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Conquering Literary Korean | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5040 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes  Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 1 of 4 19 January 2011 at 9:24am | IP Logged |
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Gonna give this a shot... if people seem to enjoy reading this, and more importantly, if I find this useful, I'll
probably continue to add to it... If you're interested, check my profile for a good sense of where I'm at with Korean. Today I studied for about 3 hours. Using a news broadcast from last December that I downloaded from SCOLA's Insta-Class section, I looked up all the words I didn't know for the two featured stories, first just from reading the transcript. I then watched/listened a few times to activate the words I just learned and to get a little listening/news comprehension practice in. The first featured story was about Kim Jong Il's son who is taking on a more public role in North Korean government and propaganda. There was a shot of him pouring alcohol for an artist using only his right hand, just as his father had done in the previous shot. In Korean culture you always pour someone's drink with two hands as a sign of respect - obviously the idea behind breaking with this custom signifies the extent to which the Kim clan is revered/feared in North Korea. The report said essentially that with the death of the official number two in their government, "North Korea" has promoted Kim Jong Un to the number two spot. The second story was about the restoration progress of a very old landmark in Seoul (a city gate) that was burned down by a crazy guy a few years ago. The project is complete but the sign that declares it as a city gate, made of a rare type of wood and written in traditional Chinese, has a visible crack going through it. This sign has not been up for more than 3 months, so the debate on who's fault this is has been heated. The chief carpenter on the project offered to build a new one with his own money, but the Culture Administration has declined, citing the fact that the crack was natural and not due to the carpentry. Obviously the carpenter is embarrassed but the Culture Admin. doesn't want to spend the time to change the sign, or so it seems. There were some citizen groups protesting the "poor management" of the restoration project... Funny stuff. I wrote up a summary on www.lang-8.com here: http://lang-8.com/213274/journals/771825 I then read through the short story "The Day the First Snow Fell" by Oh Jeong Hee (첫눈 오던 날 - 오정희). It took me about an hour - granted I had an extensive vocab list and grammar notation list on hand. In short, the story was about a 30-something lonely woman who spends the first snow day of the winter feeling sorry for herself. She leaves work, goes to a musical performance, and then ends up at a bar. There a college aged guy approaches her and orders more beer, telling her that he's been dumped by his girlfriend. His friends seem to cheer his actions on from afar. At first she doesn't want to talk to him, but she seems attracted to him and they start chatting. More beer. She shows him a family heirloom, a marriage ring that she inherited from her deceased mother. She lets him try it on. More beer. She gets dizzy. Goes to the bathroom, comes back, he and his friends are gone. She waits around, and then the waiter brings the large check. She loses her ring and has to pay for the beers. The content was kind of unexciting - I'm not into reading about lonely women, but my professor recommended it. Language-wise, this story had some tough, long sentences, but nothing I couldn't really handle after some word by word analysis. Very readable. I was able to forgo with the grammar notes for long stretches and I even made it through a couple short paragraphs without needing the vocab list. I should read this story again sometime soon - definitely for the vocab/grammar, and I also might find the story more interesting the second time around. Off to bed, but not without listening to some Korean internet radio for 15 minutes or so. I've been enjoying a station in Jeonju lately... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5040 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 2 of 4 24 January 2011 at 8:46am | IP Logged |
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I only studied for a combined total of 3 or so hours this past weekend because I was pretty busy with other stuff,
but I was able to spend much of yesterday and part of today with my girlfriend (who is Korean) so I can say I was very engaged with the language despite not studying. I grabbed another Insta-Class download from Scola and found all the words I didn't know and compiled them and their translations into a list. I then went back and watched/listened to activate the vocabulary a bit, and also reviewed the other articles I read. The first article in this broadcast was about an Indie musician who died from a brain hemorrhage in his apartment. His name was "Come from behind to win with a bases loaded home run moonlight fairy" or "달빛요정역전만루홈런". He was fairly popular, especially with the 88 thousand won generation - an interesting term for those who have graduated college but could not find good paying work, living on 10 million won per year (about $10,000). I'm not sure why it is called the 88 thousand won generation... perhaps this is their monthly salary, which would equal just over 11 million won per year. Anyways this musician died in relative poverty despite his popularity. He manufactured all his cds in his home and distributed his music over the internet. The second news report looked at why a musician like him could not make a living from his music. They used his song "Acorn" as an example - on Cyworld, the Korean version of Facebook, you can purchase acorns which allow you to buy music, amongst other things. He wrote a song saying how he hated acorns because they weren't money. In Korea, apparently domestic artists that sell their music through a website see only half of the revenue (iTunes gives 70% to artists). Moreover, websites often use "dumping" techniques to bundle multiple songs into a package and sell it for a tenth of the price, bringing the artist's profit down even lower. I know this log is about literary Korean, but I'd like to say a few words on what I've been feeling with my speaking as of late. Since WInter quarter started, I've been spending a considerable amount of time with Korean friends, including my girlfriend. Whenever I begin prolonged stretches of activity with speaking, I seem to always follow a similar pattern. At first I speak without much problem, warming up my the Korean production in my brain. As time goes on I run into serious barriers, where I feel I can't quite say what I want to say at the speeds I'm used to. Thus I revert to very odd sentences that may have English characteristics. After I run through this gauntlet, I come out on the other end with faster processing of grammar and vocab in my brain, having awakened dormant grammar and phrases. Then I really can start stringing together ideas into coherent stories, arguments, jokes, etc. I wonder how long I can sustain this recent surge... Edited by jtdotto on 24 January 2011 at 8:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5040 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 3 of 4 27 January 2011 at 12:40am | IP Logged |
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Last night I was able to study for a good 2 and a half hours or so. Lately I've been very focused on reading
newspapers, almost exclusively, despite having access to a large library of well annotated Korean short stories. Makes me think I should have named this log "Conquering Written Korean", but that would have an entirely different connotation altogether... I downloaded another news broadcast from SCOLA, this one from the end of last November. The first story reported on the forecasted cold snaps this winter. In hindsight they were very right, with far below freezing temperatures having gripped the Korean Peninsula for the past couple months. Due to La Nina, water temperatures in the East Pacific have been unusually cold, and with the most ice melted in the North Pole since 2007, the air has been saturated with moisture. In Siberia there was a large snow drop, causing the jet stream to slow down and snow and well below freezing temperatures were expected (again, they were right). The second story looked at the impacts the cold weather up until that point had had on crops. Cabbage leaves breaking and tearing effortlessly, felt covered radish roots freezing underground, etc. This all affects kimchi production, the most popular side dish in Korea. I also wrote up a short summary on the article I read a few days ago about the death of a popular indie musician. Here is the link: http://lang-8.com/213274/journals/781951 I've realized that compiling on this new vocab into a single notebook and then writing summaries of these articles with the conscious objective of USING the vocab helps me a) learn the vocab much better, and b) learn how to use the vocab in new and more complex sentence constructions. I find this much more effective than simply just going through a flash card routine (and much more interactive). True, I may not learn all the words because I don't use them all in my summaries, but the ones I use have a higher 'sticking' factor. Perhaps this is a good strategy for treading through the advanced levels of language learning. Any thoughts? Edited by jtdotto on 27 January 2011 at 12:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5460 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 4 of 4 27 January 2011 at 1:52am | IP Logged |
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I've started writing more because I can recognize a lot of words by reading and listening, but in Korean, half the words I know are purely passive, so I think your strategy is good.
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