Korean Diary

The Korean language is spoken by the entire population of North and South Korea, although there are certain differences between the Korean dialect spoken in the north and the one spoken in the south. The Korean language is also used in the autonomous region of Yanbian which is in the southern province of Heilongjiang in China.Approximately 78 million people speak Korean, including communities of immigrants now living in the former Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, United States, Brazil, Japan, United Kingdom, as well as the Philippines.

The so called denomination of the language varies between both Koreas. In South Korea it is usually called Hangugeo or Hangungmal. Within an official context the name it is given is gugeo which means “language of the country.Colloquially speaking it is also referred to as urimal that literally means “our language.”

North Korean typically refer to the Korean language as Chos nmal although it is also called urimal. The standard of North Korea is based on the way it is spoken in the capital P’yngyang while in the south the standard is the way it is spoken in Seoul. The differences between these two forms of the Korean language does not make it impossible for speakers of either group to communicate with each other because the differences are more or less equivalent to the Spanish spoken in Spain and the Spanish spoken in Latin America.

The origen of the Korean language is not yet clear. Some linguists say it belongs to the group of the Altaican languages whilst others put it in the same group with the Japanese language in one single group: Korean-Japanese.

Since neither of these two views have been demonstrated decisively, those who do study the language prefer to refer to the Korean language as a language significantly distinct from the aforementioned groups. From a morphological point of view, the Korean language uses agglutination which is the process of adding affixes to the base of a word. Korean maintains a grammatical syntax whose base is Subject-Object-Verb. Japanese, Vietnamese, and the Korean languages are influenced heavily by the Chinese language.

The system utilized for writing Korean is known as Hangeul, and it is at the same time an alphabetical and phonetic system. It is quite common to use the vocabularies that come either directly or indirectly from the Chinese language.

Jacob Lumbroso is a world traveler and an enthusiast for foreign languages, history, and foreign cultures. He writes articles on history and languages for http://www.ultimatelanguagestore.com and has used Pimsleur courses to learn various languages.

Learning a new language doesn’t have to be hard or tedious. It can be fun, if you have the right tools. No doubt, you’ve visited a book store or searched online only to find a ton of language learning kits and books. It can make finding which one is the right one very hard. In most cases, you can learn a new language with an hour. Yes, that’s right.Before you go out and spend your hard earned money on a language program, you first should understand what will be involved in learning the new language. First, take the language apart and understand how it is put together. This is one of the fastest ways to learn a new language.

You can deconstruct any language whether it is Spanish, German, Italian, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, English, Norwegian, Irish Gaelic, etc. Once you deconstruct the language of your choice, you’ll be in a better position to learn it quickly and easily, and be able to converse with no problems.

How is it possible to learn a language in one hour? That starts by taking them apart and then choosing wisely which ones you are going to be able to pick up easily and which ones are going to be difficult for you. Learning a new language is a lot like learning to play a new sport.

When you learn to play a new sport there are certain physical requirements you’ve got to have. For example, body building, you’ve got to have the ability to lift weights and build muscle. In basketball, height is a big plus. So for example, if you were shorter than average, never played basketball before, and you wanted to play basketball, you’d have to take into account that factor and the time it will take you to become proficient in that sport.

When it comes to learning a language the same principles apply. Think about the tools you already have now and how they will fit in with your new goal. If, for example, your native language is Japanese, then you may find yourself handicapped with more than 20 phonemes that are particular to your native language. Because of this, it may be that some language will be very difficult for you to learn. By picking a language that is similar in sound and in word construction (like Spanish for example), you could realize the difference between being able to converse freely in that new language in 2 to 3 months instead of 3 to 4 years!

You should ask yourself the following questions when beginning to deconstruct your new language;

1. Are there new sounds that will increase my time to fluency? 2. Are there any grammar structures that will take longer to learn? 3. How is this language similar to any languages that I already know? 4. What can help me learn this language faster? 5. What will interfere with my learning this language fast? 6. Will my learning this language erase any previous language that I’ve learned or cause fatal interference? (Ex. Some have thought that learning Portuguese after learning Spanish has caused them problems) 7. How difficult is it going to be to learn this language? 8. How long would it take me to become functionally fluent in this language?

It won’t take much to answer the questions above. You simply need just a few sentences translated from your native language into your target language to give you a clear idea of what will be involved.

Here are some to start:

The banana is yellow. It is Sam’s banana. I give Sam the banana. We give him the banana. We gave her the banana. He gives it to Sam. She gives it to him.

These sentences by themselves will expose much of your target language. From these, you’ll be able to decide just how easy or difficult learning your new language will be. They can help you to see if and how verbs are conjugated. This is based both on the person that is speaking and according to numbers and gender identification. You’ll also be able to see placement of direct objects (the banana), indirect objects (Sam), and respective pronouns (it, him).

You can even follow these sentences with some negations such as “She doesn’t give…”, “He didn’t give…”, “I didn’t give”, “I don’t give…”, and different tenses, so you can see if they are going to be expressed as separate words (such as “bu” in Chinese) or verb changes (such as “-nai” or “-masen” in Japanese), making Japanese a much harder language to learn.

Next, you want to look at the basic sentence structure. Is it anything like English where you have subject-verb-object? (Example; I eat the banana) Or is it subject-object-verb like Japanese (Example; I the banana eat), or is it something else altogether? If you’re a native English speaker, then subject-object-verb is going to be much harder for you than the other way around. If you’ve already picked up such a language, then it will not be as difficult for you. Your brain will have already been formatted for these kinds of languages.

Finally, go through the language alphabet and character system. See if your language has at least one phonetic writing system of less than 50 sounds, such as Russian, Japanese, and Spanish. Chinese would not be included here since Chinese tones create many variations of otherwise very simple sounds. Again, treat your new language as a sport. Learn the rules first, and then determine if it is worth your time and energy to learn the language. Once you’ve made the decision to either stick with it or quit it, you’ll be able to move forward knowing that you can learn any language in 1 hour.

Recently, I have had to come to terms with the fact that I’m adopted.

That statement may seem rather odd; I have, after all, been adopted now for almost thirty years.  I didn’t just find this out - growing up Korean with Irish-American parents, it was rather obvious that I wasn’t their biological child.

Being a child, though, I never learned to process any feelings that were related to being adopted.  My mother used to say to me all the time that all of my problems were because I was adopted.  I used to turn to her and respond that she used that as a convenient excuse for being a {{insert nasty words here}}.  Why do adoptive parents love to throw that around, and then wonder why adopted children have a hard time being adopted?  Well, that’s a subject for another day.

After a handful of tries getting in touch with Wide Horizons, I finally had a great conversation with a lady who deals with post-adoption issues, such as searching for a birth parent.  One of the services that they provide is that they help with Holt International, the Korean adoption agency.  One of the things that Holt asks for is a letter to my birth parents.  I’m not sure if this letter is given to the birth parent if we find each other, or if this is a psychological exercise to come to terms with my adoption.

In either case, here is my letter.

Dear 어머니,

A few months ago, my adoptive sister, Mary, came to visit.  As she walked into the door, she exclaimed, “Oh my!  She looks just like you!”  She was pointing to my five year old daughter, Stephanie.  Stephanie looked back at her, her eyes filled with fascination, and ran over to me, shying away from her aunt, and peeked at her around my legs.

This is a comment that I’ve heard a thousand times since my daughter has been born, but one that I’ve never heard growing up.  Sometimes I sit beside her while she is sleeping and amazement fills me.  This is the only person that I know who looks like me.

She hears those comments that other people say, how much we look like each other.  She studies her hands and says to me, “Mommy, we have the same hands!”  She will never know what it is like not knowing her mother.  She will never know what it is like not looking like me.  And when she is older, she can still look at my hands and say that they are the same.

When I was a child, I used to dream that my daddy and my mommy spoke Korean and that we used to eat kimchi and bulgogi for dinner.  I used to dream that when other people pointed at us in the store, that we just lived in an all-white neighborhood and it wasn’t because I was adopted.

But, even though I’ve never met you, I know that you think about me too.  Maybe you’ve dreamed that you’ve called me to sit at the dinner table, to eat kimchi and bulgogi.  Maybe you dream that I sit across from you, and you hold my hands, and I say, “Mommy, we have the same hands!”

There have been countless nights that I’ve wondered about you.  I used to cry and wonder why you hated me so much that you gave me away.  I know better now, I know that you loved me and that there are countless nights that you lie awake and wonder about me too.

A piece of my life has been missing for thirty years.  It’s a powerful force, the bond of maternal love.  It’s one that I know exists because I feel it when my daughter is near.  It’s one that I know you had for me, and that I have for you and it’s eternal, because you are still there and you are still my mother.  It transcends continents, or language, or even time.

Because one day, I hope that I sit down at the dinner table, to eat kimchi and bulgogi, and I can tell you that we have the same hands.  It won’t be a dream then.

For our podcasters, be sure to visit http://koreandiary.com for the grammar lesson.

Today’s word is the honorific term of “Wife” or 부인. The common term is 아내 (Ah-Nae).

Wife

***

What do you think of my blog article? I’d love to hear what you think!

***

If you enjoy my site, I would very much appreciate a donation so that I can pay off all these nasty legal bills

***