Category Archives: Language

On the other hand…

Posted on December 11, 2009 | 4 comments

This month’s Daring Bakers challenge is so super cool… I won’t have time for sure to make it this month, but I am definitely planning to try this month’s challenge in Jan.

No time to make it this month, cause in a week I go back to China! Yay, Beijing. Just for 10 days, cause I’ll be taking  Korean class in Jan.

I have my eticket, but my passport is somewhere in the process of getting yet another full page visa attached to it (oy, my poor passport), which I’ll only get back two days before my flight. Eep!

I think getting a new passport will have to be on my list of things to do in January. I’ll still have two full pages left, but then I figure I’ll need another half page reentry permit for Korea for next year, so I think this passport’s pretty much done for. Either that, or I can maybe hold off until summer when I’ll go back to Montreal probably (it’ll probably be faster, easier and cheaper that way).

4 Comments

Posted in Daring Bakers, Korean, travel

Korean!

Posted on November 11, 2009 | 1 comment

For a while I felt bad about not really adding anything food related other than  Daring Bakers stuff, and then I remembered that it’s my waste-of-time blog, so I should just not worry about it and post what I like. So maybe now there will be more regular posting, but it might not be food related. Or not. :p

Lately (other than starting to think about next year; and yes, I’ll be staying in Korea for another year for sure) I’ve been focusing more on my Korean language skills (or more accurately, lack thereof). Actually, even I have to admit that I’ve come a long way from my awfully limited Korean at the beginning of the year, and there is still constant improvement, BUT it still really sucks.. ha!

So to keep up my motivation, here’s stuff I’m doing, should be doing, or am planning to do.

  • I started going to a free Korean class on Saturdays maybe three months back (well, maybe 4, but then I was away on vacation pretty much right after I started going, and I was gone for a month). I recently got moved up to 중급반 (intermediate class), where I am THE lowest student in the class. I swear I was lost for the first 15 minutes. Thankfully by the end I was alright. This class has a teacher and tutors sitting next to each student. So you have someone next to you helping only you during the whole class. Pretty cool. And free!
  • I started reading Le Petit Prince in Korean (어린 왕자). I’ve read the whole thing and I’m re-reading it more slowly to get more vocab out of it
  • I started watching some Korean dramas. Cheesiness abounds! But it definitely helped. I watched them at first with English subtitles, now I watch them sometimes with both English and Korean subtitles.
  • I need to stop being embarrassed and talk more in Korean. I joined a group on Facebook recently that’s basically a bunch of foreigners (and some Koreans) who get together to speak Korean and eat Indian food. Haven’t gone to a meeting yet, but who can object to Indian food and Korean language practice? It should also help knowing others who are learning for motivation. Right now I know some foreigners who don’t know any Korean, some who know a little and are not trying, a couple who know more than I do but don’t seem to be actively learning as much anymore and a bunch of Koreans who I mostly see at swing dances (not the ideal place for talking).
  • I also need to stop being embarrassed by my Korean writing. The other day, my Korean co-teacher at the school I work at saw my Korean lesson papers from my Saturday class, and there were questions about the text where we had to write answers (eg, whether extra curricular learning/classes/hagwons were necessary or not), and she started reading out the stuff I wrote while moving around the classroom to stop me from taking it back. But if Koreans don’t read my writing and suggest improvements, how am I supposed to get better at it? So I started a blog on Cyworld in Korean. Unfortunately, I’m too embarrassed to tell any of my Korean friends where it is. Fail.
  • I plan to take the next TOPIK test (Basic level). That’ll be early/mid April. It’s a Korean language proficiency test.

Any language learning experts around who could give me more tips on what I can do?

In the meantime, for those who know some Korean, here’s a joke:

Q: What did the small tissue say to the large tissue?

A: You’re Huge-ee!

Hehehehe. For those who don’t get it,  Huge-ee is both Konglish for huge (Koreans add ee to the end of a lot of English words, like lunch-ee) and the Korean word for tissue — 휴지.

1 Comment

Posted in Korea, Korean, Language

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Language shyness and vacation plans

Posted on June 6, 2009 | 3 comments

“Where are the food posts?” you say. Or maybe not. But anyway. I have been baking, and have made apple pie and cookies since making the strudel, but I keep eating things faster than I can remember to take pictures of them. I will try to fix that soon. But there are now no cookies or tartelettes left.

For a while I’ve been aware that I’m very shy about speaking Korean with people who speak English well, but am not shy if people don’t speak much English. I know it’s usual for multilingual conversations to drift towards the strongest common language, but that still doesn’t explain the shyness.

So recently I think I figured it out, or at least came up with a plausible theory. I think it’s an empathy thing. I know a lot of the Koreans I know who don’t speak English as well are shy about their English, so I think it might be that. There are also some exceptions. My coteacher speaks English fairly well, definitely better than my Korean, but I’m not shy speaking with her because she’s so encouraging and she really helps me learn. All the time. Also, I’m sometimes shy to start speaking Korean with people who I’ve been used to speaking to in English (from when my Korean sucked more), but I think that’s just awkwardness of switching the already established lingua franca. Same way it’s weird for me to speak French with people who I met in an English context/environment, but weird for me to speak English with people I met in a French context.

Ok, enough Lisa geeking out alone on the blog.

I heard this summer about an awesome event: Arctic Lindy, a swing dance exchange in Iceland. It’s actually a week-long travel/dance thing, so it’s not just pure dancing, and it falls perfectly in the time between the end of the Goteburg exchange and the end of my vacation. Plus I’ll already be in Sweden. But a ticket from Sweden to Iceland apparently costs 500$+, and with the weeklong event cost being 360$, that makes it almost 1000$ for a week (food and accom. included). Ouch! So here’s the debate, PLEASE vote, cause I am waffling between the two very much.

1. Go to Iceland.

When will I manage to find a cheaper time to get to Iceland (seems like an amazing place) than when I’m already in Scandinavia?

I’ll be able to see more than just the inside of a gym/swing dance venue/etc because there is some travelling involved.

Dancing.🙂

2. Tour around the rest of Scandinavia more instead, the part connected to Sweden by land that is much cheaper to travel to than Iceland.

Cheaper!

Also lots of cool places, many options of places to go. I haven’t seen much of Scandinavia at all, despite being in Sweden for a month in 2006 (4 weeks in Herrang, 4 days in Stockholm. Heh).

I dunno. The link to the event is here: http://www.arcticlindy.com/

Let me know! What should I do? Right now it’s at

Go to Iceland: 2

Travel by land: 1

3 Comments

Posted in Korean, Language, Lindyhop, travel

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My students are hilarious

Posted on March 18, 2009 | 2 comments

You know, most grade 1 students, when asked to name a word that starts with e will say something like elephant. My kids do that too. But they also come out with things like engineer for e and jeepers for j.  And I don’t know how or why, but they all seem to know “oh my god”. One of them suggested it for a word with o.

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Posted in Korea, Language, school

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The Montreal Metro has some catching up to do…

Posted on March 5, 2009 | 2 comments

I just noticed today that at transfer stations on the Seoul Metro they announce the station name in Korean, English, Japanese AND Chinese. How cool is that? Only at transfer stations, though. All other stations are only Korean and English.

Montreal only does French. Sooo I think they need to stop being so linguaphobic (is that a word? Can I pretend it is?) and get bilingual.

The Seoul Metro system impresses me in so many ways…

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Posted in Korea, Language

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On trying not to be bored at work

Posted on January 30, 2008 | 2 comments

I remember why I don’t study Korean more often at work, because I’m trying it today.

But first, a story.

If you know me, you know I read a lot. If you’ve known me a while, you know that I’ve always devoured books (insert cookie monster noises here. Miam miam num num nummmm). When I was younger, like, in either grade three or four, my mom handed me a book that she said I would like. She said that she thought she had read it at about my age. It was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. So hands up! How many people got through this in grade four? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Well, neither did I. I got halfway through and got confused by plot twists.

Anyway. The thing is that after that, every once in a while, I would try to finish it, but it would never work. I would pick it up, and even after a couple of years, I would remember the beginning, and some of the middle, but could never find that place where I got confused. I knew too much to follow and keep my attention from the beginning (I had less patience then.. oh, who am I kidding?), but didn’t remember quite enough to pick up in the middle, or even closer to it. It took me years before I forgot enough to be able to start at the beginning, and then I read all the way through, pronounced it an excellent book, and couldn’t for the life of me figure out what plot twists got me confused back in 4th grade. All I remember is that I was convinced that he was in London, but somehow he was back in his home town or something.. it’s still kind of confused.

So how is this relevant to learning Korean at work? Well I love languages and try to learn them, and usually start off learning them on my own. Also, sometimes textbooks put things in an order which doesn’t work best for me, so I sometimes skip around a little, etc. Well, I have a book that someone gave me and told me was excellent. So I started trying to learn from it, but I know too much to start at the beginning, and not enough to start nearly anywhere else. So I’m in the same muddle as I was in back when I was trying to finish Great Expectations. This is why I can’t study at work. I get frustrated and bored with the easy bits, and want to skip ahead, but can’t. It doesn’t make the time go by faster, and I get annoyed. Oh, for more patience! This time, though, I refuse to wait a few years until I forget enough to be able to pay attention. I’m going to tackle this today! I hope…

Edit: I am a weak, weak person; I’m listening to music instead.

2 Comments

Posted in Korea, Korean, Language

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