I'm going to Australia, now.
Category: Banalities & Journaling
Caveat: 120 Essays
I’m off for a week, now. I fly to Australia tomorrow. I have about 120 student essays to correct–which gives me something to do on the plane journey, I guess.
It rained most of the day today, and it was cooler… It was nice. After work got out, I had dinner with Curt and we talked about his plans for his academy that he’s trying to build. I hope he is successful… I felt a bit badly about having rejected his offer for ElBeuRitJi’s, especially with those essays weighing down my backpack. But… that’s life, right?
Curt spent some time talking about 정 (jeong), about how it was a Korean concept that had no direct parallel in English. It definitely seems to have a lot of possible translations: naver.com’s online dictionary says “feeling, emotion, sentiment, love, affection, passion, human nature, sympathy, compassion, heart” among other things. But I don’t think it’s that inaccessible a concept. Curt feels strongly that Westerners are too dominated by practical and excessively rationalist tendencies, while Koreans are guided by emotion. I don’t think this is true, but I have a heard time trying to argue with him about it, so I tend to just nod and reflect on what he’s saying. I guess I’m always more interested in what people of different cultures and backgrounds have in common than what separates them, so I’m always seeking commonalities, maybe.
Below is a picture of the shiny metallic-looking Jeongbalsan police station tower, as seen (through some other buildings) from a parking lot a block west of my apartment building. It looks a bit like a grounded rocket ship from a 1930’s-era movie.
-other Notes for Korean-
In other notes: 뜻이 있는 곳에 길이 있다=”where there’s a will there’s a way”
뜻=aim, intention
Caveat: 스페인 여객기 추락 153명 사망
I had another tiny yet triumphal linguistic milestone this morning when I logged onto the internet. I opened up google news, which, because of my IP address, plops me down on the Korean version of the site by default. Normally, the only time I spend time on google news in Korean is if I’m intentionally and masochistically spending time there trying to decipher a headline or maybe (if I’m feeling ambitious) the first line of an article.
But today, I had the experience of a headline grabbing my attention and leading me to click through to the article. It said: “스페인 여객기 추락 153명 사망…19명만 생존.” It helped that there were a few keywords in the article that I easily knew: 스페인=(Spain), 명=(PEOPLE COUNTER), 사망=(dead). So it was about 153 people dead in Spain. More terrorism? I, the reading public, had to know more!
Of course, I went to google news in English, finally, to satisfy my curiosity. But it was cool to have the experience of “spontaneous reading” (as opposed to deliberate reading, I guess). Still, reading about airline crashes, whether in Korean or English, isn’t necessarily smart, right before an airplane trip.
And now, a completely unrelated thought. There’s been a lot in the news lately about McCain closing his gap with Obama in polls on the presidential race, and much commentary about how they’re “neck and neck,” or somesuch.
But Obama is still at 60 points to McCain’s 40, if you look at Intrade. Intrade is a “prediction market”–a place where people bet real money on the outcomes of future events–and a large number of studies have shown that prediction markets are phenomenally more accurate than polls at predicitons. So I’ll just keep watching Intrade and keep ignoring the polls–I will be surprised if that historical accuracy doesn’t again prove out.
Caveat: 드르르
My current favorite Korean word is 드르르 (government romanization deureureu, IPA /tɯɾɯɾɯ/). Although I’m not quite sure how to use it smoothly. Er… that’s what it means: “smoothly, swimmingly.” Something like that. I love the sound of it. The way it sounds like you’re beginning to hum some great musical trope or something. Duh-ruh-ruh.
I went to KINTEX this morning. KINTEX is a giant convention center, but every Wednesday the Uijeongbu area Immigration office (which handles the northern half of Gyeonggi province) sets up a help desk for all the foreigners in the Ilsan area, so they don’t have to trek to Uijeongbu to get their paperwork dealt with (40 minutes in on one subway line, then 40 minutes out on another is the most plausible way to make the trip, I would guess).
I got the reentry visa and paperwork worked out for my trip to Australia next week (leaving this Saturday). The matter went smoothly. There: 드르르 진행되었어요. I used it!
That date has crept up very fast. Of course, with my last-minute negotiations over the contract renewal and all, I actually only bought the tickets last week. So not that fast, really. It’s ending up being a last-minute thing all around.
I took the taxi to KINTEX–it’s less than 3 bucks, so no big deal. Then I decided to walk home. The sky was deep cerulean. The weather’s been hot, still, but much less humid, and so there’s not much haze in the air, especially with a nice morning breeze blowing. There were huge puffy lumps of cobalt and chalk cruising the skies randomly, looking for something to rain on. I zig-zagged through the narrow grid of the kburbs somewhat aimlessly, knowing my general direction.
I felt extremely aware for once of what a huge metropolis I’m living in – I’m on the northwestern corner of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world, by population. I could travel east, south, or southeast for over an hour and still be in neighborhoods identical except in specifics. West and north are different – 15 minutes west is the estuary of the Han River, and beyond that some islands and the Yellow sea and China. 20 minutes north is the most militarized border in the world, and a socialist workers’ paradise, I think.
Here is a picture of a lovely ivy-covered kburban home.
Caveat: 내가 고추룰 봤어요
A common enough sight, this time of year: red hot chili peppers lying around on the sidewalk, drying and becoming delicious. I think people must grow them on their balconies and rooftoops and things… although there do seem to be quite a few community gardens around, too.
Caveat: Buyer’s Remorse
Any time I make a major decision, whatever it's about, I tend to go through a phase directly afterward where I spend way too much time second-guessing the decision, wondering if I did the right thing, worrying about the opportunities lost by having made it, etc.
So, given I signed that contract last week, I guess I spent the weekend feeling a bit a "buyer's remorse," as I tend to think of it. I'll get over it.
On Saturday, I go to Australia, via Hong Kong, to visit with my mother for a week. Meanwhile, I have an immense amount of work to do–grading papers and all that.
I was walking to work earlier, and a former student from RingGuAPoReom, John, ran up to me yelling "teacher teacher" and gave me a warm and completely spontaneous hug. That was a good feeling, to be missed, but there was a comic sadness to it too. John was always the class clown, and there was a component of clowning in his actions, as he was with a number of other students when he did this, probably from his new academy setting. But it was heartwarming nevertheless.
-Notes for Korean–
"내 마미요"
=I do as I please
(I heard this, and have no idea if I've transcribed it accurately–I'm not able to parse it as it stands, though)
마음=spirit, idea, heart, fancy, mood, intention, inclination, feeling, interest
사실=evidence, "as a matter of fact…", so: actually
자다=sleep, so: 자, 자자=(ja, jaja)="c'mon, let's go to sleep."
Caveat: The End of “Spring”
I finished watching 달자의봄 (Dal-ja’s Spring). So far, this is the Korean drama I’ve liked most of all the ones I’ve tried watching–as I mentioned before, it’s edgier, by far, than any of the others, despite its sappy, romantic core plot elements.
My favorite character in the drama is 강신자 (Kang Shin-ja, played by actress 양희경=Yang Hui-gyeong – see the picture). Part of why I like this character (and/or the actress who plays her) is because she speaks a very clearly enunciated, slow, methodical Korean, which is easier to understand than most that I hear on tv shows. Whether this methodical Korean is part of the character, or inherent to the actress’s personality, I’m not sure. Regardless, I enjoy listening to her clipped, slow syllables.
The character herself is kind of intriguing, too: a hyperbole of Korean stereotypes about the middle-aged female middle-manager. She’s quite hilarious, without ever being silly or undignified. And in the end, you realize she’s a very sympathetic character, too. I wish they’d made more of the fact that she turns out to be the male lead’s aunt, but she kind of drops out of the last episodes.
If you want to see her in action, she figures prominently in part of episode 11, which someone has been kind enough to upload to youtube (with Spanish subtitles!). [UPDATE 20200327: link was rotten. Here is a different short link from episode 12.] Check her out – she’s the rotund woman in the red suit. Listen to how she minces out those Korean syllables… fabulous!
Caveat: Hundertwasser
I was surfing wikipedia earlier and discovered an Austrian architect named Hundertwasser I’d never before heard of, but whose work is very interesting to me–in the same vein as Gaudi, I’d say. The building at right is not by him. But it shares a few stylistic elements.
I wonder if one can become a successful architect late in life? Has it ever been done?
When I was a child, I was certain I wanted to become an architect, and I held fairly fast to that ambition until the summer after my graduation from high school. I worked for a civil engineering office and became intimidated by the sheer magnitude of number crunching that successful structural design seemed to involve. And I was too committed, at that time, to understanding not just the design ideas but the engineering principles to even consider become an “art”-type architect (i.e. one who doesn’t do the engineering parts). And from that time until now, I’ve never had much clarity of ambition.
-Notes for Korean-
context: a song lyric
이런=such, such..as, of this kind
마음=idea, thought, mind,
이런 내 마음 알고 있나요
=such my thought understand-PROGRESSIVE-CONJECTURE-POLITE
=[?] I wonder if I am understanding
고백=confession, admission
Caveat: And After All That Complaining…
Well. As of last night, I made a commitment and started paperwork to extend my contract with 엘브릿지어학원 (LBridge Language Academy) for one year–that is, through August of 2009. This probably seems very illogical and inconsistent of me, given my many recent complaints about the place. But… first and foremost, we shouldn't forget that it's always easier to complain than it is to point out the positive: when I looked as objectively as possible at my options, my goals and my feelings about what I was doing, it seemed like the right decision. Additionally, a number of recent developments conspired to make the whole thing more attractive.
Last week, my old boss, Curt, made me a sort of "counter offer." It wasn't very firm on the details, though–he's trying to start his own, new hagwon, but such start-ups are notoriously unstable. Consider only the fact that LinguaForum, which was just such a start up, failed despite having "bought" substantial student body at the start and having extensive corporate backing, neither of which Curt has access to. So although I would enjoy working for Curt again, and found the idea of a more laid-back atmosphere than what prevails at 엘브릿지 to be almost compelling, in the end I was frightened about making a commitment to him.
Then, two days ago, the supervisor here made two suggestions (the second one at my prompting) to "sweeten" the deal 엘브릿지 was offering. First, apparently a raise of about 8%. And then, the possibility of about 9 days off before the start of the new term in September–a chance to take a little trip somewhere, out of the country (My intention is to go to Australia to visit my mother).
Another–probably significant–reason I changed my mind comes down to flattery, actually. The other day, I had someone observe my class, and then she gave a fairly glowing report back to the boss here, who subsequently reported that feedback to me enthusiastically. Given the occasional crises I've had in the past over feelings that my teaching efforts weren't appreciated or were downright disapproved of by previous supervisors (not including Curt, but others), this meant a great deal to me. "Flattery will get you everywhere," as they say.
Lastly, as I've mentioned before, I've been craving some stability, I think. Staying with my current employer makes the coming year predictable (as LBridge is too big to go crashing to the ground as Tomorrow School and then LinguaForum have done), and so it gives me a chance to continue improving my teaching abilities in an always highly structured and occasionally supportive environment. So… that's the plan. Signed, sealed, delivered.
Caveat: Analytic comforts
I don't have much to say at the moment. But I've been putting together some ruminations on language learning. Here's a recent draft. I was thinking of making it into a standalone webpage somewhere, after some more editing and content, for my students to see.
Jared's thoughts on how to actually learn to SPEAK effectively. Or, rather… "a list of some things that don't really help you speak better."
- Memorizing vocabulary doesn't really help. Lists of words with definitions or translation-meanings have a place, especially starting out, but farther on, learning and memorizing lists of words with meanings, in this way, will not ever help you improve fluency.
- Knowing grammar won't make you speak better. It helps to understand the ways that the grammar of the language work, but studying it and memorizing "right" vs "wrong" grammar cannot improve your fluency.
- If you can't understand what you hear, you won't get better at speaking. Listening is critical. It's better to study listening by hearing real conversations, dialogues on television, etc., instead of just listening to things from textbooks, which are made-up conversations that are not real. And it's better to be able to answer simple questions about what you hear than to just memorize the content of the dialogues, too. Answering simple questions well (automatically!) is more help than answering complicated questions slowly or uncertainly.
- Good reading or writing skills don't guarantee you will be a good speaker. Spoken English is a different language that written English – really! The spoken version of any language is very different from its written version.
As anyone who looks at my little "notes for Korean" will no doubt realize, I'm not very good at following my own advice. There's a comfort and safety in pursuing language-learning analytically, that makes it very difficult to abandon such efforts despite their ineffectiveness.
-Notes for Korean-
소식=light fare, plain meal
소식=news, information
새롭다=new, fresh, recent
Basic adverb-derivational endings
-이=for most "old" or native-korean verbs
-리=for descriptive irregular verbs in -르 (this is just a systematic extension of the -ㄹ- doubling irregularity)
-히=for sino-korean verbs in -하다 (this is a highly productive and large class)
I had an epiphany as I figured this out: most -하다 verbs are sino-korean, and the whole process is about accommodating the complex morphology of korean, when borrowing from other languages – it happens with english loanwords that become verbs, too!
곱다=beautiful, lovely, fair
-부터=from, since
Caveat: Hero of Dust
I awoke from a strange, somewhat unhappy dream this morning, but the details quickly fled. Something about being left in charge of a large, gloomy place, with insufficient knowledge or support to know what to do. Like a cross between a poorly maintained data center (a la my last job at HealthSmart) and a musty old used bookstore, with shades of an automotive junkyard thrown in. And there was this wind blowing, and then some hero-type-person showed up, but he was made of dust, and was all bluster and no depth.
I ate a delicious nectarine as part of breakfast, and drank my iced coffees, and checked my emails. Not many emails, these days, except spam and direct marketing from Mr Obama's campaign and suchlike. I've mostly convinced myself that renewing with LBridge is the most stable, logical choice, the "path of least resistance," but I find myself groping for excuses to be angry with them and to avoid renewing. So it's clear I have some discomfort with the idea. The question is, is my discomfort with renewing greater than the prospective discomfort that will come with the multiple uncertainties about "what's next" that would accompany not renewing? I seem to be craving stability, lately, more than is my wont.
-Notes for Korean-
대결=contest, confrontation
매력=attractiveness, glamor
펼쳤다=unfolded, spread out, opened
종이=paper
정말… 괜찮은겁니까?="Are you really alright?"
There's a wacky infix -ㄴ거- that I can't figure out, though my guess is that it's related to the normally non-terminal -ㄴ걸, meaning "the action or state expressed by the verb occurs or is the way it is despite and contrary to whatever expectations what might normally have" (awkward phrasing courtesy my grammar book, p 225). The book also says "this pattern can attach '요' to express politeness," which leads me to think that in the above case, -ㅂ니다 is being attached to express higher formality, and that this is causing the -ㄹ to be dropped. But I'm not terribly confident about this.
힘들어="I'm tired" (it's arduous [?])
Caveat: The Obsolete Code of the Higher Eclectica
I was reading an editorial in the New York Times that, although clearly intended as satire and meant tongue-in-cheek, struck me as fundamentally accurate. And it made me feel outmoded, given the extent to which I buy into the "code of the Higher Eclectica" as Mr Brooks put it. I feel a certain scorn, combined with a distrust, of those who base their definitions of cultural coolness on media over underlying culture. But I think it's true. It's now the iPhone generation, and cultural content has become moot – all that matters is means of transmission.
I begin to imagine a marxian-style analysis that encompasses historically and materially determined transitions in "modes of transmission" that goes above-and-beyond the classically marxist transitions in "modes of production." Let's just call it the germ of an idea, for now. Mientras tanto, digamos adios a la "Higher Eclectica" del Sr Brooks.
Which reminds me of a couple of lines in the latest Korean drama that I've been watching episodes of: they mention the "386" generation as being those people in their 30's and early 40's (in Korea, but it applies just as well to U.S. culture I think)–people who's formative years included personal computers but for whom the internet and broadband cellphone connectivity seem just a tad "newfangled."
Anyway, the drama is called 달자의 봄 (Dalja's Spring), and it is consistently violating all the "rules of Korean drama" that I'd decided must exist up until now. It deals with all kinds of unexpected and "taboo" subjects that every single drama I've watched up until now scrupulously avoided: divorce, suicide, abortion, premarital sex, pregnancy outside of marriage, middle-aged career women, single mothers, irresponsible fathers. And more than just blinkingly, although by U.S. standards it remains utterly G-rated.
Yet despite all that, it is a very light-hearted, even sappy romance, with a fundamentally conservative social message, just like all the Korean dramas I've watched. This message strikes me as both compelling and unrealistic vis-a-vis human day-to-day realities in any culture. And it continues to reinforce my earlier not-so-clearly-stated hypothesis that contemporary Korean culture (and perhaps East Asian culture more generally?) is undergoing a kind of Confucian counter-reformation within a modernist and/or post-modernist trajectory.
Yesterday I worked–I'd "volunteered" to help with a speech contest, and so I woke up early and went over to ElBeuRitJi's Baengma Campus, and served as a judge for lots of not-bad student speeches. It was awesome to see some of my former RingGuAPoReom students (middle schoolers) who were participating, and one of my former students, shy-but-supremely-competent Irene, even managed to win a runner-up prize, which was quite an accomplishment in the context of ElBeuRitJi's much more intense academic standards, as well as a remarkable conquest of her own reticence. I felt parentally proud, as teachers sometimes do, I suppose–Irene is one of the few students who I remember vividly from my first few days of teaching back last September, when I realized quickly that she was the quiet one feeding all the right answers to her loud and gregarious friend, Amy, who was sitting next to her.
After work, I walked home in the steaming heat of mid afternoon, all the way down past Madu-yeok and Jeongbalsan, and when I got back to my apartment I felt terrible. Tired and sickly. Perhaps I had given myself mild heat stroke or something, I don't know. But I basically passed out, feeling exhausted, and had an unpleasant night of restless sleep.
-Notes for Korean-
context: 달자의 봄
쿨하게 나가야지="act cool" (kulhage nagayaji = cool-DO-ADVERBIAL go-out-SOME-IMPERATIVE-VERB-ENDING-THAT-I-CAN'T-FIND-IN-A-BOOK)
note that 쿨 (kul) is apparently directly from English
지금 뭔가 야한 상상 하고 있었구만, 맞지?
"Now you're having some vulgar fantasy, right?"
야한=dirty, coarse, vulgar
상상=imagination
일어나다=to get up, wake up
so… 일어났어요?="you're up now?"
context: obsessing on unparseable Korean
According to the drama transcript on the KBS website, in episode 18, about 47 minutes in, grandma says:
고저 한번 잘해볼라다가 끝나는거 고거이 인생이라구 말이디.
I had tremendous difficulty trying to parse this, and I have failed. Also, as I listened to it over and over, I don't think that's what she actually says. The last words sound more like … 인생이라고 말이야, which, conveniently, I find slightly easier to parse–so I'm going to assume, with great hubris, that there's an error in the Korean written transcript, or else the transcript is meant to reflect some kind of dialectical variation and that the actress playing grandma chooses not to implement when she actually speaks. Certainly, I've never heard of a verb ending -디 before. Anyway… according to the subtitlers, the phrase is supposed to mean: "The true meaning of life is to live well once through." So, you can see why that caught my interest–a nice philosophical, aphoristic nugget. But I really have been utterly unable to parse this successfully.
With my revisions to the transcript, the transliteration would be:
goseo hanbeon jalhaebolladaga kkeutnaneungeo gogeoi insaengirago maliya
=fluctuation once well-do-try-[INTRO-WARNING?(p231 in my grammar)]-[INTERRUPTED-PAST(but can this ending attach to the previous one?)] end-GERUND-[MYSTERY-ENDING-#1] [MYSTERY-WORD-#2] life-[COPULA]-[AUX VERB -고 말다?=finish up?]
words…
고저=fluctuation
한번=once<=한=one (ADJ form)+번=time (COUNTER)
끝나다=end, come to an end
고거이=?that?
인생=human life
Caveat: Life in Sunshine Heights
The news from Lone Mountain, Sunshine Heights, Near-the-Capital, Korea.
Place names in Korean are often revealed to be rather inane once you figure out what they mean. I became curious about some of the terminology in my address, and investigated a little bit. I live in a district called Ilsan, which means nothing more than "one mountain." Technically, there are two districts: Ilsanseo-gu and Ilsandong-gu (West One Mountain District and East One Mountain District) – so I guess that means the two districts have to share the one mountain. Nor is it clear to me which of various mountains in the neighborhood is the "one."
These districts (also called "wards" and, in my opinion, best translated as "boroughs") form part of Goyang City. Goyang seems to mean something like "sunshine elevation" – so you might call it Sunshine Heights City. It's also an exact homonym for "exaltation" and a near-homonym for "cat" (goyangi).
The city of Goyang is part of Gyeonggi province. Gyeong is just the Chinese hanja for "capital" (as in capital city), and is often a word used to refer to things related to the capital of the country, Seoul, which is just down the subway line. The -gi ending seems to refer to the fact that the province is "near-the-capital," which is self-evident if you look at a map.
Interestingly, the name Seoul is just the native Korean word for "gyeong" and means nothing more than "capital," too. In fact, you can use the word seoul to refer to the capital of other countries: e.g. 프랑스의 서울 파리 (peurangseu-ui seoul pari = France's capital, Paris).
-More Notes for Korean-
context: work preparations and random thoughts
소금=salt
성적=record, score
회원=member
중=middle, during
대비=preparation, provision
고사=test
기말=end of term
문제=question(for discussion)
나무조각=wooden sculpture
지긋지긋 하군요="it's revolting"<=지긋지긋 하다=be tiresome, be disgusting, be abominable, etc.
Caveat: My subway station
This is my subway station.
Have a nice day.
Caveat: 과연 외로움은 상처보다 견디기 쉬운것일까?
Yesterday, with my extra day off, I met Basil in Gangnam and ate some delicious very authentic-tasting tacos al pastor – they could’ve come from a street vendor in Mexico City. I felt happy.
Today was more melancholy. Time is running out on my never-ending vacilation/procrastination regarding my decision to stay with ElBeuRitJi or not. I hate the fact of having to make decisions like this. If you just read my blog entries, you will conclude that I’m not very fond of ElBeuRitJi. And that’s true. But there are factors that encourage me, nevertheless, to want to renew. The primary one being that I’m craving some stability and/or predictability at the moment, and I am finally feeling somewhat pleased with the progress I’m making on my efforts to learn some Korean, so to throw things up in the air to see where the land, just now, feels like “running away without a good reason.”
Anyway, nobody will want to read too much about my angst. Let’s just say, by the end of the week, I’ll know for sure if I will be staying with ElBeuRitJi for another year or if everything will be up in the air come end-of-August, with who-knows-what coming next.
In other news… “Go-Stop” is a ubiquitous card game Koreans seem obsessed with–scenes involving people playing this game appear everywhere in movies and dramas on television. I am trying to learn more about it. Rules: https://www.pagat.com/fishing/gostop.html
-Notes for Korean-
context: random notes
매일=everyday, daily
메일=email
날=day
괴물=monster
어린이=child
싫어=”Nope” or “I won’t do it” (a bit rude I think)<=싫다=to be disagreeable, to be unwilling, to be unpleasant
-보다=[comparative particle ending] “…than…”
-네=”and family” after a name, e.g. 달자네=Dalja and family
context: reading a transcript alongside a tv drama
과연 외로움은 상처보다 견디기 쉬운것일까?
=indeed loneliness-TOPIC injury-than bear-GERUND easy-thing-COPULA-CONJECTURE
=”can it be that loneliness is easier to bear than pain?”
context: a web advertisement for a game
재미없으면 보상해드립니다!=”if you are not amused, you get a refund!”
I’ve decided to add this to my blog’s tagline, for a while. The breakdown:
보상=reward, compensation, recompense, refund(?)
드리다=[DONATORY auxiliary verb, HONORIFIC BENEFICIARY]=give, let, set, make a present of something to someone… preceded by V+어/아/여
cf. 주다=[DONATORY auxiliary verb, HUMILIFIC BENEFICIARY]… also preceded by V+어/아/여, which we use all the time to make requests…
… these are a case of a HONORIFIC/HUMILIFIC lexical pair, I think.
Just below, in the ad:
그걸과!=…I have no clue what this means, exactly; 그거-(<=그것) can be “that, this,” but what’s that embedded -ㄹ-? an OBJ ending? 과=and, with, against; but that means the phrase has no verb… is that OK? it would mean something like “against that!” doesn’t sound quite right…
context: reading the labels of household products
곰팡이=mold, mildew
Caveat: Are we there yet?
With my long weekend, I really should get out of my apartment and do something. I'll report back later.
-Notes for Korean-
context: trying to improve my spontaneous public transportation vocabulary
저 내립니다=I'm getting off [here]
Caveat: It takes a million years for people to meet
I watched two movies.
The first was 時をかける少女(toki o kakeru shoujo, The girl who traveled through time), a Japanese film from 1983 about a girl who starts spontaneously hopping back and forth through time – as the title suggests. It’s a rather stark, haunting work, but beautifully filmed and with memorable actors in the key roles, and a silly 1980’s JPop music video at the end, almost completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the film.
It’s interesting listening to Japanese after all my hard work in Korean – as I’ve read many times, knowing some Korean seems to make Japanese more “accessible,” even though my passive Japanase vocabulary is probably limited to at most 30 or so words and phrases (and my active vocab includes 2-3 fixed phrases, no more). This weird accessibility comes about despite the fact that Japanese and Korean actually seem share very little mutually comprehensible vocabulary. I think it must have to do with the similarities in grammar, word order, and pragmatics (i.e. how the language is deployed conversationally). One line in that movie that I liked: “It takes millions of years for people to meet,” from a recurring song sung by the character Fukushima.
The other movie was a bit of decadance. Or regression. A movie may qualify as being only great in its transcendent badness: Flash Gordon, Saviour of the Universe. This is the 1980 remake of the original 1930s series, and is one of those movies that was so bad it has since been elevated to high camp. But, with its Queen soundtrack and retro special effects, I have harbored an inordinate fondness for it, and it’s been so long since I’ve seen it. It came up in conversation with Basil yesterday, and last night I found it on a torrent and downloaded it. It was awesome. One memorable line, of many: “Are your men on the right pills?!” says Emperor Ming to his creepy number two, Clytus.
-Notes for Korean-
context: here and there… going through some old scraps of paper I wrote things down on
싸려 = 아닥 = shut up
곤란 difficulty, suffering, distress, hardship (and with ―하다 )
당황 confusion, consternation (and with ―하다 )
방언 dialect, slang
재촉하다 press, urge, request, command
서두르다 hurry up, get a move on,
website says: 깝치다 = 서두르다
꼭 tightly, securely
깝치다 = to put on airs
달팽이=snail
기다릴게요=[I] will wait for [you]
진짜 스님 될려고 그러세요?=(really monk become-INTENTIVE is-true-DEFERENTIAL-POLITE)=”do you really want to become a monk?”
Caveat: 오블리비어스
If only the real world had hyperlinks in it.
Today was a day off from work. I spent time hanging out with my neighbor in my building, Basil. A Palestinian-Canadian-American, he’s an interesting character. And, as of last week, a coworker – one of those “small world” things, I guess. I’d been a passing acquaintance of his since we had met each other walking around one time, and realized we were next door neighbors in our building. But now that we’re coworkers and nearby deskmates, we have more in common. So we talked for a while and hung out, and went into Seoul together, and had lunch/dinner at a middle eastern restaurant in Itaewon called Dubai. It was pretty good food, too.
But actually what I wanted to write about was the odd subway ride home. The subway was crowded, and so I stood in a corner of the subway car, and, per my usual habit, my eyes tried to find fragments of Korean to attempt to decipher. Obviously, I realize it’s impolite to read over one’s shoulder, but sometimes I can’t resist, especially when I catch something in Korean that I can actually understand.
This one woman was sending and receiving rapid-fire text messages in Korean on her cell phone (all the while reading a Japanese novel), and I read several words that I recognized, and I began to follow little isolated chunks of the conversation. One word she used that caused me to wonder, was when I read, clearly, 외국인 (foreigner), and then, a few words on, some form of 있다 (there is). Which made me wonder, intertextually, if she was perhaps texting her friend about the fact that a foreigner was reading over her shoulder. This seems unlikely, in retrospect, but it was one of those coincidences that piqued my interest, I guess. So I kept watching, circumspectly.
And then I saw the word 오블리비어스. What is that? Hm…. obeullibieoseu. Aha! Oblivious! Konglish, I thought. I don’t know what it is. I don’t think “oblivious” is a common Konglish term. So I googled it. Not right then, of course – although if I’d truly wanted to, I could have: my cellphone can surf the internet, if I pay exhorbitant rates. But the day is not far off when everyone will be able to google (or naver, or whatever comes next) anything they see, right as they see it. And then the real world will begin to grow hyperlinks.
But, meanwhile… I filed it away in my brain, and as soon as I got home, I googled it. And lo and behold, “Oblivious” is the title of a song by a Japanese musical artist named Kalafina, who appears to be popular in Korea, at least as far as I can tell. So, “oblivious” is not so much Konglish as Japanglish-borrowed-to-Korean. This made sense, given the fact she was also reading a Japanese novel at the time. She was probably reporting to her friend via text message as to what she was listening to on her MP3 player.
Anyway, I found this website/blog [UPDATE 2021-12-08: this link has rotted and I can find no replacement – sorry] dedicated to posting the lyrics of Japanese pop songs in both Japanese and Korean, and found something else intriguing that I’d never seen before – the use of hangeul (Korean writing system) to represent the Japenese language, somewhat like Konglish, of course. I wonder what this is called? Nihongeul?
Here on the left is a sample (the website was in “Flash,” which made cut-n-paste difficult, so this is a screenshot instead). Each lyric line is given 3 times. The first line (purple) is Japanese. The second line (grey) is Japanese-in-hangeul. The third is a Korean translation. Isn’t that cool? Hmm… most of you are shaking your heads–what a language-geek!
In any event, it turns out that I really like that song by Kalafina, “Oblivious” – I’m listening to it for the third time since I discovered it. Kind of chanty and new-agey, maybe, but not bad, for JPop. And I discovered it solely because I “clicked a random hyperlink” that I happened to see while looking over a woman’s shoulder in the subway. It feels like the future, today.
[UPDATE 2021-12-08: I’ve noticed this is a very popular post for random visitors from the wider internet – probably being found via google or some other search engine. For 2021, it’s my single most visited page in this blog. So, for my visitors’ convenience, here is a link to the actual song: カラフィナ – Oblivious.]
-Notes for Korean-
너무=too much, excessively
냉채=cold mixed vegetables (basically, korean salad?)
냉-=iced, chilled, cold
쓰디쓰다=extremely bitter
뭔데?=”what is it?” (…more of that problematic -ㄴ데 ending thingy that the grammar books are so unhelpful on–perhaps it’s highly informal/idiomatic?)
오피스텔=apartment (this is actually from English, but via Japanese, I think. literally office-tel… as in office-hotel. cf. 아파트=apateu: The semantic fields work differently, 오피스텔 is the name of the individual unit in the building, 아파트 is the name of the entire building, if it’s strictly residential. To the extent the former is used at all in English, the semantic fields are exactly reversed)
사실은 나 그 애를 많이 좋아했었거든=”actually, I liked her alot” (truth-TOPIC I that kid-OBJECT much like-do-PASTPERFECT-SUPPOSITION)
context: movie titles (burning CDs to make room on my harddrive)
장화, 홍련 = rose flower, red lotus = “A Tale of two sisters”
광식이 동생 광태 = Gwangshik’s Little Brother Gwangtae=”When Romance Meets Destiny”
간큰 가족 = “A bold family”
context: words
가족=family
가장=extremely, most
Caveat: 곰 세마리가
“Gom semariga” (three bears) is a ubiquitous children’s song that appears to be derived from the tale of the three bears – whether from a native Korean version or a Koreanized version of the western folktale, I’m not sure. The song is very simple and seems to have the typical melodic “hook” that’s found in children’s songs, that can cause them to insinuate themselves into your unconscious.
I was exposed to it because of watching the drama Pulhauseu, where it recurs as a leitmotif around the on-and-off relationship between the contractually-married couple Han Ji-eun and I Yeong-jae, and with her in-laws (his parents), where the grandmother refers to her as “Three-bear” because of this song.
Anyway, it’s just a cute little song, I guess. Here are two non-Pulhauseu, cartoon renditions of it that I found on Youtube:
https://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=jYtoBRHXFJI [broken]
And here is an excerpt of various performances of the song as it occurs in the drama:
https://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=PkmE9SejiUk [broken]
[Update 2013-06-09: two of the youtube links were broken. I’ve replaced two links with embeds]
This includes Ji-eun’s initial, awkward performance, and a later hilarious part where Yeong-jae sings it in an “American accent,” apparently spoofing the fact that there seems to be a vogue among American teenagers who are fans of Korean dramas for singing this song and posting it on the interweb.
Here are the lyrics:
곰 세마리가 한집에있어
아빠곰 엄마곰 애기곰.
아빠곰은 뚱뚱해
엄마곰은 날씬해
애기곰은 너무귀여워
으쓱으쓱 자란다…
-more Notes for Korean-
context: eavesdropping on a coworker’s telephone conversation
If somebody ends a sentence with -ㄴ데요, what does this mean? For example, the copula (be-verb) 인데요. Or perhaps I misheard it.
A grammar index in my Integrated Korean textbook (the one from my Univ. of Minnesota course) says that -ㄴ데요 is a “polite avoidance of refusal,” but then points to a chapter of the book in volume two, which I don’t own. So I can’t look at any examples to make sense of the ending. My Korean Grammar for International Learners tells me that -ㄴ데 is a connective ending (meaning it can’t end a sentence), and states, “it is useful to think of this anding as a sort of verbal semi-colon or m-dash, providing a loose linkage between two clauses” (p. 264). But they make no mention of a sentence-final version with -요 added.
우산=umbrella
Caveat: comander-in-chief.com
An article in the LA Times (online) about Sean Tevis was intriguing. It’s showing how the new, Obama-style of internet-based fundraising is beginning to impact local political races, in the reddest of red states, Kansas. He’s using geek-speak and webcomics to transform the electoral process in a state legislative race. At right is a particularly funny excerpt from the comic on his website. I could borrow this diagram to explain how to survive in Korea as a westerner!
In fact, I’m not entirely unfamiliar with Olathe, KS… I’ve spent a little bit of time there. That area is basically a Marin County or Westchester County for red-staters (which is to say that Johnson County, KS, is one of the wealthiest counties in the country, but unlike most of the U.S.’s wealthiest counties, it’s about as red as red can get). So the fact that a democrat-leaning computer guy is using the internet to raise unexpected campaign cash, even there, is proof that this new mode of campaign finance is truly taking root, I guess.
Really, the credit belongs to Howard Dean, as I understand it. And various semi-counter-cultural computer types from Vermont and, of course, Silicon Valley. It was Dean, in the 2004 race, who first used the internet effectively in this way – and had it been the case that he’d managed to avoid the “Iowa Scream,” things could have developed Obama-style in that election. But instead, Dean’s campaign self-destructed and the deanoids (including Dean himself, from his position running the DNC) are now the not-so-secret engines driving the internet-based fundraising juggernaut that is barackobama.com. Hmm… I just had a thought. I said sometime back that Obama was going to be our Urkel-in-chief, but how about this: commander-in-chief.com? I wonder who might be squatting on that particular domain name.
In other news… The character Han Ji-eun in Full House is quite different from others I’ve seen, so far, in Korean dramas. Most of the characters (both male and female) in these shows seem to struggle with the same sorts of cultural-based communication taboos that I’ve confronted in my working environments–see my post of several days ago. In fact, it is the existance of these communication taboos that very often drive so many of the convolutions of plot and character development, where, just like in Baroque Spanish drama, the “misunderstanding” is the cultural apparatus behind all the great stories. But Han Ji-eun evolves to become amazingly straightforward in talking about her feelings and situation, which makes her a very sympathetic and appealing character to me.
Quote:
“Power begets more power, absolutely.”–Frank Rich, regarding Obama, in a recent editorial in NYT
-Notes for Korean-
context: talking with my students about big numbers
억=100,000,000 (one hundred million)
context: learning to use the grade-posting website at my new job
평가=evaluation
관리=management, admin
상담=consultation, talk
원생관리=(I haven’t got a clue what this means, dictionary not helping…
문제=theme, subject, question
풀이=explanation
표시=indication, manifestation (with a check box, …표시 means “show…” I think)
context: reviewing old notes (from 7/1 – 7/14)
첫걸음 baby steps, first steps
첫 maiden, first time of something
걸음 walking, pace
정표 keepsake, memento, love token
걷기 fall into step, tip toe…
운동 movement, motion
인재채용 employment recruitment
눈싸움 a snowball fight
긴급 emergency
기상청 weather forecast
문화 culture, civ
겪다 undergo, experience, suffer
분야 sphere, realm
인간 mortal, human
인간계 the world of mortals
사신 (邪神) demon, false god
사신계 ?the world of demons (shinigami)
매일 daily
같이 like, similar to, same as, as usual, side by side
똑같다 alike, absolutely identical, exact image of
맞다 to be right
여행 travel, trip, voyage
돈 money, cash
여우 fox
암여우 vixen (female fox)
아이구 oh my! oh goodness!
Caveat: Cicadas
Cicadas are singing loudly in the trees, now. It’s high summer: humid and hot, like the summer in Philadelphia or New York.
Here is a picture of a small part of a mountain as seen between some generic looking high rise apartment buildings. I took it when I was wandering around Seoul the other day.
-Notes for Korean-
context: episode 9 풀하우스:
해라=do it (again there’s that pesky intimate imperative that doesn’t seem to appear in any reference works)
곰곰이=musing over, considering carefully
이상(異常)=strangeness;oddity;abnormality… ―하다=(be) strange;queer;odd
so…
진짜 이상한 사람이야!=what a weirdo! (really strange-[DOING] person-[COPULA-INFORMAL])
…and from the transcript:
민혁; 그렇지만 한가지만 충고하자… 앞으론 흔들리지 말고 중심 잘 잡아… 그리고 나한테 빈틈 보이지마.
“Min-hyeok says: still, let me give you some advice… from now on, don’t hesitate to get a grip on yourself…also, don’t underestimate me.”
I got interested in this piece of dialog was because of the translation of the second phrase: “don’t hesitate to get a grip on yourself.” It just sounds unnatural, so I decided to go out on a limb and make my own effort. Here goes…
앞으론 흔들리지 말고 중심 잘 잡아
ab-eu-ron heum-deul-li-ji mal-go jung-sim jal jab-a
from now -[TOPIC] waver -[REVERSATIVE] don’t -[COORDINATIVE] center well hold -[INFORMAL]
“from now on, do not waver and stay centered”
I can’t really say I have much confidence in how I put that together, but it sounds better than the subtitle’s version, and conveys a roughly similar meaning.
words:
앞으로=from now on
중심=center
흔들리다=waver
말다=stop, do not
… more
왜 텔레비젼 광고 같은데 많이 나오잖아
“the way it is in television”
곰=bear
고민=worry, dilemma, trouble
이제=now, and now
이제 와요?=”so you’re home?”=now come?
context: my refrigerator
마늘=garlic
국산=domestic (as in a product, opposed to imported)
context: looking around
문법=grammar (lit writing-rules)
context: that damn internet
설치=installation
삭제=cancel
context: a coworker
보신탕=dog meat soup (I never knew this… I know 개고기=dog meat)
Caveat: Database Gurus Moaning in Dark Rooms
A recent business headline tells me that Microsoft is acquiring DATAllegro. DATAllegro is a "Data Warehousing Appliance" vendor – which peripherally touches on some aspects of my last career. I have a lot of lingering curiosity about the data warehousing industry, I guess.
It's not really surprising that MS is chasing and acquiring large data warehouse appliance vendors – just the press release makes clear that it's all about adding value to the SQL Server product line, and "scaling out" to be able to better satisfy the largest enterprise customers with SQL Server, where, currently, large enterprise customers are more likely to stick to Oracle, or find a niche-market provider (such as Netezza, Teradata, or DATAllegro).
Still, the fact that the acquisition is specifically DATAllegro is surprising – according to their website, DATAllegro is currently partnered with Ingres, which is an open-source database management platform. Does that mean MS is going to be partnered with Ingres, now? Or does it mean MS is now going to try to migrate DATAllegro's hardware/software appliances to their proprietary SQL Server? I would assume the latter – but this causes me to visualize some extraordinarily miserable database gurus moaning in dark rooms, and much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair.
I suppose that in the world of high-end specialized data warehouse appliances (which can run several hundred thousand dollars per terabyte of capacity), choices were limited for Microsoft's M&A guys. But going out and acquiring a business such as DATAllegro, who is using an open-source competing product (Ingres), and running largely on Linux servers (another open-source competing product), strikes me as more of a preventive acquisition as opposed to a value-added one. These are common enough in big business: if you can't win in a given competitive market on the merits of your product, there's always the option of buying out the competition and mismanaging them into oblivion.
Hmm… Uh oh. That's starting to sound like the introduction to another rant on my current employers, isn't it? Sorry.
…and how is it that I end up hearing Bob Dylan singing "You Belong to Me" (in English, of course) in the soundtrack of episode 5 of 풀하우스? It seems it's all about love quadrangles: roughly, 영재 loves 혜원 loves 민혁 loves 지은 and around again…
-Notes for Korean-
잠깐만요=just a sec
걸다=hang, hook, suspend, talk to, start [an engine], call [on telephone] … clearly a very useful word.
거셨어요=[you've] called… note verb is irregular, drops -ㄹ…
그럼=well, surely … transition/filler word
Caveat: Sandinistas and Mad Scientist Girls
I found an unexpected treasure of a book yesterday. A book I’d meant to buy, once, some time ago, but then upon coming to Korea, I had postponed it indefinitely and forgotten. In the several shelves of Spanish language books at Kyobo, yesterday, there was sitting the first volume of Ernesto Cardenal‘s autobiography, Vida Perdida.
I was profoundly affected by the work of another Nicaraguan author, 20-something years ago: La montaña es algo más que una inmensa estepa verde, by Omar Cabezas. One of my “top 50” books, I would guess – though that list is always changing, isn’t it? That was an autobiographical bildungsroman, covering Cabezas’ life as a Sandinista rebel in the epoch before the Nicaraguan revolution of 79 and the overthrow of Somoza.
So…
I had always struggled to appreciate the poetry of Cardenal (the poet-politician-priest, who was also a Sandinista, and in fact was later a minister in Ortega’s revolutionary government), and I have thought I would get more out of his prose, but had never had the opportunity to read it.
And there it was, published in Mexico, waiting forlornly to be purchased for only 22,000 원, in a Seoul bookstore. So, of course, I bought it. Vida Perdida, por Ernesto Cardenal. And started reading it. It begins, not chronologially, but instead with his departure for a Trappist Monastery in Kentucky, having decided to become a priest. I’d forgotten about that – he went off to the same monastery that hosted Thomas Merton for so long. Such a divergent life from Merton’s, though, despite the latter’s mentorship.
In other news, I finished the drama Delightful Girl.
Check out the girl with purple hair. A kid sat next to me on the subway and was reading this book, 프래니 (peuraeni = Frannie), about a Mad Scientist Girl. I remembered the title, I and navered it when I got home – it’s a translation of an English-language children’s book by Jim Benton, but the illustrations looked so extremely wonderful and entertaining. Perhaps next time I hit a bookstore, I should buy this book and use it to try to work on my Korean some more – a children’s book would be about the right level, right?
-Notes for Korean-
context: Now I’ve started watching another drama, called 풀하우스 (pulhauseu=full house). I find the attribution of its “hanja” name (according to the English wikipedia article) confusing:
浪漫满屋…
lemme try to analyze this:
[1浪][2漫][3满][4屋]
=[1랑][2만][3not in naver’s online hanja dictionary, but I found it here:만][4옥]
=[1물결][2흩어질][3그득][4집]
=[1?wave][2?scatter][3full][4house]
Is this truly a “hanja”? Or is it simply a Chinese name for the show? The proper Korean name of the drama is a Konglish term, and Konglishemes don’t have matching hanja, do they? I’ll be the first to admit, my comprehension of the niceties of the hanja system is next to nil.
context: dictionaryland and websites.
목록(目錄)=catalog, inventory
구동사=phrasal verb
명사=noun
형용(形容)=form, shape, appearance, description, metaphor
형용사=adjective
미리보기=preview (lit advance example)
다시보기=(lit again example)=?review?
가르치다=teach (I should know this)
말씀=language, talk
context: thinking about what’s best.
최고=superlative, best
짱=best (slang. perhaps mostly used by children–but don’t forget what you saw Ella and Stacey writing on the wall at school, that time) (…a site for korean slang info)
context: reading the script for episode 3 of 풀하우스, I’m seeing all kinds of reduplication words, which seem common and are interesting.
쓱쓱=easily, smoothly…
툭툭 치고=tapping…
씩씩=?smiling at each other? not sure what this is
잘 있어=take care (jarisseo=be well)
수목=tree
알았지?=understood? got it? (This was exciting for me to understand, as I parsed it simply upon hearing it, without having seen the form in writing before… and then I was able to type it in–correctly spelled–and confirm that I’d indeed understood it).
context: other random curiosities
문어=octopus
문어=literary expression
…wow – nice pair of homophones. far out!
고기=meat, fish (and could I forget this? It’s one of the few words I thought I’d retained from my first time in Korea, in 1991)
글월=letter, note, epistle
동물=animal, brute, creature
낙지=common octopus
발=foot, paw, arm
Caveat: 빌코멘 오바마
I was riding the subway, and looking at a newspaper over a man’s shoulder. There was a big headline, that read “빌코멘 오바마” (bil-ko-men o-ba-ma). And there was a picture above the headline, that definitely gave away the second word – it was a certain popular American politician. The first word took a few more seconds to puzzle out. But I’ll give a clue – that certain American politician was giving a speech in Germany. So, I’ll let you polyglots out there decipher what that first word is – it’s not Korean.
I decided to do some random exploring. I got off the subway at 독립문 (Dongnimmun). I wandered around the neighborhood, with a vague idea of trying to go up over the mountain to the southwest, toward Sinchon past the Geumhwa tunnel, but the moutain didn’t appear to have footpaths over it – at least not from where I went.
One odd thing I noticed was when I looked up at the Independence Gate (which is what 독립문=Dongnimmun means), and I saw written there, very clearly, 문립독=Munipdok… which is to say, the three hangeul glyphs are in reverse order! Why does the gate have its name written backwards, on it? I have two speculations. First, it’s because I was looking “out of” the gate – I was standing to the east of it, meaning closer to downtown, and the gate was on the western side of the old city, so, the side I was looking at was the “inside.” So maybe the name was written backwards to match up with what was written on the other side? The other speculation is that maybe it has to do with Chinese word order? I couldn’t find a solution to the mystery through any googlings. Anyway, I took a picture of the gate, but the backward hangeul at the top of the arch doesn’t show up very well – the resolution wasn’t good enough on my phone’s camera, I guess.
I got on a bus randomly, and it did in fact take me toward Sinchon. But in the meantime I’d lost interest in trying to get to Sinchon, and had become fixated on making my weekly visit to a major bookstore. So I got off the bus when I saw a station on the number 5 subway line, and rode it two stops to Gwanghwamun, where there’s a big Kyobo bookstore. Too big – I like the one in Gangnam better. This one was a freakin zoo, it was so crowded. Maybe it was because of the rain. I bought a few magazines and one book, and left much more quickly than I normally do.
I have spent some time messing around on naver.com, trying to become more comfortable and proficient navigating the internet in Korean. I found a great posting (in English) that someone did on the basics of how to use naver.com, Korea’s number one internet portal. In any event, I can now proudly say that I have a Korean email address – to go with all my other email addresses! It is jaredway [at] naver.com.
-Notes for Korean-
context: surfing naver.com
만들다=make, create, so… 만들기=[a button on a website, “create!”]
…and therefore, “하느님께서 태초에 천지를 만드셨다” “in the beginning, God created heaven and earth.”
On seeing this, I got curious about the Korean word for God. There are two words which have different origins but are (in)conveniently quite similar in pronunciation (which creates confusion and/or clarity depending on one’s attitude towards semantic ambiguity, right?):
하느님(haneunim)=god as a traditional “lord in heaven” and mentioned even in pre-Christian Korean literature, and, e.g., the Korean national anthem. It comes from 하늘(haneul)=heaven, sky… hence, “sky guy [honorific]”
하나님(hananim)=a capitalized, monotheistic God, “number one guy [honorific]”
…
성격=personality, type
열린=open, unlocked
닫힌=closed… from 닫히다=close, shut
숨은=hidden… from 숨다=hide
…
분류=classification
생활=livelihood, lifestyle
생활하다=live, subsist
-점(店)=a store;a shop
Caveat: Parsimony. Then, more 쾌걸
I got home from work. Feeling very gloomy. LBridge made me pay for my visa “revision” (including 40 bucks for the medical checkup, the 30 bucks to the U.S. embassy, 10 bucks for the online “no criminal background” paper, 60 bucks for Korean immigration office). The last time we had to submit a revision, when LinguaForum took over my contract, they paid for it. Which is logical – after all, it was the fact of the take-over that meant the revision had to be done at all. If there had been no take-over, there would have been no visa revision fees and expenses, right? Why should I be paying these expenses that have arisen solely because of the corporate comings and goings of my employers? Well… the simple answer is, there’s nothing in the contract that says they have to pay for it, of course.
And when I said I needed some supplies for my desk, Sarah, my “team” supervisor, said, oh, I needed to go buy them. Again – supplies at the last two hagwon were something that the office managers would offer to buy.
It’s not that I’m being in the least parsimonious… I have spent hundreds of dollars of my own money to supplement my teaching work: I have bought supplementary books, supplies that I didn’t feel justified asking for from my bosses, treats, food and gifts for my students, etc. And I begrudge absolutely none of it. Because in all those instances, what my bosses would say is… oh, you shouldn’t spend your own money. Now, it’s the opposite – they’re saying to me, up front: you should spend your own money. They’re being cheap and miserly. Maybe that’s why they’re big and successful. But it makes them unpleasant to work for.
I screwed up today, too. I had miscopied my schedule from Sarah, and the consequence was that an odd quirk in the Friday schedule didn’t get transfered to my version of it. And so I failed to show up for a class I was supposed to teach, because I had it written down for a later hour. It was entirely my own fault, and I feel guilty about it – the kids sat for 20 minutes with no teacher, while the front desk tried to figure out who was supposed to be in there. I can’t even blame the problem on the “lack of communication” issue that has been so bothering me. Sucks.
I came home and made some pasta with curried vegetables for myself, and I have been watching my drama. In episode 16 of 쾌걸춘향, 이몽룡 says to 성춘향, “Boy, time flew by as if you were in some TV drama.” I listened to this quote over and over trying to parse the Korean, but finally I broke down and found the transcript for the episode online, and the line is: “인생이 참, 믿기 힘들 게 드라마 같이 흘렀다.”
I will swear, that Mong-ryong is very much eliding the fourth-from-last syllable of the phrase (which should be 티=ti, based on liaison rules), essentially eliminating it, but then palatalizing the /tʰ/ into /ʧʰ/ as a sort of a trace of the elided /i/, so that instead of 같이 흘렀다 he’s saying 가츨렀다. This makes perfect sense, phonologically, but I’d be willing to bet that Koreans will swear to you up and down that they never do such a thing in their language. Psychologically, internal representations of language are heavily influenced what we are told is “correct” in school and social settings, of course. And it makes it damn hard to parse, aurally, since that word that’s getting mangled, 같이=”as if” (roughly – it’s a verbish thing that means “like that”), is critical to making sense of the phrase.
Anyway, apparently, according to some things I found online, there are all kinds of clever intertextual things going on in this scene. 성춘향 is making up a story about her past several years (which have elapsed since the last episode), and the made-up scenes are showing in flashback form as she tells them – but they’re all references and recapitulations of important plot points and scenes from other popular Korean television dramas. So at this point, when 이몽룡 says this above quote as a reaction, the typical Korean drama watcher is going to burst out laughing – at least if they have any capicity for Cervantine irony whatsoever.
-Notes for Korean-
흘렀다=[time] elapsed<=흐르다=elapse, trickle, run down + [PAST marker]
드라마=drama
Later in the same episode, repeatedly: 잘가라=”take care” lit. go well, farewell… the ending -라 (as such) isn’t in my reference grammar, which is kind of annoying, but I’m assuming it’s some kind of intimate imperative
제-(第)=number, [ordinalizing ending, as in -th in English]
회=installment, episode… hence 제16회=episode 16
context: surfing the korean dictionary
푸르다=blue
풀다=solve, work out, answer
설명=explanation, illustration (說明)
설명하다=explain, illustrate
-도(圖)=a chart, a plan, a picture
-공(工)=worker, mechanic
context: surfing the internet in Korean
연결=connection, linking
생산=production
활발하다=lively, brisk, vivacious
아름답다=beautiful, lovely (irregular, cf 아름다운 with that adnominal ending thingy)
푸른=blue
자연=nature
여러=diverse, many
-분=esteemed person
so 여러분=ladies and gentlemen
초대=invitation
so 초대하다=invite
제로=zero
context: surfing the dictionary
북부=southern part
남부=northern part
-부=part (cf also 1부, 2부 as part of the school’s published class schedule)
the confusing word 주:
주(州)=a state(미국의);a county(영국의);a province(캐나다의)
주(株)=stock, share (this is how Koreans write “inc.”, too)
주(主)=owner; proprietor; master, lord
주(洲)=river delta; continent
주(朱)=vermilion;Chinese red color
주(週)=a week
주(註·注)=annotation, footnote
주(駐)=resident, stationed in
주(酒)=liquor, wine, alcoholic drink
이에=hereupon, hence, accordingly
그이의 딸=that man’s daughter
용어(用語)=terminology (hanja lit. use-language)
Caveat: Syntax in the Rain
I step out of my building at about 12:45. It's raining, but not too hard.
I start listening to my MP3 player as I wait to cross the street in front of my building – this is always the longest crosswalk wait, as the street is busy and the light is on a very long timer, and there are always police around, so jaywalking seems less attractive than at other points on my route. Once I crossed against the light, only to see a group of about 10 policemen marching in a line on the sidewalk directly opposite me, and the last one in the line looked at me directly and made a menacing face, though he didn't do anything – maybe because they were in a formation or going somewhere important. The borough police station is just up at the main corner, after all.
My MP3 player is playing Radiohead. I've been thinking about languages. Well, aren't I always thinking about languages? Lately, when people I meet ask me things like, "so, what are your hobbies?" I have been answering, "studying languages." And… I've been meeting alot of people, lately, what with the new job and all. It is true that studying languages is a major hobby of mine – not that I'm really that good at it – but it's not that common that I come out and state it as a part of introducing myself. After all, it's very eccentric – like so many things about me.
So, I had this thought, just now. The reason I like Korean is the same reason I like LISP. This may take some explaining. LISP is a computer programming language. It has a reputation for being elegant but eccentric and difficult, but it was the first computer programming language that I truly felt "at home" working with, and I much prefered to to something like BASIC or Pascal, which were the other programming languages I experienced and worked with in the 80's. In the 90's, I didn't do much with computers, and the only thing I worked with extensively was HTML and derivatives like DHTML, mostly for hobbyish pursuits.
Then in the most recent decade, I became a database hacker, and SQL became my dialect of choice, although I've done some work also with trying to learn OO-languages, such as C#. But I was essentially married to SQL, to the extent that I would attempt to solve network-admin type problems with SQL scripts (using extended dialects that allowed such things, like Microsoft's T-SQL or Oracle's PL/SQL). These efforts, though often successful, would tend to make the more traditionally-minded colleagues around me laugh and shake their heads.
Throughout it all, however, I have always thought that LISP was a truly beautiful and elegant language, like an abstract mathematical object. SQL is grubby, messy, and "evolved" – meaning that it grew to its present standard slowly and through trial and error, and it lacks the systematic beauty of something like LISP, I think.
Obviously, no human language is "designed" in the sense that LISP is. Nor is it, practically speaking, abstract – obviously. But there is a weird, complex elegance to the underlying grammatical patterns of Korean that remind me of LISP, in a strange way. It somehow reveals a potential about a different way of conceptualizing grammatical relations that I find fascinating – but it's very hard to explain. I need to refresh my grounding in syntax universals, deep structure, Chomky's "Government and Binding" (a creepy name for a grammatical theory, don't you think? especially coming from a self-declared anarchist like Chomsky), things like that. But I genuinely like the Korean language in the same way I like LISP – it's eccentric and fascinating and elegant and magical.
Rasputina starts on my MP3 player. I turn off the commercial "broadway" and begin walking up the footpath between the highrise apartment buildings. The trees are so green, and there aren't many pedestrians.
So many people ask me, why are you single? Actually, not just Koreans (where, culturally, it's a pretty typical question to ask someone), but even westerners that I meet here. And I never have a good answer for them, except something meaningless and vague, in the spirit of, "well, I guess I prefer it." But the real reason is tied to the notion above – my interest in, and commitment to, things that are eccentric. Being eccentric is difficult. It's not likely I will find people with whom I have things in common, at a deep level. And I'm not the sort of person to go into a relationship with someone with whom I don't have much in common, I guess. I am resigned to, and, in fact, comfortable in my loneliness, at this point.
A Japanese pop group, Round Table, starts "Let me be with you." It starts raining harder. Much harder. But… I like the rain. It always puts me in a weirdly low-key cheerful, optimistic state of mind. It may be the clearest indication of my birthplace's impact on my spirit. Those redwood trees… the eternally protective, sheltering greyness of Humboldt's summer, and the calm embrace of the Pacific Northwest winter rains. Cloud cover and rain are comforting things, to me, whereas I find bright, sunny skies vaguely oppressive and dispiriting. Water is the stuff of life – when it's raining, the stuff of life falls from the sky freely. Each raindrop, a gift from heaven. Innumerable.
Ruben Blades begins singing "Adan Garcia" – which is about disappearances during the dirty wars in Central America in the 80's, I think. I dodge puddles and wait for the crossing signal. I think about the eccentricity of listening to 80's Spanish-language protest music while standing in the rain in a Korean upper-middle-class suburb. Has it ever been done before? I find the idea that it makes me unique appealing.
Now I'm listening to Depeche Mode. The hard, hard rain continues, and my lower half is getting quite wet, below the protective perimeter of my umbrella. I love rain like this, but I begin to feel anxiety about showing up at work dripping like a wet dog. It's inevitable that social anxiety can wreck otherwise happy feelings about something. I get a sympathetic smile from a woman escorting her child, going the opposite direction, both huddled under one not-large-enough pink umbrella and bravely stepping through the rivers on the pavement.
-Notes for Korean-
context: I have been browsing my hardcore grammar book, Korean Grammar for International Learners, by Ihm Ho Bin et al. This is a truly excellent reference grammar for the Korean langauge, it's a translation of an academic work written in Korean, but with lots of supporting "translation-to-English materials" so it really stands as an independent reference work – it's the only reference grammar of it's kind that I've seen amid much searching and browsing in bookstores. It has received some negative reviews from other foreigners trying to learn Korean, but I think that is because it is linguistically sophisticated – I can barely understand some of it, and I have a degree in linguistics, so I could see how it could be intimidating to someone with no background in formal syntax.
내다=do all the way, finish thoroughly
this is a "terminative" auxilary verb; the preceding verb is in the minimally inflected form e.g. -어/-아/-여 (depending on vowel harmony)
경찰이 그 물건을 찾아 냈습니다=(police-SUBJ that item-OBJ find-INFL finish-PAST-FORMAL-DECLARATIVE)=the police found the item
so:
물건=thing, article, item; also 품 (I like the hanja for this: 品 – looks like a little pile of boxes, a good symbol for "thing")
context: deciphering korean-language websites
직통=direct service (as in a train)
매진=sold out
예약=appointment/예약하다=make a reservation
조회=inquiry
명함=business card (?)
context: surfing the web
this site has amazing vocab lists: https://21cseonbi.blogspot.com/
진짜=real (I know this… but I keep forgetting how to spell it)
Caveat: “Notes for Korean”
Over the last month, I’ve been trying to get more serious and disciplined about my study of Korean. I have begun to keep little computerized notes, every single day, of interesting or useful vocabulary items, phrases, and things like that. But I’ve reached a point where I have compiled enough of these that they’re becoming difficult to keep organized; more importantly, I sometimes go looking for something I know that I put into a note, and cannot find it. Also, some of these things are things I would love to have found by searching online, in the same way that I have found other similar things.
Because of all of that, I have decided that it might be useful to post these daily notes and observations about Korean as a kind of footnote to each day’s blog entry. This will make them searchable by not just me but by anyone – although it won’t improve their level of organization. But with google, who needs organization? – just let the spiders crawl around and find it, right?
So, starting today, I will include a little, disorganized spattering of notes somewhere in each blog entry. Most of my regular readers (how many are there, really? 3? 2?) will not have much use for this, but they’re mostly going to be there just for myself, as it’s a convenient and logical place to put them – I’ll be able to access them anytime I need, and I’ll be able to search them, too. Further, by compiling them I’m helping myself to remember them, and I can express my joy at trying to make sense of this fascinating yet difficult language.
-Notes for Korean-
context: my cellphone’s “phrase of the day”: 식품 매장이 몇 층에 있는지 알려주실 수 있습니까?
매장 =department, floor (as in a dept store), store
so: 식품 매장=food floor, food court
and: 알리다=know, tell, inform, notify
context: episode 13 of 쾌걸춘향, 춘향 says to 몽룡, “금해애애!” (approximately) = “stop thaaaat”
금하다 =refrain, prohibit, or (idiomatically) stop doing something
In researching this online, I also found an interesting double negative:
…-ㅁ을 금할 수 없어요 = [I] can not stop myself from …
context: deciphering instructions in a student textbook
풀이 =explanation, clarification
찾다= seek, search for, spot
발견 =discovery, revelation
발견하다=find, discover
context: conversation of words with a coworker
나륵풀=basil (the herb)
풀=grass, herb, plant, pasturage, weed
context: trying to figure out instructions on a korean website
지나다=pass, spend, elapse… etc. (I should know this – it’s lesson 1 in most Korean-as-a-foreign-language textbooks!)
사용=use, employment, appropriation
복사=reproduction, copy
주소=address
똑=exactly, precisely
소리=noise, sound, talk, word
끝=end, conclusion
처음=first, beginning, start, cf. 첫
도우미=helper, wizard (in computers)
정보=information, report
닫다=close (close button says 닫기)
당신=a special word meaning “you” (I should know this)
context: vocab words for “blue” class
discover (v)=발견하다
energy=정력, 에너지
forecast=예보
shed (v)=벗다
source (n)=원천
stay (v)=머무르다
put on (v)=입다
until=-까지 (nominal ending)
spot (v)=발견하다, 찾다
always=항상
have seen / haven’t seen=본적 있는 / 본적이 없는
Meanwhile, in other pursuits… I rediscovered a Portuguese poet named Fernando Pessoa, who apparently wrote criticisms of his own poetry under alternate pseudonyms (heteronyms). This is interesting, cf. Borges. I vaguely recall running across him before, but, if so, I completely forgot him. I was reading the Portuguese-language wikipedia article about him, just to entertain my linguistic fancy, I guess – keeping myself challenged, and all that. And under the Spanish-language article on him, I found the following pithy observation about Pessoa by Octavio Paz: “nada en su vida es sorprendente, nada excepto sus poemas” (nothing in his life is surprising, nothing except his poetry).
Quote of the day:
“Tenho o dever de me fechar em casa no meu espírito e trabalhar quanto possa e em tudo quanto possa, para o progresso da civilização e o alargamento da consciência da humanidade.” – Fernando Pessoa
Pessoa is perhaps best known in the English-speaking world for his last words: “I know not what tomorrow may bring.” I’m sure others may have said these words as their last, too, but he’s the one to whom the quote is generally attributed. It’s notable that he, in fact, wrote them rather than speaking them, as he was unable to speak at the time. And it’s also worth noting that they were in English, not Portuguese, since English was a second native language for him, because he’d spent much of his childhood in South Africa.
Caveat: The Communication Taboo
Now that this is my third completely new workplace this year, I think I’m going make a generalization: Korean bosses and supervisors don’t feel any need or obligation to actually communicate with their underlings.
The consequence is that the learning curve at new jobs is steep. I think this must be related to the confucian-heritage “respect-your-elders” ethic, that is also so deeply embedded in the language. Because “juniors” owe respect to “seniors,” this also means that “seniors” are under no obligation to support or help “juniors.”
Nevertheless, ElBeuRitJi has definitely made an artform out of noncommunication, even compared to my previous two bosses. Yesterday – my first day – I managed to get within five minutes of my first class and no one had yet told me where the classrooms were. I had a notion they were upstairs – just based on the room numbers – but you’d think someone would have actually given me a tour or something. I had to ask.
And today, as I sat in the staff office (with almost twenty teachers, compared to RingGuAPoReom’s five), and my last class had ended, I looked around uneasily realizing everyone was busy as a little bee at his or her desk. No one was leaving, but classes were over. And my instinct (fed by a careful watching of various contemporary-setting Korean dramas) kicked in: there was a rule about staying. This is standard in most work places, of course – but my last two work environments had had a very casual attitude about departure times, because of the late hours these schools keep. If you were done with classes and paperwork, you were free to leave. And so, although I wasn’t really surprised that this new place had stricter rules, it was nevertheless odd, to me, that no one had ever bothered to enunciate those rules to me. My worry is that there are other unenunciated rules that everyone thinks obvious but that I won’t have any instinct to recognize.
Basically, I have received zero orientation of any kind to this place. Is this standard? What does it mean, for example, that I’m working there, but they haven’t given me a time card? I noticed all the other teachers using electronic time cards, but I hadn’t even been told about them. So I asked my boss, and he said something like, “oh, I should get you one.” Does this mean I’m going to have problems with pay at the end of the month? The last two places had no such things as time cards.
Maybe I’m just over-reacting because of my grudges over how the merger was handled, and over my perception that there was disrespectful treatment of the students and staff at RingGuAPoReom by the incoming people at ElBeuRitJi.
On the positive side, I like the students. And the curriculum is pretty good, although the grading scheme is byzantine and the syllabus is brutal.
Here is a picture of something random.
Caveat: Dioses Antropófagos Barsonianos
Hoy mañana tuve que ir a Seul, a la embajada estadounidense para intentar arreglar la cuestión del papeleo de mi visa.
La foto muestra la gran avenida que está directamente en frente de la embajada imperial. A veces cuando me meto en el metro, llevo un pequeño libro que encontré en una librería en Minnesota, que es una versión en español del segundo libro de la serie marciana de Edgar Rice Burroughs: Los dioses de marte. Me gusta leer el libro en el metro porque tiene apariencia de algun librito devocional, y no pinta de ciencia ficción.
En el libro leí estas palabras de la princesa Faidor, hija de Matai Shang: “Pues si los hombres pueden comer carne de animales, los dioses pueden comer carne de hombres. Los Sagrados Therns son los dioses de Barsoom.”
Bien, la teofagia es la práctica de comer dioses (digamos, simbólicamente, por ejemplo en el eucaristo cristiano). Pero parece algo interesante y raro la idea de dioses antropófagos, ¿no?
Caveat: Love is not that special
I finished watching the episodes of 1%의 어떤 것 toward the end of last week, and immediately began a new series, called 쾌걸 춘향 (translated as Delightful Girl Choon-hyang). I'm trying to figure out why I've been enjoying these romantic/comedic dramas as much as I have – above and beyond the insights to Korean culture. And I made a realization because of the rather weighty tradition behind this new one I've started.
Delightful Girl is based on a traditional Korean story called 춘향가 (chunhyangga), which is part of what's called the pansori storytelling tradition – in essence, a kind of epic/lyric oral literature. The plot of the story, just like the 1% story I was watching last week, revolves around frustrated love and romance in the broader context of Asian/confucian social systems and values. And I suddenly realized, I've been enjoying these stories for years – they are extraordinarily similar to the almost hundreds of "framed stories" found in the Cervantine corpus: girl meets boy of different social class, or under some unusual circumstance; love gets frustrated by conflicts involving parents, in-laws, or social mores and taboos; weird coincidences happen that alternately encourage or frustrate the relationship; everything ends happily-ever-after. And Cervantes was just echoing the likes of Petrarch and Boccacio and the vast content of the Spanish Golden Age drama.
My hypothesis: culturally, Korea is experiencing the equivalent of Europe's renaissance and baroque, alongside modernity and postmodernity, all at the same time! That may be too bold, but I taste the germ of a fascinating comparative cultures / comparative lit paper exploring the parallels between renaissance drama and literature and the contemporary Asian television drama.
And my profound quote of the day: in the 2nd episode, the character Han Dan-hee says to her boyfriend Pang Ji-hyuk, over french fries, "They only need a moment. Love is not that special. Crush on an eye, on ears, and then you get the feeling. That's love."
Caveat: After a Rainstorm
I really like the sky in this picture. I took it earlier today in Seoul, near Guro station, right as a rainstorm was ending.
Caveat: Last Day (again)
Today was my last day as an employee of LinguaForum, and a last day at that location and with the middle-schoolers. I was pretty sad, and feeling a bit cares-to-the-wind about the whole thing, too.
Monday I start at ElBeuRitJi – and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by what that will bring. Completely new kids, new curriculum, new environment. And it will be a lot of work – there’s consensus, there. The ElBeuRitJi people take themselves too seriously, and work their people hard. It’s not as relaxed a workspace as I’ve become used to here in Korea. And I’m not convinced I will like it. I’m struggling to keep an open mind about it all.
Here is a picture of my EP2-Tuesday/Thursday ban that I took yesterday.
Attrition in the face of the big changes meant that the last week or so there have only been the three of them. Hannah, Song, and Crazy Paul. Great kids.
I’d love to post pictures of my middle-schoolers, especially my now-to-be-much-missed Princess Mafia (aka TP1 Tuesday/Thursday), but the middle-schoolers are much more camera shy than the elementary kids, and I’m not one to force them to be in a picture for me. But I will miss them very much, and the TP1 Monday girls who were so difficult, sometimes, and those Gag-show boys from PTP/M, and all the rest of them. I’m getting teary…
Here is a picture of me with my erstwhile boss, Curt.
I like Curt – he’s a good guy, and down-to-earth. Note that the picture was tilted because Sylvia wanted to make sure Curt was taller than me – this is a very indirect way of showing deference to the boss. since he’s the boss.
Here is a picture of me with the front-desk-person, Sylvia.
She was always very kind to the students, very genuinely caring and friendly. I will miss her – I could always count on her to comfort a crying child (on those occasional times when I ended up with one in my classroom, due to accident or squabbles or whatever) or to oversee a child parked in the front lobby due to behavioral issues.
Caveat: 얘들아 깝치지마
I finally figured out the ending –지마: it means don’t [imperative]. It coalesced last night, as I was walking home, and I overheard two small boys playing, they were jumping off of a low wall along the footpath. One of them said to the other “하지마” (hajima – don’t do that). I have been familiar with this as a set phrase, but I had never successfully parsed it before into its component parts: ha [the verb to do] + ji [a verb-ending conveying conjecture or insistence] + ma [I think this is an informal intimate form of the verb 말다, meaning stop or cease]. So, at last I figured out that you can put –지마 (or the more formal –지마세요) onto any verb, in order to say don’t do X.
And the reason this finally clicked, for me, was because of another expression I’d learned yesterday from my students, and had been puzzling out: 얘들아 깝치지마 (yaedeura kkapchijima), which roughly means “you kids, stop being so obnoxious,” but the phrase is extremely informal, basically rude if not downright vulgar – so maybe a good idiomatic translation might be “y’all need to shut the hell up” (which is how an Army sergeant I once had used to introduce himself whenever he walked into a room, as a kind of signature phrase, and it was particularly humorous because he would say that, first thing, even when entering a room that was utterly silent).
Yesterday, I also found a great resource for learning abstruse tidbits of Korean language from a foreigner’s perspective: there’s a guy who’s been blogging (in English) his in-depth explorations of Korean for years now, at Korean Language Notes. He has a pretty academic orientation (which I find appealing given my own tendencies). I spent several hours surfing through old posts, though I’m at too elementary a level to understand all but some fragments of it.
I also successfully made use of naver.com’s Korean-Korean dictionary for the first time, which feels like a landmark of sorts – the ability to look up a word in Korean, and comprehend what it says about that word, in Korean. It’s a trivial step, but it felt like progress.