to the Indian chefs speak in Korean too haha. They sounded like natives! Hope I can reach that level too T_T!

Look forward to pretty fall leaves next post if we do end up going on the trip! :D

이 세상은 얼마나 작은지...

"This world is so small..."

I figured I'd utilize the new grammar point I learned yesterday:

얼마나 ~(으)ㄴ/는지 _______

"It's so ___ that ____"

So I've been having quite a few small world experiences lately! Seriously, six degrees of separation! To start off with one that's not so surprising, I found out a few days ago after my speaking interview test that my 말하기 선생님 taught Hisashi and Sneha for their 읽기 듣기 (reading and speaking) class!

Now for more fun connections:
- Yu from the class over went to college friends with my cousin's friend Karen who I met when she came to Korea!
- Henry also from the class over knows TWO of my friends from elementary school--he went to middle school with one of them and high school with the other, the one he went to middle school with being one of my best friends from elementary school haha
- My friend Sagwa (Apple)'s friend Edwin had commented on her note on facebook--and I noticed, one of our mutual friends was Angela 선생님 from back at Yale! Crazy! Apparently he had her as his teacher at Brown!

Phew, Sogang really has a way with connections haha ^^.

After taking the interview midterm I've noticed that all us foreigners have quite the same pronunciation issues. But what still is ridiculously hard to distinguish to all our ears are the difference between the "slightly aspirated" consonants and the aspirated consonants (that is, consonants that are articulated with a breath of air--like if you say "p, t, k" in English you'll have a puff of air come out of your mouth).

ㄱ ㄷ ㅂ ㅈ (g d b j)
ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅊ (k t p ch)

Unfortunately, the first line is really closer to "k t p ch" but only with a SLIGHT puff of air. This makes it really hard for any of us 외국인 (foreigners) to distinguish them because Korean is possibly the only language with this distinction. On the other hand, the "stiff voice" sounds:

ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅉ (kk tt pp jj)

Whereas a lot of people have trouble hearing what this is, growing up with Thai, I have no trouble hearing the difference between these consonants and the other ones.

A weird distinction I find though that's harder to hear is:

ㅅ (s) and ㅆ (ss)--the first one is weaker than the English 's,' kind of sounding like an s followed by a bit of an 'h' sound (not sh). The second one sounds like a strong "s" sound. The easiest way I find to distinguish the single consonants from the double ones is that there's a tensing of the throat in the double consonants.

One that I will probably almost never hear the difference between though are:

시 (shi) and 씨 (sshi)

A tense version of "sh" is really hard to hear in my opinion. I've noticed though, that although Korean's not tonal, there seems to be a sort of tonal difference between the sounds. The "slightly aspirated" consonants tend to have a middle tone whereas the aspirated ones and the stiff voice ones have high tones (or sort of rising).

The issue our teacher came up with was the word 체육관 cheyukgwan (gym), where our "ch" sounded more like the Korean "j" sound ㅈ.

Ahh language differences. Okay, I'll stop being a linguistics geek :).

Last Friday was a fun day! Every year (since maybe 10 years ago? maybe less?) Sogang holds an international cultural festival 서강 세계 문화 축제. Considering the language school is really diverse, there were different stands with foods from all over the world and all kinds of traditional games. Before going to the festival though, our class met up to eat 족발, that is, pig's feet. I was a little skeptical but it was pretty good--not my favorite food though haha.
Erghh, I really need to get a new focus! But looks tasty right? Maybe? ^^
Yay for class bonding! Once again...sorry for the blur T_T.
Meng Ju is a beast! Hehehe, this picture is so fun.
At the festival! Henry sits on a seesaw (not sure what tradition this is...isn't it everywhere? haha). Funny story--the reason Henry's wearing a suit is because his teacher told him to, and when he showed up in one, she said that it was a joke!
신효원 선생님 (my writing teacher) and Sagwa in a yukata (traditional Japanese dress)!
Mashing...떡 (rice cake dough) maybe?
A Japanese ajumma, Keiko, Xue Qing, Leng, and Keiko's son Yosuke! Hahaha so adorable :D.
Seriously, Sogang is the epitome of diversity. Here's some Kazakhstani food and dress! Other exotic countries students are from include Maldives and Fiji, among Myanmar, Uzbekistan, etc. which I think I've mentioned before.
A Vietnamese traditional game--you have to jump between the sticks then out of them with both feet without tripping. Fun!
Class bonding is the best! :D Shame we're missing three people (Yuki, Xiang Yang, and Keiko) in this picture though!
These girls put on a belly dance show, not to mention some other ones too that'll come up soon!
Flowy!Their second show--I'm not sure what kind of dance this was supposed to be though.
Early 20th century American showgirl style!
Another demonstration of the seesaw. That's a pretty high jump!
Hehe I rubbed these ballloons in Xue Qing's hair and attached them to her. Yay for static electricity! And next to her is our speaking teacher 구은미--she's so awesome and sweet! :D
So much happiness in this picture!
A bboy show! I dunno if he can match up to the likes of John Pyun though hahahaha.
Yay traditional clothing haha! Some hanbok clothing and a yukata on Anastasiya.
Later on there was a lottery drawing with the first prize being a wii! There was also a prize for a 2 night 3 day stay at a resort and some MP4 players. This guy sang some yodeling songs he learned in Switzerland in between the lottery drawings.
This girl won the wii. So lucky!!!
Sagwa won an mp4 player!
Laura wins the stay at a resort!
Eating at a nearby restaurant after the festival.

I've gotta say, that cultural festival was one of the most uplifting events here so far :). Next week our class is planning to travel to a mountain to see the beautiful autumn leaves, yay! Look forward to another update soon ^^. I've gotta catch up hehe.