Firstly my apologies for the lack of updates. I don’t really have that great an excuse for this but am afraid my blogging ambitions have been somewhat stunted recently by all the other things I’ve been busying myself with. These include making time to study Korean, restarting going to the gym, emailing people I’ve neglected for weeks and weeks, and other compulsions such as facebook.

Also I went to Gangneung in Gangwon-do last weekend with my girlfriend.

Anyway, with regard to studying Korean (or any langauge for that matter) I have discovered a site which I think has a lot of potential for uniting people to help them study languages in a fun, facebook-style interactive manner. The site is Palabea.net. The Korean section of the site is relatively small, reflecting the relative popularity of learning it but there are already 82 members in the Korean virtual classroom which would be worth joining to meet some like-minded learners. I’ve posted 2 videos on there of reviews of the Korean study books I own, which interested people might like to watch.

Departing hugely from this last topic now and onto something mostly unrelated to the Korean language. I’ve recently been keenly reading the writings of James Turnbull on his blog The Grand Narrative on his discussion of East Asian, and particularly Japanese women on their submissiveness to voices of authority reminiscent of their school days. In two articles, the first of which has the instantly attention-grabbing title of ‘Japanese women like being told what to do’ he discusses the peculiar tone of Japanese women’s magazines which basically order Japanese women what to do. Rather than me trying to elaborate further on this you’d be better off reading the articles first hand (part 2 is here)

And what was my point with this?.. Well apart from being incredibly interesting to anyone like myself who finds Japanese women a natural source of interest, a point made in the first article about the homogeneity of apparently ‘individual’ culture in Japan and Korea echoes my own thoughts well after living 8 months here. I haven’t quite gathered my thoughts completely at this point but the basis for my believing this goes along the lines of that individual consumer and lifestyle choices in areas such as fashion and music seem to be very similar with the vast majority of people. I plan to write more on this when I’m less tired and can remember exactly what I wanted to say, for the time being I’d highly recommend you read the articles on The Grand Narrative.

My third column in a series of artitlces on my experiences learning Korean. Published in The Korea Herald, Expat Living, Wednesday April 23, 2008:

Learning Korean can take a thick skin

Despite that I’ve only been studying Korean for the last six months or so there’s one thing I can already be sure of - no foreigner learns this language by just hanging out with Koreans.

The thing with Korean that I expect deters many from learning it, is that to do so you really need to study - and study a lot. While  phrasebook-in-hand can get you only so far (and if you have a good memory, a little further), the nature of Korean grammar as well as stylistic differences means you need to sit down with textbooks or in a class to really begin to learn. I can understand why people don’t learn Korean for the simple reason that they don’t want to study. But the rewards from learning Korean are bountiful.

Apart from the obvious communication benefits, you are opening the door to a new world and seeing it for the first time as it was really meant to be seen. Nothing will be lost in translation, or even worse, altered with a biased spin. With this ability to comprehend you will be free to form your own opinions.

As many know, the first step is learning hangeul, the Korean alphabet. While many claim this is easy and only takes a few hours (some even boast they did it in two), the truth is that recognizing the characters and their corresponding sounds with reasonable accuracy takes quite a bit longer.

Still, the learning curve is relatively low, and the commitment to memorizing it becomes rewarding enough in itself that learning becomes self-perpetuating, especially with the many English words that are written in Korean. Hangeul can be learned well with a textbook and CD, with the latter being required to distinguish the tricky aspirated and tensed consonant sounds.

From there, attending a Korean class is a really big help. They will be able to correct your pronunciation and speak slowly so you can hear Korean at a learner’s speed. One problem that I believe exists with many Korean teachers however is their preference for teaching only the respectful form of the language, the use of which will get you laughed at if conversing with close Korean friends.

Having a conversation partner is a great way to expose yourself to the real colloquial language - especially slang. As for English teachers, just listening to your students interacting can be a big help too, though you will soon learn they often talk about very similar topics.

Once past the steepest part of the learning curve and have started to grasp grammar and the way Korean people speak, you will find there are lots of little ways to improve your Korean. Most cell phones have a dictionary, so start looking things up. Buying an electronic dictionary, the same ones you see with every English student, is a big help too.

Learn to send text messages in Korean. Better yet, type on a Korean keyboard and start a blog in Korean.

Watch Korean movies, they’re some of the world’s best - especially last year’s “Milyang,” a winner at the Cannes Film Festival for actress Jeon Do-yeon’s performance. Also, try and read Korean subtitles in English language movies, and you may be pleasantly surprised by what you can understand.

The main thing is to not give up. Keep an open ear and an open mind. Don’t take it personally when Koreans laugh at your Korean. I have experienced that enough by now to know that they don’t mean it in spite, it is a natural reaction to the peculiarity of hearing a foreigner trying to speak their language.

I’ve just started an online notebook to aid my studies here:

www.onlinegongcheck.wordpress.com

Thanks to Amanda of Amanda takes off for the inspiration. 고마워요!

Update 1: Thanks to 김유민 for offering corrections for my first diary entry to make it sound the business!

Below is the first diary entry that I wrote for my new Korean tutor. She marked the original copy and suggested corrections which I have done my best to put in place. If you see any mistakes though or can suggest more appropriate expressions then please let me know.

온라인 한국어 일기 1

내 이름은 제임스이다. 그리고 나는 21세이다. 작년 7월에 여국에서 대학교를 졸업 했다. 거기에서 나는 심리학을 전공 했다. 그동안 나는 심심해서 여행을 아주 많이 하고 싶었다. 그래서 내가 친구한테 그문제에 대해 이야기 했다.
그녀는 나한테 한국에서 영어를 가르치는 것에 대해 말했다. 나는 그것이 재미 있다고 생각 했다. 게다가 한국어도 이미 조금 알고 있었다. 왜냐하면 태권도를 했다. 어쨌든~~ 지금은 나는 한국에 산다. 그리고 나는 영어 선생님이다. 직음이 전보다 더 재미있다!

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Translation:

Korean Online Diary 1

My name is James and I am 21 years old. Last July I graduated from university in England, where I majored in Psychology. At that time I was bored and I really wanted to go travelling so I talked with my friend about the problem and she told me about teaching English in Korea. I thought it sounded fun. On top of that I already knew a little bit about Korean because I had studied taekwondo. Anyway… Now I live in Korea and I am an English teacher. Now is more interesting than before!

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I’ve just read an exceptionally well-written article about the ridiculousness of S. Korea’s approach towards English education, and especially in the hagwons that so many English teachers (like myself) work in. Conor Purcel (AKA Seoul Man) captures many of the thoughts I’ve been having about my own job magnificently.

I found this article on the travellers site BootsnAll traveller but would guess it originally appeared on Conor’s own blog - does anyone know the address of this if he still has it? The reason I say still is because the article is dated Sept 2002. Either way, he has written more articles on the site too. Two other articles of his I read were also good reads, on surviving as a foreigner and nightlife.

Anyway, I like the article so much that I’ve re-published it below. Conor, if you want me to remove it then please email me

The Business of Knowledge
by Conor Purcel

2pm. Oedae Hagwon. Sosa Dong. Bucheon city. Korea.
On the fourth floor, 15 crying, moaning, bleeding, shouting, laughing students are crammed into a tiny room, all there to learn a language most will never use. All forced to recite English expressions ranging from the banal (”How are you today?”) to the ridiculous (”Is Minhee handsome?”). They will read textbooks littered with grammar and spelling mistakes. They will learn about candy cane and baseball. They will sit exams, produce plays, memorise stories, compete in quizzes and do homework; all in the vain attempt to learn English. Yet meet any of these students in 20 years time and most will not be able to mutter more than a few perfunctory English sentences.

While this might seem like an overly cynical attitude on my part, anyone that spends more than five minutes in a hagwon will realise the sole motivation is the making of money. This reality is as blatant as it is tolerated and no one (the teachers, the students or the parents) seem to care. The Korean teachers are in the main overworked, over-stressed and underpaid. That they are not churning out future English laureates is of no great concern. As for the foreign English teachers, well most seem more interested in what bar they will be frequenting on Saturday or what channel is showing premiership football. Whatever great intentions they bring with them through customs are soon drummed out of them by the reality of working within the hagwon system.

Read the full article here

미녀들의 수다 or The Beauties’ Chatterbox as it is often translated is one of the most popular shows in Korea (at times pulling 15% of all TV viewers). The premise behind the show is pretty simple, as The Marmot’s Hole describes here:

“The program brings together 16 lovely and unmarried young women residing in Korea to discuss Korean culture and Korean men…”

I’m sure that like myself, many others will have encountered this show when flipping through the channels. Although I have to admit to understanding very little of what the women are talking about in detail, I do still enjoy watching it for what I can pick up and not least for that these women really are very lovely (yes, the title of the show is accurate..!)

There are plenty of clips available on youtube.com. Here are a couple of funny ones I recently stumbled across. The first is the introduction of girl from Uzbekistan called Djamila and then proceeds onto some basic conversation.

In the next clip the more advanced speaking Dominique does a hilarious take-off of Djamila’s sultry ways…

Anyway, aside from the show’s more obvious merits I think watching the clips on youtube can be a good way to study Korean converstion as there are plenty of clips available and you have time to stop the video and read the subtitles when necessary. Obviously there is the potential problem that some of the conversation is wrong but this seems to be always made clear so shouldn’t be a problem. Search youtube.com for ‘global talk show’ (another name for the show) and you’ll get plenty of results.

Also I read somewhere on the net that there is a DVD. Does anyone know if this is available yet and if so whether it has subtitles and where it can be purchased from?

Beastie Boys watch out. 3 foreigners from a town called Gumchon (although they debate this romanization) have released a hilarious rap video about their life there under the name ‘EV Boyz’. Essential viewing for any waegukin.

Source: Socius in Daejeon

Unfortunately I don’t have any other information on them - can anyone help?

Some posts I’m planning on writing in the near future:

• Reviews of books I’ve read for learning Korean
• Korean film recommendations
• The mistakes that Koreans always seem to make when speaking English and what these tell us about Korean or how Korean has sometimes been mis-translated.

I’d like to say thanks to ezcorean and let’s learn korean for their interest in my blog, and special thanks to the latter for mentioning my article in the Korea Herald today.

Both are excellent sites about learning Korean. Ezcorean provides the ability to create an account and make word lists which you can then test yourself on, and let’s learn Korean provides humorous insights and learning tips from a number of writers.

I’ll be posting more regularly on here now so stay tuned…

My second article was published in the Korea Herald today. Unfortunately I was allocated a lower word count this time (500) and the article had to be edited further to fit it into today’s paper. Here I’ve published the full unedited article.

Dropping the ‘You’

In my last article I touched briefly on some of the differences with Korean that can create difficulties for those beginning to study the language like myself. While the previously discussed differences were very apparent aspects of the language, such as the vocabulary and grammar, there are more hidden differences with Korean in the style of communication that make studying it such an interesting and at times astonishing experience for the student.

One of the first things the student of Korean will encounter is the existence of speech levels, in which words need to be altered to fit the situation and pay appropriate respect to the person with whom one is conversing. What they may not know however is that this is just one part of a whole set of differences in the language which stem from the influence of Confucianism on Korean culture. Whilst a summary of Confucian ideals is well beyond the scope of this article, the most important thing to know is that there can be five possible relationships between subjects, determined by age and status. Related to this point is the important concept of jeong, which is the idea that people need to have knowledge of each others position in the hierarchy in order for one of these relationships to be established, and for it to blossom from there.

From the language student’s perspective these differences can be somewhat invisible unless they are being educated in Korean culture or better yet living in the culture. It is unobvious for example that the innocent-sounding question of “what’s your name?” can be considered unnecessary and even rude, due to the preference for using familial titles to call people (except for in close relationships or between elders and inferiors). What this means is that the question “how old are you?” is the much more valid one to ask in most cases, as it helps the subjects to work out the relationship existing between each other, which then acts as a basis for them to know which questions to ask next.

While this difference in the language has now become familiar to me, there is another which I am finding much harder to adapt to, and that is the lack of use of the second-person pronoun ‘you’. While it is indeed true that pronouns are less common in Korean, even amongst these ‘you’ occupies a special place in that it is only generally acceptable to use between those in close relationships. I found this out first hand when my use of the dictionary translated tang-shin appeared to only make my listeners either uncomfortable or it sent them into fits of laughter. I’ve since learned that this ‘you’ pronoun is usually reserved for formal use or between married couples.

Whilst adapting your style of questioning to fit more in-line with Confucian teachings is one thing, the dropping of the ‘you’ pronoun altogether is a much harder change to make for the student who has grown up to the know the world in terms of “me and you”.