21 Questions

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Shanna posted this today and I decided to give it a go too.  Currently dealing with a lot of blegh school- and health-related stuff so I haven’t been posting regularly, but I do have several half-written posts currently percolating in my Drafts.  But for now, here’s this.

1. Why Korean?
I have a whole, rambling post dedicated to that.  I love language and of all the languages I’ve tried learning, Korean stuck with me.

2 . Daum or Naver (dictionary I mean)?
Daum, baby.

3. First website that you visit everyday?
Tumblr HEH HEH.  And Dramabeans.

4. Best thing that happened to you? (related to learning Korean)
Meeting wonderful people who share my passion for language.

5. Ever regretted learning Korean?
Not for a second.

6. Most common feedback/question you get when you say you are learning Korean?
“Why Korean?”
“How long have you been learning?”
“Say something.”

7. First Korean food that comes to your mind?
떡볶이!  The first Korean dish I ever tried was 야채 비빔밥 at Tofu House, but I LOVE 떡볶이.  I want some.  Like now.

8. Most overrated Korean drama?
내 이름은 김삼순.  Feel free to hate me, but I must be true to myself.

9. Most underrated Korean drama?
White Christmas or Que Sera Sera.

10.Latest milestone in learning Korean?
Finally having confidence to watch everything unsubbed.  Woot!

11. Favorite Korean word / phrase?
수고 했다/ 수고 많았다/고생 했다.  These are such special phrases to me.  I like that there’s a direct and standard phrase in Korean that others can use to acknowledge another’s hard work.  Whenever I get back from lab and 언니 says that to me, it makes me want to get up the next day and work even harder.

12. Name 3 people (fictional / real) who motivate / influence your Korean learning journey
1)  My language partner and dear friend Kwang-im, who’s always challenging me and pushing me out of my comfort zone and making me realize what I’m actually capable of – not only in Korean, but in the scientific research world as well.

2)  The Korean, writer of the popular Ask A Korean blog, who came to the United States when he was in high school and now has a better grasp of the English language than most native English speakers.  At some point in his life, he crossed the “good writing for a foreigner” threshold to just “good writing” period.

3)  Hyunwoo Sun, polyglot, entrepreneur, and founder of Talk To Me in Korean – is there nothing this man can’t do?  My Korean wouldn’t be at the level it’s at if it were not for this man and the amazing TTMIK team.

13. Secret ambition / goal (relating to Korean)
Not “real” goal, more of a crazy fantasy.  Act in a Korean drama as the token foreigner character, except have some lines in Korean too.  Never mind the fact that I can’t act.  HAHAHAHA.

14. I want to sound like _____ when I speak Korean
Ha Jiwon!!  I love her tone.

15. Best compliment received (for Korean)
A comment I once got on Lang-8:

와~ 이렇게 한국어를 잘 쓰는 외국인 분은 처음봐요!! 모르고 보면 그냥 한국 사람이 쓴 글로 보일 정도군요. 요즘엔 한국인들도 한국어를 제대로 못 쓰는 경우가 많은데, 한국어 잘 못 쓰는 한국인들에게 Archana의 글을 보여주고 싶을 정도네요~ 열심히 공부하시는 모습 아름답습니다!

Also, a friend of my friend said that my speak/write 예쁘게.

16. When is the last time you sat down and studied Korean?
I think it’s been a year and a half or something.  I don’t really “sit down and study” Korean.

17. Favorite textbook?
I hate textbooks.  Integrated Korean.

18. Special people you met (online or otherwise) through Korean?
The one who started it all – my best friend in high school Michelle, my language partner and 친언니 같은 Kwang-im, my program mate Yekyung, my wonderfully wonderful fellow book-addict Jeannie, the ever-diligent Shanna, words-cant-describe-how-much-I-love-her Holly, and of course ALL OF YOU.

19. How has learning Korean changed you / your life?
It’s nice to have one thing in my life that will, without fail, make me happy.  Also, 90% of the things I do in my leisure time involves Korean in some way.  However, I’ve lost other parts of my life – I don’t read as much any more and I hardly ever write.  Because free time is so limited in grad school, all of that time goes into Korean.

20. Ever dreamt in Korean?
Yes.  Funnily enough, I have several dreams where I’m being interviewed in Korean but I can only understand 85% of what the interviewer is saying.

21. Single best thing about learning Korean?
Having a whole new culture/history, a new body of literature, and world of entertainment open to you. 

Hope to see more of this going around the K-learning blogs.  Till next time.

Daum’s Easy English (금상첨화!)

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So much about language learning is about individual perspective.  For example, my own mother tongue, culture, and the values I was brought up with influences how quickly I learn certain Korean phrases or bits of Korean culture.  Needless to say, the things I can identify with, I learn more quickly.

That being said, although I use Marathi and my Indian background to connect to Korean, English is clearly my stronger language.  And as my Korean inches beyond the intermediate stage, I find myself reading more and more about English in Korean and I’ve actually learned a lot.  I began to pick up so-and-so Korean phrase is equivalent in meaning to blah-blah English and that’s really helping my writing and communication.  A fair warning though:  I’ve looked at a few “teach yourself English”-type books in Korean and am often baffled by the expressions and example sentences in the books.  Most of them are just BAD.

Now, I’m a steadfast Daum user (pretty sure I’m in the minority, but I can’t stand Naver) and I love the Daum 어학사전.  Recently(?), I found even greater reason to love it.  Daum’s Easy English series (which you can find on the 어학사전 home page) features some of the best and simplest explanations of English phrases and idioms I’ve seen to date.  The Korean explanations are easy to understand and the examples, for the most part, natural in both English and (I think) Korean.  The best part is they provide a really great Korean counterpart to the English phrase being defined – that means I usually learn something too!

daum

I recently learned a very relevant 사자성어 from one of the Easy English posts.  I’ve been kind of… skirting around learning these four-character idioms but my language partner Kwang-im actually uses them a lot (she also insists that I should know them because I’m a graduate student and thus should use ‘high-level’ Korean heh).

Anyway, the phrase is in the title of the post:  금상첨화 [錦上添花] basically means ‘the icing on the cake.’

Breaking down the Hanja we have:

  • 錦 [비단 금]:  silk
  • 上 [위 상]:  on top of
  • 添 [더할 첨]:  to add/increase
  • 花 [꽃 화]:  flower

Together, you get the Korean definition of the phrase:   ‘비단 위에 꽃을 더한다는 뜻으로, 좋은 일 위에 더 좋은 일이 더하여짐을 비유적으로 이르는 말.’  (Adding flowers on top of silk – that is, having something good happen on top of something that’s already good in the first place.)

Flowers on silk, icing on cake.  Same meaning, different metaphor!

I’ve always liked Daum but the fact that it has this really great series, 진짜 금상첨화이다!

태몽

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Another tidbit I learned from my language partner.

We were talking about names and such and she said that her own name was rather unusual by Korean standards.  When my language partner was born, her father legally named her this somewhat odd name without consulting her mother, which upset her mother so much that she called my language partner an entirely different (more common) name  for most of her early childhood.  The reason her father named her thus was because of 태몽.

태몽[胎夢] breaks down to 胎 (아이를 배다 태) and 夢(꿈 몽).  The definition is easy to figure out from the Hanja – 태몽 is a dream about a child that is about to be born.  This dream is sometimes dreamt by the mother herself but can be dreamt by close family members as well – the father, grandparents, aunt, uncle, etc.  Traditionally, the content of the dream is supposed to tell you something about the gender, nature, and/or future successes of the child.  Sometimes, as in the case of my language partner, parents name their child based off 태몽.

For example, suppose one dreams about a dragon.  Supposedly, if one sees the horns or head of the dragon, the child will be a handsome boy; if one sees the tail, the child will be a beautiful girl.  Regardless of the child’s gender, a dream containing a dragon is considered very auspicious since dragons symbolize power and authority.  Dreams about tigers are also considered very auspicious.  Since tigers are considered companions of the Mountain God, these types of 태몽 indicate that the child will be very noble and mighty in nature.  Dreams about riding tigers, being bitten by tigers, or being embraced by one supposedly indicate the child will be a boy whereas dreams about tigers entering your home indicate the child will be a girl (source).

This was just a sampling, but there are tons of stuff about 태몽 interpretations out there.  If you’re curious, just type in ‘태몽 풀이’ into your favorite search engine and read away.  It’s quite interesting and will give you insight into what certain animals, fruits, etc. symbolize in Korean culture.

I’m not sure if there’s anything similar to this in American culture and I’m fairly certain there isn’t anything like this in Indian culture.  Interestingly, my family believes in something like the opposite of 태몽.  My parents and grandparents often say that when a person passes away, his/her spirits says its final farewell by visiting close family members’ dreams.  A rather interesting, unexpected parallel!

힘을 주는 속담

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In the course of this month, I came to the sobering realization that 1) I’m unhappy and 2) I don’t know how to fix it.  My academic life took a sharp and painful turn in mid-February and things have been really up-and-down since.  Despite the infrequent posts on this blog, Korean has been a constant source of comfort, not to mention sanity, for me in the past month.  Not a single day goes by without my doing something related to Korean.

This is one of my favorite Korean proverbs, and one that I think about often these days.

하늘이 무너져도 솟아날 구멍이 있다.

Literally: “Even if the sky falls, there will be a hole from which you can escape.”  As Korean Wiki Project puts it, “There is still hope in even the most desperate of situations.”

(I suppose the English equivalent would be “Every cloud has a silver lining” but the Korean version is so much more poignant and heart-wrenching to me.  ‘Silver lining’ implies that something good comes out of every bad situation; I don’t know how true this is in reality, and certainly, I doubt anyone would start off feeling this way.  The Korean version just sounds so right to me.)

Anyway, I think about this proverb almost every single day and tell myself:  As long as I am a healthy, driven human being, I can pick myself back up from every fall.  Nothing is the end of the world.  I can start over.

I can’t say I’m 100% okay at this point, but I’m slowly learning to let go of unnecessary worries and stress.  Hopefully things will look up soon.

(P.S. I missed you all.  I promise haven’t disappeared entirely off the interwebs.  In the interim, I somehow managed to gain a few new readers, so a special warm welcome to them.)

뷁!

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I thought 헐 was just about the greatest thing, until my LP 언니 taught me this gem.

뷁 is used on the internet when there is no appropriate exclamation or word to describe the extent of one’s dissatisfaction.  That is:

NOUN+은/는 좋지 않다 can become NOUN+은/는 뷁같다 or 뷁스럽다.

I imagine this is used kind of like “blehhhh” or “mehhhh” – general, noncommittal sounds of dissatisfaction in English.  It’s embarrassing how often I use ‘bleh’/'meh’ to express myself at the cost of using more intelligent adjectives, and now I can do it Korean too!  Not good.  Heh.

So I tried looking up a few other things about this word (can you call it a word, even?) and found out that it originated from a lyric that went “왜 날 브레이크” from Moon Heejun (of H.O.T)’s solo song “I.”  When said quickly, 브레이크 (‘break’) sounds a lot like 뷁.  The funny thing is that netizens made fun of the song and his pronunciation by pasting his face onto 100원 coins (백원 = 뷁원).  So mean!  Check out the original song here (and I apologize for your ears in advance heh).

(Source)

마의 16세

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This is the funniest piece of Korean slang I have learned EVER.  It’s pure gold.

So here’s the context.  The phrase is 마의 16세.  마(魔) comes from 마귀 마, where 마귀 means ‘evil spirit’ or ‘demon.’  It’s the same 마 that’s in 악마 (‘demon’, ‘devil’), 마술 and 마법 (‘witchcraft’, ‘magic’), and 마녀 (‘witch’).  So not a good thing, right?  16세 is sixteen years old, in Korean age (so 14/15 Western age), and this is significant because it is the age when students finish middle school and enter high school.

Basically, 마의 16세 refers to one’s transition from an adorable child to an awkward young adult.  Puberty hits and, bam, so does the acne, the growth spurts (either vertically or horizontally), the braces, the glasses – all the physical and emotional changes that made the transition from child to teenager oh-so painful.  This phrase covers the latter part of puberty – the transition into adulthood – and, interestingly, it seems to apply mostly to boys, whose physical appearance changes more dramatically in a short period of time (in some instances), than girls.  Regardless, I don’t miss those days.

It’s possible that sixteen-year-olds might say something like ‘마의 16세만 넘기면 된다,’ but the really funny thing is that this phrase doesn’t seem to be commonly used to refer to Koreans themselves.  It seems that some Koreans believe that the physical features of Asians do not change significantly between  adolescence and adulthood, or that they make that transition smoothly without an ‘ugly’ period (e.g. look at 유승호 and 여진구!).  In fact, this phrase might be used almost exclusively for Westerners.  

The funniest thing about all this is that the origins of this phrase, according to my Language Partner 언니, comes from Daniel Radcliffe (of Harry Potter fame)’s shocking transformation from adorable 10-year-old to… less-than-adorable* teenager?  Oh dear.  Of course, I don’t know how true this is but some snooping around on the interwebs has informed me that a lot of people associate this phrase with Dan’s post-puberty transformation.  Face-palm.

*Not my personal opinion, just reporting the general consensus.  We all have our ideas of what is attractive and what is not, but I don’t like throwing around words like ‘ugly’ at anybody.