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.