Category: Language & Linguistics

Caveat: Sucky Rosetta Sudoku

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I don't like sudoku.  Nor do I like crosswords, chess, "brain-teaser" puzzles, etc.  I feel like this fact about myself is somehow a serious violation (nay, betrayal) of my nerdly origins, that I'm like this.  But, I've always lacked enthusiasm for these types of mental recreations.  One memorable example:  I remember when Rubic's Cube first came out, and everyone was obsessively trying to solve it.  I managed to solve it – it wasn't easy, but I managed – but  I genuinely recall my efforts to do so as a profoundly unpleasant experience.  I never picked it up again.  Even today, when I see a Rubik's Cube, I have a sort of visceral reaction of strong distaste, similar to how I react to seeing bananas (to which – it has been verified – I am allergic).

My theory is that this gut reaction is because my perfectionism is stronger, and receives higher priority, than my intellectual curiosity.  That doesn't sound like a very good reflection on my personality.  And… it's not.  But I'm trying to be honest about things, here.

Anyway, that's not what I meant to write about.  I had a major insight, yesterday. 

I'd decided to dedicate some more time to working through the Rosetta Stone software I'd splurged on last fall.  I've been pretty unhappy with it, and so it's hard for me to motivate to use it.  I have only managed to work up to around the middle of the Level 1 Korean package.

So I was slogging through it… I see the value in it, in building some automaticity with respect to grammar points and  vocabulary.  My core criticisms remain the same:  it's not very linguistically sophisticated in its presentation of material (especially of phonological issues and grammar); the speaking sections' "listener/analyzer/scorer" is majorly wonky (I sometimes get so frustrated I just start cussing at it, which tends to lower my score); the grammar points covered sometimes don't match the way actual Koreans around me actually speak, in my experience.

But I found a new reason why I don't like Rosetta Stone, and I found it in a surprising way.  I was reading a recent issue of the Atlantic magazine, and there was an ad for Rosetta Stone.  And the ad said something to the gist of:  "if you like sudoku, you'll love learning a language with Rosetta Stone."

You can see where this is going, right?  Rosetta's software is deliberately designed to activate the same mental processes and reward centers that puzzle-games like sudoku do.  And therefore it's suddenly obvious why I spend most of my time when trying to use the software feeling frustrated and pissed-off.  It's the same reason I feel constantly frustrated and pissed-off when I try to solve sudoku puzzles, or play chess, or other things like that.  I just don't enjoy that type of intellectual challenge.

But this insight also forces me to temper my criticism of Rosetta Stone substantially, in one respect:  it means that it's just my idiosyncrasy, in part,  that causes me not to like it, and to regret having bought it.  If you're like most reasonably intellectual people, and enjoy killing some time solving sudoku or playing chess or the like, then, probably, Rosetta Stone is a great tool for learning a language.  You'll probably think it's really fun.

Sigh.

So… there.

Caveat: 금도끼와 은도끼

Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

금도끼와 은도끼

옛날 어느 마을에 가난한 나무꾼이 살고 있었습니다.  그는 어머니를 모시고 살았는데, 부지런해서 늘 아침 일찍 산으로 가서 나무를 했습니다.
어느 날 산 속에서 연못 옆에 있는 큰 나무를 발견하고 도끼로 세게 찍기 시작했습니다.  그런데 손에 힘이 없어져서 도끼를 연못에 빠뜨렸습니다.  하나밖에 없는 도끼를 빠뜨린 나무꾼은 연못을 보면서 한숨을 쉬었습니다.  그 때 갑자기 연못의 물이 움직이면서 하얀 연기와 함께 산신령님이 나타나셨습니다.  산신령님은 금으로 만든 도끼를 내밀면서 말했습니다.
“이 금도끼가 당신이 빠뜨린 것입니까?”
“아닙니다.”
“그럼 이 은도끼가 당신의 도끼입니까?”
“그것도 제 것이 아닙니다.”
“그럼 이것입니까?”라고 하면서 그가 빠뜨린 쇠도끼를 내밀었습니다.
“네, 바로 그것이 제 도끼입니다.”
산신령님은 “당신은 정직하기 때문에 이 도끼들을 모두 당신에게 줄 테니까 가져가십시오.”라고 말하고 도끼 세 개를 준 후에 다시 연못 속으로 사라졌습니다.
그래서 그 나무꾼은 부자가 되었고 그 후에 결혼을 해서 행복하게 살았습니다.
No… I didn’t write this story.  It’s an old Korean fairy tale.  I like the story.
The version here is copied from my Korean Language textbook, at the end of the book.  It’s provided as a kind of culmination of all the material covered.  Note especially all the various constructions using the many possible meanings of “~(으)로.”
But the translation of the story, provided in the appendix, is truly terrible – it manages to be bad English, while at the same time failing to be a close, phrase-for-phrase translation of the Korean, which is what would be useful in a language textbook.  So you can’t really use the translation to figure out confusing grammar points, on the one hand, but it’s not a very clear version of the story, on the other.
So, being the strange person that I am, I decided to attempt my own translation, which follows.  I’m trying to stay very close to the Korean, trying to ensure that each Korean phrase and grammatical element has a match to its closest English equivalent, that I can figure out – but at the same time I’m trying to make sure it’s at least passable English, meaning no glaring grammatical or idiomatic errors.
If there are mistakes in the Korean above, blame my poor Korean typing skills, not my Korean textbook – it’s probably just a typo, since I copied the text of the story from my textbook manually.

The gold axe and the silver axe

In olden days a poor woodcutter was living in some village.  That man lived with his mother, and since he was industrious, every morning he went to the mountain and cut wood.
One day, being at the mountain near a pond, he found a big tree and be began to cut it with his axe.  But then his hand became weak and he dropped the axe in the pond.  The woodcutter, having but the one axe, looked in the pond and sighed.  At that moment suddenly the pond’s waters stirred and, along with some white smoke, a mountain spirit appeared.  The mountain spirit held out a gold axe, and spoke.
“Did you drop this gold axe?”
“No, sir.”
“Then is this silver axe your axe?”
“That isn’t mine either.”
“Then is this yours?” he said, and held out the dropped iron axe.
“Yes, that’s definitely my axe.”
The mountain spirit said, “Because you are honest I will give you all these axes, so take them,” and with that he gave the three axes and disappeared again into the pond.
And so the woodcutter became rich, and after that he got married and lived happily.
 

Caveat: Absolute must-have information

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Language & Linguistics / My Photos

I bought a book yesterday. It’s a Japanese phrase book – for Korean speakers. I figured that would be a way to help me get around in Japan, without dropping the ball on the Korean Language thing.

pictureAnyway, it’s pretty handy, and if I want to know how to say something, I have to first figure out what the Korean means before I can jump on the Japanese phrase I might need – although at least some of the vocabulary is provided with English glosses, too.

On page 75, I found the most important information. Namely, I need to know about オタク (otaku). ‘Cept… I already knew that word. Plus, if you’ll notice, the Korean is the same. Actually, the only time I’ve heard Koreans using that word is with reference to specifically Japanese cultural phenomenon.

Walking around, I saw more cherry blossoms. I guess I picked the right time to come hang out in Kyushu. Here’s a view at the intersection half a block north from the little guesthouse I’m staying at.

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Caveat: Japanese? No hablo…

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Language & Linguistics

Somehow, since I was here last September, I forgot what little Japanese I used to know.  I think it's part of having been so deeply immersed in learning Korean over the last several months.   So in that sense, it's a good sign.  But it's frustrating to be in Japan and functioning at an even lower level than I was 6 months ago.

Ah well.  Win some, lose some.  I'll go exploring in Fukuoka again tomorrow.

More later.

Caveat: 89

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea / Life is a Dream / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Because I’m continuing at my Korean Language hagwon, I took an end-of-level test today. There were listening, speaking, and grammar/reading sections. My overall score was 89.

That’s not bad, I guess. I was surprised that my lowest score was on the grammar/reading part, since that’s really my strength, but I had made some careless mistakes, on the one hand, while on the listening section, which was the hardest, the teacher gave all the dialogs and questions twice, which may have been stretching the intent of the test, a bit, making it easier, so that my score on that part was 94.

What else can I do to get more out of my language study? I need to spend more time reviewing and memorizing vocabulary. I have some excellent tools that I’m not making much use of, for example that Rosetta Stone software, as well as the spreadsheets I’m maintaining with list of words I’ve looked up. I could stand to spend more time with each of those.

I had a weird conversation with a short-term guest at my guesthouse, the other night. He was Australian. I told him I was studying Korean, and his comment kind of sums up some preconceptions and prejudices that exist out there, with respect to my endeavor. He said (roughly), “Wow, I never met someone studying Korean before who didn’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend helping them.” I just laughed. I had no comeback, at the moment, but I thought later, I should have said, “Yeh, I guess so. I’m in love with the language, directly, instead. It’s a frustrating relationship.”

I have so far to go. Will I become tired of it, at some point? Will I become disillusioned, over time, as the difficulty of this “relationship” emerges in all its permutations and complexities? I have been infatuated with the Korean Language since we did a unit on Korean in my undergrad syntax class at the University of Minnesota in 1988. But I didn’t really pursue that infatuation, for a very long time. Then, a little over 3 years ago, as I was shopping around for “what to do next with my life,” once I’d decided to quit the computer thing, I decided: “Find your passion, and chase it down.”

Then, over the following two years, I became side-tracked by the sheer volume of work related to teaching (or trying to teach) English to kids. And that was VERY rewarding. No denying that. It taught me new things about myself, and gave me new tools to cope with life’s challenges. But I didn’t pursue this passion, this linguistic avocation, very aggressively. I dropped the ball. Now, I’m trying to pick it up again.

When I was really trying to learn Spanish, first starting out, in 1986, living and working in Mexico City, I remember many times thinking, “wow, this is exhausting!” Learning Spanish, trying to become essentially fluent, is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Harder than basic training in the Army. Harder than grad school (although that was, in fact, part of learning Spanish, too, at a much more advanced level). Maybe even harder than that messy fall of 1998, when things fell apart with Michelle and I had to make the difficult decision that existing in the world was worthwhile.

And now, I’m trying again. I will learn Korean. Because if I succeed, it will be such a magical, amazing accomplishment. Unconventional, and, in the greater, grander scheme of things, pointless… yet, for all that, utterly worth doing.

There, I’ve laid my cards on the table. I always feel uncomfortable declaring goals, for fear that when/if I fail to achieve them, I have to then bear the secondary humiliation of everyone knowing that I’ve failed. But… by declaring my goals, I am also giving myself extra motivation, extra impetus.

So, friends… hold me to it. If I stumble, or pause, or fall down, or wander off in frustration or distraction, please gently remind me: “Jared, what about your goal? How are you doing with the Korean?”
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Caveat: 잠잤어요 (heterosyntactic reduplication)

Language & Linguistics / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Korean has lots of “normal” phonological reduplication, which is a common linguistic phenomenon in many languages, notably in micronesian and polynesian groups, for example.  Opening my dictionary at random, I can locate words such as:  붉다 (bulk-da, “red”) => 붉다붉다 (bulk-da-bulk-da, “very deep red”).   This is a “classic” sort of linguistic reduplication, as might be taught in Linguistics 101.
But recently, in my Korean class, I was introduced to a strange sort of reduplicative process that crosses syntactic boundaries.  I tried to invent a term for it, and came up with “semantic reduplication,” but that seems to be already taken for a slightly different process.  So I’m not sure what to call it – maybe something like heterosyntactic reduplication?  The idea being that the word element is repeated, but under different semantic categories (in this Korean case, a verb stem gets repeated, first in a derived gerund form and then in the basic verb form).  Maybe someone’s already named it, but I was unable to find anything on a cursory search.
Here are some examples, that were given in class (accusative particle -을 in parenthesis is optional).

잠(을) 자다 (jam-eul ja-da, “to sleep a sleeping”)
춤(을) 추다 (chum-eul chu-da, “to dance a dancing”)
꿈(을) 꾸다 (kkum-eul kku-da, “to dream a dreaming”)

I have no idea how “productive” this type of reduplication is, but I know that at least for those verbs with which it used, it is common – not a day after my class where I was introduced to this concept, my friend sent me a text message where he used it, in the phrase “잠잤어요” (jamjasseoyo, “[you] slept a sleeping”).
In any event, I think it’s rather interesting, linguistically.  Someone could write a dissertation on it.

Caveat: The Magical Syntax of the Korean Language

Language & Linguistics / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I have found a really excellent example of one of the things I find so amazing and fabulous about the Korean Language. I’ve been watching a TV drama called “커피프린스 1호점” (from 2009), and there’s a scene where the characters are eating together while playing intensely with language as they try top each other’s insults.

They make each other’s names into verbs, they make them into adjectives, they make them into adverbs. Korean syntax is extremely flexible in its ability to make new vocabulary, and also in its ability to change any given part of speech into another part of speech through the use of endings and particles of various kinds. It’s highly systematic, driven by complex rules, yet it’s also mind-bogglingly creative. Really, it’s exactly my kind of thing. Korean rocks!

Here is a youtube clip of the scene that I like so much. Ignore the romantic song at the start, and focus on the scene from minute ~2:30 up to about minute ~3:30, and watch the characters as they talk to each other. The subtitling only weakly begins to capture the amazing things that are done first to Eun-chan’s name, and then to Han-kyul’s.

[UPDATE: the video was removed from youtube, and since I was stupid and didn’t record the Episode number, it’s nearly impossible for me to relocate this clip. Regrettable.]

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Caveat: Rosetta

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Language & Linguistics / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

One thing I did before leaving the US, is that I broke down and spent a rather large sum of money on Rosetta Stone language learning software, for Korean.  I had a couple of reasons.

Firstly, of course, there is my desperation to somehow get better with Korean, and therefore a willingness to try new and different things, and spend money doing them.

Secondly, however, was that as linguist, I've been wondering what, exactly, they were doing that allowed them to believe themselves a premium seller of language-learning tools, for that's the way they market themselves.  Are they really that good?  I wonder.  There is so much in the way of really bad materials for language learning, devoid of any apparent familiarity with linguistic theory, often replete with errors and folk-judgements about things like sound change or grammaticality.

I've managed to work through the first 3 lessons of the first unit of my Rosetta Software Korean Level 1.  Here are my thoughts.

As software, it's extremely well designed.  Attractive, easy to figure out, intuitive, just as they claim.  My primary complaint with the interface is the speech-recognition tool… I got lots of answers "wrong" as I worked through it because it simply doesn't seem to "hear" me.  And it seems a little bit buggy in the way it handles not being able to "hear" you, leaping along and going "bing," "bing," (error, error) without giving you time to try again.  Also, A few times, I became frustrated with a new type of exercise and the lack of instructions on how to do it, but ultimately I recognize that this is part of the "method" being used: they want the user to solve each exercise, each section, as a little puzzle, and be engaged at a more-than-analytical level in using the language.

As far as awareness of linguistic theory, I'm less impressed.  They make the same sorts of grammaticality judgements as so many horrible  "beginning Korean" texts, and I'm not sure the focus on the highly stilted, fully inflected forms of the nouns is going to lead me to any kind of communicative efficacy, down the road.  Actual Koreans speaking actual Korean almost never use the kinds of singular-plural inflections they're teaching here, at least in my experience, for example.  I'll try to keep an open mind.

The single most frustrating thing is the speaking exercises.  Not just because of the wonky speech-recognition problems I described above, but because they give you little hangeul prompts for words to pronounce, but they aren't really useful at all — because they're not explaining or displaying or in anyway accommodating the extensive and overwhelming processes of sound change and syllable liaison that operate within Korean words and phrases.  I can figure out what they want me to do, because I have a degree in linguistcs and several years of effort behind me in sounding out Korean hangeul, but I think that if I was a typical, linguistically naive language learner, my simple, heartfelt reaction would be:  WTF!

I'm sure they have a couple lessons in the introductory part, where they're teaching you hangeul (which I didn't work through) — but honestly, exposure to the sound change and liaison rules is not the same as internalizing them — the software needs to hammer these rules home in these speaking exercises.  I've seen plenty of beginning Korean texts that will provide two "spellings" for each word:  a standard spelling and then a "sounded out" spelling that explicitly reflects the sound change and liaison rules in operation.  If the software did this in its presentation of speaking exercises, I think it would be a lot more transparent.  As it is, you hear a pronunciation and read the hanguel on the screen and wonder if the person narrating is looking at the same thing you are.

Lastly, I really think I'd have struggled immensely with making heads or tails of this software, if I hadn't brought with me the extensive background and previous effort in trying to learn the language.   I've already been exposed to much of the vocabulary, and all of the grammatical concepts being covered, on and off over the last couple of years, and most importantly, I'm comfortable with the Korean writing system and can recognize syllables at a glance.  And with all that, I'm getting only 85% correct on most of these units.  How frustrated would I be if I was coming at it "cold"?  I'd be giving up, is my guess, and muttering "impossible!"

So, that's my review based on about 6 hours of hard work with Rosetta.  I'll stick with it, if only because for me, it's very helpful with vocabulary.   But was it worth 400 bucks?  A tentative NO.

Caveat: Weed-wacker infomercials on Buddhist TV and other random observations

Hiking & Travel / Language & Linguistics

Yesterday felt a bit unproductive.  I wasted two hours trying to figure out if I could reactivate my cellphone.  The company ended the service as soon as their records indicated that my work visa had expired.  Last time that happened, I had a one month grace period which I'd been counting on to be able to exploit this time so I could have a functioning cellphone for the rest of the time in Korea.  I suspect I didn't get the grace period this time because I disappeared off the grid to Japan for 10 days.

Anyway, it started seeming very expensive and complicated to get them to reactivate the phone, so I gave up and just rented a cellphone for this last week, so I'll be able to call people or whatever.  It's hard to function in Korean society anymore without a cellphone — adoption is basically 100% as far as I can tell.

I then had to find a different hotel, as the funky place I stayed my first night was fully reserved.   I had chosen that place almost solely on the basis of the fact that they offered in-room free wifi according to their website, which is hard to find in anything but top-end hotels.   It was OK, kind of a youth-hostel vibe that reminded me a bit of my years at Casa de los Amigos in Mexico City.

I may try to stay with an acquaintance, Peter (not the same Peter I worked with, but an American I met through my friend Basil some months back), in Ilsan — he's made an offer to crash on the extra bed at his apartment.   It would be convenient to be based in Ilsan, and the choices of hotels out there are surprisingly limited, especially for Korea:  either high-end business hotels or those pseudo-posh "love motels" (a la the Japanese model) where you can easily get a room overnight, but they look at you funny at the front desk when you ask to stay for such a long time, and your neighbors might get noisy.   I have seen very few of the traditional Korean yeogwan that can be found almost anywhere in most Korean towns.

I felt very tired yesterday.  Perhaps all the traveling, catching up with me.  Returning to my comment of some days back:  I'm really not that good of a traveler… I just like being in lots of different places.

Staying in various hotels and places, I've been enjoying (?) the glories of having access to Korean cable television, which is something I never had access to in my apartment.   60 odd channels.  Here are some random observations.

Why did the minbak at Dodong, Ulleungdo, have a channel with Chinese-language music videos?

There are at least two Christian networks (one may be Catholic?), but there's also a Buddhist TV network, which is fascinating, as it follows the Americn "Christian media" model closely, but of course, the content is strikingly different.   At one point, I was fascinated to watch a long lecture (sermon) by a traditionally bald-headed senior monk at some temple, and to note that he was, in fact, an American (ethnically European), speaking fluent Korean, badgering his audience and telling them jokes in a style not unlike a Christian pastor.   Of course, I laughed for a long time when this was immediately followed by an extended informercial for a weed-wacker. 

There's the "Go" channel (as in the complex board game of "Go"), but there also seems to be a channel with a lot of Chinese-style chess.  And there are 3 or 4 sports channels, too, but I'm puzzled by the fact that they always seem to be covering the same sport at any given time, but different angles and specific matches or events.  At one time, you'll seem 3 or 4 channels covering golf.  Then later, they're all covering soccer matches.  Mostly, they're covering baseball (this is late summer in Korea, after all).  But… are they all working together, or as a cartel, such they always have the same sports?  Is there some convention or rule that says they have to stay in sync?  Or is all really the same company?   I can't quite puzzle it out.

Korean TV seems to have a lot of shows dedicated to following "average people" around in their lives.   So you can sit and watch someone shopping, or meeting their friends for lunch, or having dinner with their family, with a running narrative commentary.   I'm sure there are special reasons why these individuals and families merit following around with a camera crew, but my Korean is not good enough for me very often to figure out what those reasons are.   But as a cultural observer like I am, I find myself drawn to these programs just from the way that they offer windows into daily Korean life.  One show that I caught last night was following a group of Korean expatriates living in Los Angeles, which I found particularly fascinating.

Caveat: Languages

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Language & Linguistics / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Yesterday I went to the Meiji Shrine, among other places.  It's kind of a big almost wilderness-y park just a few km south of Shinjuku.  Quite stunning and beautiful inside.  I took some video… maybe I'll try to process and post it, later.

Anyway, when I first got there (after walking the wrong way around to the "back" entrance, as per my obtuse, instinctive, anti-touristic custom), I found myself having a short exchange with the guard at the entrance, since there didn't appear to be any signs with English making clear I was at the right place.  Nothing fancy, mind you:  Is this the Meiji Shrine?  Yes.   Thank you.

But I realized that I was managing the exchange in not-too-bad low-level Japanese.  The guard definitely seemed impressed.  That's a tribute to my 20-years-ago Japanese teachers at the University of Minnesota, I suppose.   Still, I immediately felt very frustrated and almost angry:  the "trying-to-learn-Korean-for-over-2-years Jared" suddenly was very jealous and resentful and pissed off at the "haven't-even-looked-at-Japanese-in-20-years Jared," because that was an exchange that would have still given me anxiety in Korean (although I think I might have managed it). 

I can meditate on various reasons and excuses why I find Korean so difficult.   There's the mind-bogglingly weird sound system (I mean, not in absolute terms, but to us English speakers).  There's all those Chinese-origin homonyms (what happens when you borrow 4 words that are identical in pronunciation, except for tone markings, into a non-tone language?).   But the reason that's probably most likely, but that's hardest for me to accept, is that apparently there's a big difference between my 20-something brain and my 40-something brain.  I've commented on this before.   Oh well.  Maybe I should just study Japanese, since it seems to come so much more easily to me?

But… I like Korean.  Do I like it because it's so hard for me?   Am I a linguistic masochist?  Hmmm.

Caveat: Vowels are a scarce resource

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / Language & Linguistics / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

There are not many jounalistic spaces on the web that I would consider personal "destinations," in the sense that I save bookmarks to them and return to them regularly because I enjoy the content and find it reliably entertaining.  This is doubly true for blogs and news sites related to technology.  I'm much more likely to simply find myself surfing to locations because of some specific interest being pursued via one of the big aggregators of news and opinion, e.g. Google News or Wikipedia, etc.

One place I have found myself returning to regularly is The Register, a UK-based news and blog site about technology.  The writing is reliably high-quality for the most part.  And I especially enjoy the dry, sarcastic humor of blogger Ted Dziuba, from whom I borrowed the observation that I used as the title of this blog.  It's not really relevant to anything in particular, it's simply funny.  It reminds me of the Onion headline from a decade or so ago, that said something along the lines of "Clinton deploys vowels to grateful Bosnia."

Then again, it depends where you are.  In Korea, if anything, they suffer more of a vowel surfeit than a shortage.  I think the language would be a lot more manageable if they would dispense with a few of their more challenging vowels and diphthongs.  Ah well.

Notes for Korean (while trying to use a computer)
검사 = inspection, test, examination
무료치료 = "no charge cure" (in context of antivirus ware.. seemed weird)
취소 = cancel
종료 = end / close

Caveat: მონანიება

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I watched a movie called მონანიება /monanieba/, which means “repentance” in the Georgian Language (Kartuli is the endonym, i.e. what the speakers call their own language).  I really like this movie… for a long time I was unable to find it, but I recently found it and downloaded it.  I first saw it shortly after it was originally released, a product of the lead-in to Gorbochev’s perestroika period, mid 80’s.  Very intense, symbolic movie about that most famous of Georgians:  Stalin.
I actually tried studying Kartuli, once.  I got as far as memorizing the alphabet and learning some basic verb and noun forms.  Maybe someday I’ll go there.  I could continue my career as a professional cultural imperialist (i.e. EFL teacher).

Caveat: Language Soup

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I went to see a movie called "Shinjuku Incident."  It's a project of Jackie Chan's, but it's not so much an action movie per se, more of a noir, violent drama.  It's set among the Chinese illegal immigrant communities in Japan in the 1990's, and the dialogue is about 75% Chinese, 25% Japanese.  Watching it with Korean subtitles made it into an Asian language soup.   I obviously didn't understand a great deal, but as is my tendency, I enjoyed trying to sort out the languages.  The ending was funny:  the Jackie Chan Chinese immigrant-gangster character is dying, floating away in a storm sewer, and says something profound — last words and all that.   The Japanese policeman character says something to the effect of, "what?!  I can't understand what you're saying!"  So the last words are unknown to the one witness of them.  My sentiments, exactly.

Caveat: Alas, Robuckle

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Language & Linguistics / Life is a Dream / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

It was a pretty rough week.  Not so much in the quantity of work, but in the ups and downs of the affective environment at LBridge.  There was the announcement, mid-week, that there will be layoffs, campus closings, etc.  Though not impacting me directly, obviously the mood in the staff room has taken a beating.  And today the rumors began to surface that teaching loads would be way up, next term.  Which is logical, but no more welcome, for all that. 

And there were deprecatory things muttered about "speaking teachers" (code for E2 visa-holding teachers as opposed to "natives") who have "easier jobs."  While I disagree with that, with regard to class load, I do acknowledge that not having to interact with the parents, as is required of the native teachers, definitely makes things a little bit easier.  I see how they struggle and suffer with the constant shifts in mood and policy (oh, there's a policy?), and of course, lack-of-support, on the part of management. 

But the thing that has me most depressed is the situation of a student of mine.  Not just mine… she's been in the Eldorado-ban (level) for a good portion of my time here.  Her English name, self-selected, is Clover.  I actually really have enjoyed having her in my class.  She's not a great intellect, and her English skills are spotty.  She's not a hardcore studier, and she's often moody.  She can be easily discouraged, and is too often comparing herself unfavorably to her peers.  The competition gets her down.  But… she could be a lot of fun, too.

One day, a month or two ago, I came in, and she announced, "today, I am Robuckle."  I said, "that's an interesting name.  I like it."  But I wanted to know where it came from.  She managed to explain, after jumping up to the board and drawing it out in Korean hangeul, that it was the consequence of playing a common language-game with the hangeulized version of "Clover."  This, of course, enchanted me – everyone, including my students, know about my love for all sorts of language games.

Here's how it works.  If you write "Clover" in Korean syllables, it comes to keul-lo-beo (클로버).  Then, according the rules of the language game, you put the first syllable last.  That gives lo-beo-keul (로버클).  But now the leading /L/ has been un-twinned, so it gets to become an /R/, according to standard Korean phonology.  That gives ro-beo-keul.  Finally, you un-hangeulize it back to something close to English phonology, and it sounds like "Robuckle."  Fabulous!

Clover enjoyed having made me so happy with such a silly thing.  So I enthusiastically endorsed the renaming of Clover as Robuckle.

Robuckle went back to being Clover a few weeks later, but after that, I always would grin to myself whenever I was scoring a paper of Robuckle's, or entering a grade, or whatever.  I'm easily and eccentrically pleased, I guess.

Anyway.  Clover's grades have been dropping quite a bit, of late.  And she got a terrible score on the speaking final speech.  She complained (via her mom, conveyed to the homeroom teacher, conveyed to me) that I had scored her unfairly.  And she became grumpy and taciturn in class.  Which of course caused her subsequent scores on things to drop, too.  I asked her, several times, to bring me the scoring sheet I had given her for the speaking final – I was open to renegotiating the score, or, even, letting her have another go at it.  But she was more interested in being angry about it.  She finally told me her mom "threw it away" (meaning the scoring paper), to get me to leave her alone about renegotiating the grade.

The other day, she apparently complained to her mom that she "hated" all of her teachers at LBridge.  Which is fine.  Such complaining is the god-given right of every adolescent.  But she alleged that we all hated her, too, and that we were unfair to her.  Such complaints come from children everywhere, all the time.  But the problem in the hagwon biz, where the parents are the paying customers… well, you can imagine: I've written about this dilemma at least once before.  The management is just as likely to side with the kid as with the teachers, especially if the kid in question is being unequivocably backed by his or her parent.

The outcome of this is that Clover's homeroom teacher got a dressing-down today by the manager, for not intercepting Clover's problems, and for being unfair, and for not mediating her perceptions of unfairness of her other teachers, such as myself.  And that left Clover's homeroom teacher pissed as hell, naturally.  At Clover.  At Clover's mom.  At the manager.  And Clover is, most likely, dropping out.  And Clover's sister, a star pupil across the street at the middle-school branch, is being pulled, also.  Officially, it's all the fault of us teachers. 

You see how this works?  It's depressing.

And despite all that, I'll miss Clover, too.  Her unkempt hair, her occasional wry grin, her sullen slouch, that baseball cap permanently affixed to her head, her flashes of real intelligence shining through the murk of atrocious syntax.

Alas, Robuckle.

Caveat: blade haaku

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Language & Linguistics

I was surfing wikipedia, and as usual gravitating to language-geek-appealing things.  I was reading about the Kannada language – a Dravidian language of west-central India.  And there was a list of interesting phrases, and I found that included "Blade haaku – to talk at length to an uninterested listener."  Every language needs a phrase that means this!

It might be a good name for a blog, too.  This blog?  I don't know.  I definitely have the strong gut feeling that most of the time, I am, in fact, talking at length to an uninterested listener.  But anyway, life goes on, right? 

Caveat: Hermits

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I keep obsessing over the concept of Juche:  the North Korean political philosophy.   It's not that I agree with it, or even understand it.  And North Korea, as a political or even cultural entity, scares me much more than it interests me.  But I keep coming back to Juche as being some kind of secret key to understanding Korean national character.  Not that I really even believe such a thing.

I've been reading a book by Simon Winchester, Korea:  A Walk Through the Land of Miracles.  It's very interesting.  At the beginning of the first chapter, he quotes The Description of the Kingdom of Corea, the English translation of Hendrick Hamel's 1668 book written in Dutch, which was the very first account of Korea by a westerner.    The words that struck me:  "This kingdom is very dangerous, and difficult for Strangers." 

Out of curiosity, I found the original Dutch, too (which I find fascinating just because it's weird language… archaic Dutch): 

"Dit lant bij ons Coree ende bij haer Tiocen Cock  genaemt is gelegen tussen de 34 1/2 ende 44 graden; in de lanckte, Z. en N. ontrent 140 a 150 mijl; in de breete O. en W. ongevaerlijck 70 a 75 mijl; wort bij haer inde caert geleijt als een caerte bladt, heeft veel uijt stekende hoecken. Is verdeelt in 8 provintie ende 360 steden, behalve de schansen op 't geberghte ende vastigheden aanden zee cant; Is seer periculeus voor de onbekende, om aan te doen, door de meenighte van clippen ende droogten."

I like the way that the name of Korea is romanized… the way that it provides clues to both 17th c. Dutch phonology and 17th c. Korean phonology:  "Tiocen Cock" represents what is now written in Korean 조선국 = joseonguk. 

Anyway, the phrase " Is seer periculeus voor de onbekende, om aan te doen, " definitely sums up Kim Jeong-il's Hermit kingdom even today.   And the account of the foreign Dutchmen being captured and enslaved by the Koreans for 13 years, until they finally escaped, stole a boat, and went to the relatively more hospitable Japan.  It's hard to imagine late-medieval Japan as being more hospitable to strangers than some other country, but Korea was definitely much more inwarding looking than even Japan, I think.

OK.  I was thinking about Juche.  Inward-lookingness made into an explicit national philosophy.  Inward-lookingness but with external hostility.  Hmm… that could be my boss.   It's a bad idea to make generalizations about "national character," and to project those generalizations onto individuals is even worse.  But… it's so tempting.

Notes for Korean
일반 = general or universal
액세스하려는 파일은 일시적으로 이용할 수 없습니다 "file access cannot be completed at the moment"
일시적으로 = at the moment, temporarily
방법=means, plan, method, way, recipe

Caveat: Those Evil Epenthetics

Language & Linguistics / Teaching & Methodology

I become more and more convinced that it is not necessarily an advantage, for Korean learners of English, that the Korean language (South Korean, anyway) has been so welcoming of English vocabulary over the last half-century.  In fact, it creates some serious problems.  Here's why.

Korean phonology allows far fewer consonant clusters than English does, and in general, vowel and consonant inventories are radically different between the two languages, too.  Therefore, when Korean borrows an English word, it messes with its native phonology substantially to make it "fit," or nativize it.   The main thing that happens is that "epenthetic" vowels are inserted between consonants that aren't allowed to follow each other in Korean, or at the end of English words that end in consonants where Korean doesn't allow such a consonant ending.

A notorious example:  printer -> 프린트 (REV peurinteo IPA [pɯrintʌ]).  The main Korean epenthetic vowel used is 으 [ɯ], which is basically the Korean functional equivalent of the English schwa [ə].   Because of this, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that Korean speakers develop the mistaken belief that [ɯ] is a common English sound, when, in fact, it not only doesn't exist in English but is a freaky, difficult, weird-sounding vowel for English speakers.

The problem is that Koreans then internalize a false rule, which is that this sort of vowel epenthesis is the "right" way to pronounce English words.  I've had kids literally argue with me, passionately, in class that "hadeu" (IPA [hadɯ]) was the "right" pronunciation of the word "hard," for example.   The reasoning is basically that, if these thousands of borrowings from English into Korean are English words, after all, how could Koreans be saying them all wrong?  It's naive "folk" linguistics, but it becomes a huge battle in the classroom.

Worse… in some kids, whose parents or former teachers thought they were doing them a favor by transcribing their English lessons into hangeul (Korean alphabet), the problem becomes insanely worse, so that they will utter whole sentences, verily, entire speeches, in "hangeulized" English.  I had two students do this today.  I wanted to cry.  How can I help them, when they argue that "del ijeu noting rongeu wideu ma-i peurononshieishon" (there is nothing wrong with my pronunciation)? 

Sigh.

Caveat: 저는 위키백과 ♥

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Internet & Blogging / Language & Linguistics / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Which is to say, ”I♥Wikipedia” (roughly… seems to me, the heart should go at the end in Korean, since that’s the verb, right? And… what about endings? Should it end in “-♥요”? “-♥해요”?) What exactly does the heart stand for – the whole verb, including endings? Or just the semantic root. These are harder to resolve in Korean, than in English, maybe. Then again, basically, the heart works like Chinese.
Anyway, back to 위키백과 (wikipaekgwa = wiki encyclopedia i.e. wikipedia). There was an awesome review of it by Noam Cohen in the New York Times.

Caveat: Make up a story…

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Quotable

I have the flu. Bad. Fever and cough, yesterday. Argh.
pictureOn a news website, an ad for Bloomberg caught my attention. It’s a riff on the commonplace that things get lost in translation (a la the children’s game “telephone”). Still, the specific example was clever (if accurate, and… who knows?).  I will reproduce it, thus giving them some free advertising.  But, whatever.
[Start] English: Get your facts right at the source
[ –> ] Italian: Ricava le tue informazioni vere direttamente dalla fonte
[ –> ] Chinese: … .. ..
[ –> ] English: Make up a story and run to the motherland
I didn’t really make much effort to copy the Chinese.  I had a hard time copying this.  I don’t know Chinese, but I can read fragments, because of my efforts to study Korean hanja. Notes:
故 = 고 (chinese meaning is “therefore”)
故事[story? but korean is 고사 = historical folktale or tradition, fable?]
Quotes:
“Talent is not the same as intelligence.” – Me (and probably someone else, too).
“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.” – Edsger W. Dijkstra
“Absentem qui rodit amicum, qui non defendit, alio culpante; hic niger est; hunc tu, Romane, caveto” – Horace
picture

Caveat: Freaky Ergativity Fetish

Language & Linguistics / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

What's ergativity?  In the field of linguistics, ergativity is a way for languages' syntactical systems (i.e. grammars) to organize themselves.   It is one of several ways, and contrasts mostly with what might be termed accusativity.  Which is to say, there are ergative features of syntactic systems, and accusative features.   Most languages exhibit a strong leaning toward one system or the other, and to most Westerners, ergativity seems exotic because most European languages are markedly accusative.  One popular counter-example is Basque, which is broadly ergative.  But that's not exactly a widely-spoken European language. 

Ergativity is very hard to explain to people without a lot of background in comparing the grammars of different languages and linguistic features, but here's an effort at an example, drawn from English.

English is mostly accusative.  This means that the subjects of transitive and intransitive verbs are grammatically "the same," while the objects of transitive verbs are "different" from those subjects.   In grammar, in English, subjects come "in front" and objects come "behind."  For example:

The alligator dances the charleston.
The alligator dances.

The alligator, in both examples, is the subject, and, when the verb "dance" is intransitive (the second example), the subject, "The alligator" still shows up in front of the verb, showing it is a subject, not an object.  We cannot give an intransitive verb "only" an object, e.g.  neither of these below make sense (though for basically opposite reasons, one because of syntactic accusativity and one because of semantic accusativity):

*Dances the alligator.
*The charleston dances.

This is "normal" accusative behavior.  But English does have some special verbs, which are "ergative" in terms of how they work.  Consider this:

The alligator broke my pencil.
My pencil broke.

In this case, the "object" of the breaking in the intransitive usage of the verb "promotes" to the subject position, which is now not called the subject position but the ergative position, because in ergative systems, there's not a contrast between subject and object (nominative vs accusative) but rather a contrast between ergative and absolutive. 

I'm sure this seems really strange and hard to understand.  I didn't understand it at all in my intro to linguistics class, and didn't really figure it out until my second semester of syntax (for linguistic majors).  Actually, it's possible I still don't really have it figured out.

Anyway, why am I thinking about this?  I want to know, is Korean ergative?

I know Japanese is largely accusative.   And I'm guessing that Chinese is what's called "split ergative," meaning it can't decide if it's ergative or not.  But what's Korean?  My current guess is that, like along so many other linguistic parameters, it's some kind of outlier… its "own damn thing."   Korean strikes its own path through the linguistic wilderness.  That's part of what draws me to the language.

But what path is that?  Korean has noun case markers (just like, say, Finnish or Latin), but they are clitic (meaning they stand alone as word-particles, much as case markers do in Japanese).  But, unlike anywhere else I've experienced, these case markers can be "stacked."  Which is cool.  You can attach a locative case marker to a noun phrase, and then attach a topic case marker to that.  I saw one like that, earlier today.

In other words, you can make noun phrases play multiple syntactic roles in the sentence simultaneously.  Which is cool.  Worse, of course… all case marking of all sorts in Korean is entirely optional.  You show case when you feel like it.  Mostly, in higher registers and during careful speech, and in writing, of course.   But… with all these case particles floating around like so much syntactic dust, are things ergative or accustive?

 I'm going to investigate….

…그사이에 저는 떡볶이를 먹어요.

(=meanwhile+[DATIVE MARKER] I+[TOPIC MARKER] tteokbokki+[OBJECT MARKER] eat+[POLITENESS MARKER])

Caveat: Wobow! Thebey ubuse ubbi dubbi hebere!

Language & Linguistics / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Ubbi dubbi is a language game (or “language”) apparently popularized by the PBS TV program ZOOM. Which must be how I learned it – I remember practicing it with my friend Bob (or was it Mark or Ken?) on a number 6 Grand Ave bus in St Paul in the 1980’s, while fellow passengers looked on in bemusement.
Writing it down kind of loses the effect, mostly because of the unphonetic nature of English. Here is a video sample I found on youtube:

I also found an Ubbi Dubbi translator.
Well, I heard my students Amy and Sally using it with each other, the other day. In Korean! And this is actually documented… I found a brief reference to something called 도깨비말 (“ogre language”) in the English wikipedia article on language games.
What was so interesting and amazing to me about hearing it done in Korean is that, stunningly, I found the Korean easier to understand. I think it was because they have to slow down to do it, and it reduplicates the vowels, which are mostly fairly “pure” in Korean (unlike the messy diphthongs so common in English) which makes it easier to pick out which vowel is being used. How did it sound?  Hmm… very briefly, I heard Amy say, for example, 그브래배? (keubeuraebae <= keurae = “is that right?”).   Totally cool.

Caveat: Glish

Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Language & Linguistics / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I was websurfing and found an interesting thing:  Ilan Stavans has translated the first chapter of Don Quixote into a very entertaining Spanglish version.  Here are the first few sentences:

In un placete de La Mancha of which nombre no quiero remembrearme, vivía, not so long ago, uno de esos gentlemen who always tienen una lanza in the rack, una buckler antigua, a skinny caballo y un grayhound para el chase. A cazuela with más beef than mutón, carne choppeada para la dinner, un omelet pa’ los Sábados, lentil pa’ los Viernes, y algún pigeon como delicacy especial pa’ los Domingos, consumían tres cuarers de su income. El resto lo employaba en una coat de broadcloth y en soketes de velvetín pa’ los holidays, with sus slippers pa’ combinar, while los otros días de la semana él cut a figura de los más finos cloths. Livin with él eran una housekeeper en sus forties, una sobrina not yet twenty y un ladino del field y la marketa que le saddleaba el caballo al gentleman y wieldeaba un hookete pa’ podear.

I've always been fascinated by the way that languages mix together.  I have been hyperaware, lately, of the immense amount of Konglish found in my current South Korean environment.  I spend a lot of time reading random signs, websites, and bits of advertising, just to practice, and when I do that, I am stunned by how much of it turns out simply to be English written in Korean hangul.  Some examples from just the other day on the MSN homepage, Korean version:

스페셜 이벤트 = seupesyeul ibenteu (i.e. special event)
스타홀릭 = seutahollik (star-holic i.e. "addicted to celebrities," roughly)

As a language learner, I find all this easy-to-parse verbiage reassuring.  As a student of linguistics more generally, as I already mentioned, I find it fascinating.  But as a sometime critic of neocolonial processes, I sometimes find myself disturbed about it, too.

Anyway, I'm going to try to coin yet another neologism.  "Glish" is the generic name for all the hybrids the globalized neo-colonial enterprise called America is engendering:  Spanglish, Konglish, Franglais, etc. 

Caveat: “Off topic you are!”

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea / The Wonders of Work

My student Eric was giving a speech.  Harry, another student, leapt to his feet and, pounding his fist confidently on the table, proclaimed, "Off topic you are!"  It was pure Yoda-speak.  And I began laughing uncontrollably, which left Harry a bit uncomfortable.  So I had to explain that Yoda, in the Star Wars movie, is a very funny-speaking character, but that, if you study his language carefully, you realize he's basically speaking English words with Korean grammar.  Which means that Korean students can "do" Yoda, sometimes, without meaning to.  I'm not sure my kids fully understood or accepted my explanation completely.  But they realized they could make me laugh by ending sentences loudly and confidently with verbs. 

"Homework what is?" they demanded, at the end.  Good students.  Funny students. 

Caveat: шоколад, хлеб и борщ в Сеуле

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea

It’s now been 20 years since I studied Russian in college.  And unlike some other things I’ve studied, I’ve not made much use of it.  At the time, I was quite good at it.   I completed a year of college Russian and got one of the highest grades on the end-of-year final that the department had recorded for a first year student — high enough that I remember being contacted by a CIA recruiter (remember that 20 years ago, the cold war had not yet ended).  I was flattered but uninterested at the time.  Imagine if I’d pursued that?  How different would my life have been?
pictureAnyway, I was with Basil today, we went to a bookstore and then we went out for Russian food at a restaurant in the Russian neighborhead near 동대문 (dongdaemun).  After having some pretty good borscht and kebabs, we went into a tiny Russian cafe (picture at right) where we drank some kefir and I bought a loaf of dark Russian bread.  And then in a Russian supermarket I bought some Russian chocolate (for the novelty, of course).
I was stunned to realize that I was interacting with the Korean-Russian lady behind the counter in Korean, much more comfortably than if I’d been forced to use Russian.  And it felt like a weird sort of linguistic milestone, to be in Seoul’s Russiatown interacting in Korean… it means Korean has passed Russian in terms of my linguistc comfort and competence.  That’s not really saying a lot, of course.  The Russian is very very rusty.  But it felt good, in  a very weird way.
The title says шоколад, хлеб и борщ в Сеуле (“chocolate, bread and borscht in Seoul”). I ate the borsht in the restaurant, but here below is a pic of the bread and chocolate I brought home with me.
picture

Caveat: What what why so what why so?

Kids / Language & Linguistics / Teaching & Methodology

Jenny is an intelligent student, and she tries hard, at least occasionally.

But I didn't quite know how to answer the smoothly uttered question, "what what why so what why so?"  I don't think it's a translation from Korean, either.  It's her own magical language, I guess.  The way she uttered it, It had great English-question intonation, good pronunciation, and even the pragmatics were clear.  Only the semantics were missing.  Hey, 3 out of 4, right? 

Caveat: Not Funny, Just Fun

Language & Linguistics / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

"Funny" is, in my estimation, the single most mis-used word by Korean learners of English.  Somewhere along the line, they internalize a rule that tells them that "fun" and "funny" are synonyms, and that, furthermore, they describe an internal mental state rather than an external situation.  Hence you get innumerable variations on this sort of phrase:  "I am funny," by which is meant "I am having fun."   I think the problem arises out of a semantic overlap in Korean that doesn't exist in English, but is aggravated by the deceptive shared etymology of the two English words.

Lately, I've taken to telling my students that their chances of using the word "funny" correctly are sufficiently low that their best bet it to avoid the word altogether.  "Fun" has broader semantics in any event, and is generally closer to what they intend.  The issue of the fact that it describes an external as opposed to internal state is more difficult to resolve, and is linked to Koreans' efforts to use English "state" adjectives in general, I think.  Regardless, "I am fun" is slightly more comprehensible than "I am funny" as a multi-purpose response to an entertaining situation. 

 

Caveat: “Notes for Korean”

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / My Photos / Quotable / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn 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

picturePessoa 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.
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Caveat: existentialist-in-chief

Language & Linguistics / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I was reading an article discussing General Clark's recent comments regarding McCain's qualifications to be "commander-in-chief."  (The thought being, roughly, that having been a prisoner-of-war is brave and shows strong character, but isn't the same as command experience.)  I was thinking about that phrase, commander-in-chief.  And began toying with the idea of McCain as "prisoner-of-war-in-chief," reflecting on the way that a person's formative experiences and character can come to define a presidency:  Nixon as rogue-in-chief, Reagan as movie-star-in-chief, Clinton as bubba-in-chief. 

In this vein, and if McCain is to be prisoner-of-war-in-chief, what would Obama be?  I think about aspects of his character and formative experiences, and think, maybe something like community-activist-in-chief?  Perhaps, less charitably, he could become our Urkel-in-chief.  There's definitely something to the idea that, like the sitcom prototype (the legendary Urkel), Obama manages to transcend racial and cultural stereotypes in part through his nerdiness – which is to say, nerdiness as an essential stereotype runs "deeper" than race.  Which actually says something pretty positive about the state of race relations in America, maybe.  I  think it was Joel Stein who first suggested the comparison between Obama and Urkel, but I don't know that most of the comparisons have been entirely meant to be positive.  Still… who am I, as pale white ubernerd, to judge?

Caveat: Parlez Hançais?

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / My Photos

Konglish (Koreanized English, sometimes also called Engrish, though that term also includes Japanized English, and I don’t really like that term) permeates Korean popular culture, especially in the spheres of marketing.   Konglish exists at several different levels, from more-or-less correct English messages attached to advertising, to random English words or pseudo-English words plastered on t-shirts, to “hangeulized” English in the form of minimally adapted loanwords into Korean, and especially used as product names and brand names.
Many examples of “hangeulized” English (i.e. English written using the Korean writing system, and adapted therefore to Korean phonology) can be found on the shelves of the grocery store.  Here is an example:
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This is a brand of iced coffee that I buy.  The cursive-looking hangeul at the top spells out “Kantata” (i.e. Cantata, as in a piece of music), then right under that in smaller letters it says “orijineol wondu keopi” (original wondu coffee).   The phrase “wondu keopi” repeats under the coffee beans picture, and then it says “peurimieom beullendeu pollipenol 100 mg” (premium blend polyphenol 100mg).  See how that works?
Ok, actually what I want to write about is what appears to be an emerging related phenomenon, which is the use of “hangeulized” French, also in marketing. The advantages seem to be a) French has a novelty factor, while English is rather worn out, b) French has the same high-social-status element that English does, but with less historical and geopolitical baggage (at least here in Korea – don’t try this in e.g. Vietnam).
What’s really interesting, to me, is the subtle way that the French phonological system, as represented using the Latin alphabet, is hangeulized differently for a given etymon than would be done for an identical word in English. Here is a bakery that just opened a few blocks west of here (and note the use of perfectly acceptable English in the supporting text to the brand-name):
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The sign’s hangeul reads “bon geurang bageteu” (which is bon grand baguette in French – bad French, actually, since it messes up the gender agreement between the adjectives and the noun, I think). The word “grand” is common enough in both French and English, and if it were an English word being hangeulized, they’d do something more along the lines of “geuraendeu,” but, because it’s French, they capture the different quality of the french vowel, along with the nasalized ending, by doing it as “geurang.”
I’m sure very few people find this as fascinating as I do. I can’t make excuses for my stupid interests. But I’ve decided this hangeulized French needs a name, along the lines of the term Konglish. And I think “Hançais” is just perfect – “han” meaning Korean (in Korean), and -çais for the French part, of course.
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Caveat: Verbcastles

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Allegedly, the Korean language has no relative pronouns.  So how do they phrasally modify a noun?  They do this cool thing whereby they can nominalize a verb (and all its accompanying baggage, subject, object, etc.) and make it the object or subject of another verb.  And this can pile up:  a nominalized verb phrase functioning as the subject of another verb, which in turn is nominalized and made the subject of another, etc., ad infinitum.
I won’t even dare to try to show an example – I don’t want to embarrass myself by publishing mutilated Korean.  But it’s mind-boggling complex and yet syntactically elegant.  We can do it in English, within certain limits, but our natural Subject-Verb-Object word order makes it difficult to enchain indefinitely, while Korean’s Subject-Object-Verb order means the structures can nest comfortably.   Maybe I can try to conjure some reliable and concrete examples.

Meanwhile, I have been contemplating sandcastles, and found this old picture of a sandcastle Jeffrey (my stepson), Andrew (my brother) and I built on a Santa Monica beach in 1994.

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Think of them as complex syntactical objects made of sand.
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