In Cute Honey Strawberry Shortcake, there is no day and no night...
...only endless permutations of the Korean alphabet.
So I have survived my first week of classes, during which I learned to read Hangul, the Korean writing system. It's, um...relatively systematic, I guess. Mostly phonetic, but (as I have come to discover) riddled with odd exceptions. We haven't officially learned about the odd exceptions yet--I've been cheating a bit, studying from an extra language textbook. I think the teachers are hiding the exceptions from us so as not to scare us away. I shouldn't really complain, though--I'm sure English is worse.
Pronunciation is decidedly more difficult than Japanese. I should have restricted myself to languages with only five vowel sounds if I wanted to continue my obsession with perfect pronunciation. :) Korean has something like 15 vowels, but even the vowels aren't as bad as the consonants, which I find disturbingly wishy-washy. Basically, each consonant has three different pronunciations: (1) voiced/unaspirated, (2) aspirated/unvoiced, and (3) very-subtly-voiced-or-aspirated-depending-on-its-position-in-the-word. For those of you that haven't studied linguistics, here's an example based on the consonant "giyeok/kieuk" (ㄱ/ㅋ), which corresponds roughly to the English sounds "g" and "k".
In its voiced/unaspirated incarnation, it sounds like an emphatic "gg" and is written ㄲ.
In its aspirated/unvoiced incarnation, it sounds like an emphatic "kk" and is written ㅋ.
In its very-subtly-etc. incarnation, it can sound like either a soft "g" or a soft "k", and is written ㄱ either way.
Almost every consonant has those three variations, and I'm still finding them extremely difficult to distinguish in both speaking and listening exercises. I suppose I should cut myself some slack since it's only been a week, but I want to get it right so badly!!! I wish there were a language lab here, like there was at Michigan State. When I first studied Japanese, I'd spend hours in there practicing the pronunciation of words that were only slightly different in order to train my ear and my mouth. The tapes the TAs made were pretty much indispensable in this task. Alas, here we have no TA-produced tapes, only the CD that came with the textbook, and the CD lacks the kind of examples I need. I learn pronunciation by informed mimicry! I have the information, now I need something to mimic. Maybe I'll pay one of my Korean friends to make a recording or something. There are plenty of written examples in the supplementary textbook I bought, but they're not included on that textbook's CD, either. :P
In other (non-linguistic) news, I have become more or less nocturnal since I moved into my new apartment. Having no windows is far more disorienting than I expected it to be. My usual circadian rhythm has been thrown off completely. Without sunlight, I find that I have absolutely no motivation to get up in the morning. Therefore, I find myself rolling over and falling back to sleep whenever I can in the morning, which is perhaps the source of the second problem--I can't fall asleep at night! This has (almost) never happened to me before. It's very strange. I guess I'll have to start living strictly by my alarm clock if I want to get back on a regular schedule...but even if that works, I'll be extremely glad to get back to my apartment in Wisconsin, which is full of windows. (Yay windows!)
On the social front, I've been spending time with a few Korean friends as well as friends from class. Here's our cast of main characters so far:
Hye-Sun: my Korean friend whom I've known since I was an undergrad at MSU
Eli: the sister of one of my Wisconsin colleagues, in Seoul for the summer
Jimi: one of Eli's friends, she's a kindergarten teacher in Seoul
Miyuki: a classmate from Osaka
Henry: classmate; a Korean-American adoptee from Manhattan
Grover: a higher-level student, the only other white person I've hung out with since I got here
This weekend was spent with various combinations of these people, minus Hye-Sun, who's been too busy with work to come to Seoul (she lives maybe an hour or so away). On Friday I went to lunch and a movie (Indiana Jones) with Miyuki and Eli, Saturday I bummed around Namdaemun Market with Henry and Grover and spent the evening consuming fried chicken and beer (for which my stomach did not thank me), and repeated the lunch/movie pattern with Eli and Jimi today. Obviously, I haven't gotten as much studying done as I would like...but I'm having fun! ...And spending too much money...oy. We'll see how long I can keep this up.
But hey, when else am I going to get to spend this kind of time in Korea? Possibly never! I may as well enjoy it while it lasts. :)
I'll put up some more pictures later this week, but for now, all you get is this boring update. Sorry!
So I have survived my first week of classes, during which I learned to read Hangul, the Korean writing system. It's, um...relatively systematic, I guess. Mostly phonetic, but (as I have come to discover) riddled with odd exceptions. We haven't officially learned about the odd exceptions yet--I've been cheating a bit, studying from an extra language textbook. I think the teachers are hiding the exceptions from us so as not to scare us away. I shouldn't really complain, though--I'm sure English is worse.
Pronunciation is decidedly more difficult than Japanese. I should have restricted myself to languages with only five vowel sounds if I wanted to continue my obsession with perfect pronunciation. :) Korean has something like 15 vowels, but even the vowels aren't as bad as the consonants, which I find disturbingly wishy-washy. Basically, each consonant has three different pronunciations: (1) voiced/unaspirated, (2) aspirated/unvoiced, and (3) very-subtly-voiced-or-aspirated-depending-on-its-position-in-the-word. For those of you that haven't studied linguistics, here's an example based on the consonant "giyeok/kieuk" (ㄱ/ㅋ), which corresponds roughly to the English sounds "g" and "k".
In its voiced/unaspirated incarnation, it sounds like an emphatic "gg" and is written ㄲ.
In its aspirated/unvoiced incarnation, it sounds like an emphatic "kk" and is written ㅋ.
In its very-subtly-etc. incarnation, it can sound like either a soft "g" or a soft "k", and is written ㄱ either way.
Almost every consonant has those three variations, and I'm still finding them extremely difficult to distinguish in both speaking and listening exercises. I suppose I should cut myself some slack since it's only been a week, but I want to get it right so badly!!! I wish there were a language lab here, like there was at Michigan State. When I first studied Japanese, I'd spend hours in there practicing the pronunciation of words that were only slightly different in order to train my ear and my mouth. The tapes the TAs made were pretty much indispensable in this task. Alas, here we have no TA-produced tapes, only the CD that came with the textbook, and the CD lacks the kind of examples I need. I learn pronunciation by informed mimicry! I have the information, now I need something to mimic. Maybe I'll pay one of my Korean friends to make a recording or something. There are plenty of written examples in the supplementary textbook I bought, but they're not included on that textbook's CD, either. :P
In other (non-linguistic) news, I have become more or less nocturnal since I moved into my new apartment. Having no windows is far more disorienting than I expected it to be. My usual circadian rhythm has been thrown off completely. Without sunlight, I find that I have absolutely no motivation to get up in the morning. Therefore, I find myself rolling over and falling back to sleep whenever I can in the morning, which is perhaps the source of the second problem--I can't fall asleep at night! This has (almost) never happened to me before. It's very strange. I guess I'll have to start living strictly by my alarm clock if I want to get back on a regular schedule...but even if that works, I'll be extremely glad to get back to my apartment in Wisconsin, which is full of windows. (Yay windows!)
On the social front, I've been spending time with a few Korean friends as well as friends from class. Here's our cast of main characters so far:
Hye-Sun: my Korean friend whom I've known since I was an undergrad at MSU
Eli: the sister of one of my Wisconsin colleagues, in Seoul for the summer
Jimi: one of Eli's friends, she's a kindergarten teacher in Seoul
Miyuki: a classmate from Osaka
Henry: classmate; a Korean-American adoptee from Manhattan
Grover: a higher-level student, the only other white person I've hung out with since I got here
This weekend was spent with various combinations of these people, minus Hye-Sun, who's been too busy with work to come to Seoul (she lives maybe an hour or so away). On Friday I went to lunch and a movie (Indiana Jones) with Miyuki and Eli, Saturday I bummed around Namdaemun Market with Henry and Grover and spent the evening consuming fried chicken and beer (for which my stomach did not thank me), and repeated the lunch/movie pattern with Eli and Jimi today. Obviously, I haven't gotten as much studying done as I would like...but I'm having fun! ...And spending too much money...oy. We'll see how long I can keep this up.
But hey, when else am I going to get to spend this kind of time in Korea? Possibly never! I may as well enjoy it while it lasts. :)
I'll put up some more pictures later this week, but for now, all you get is this boring update. Sorry!