Which is to say, 중국 사람이 많네요!
Which is to say, "There sure are a lot of Chinese people!"
Of the 1000 or so students studying Korean here at Yonsei's Korean Language Institute, it seems that at least half are from Mainland China. You hear Chinese spoken everywhere: in the hallways, on campus, even on the bustling sidewalks of Shinchon.
Perhaps this will not surprise most of you. Take a look at the map, and you'll see that Korea dangles off its monstrous neighbor most precariously. In addition to geographical proximity, there are over a billion Chinese people. Why shouldn't several hundred of them make the short journey here to learn Korean? After all, look at all the Canadians in America learning English. (Okay, sorry, that's a cheap joke.)
But it does surprise me. Not too long ago the Chinese weren't going anywhere. They were too poor and isolated. And then, when they did start going places, they all wanted to learn English. They went to the US, England, and Australia. Why would a Chinese person bother with little insignificant Korea?
But things have changed now. Not only are Koreans aligning themselves more closely with China than the US, in terms of their economic (and perhaps political) future, they are having a major cultural impact on Asia. Korean movies, TV shows, celebrities, and music have been extremely popular in China for the last decade. (When I lived in Hong Kong, there were Korean movies playing everywhere. That was over 6 years ago.)
So the Chinese here, and I expect they'll be here for a long time to come.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Eumshik 4: Surasang
Yesterday Erma and I went to the Third Festival of Traditional Royal and Noble Food (재3회 궁중과 사대부가의 전통음식 축제), on the grounds of the Unhyeon Palace (운현궁 雲峴宮). It was put on by the Institute of Korean Royal Cuisine. The institute researches and reproduces the food that was eaten in the royal palace in the closing years of the Joseon (aka Chosun) Dynasty, which ended in 1911. The institute's knowledge comes in a direct line of descent from a "chief cuisine court lady" who served under the last two kings of Korea.
There were tents set up all over the grounds of the palace, under which recreated dishes (some plastic models, some actual cooked foods) and full meal settings were displayed. It was really interesting.
The king ate pretty good, let me tell you. But his meals follow the same basic principles that govern Korean eating today, including the CoRSE (Conservation of Rice and Soup Edibles) Law mentioned in my previous entry. (Hat tip to Monkeyboy for the acronym.)
Here's breakfast, the biggest meal of the day.
In the front you see the rice on the left and the soup on the right, same as today. But of course, the king gets lots and lots of side dishes. This is technically a "12 side dish" table setting. Traditionally, when counting side dishes, kimchis (there are three at the top) and soups (there are two on the right) are excluded, as are the three dipping sauces. For reasons we didn't understand, the large meaty thing next to the soups also doesn't count. That leaves the twelve dishes, in three rows of four, that are properly banchan. (The covered bowl front right is for depositing bones and other inedible bits.)
[Paragraph added October 30, 8:57 pm:
The royal table setting with 12 side dishes is called surasang 수라상. Only the king was allowed to have this many side dishes.]
But there's more! Here's the rest of breakfast:
The raw meat (front right) and the vegetables are grilled by a servant on that metal brazier behind the table, and it all gets turned into a big meaty soup (with the eggs somehow involved), which is then served to the king.
I also mentioned in the last post that there are a wide variety of kimchis. Here's a display of some of them.
Some of them were really intricate and bizarre. Here's one that is wrapped inside cabbage leaves. It's called bo gimchi, "wrapping-cloth kimchi".
There were tents set up all over the grounds of the palace, under which recreated dishes (some plastic models, some actual cooked foods) and full meal settings were displayed. It was really interesting.
The king ate pretty good, let me tell you. But his meals follow the same basic principles that govern Korean eating today, including the CoRSE (Conservation of Rice and Soup Edibles) Law mentioned in my previous entry. (Hat tip to Monkeyboy for the acronym.)
Here's breakfast, the biggest meal of the day.
In the front you see the rice on the left and the soup on the right, same as today. But of course, the king gets lots and lots of side dishes. This is technically a "12 side dish" table setting. Traditionally, when counting side dishes, kimchis (there are three at the top) and soups (there are two on the right) are excluded, as are the three dipping sauces. For reasons we didn't understand, the large meaty thing next to the soups also doesn't count. That leaves the twelve dishes, in three rows of four, that are properly banchan. (The covered bowl front right is for depositing bones and other inedible bits.)
[Paragraph added October 30, 8:57 pm:
The royal table setting with 12 side dishes is called surasang 수라상. Only the king was allowed to have this many side dishes.]
But there's more! Here's the rest of breakfast:
The raw meat (front right) and the vegetables are grilled by a servant on that metal brazier behind the table, and it all gets turned into a big meaty soup (with the eggs somehow involved), which is then served to the king.
I also mentioned in the last post that there are a wide variety of kimchis. Here's a display of some of them.
Some of them were really intricate and bizarre. Here's one that is wrapped inside cabbage leaves. It's called bo gimchi, "wrapping-cloth kimchi".
Friday, October 12, 2007
Eumshik 3: Menyu
As it happens, my class is doing a unit on food right now. Between the class readings, my experiences eating here in Korea, and insights from Erma, I feel like I've gotten a pretty good sense of the basics of Korean cuisine.
Of course, as in many other countries, the cuisine is too rich and varied to capture in its entirety with a few generalizations. But that won't stop me!
Although the more rarefied examples of Korean cuisine can be quite delicate and sophisticated, the basic dishes that you see everywhere and that are a staple of home cooking are not terribly complex. I hesitate to use the term "unsophisticated", because it sounds pejorative. And I certainly don't mean to say that the food isn't delicious -- it is. But there isn't the kind of high aesthetics that you see, for example, in the best of French or Japanese cooking. Korean food is hearty and filling. Many of the best dishes, like good Mexican food, involve throwing a lot of ingredients together and then cooking them for a long time until they turn into a big flavorful saucy mush.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the meals we made at home recently provides a good illustration of the basic components of a simple Korean meal.
Each person is given an individual serving of rice and of soup -- the latter of which can come in a number of different guises. Each person also has a pair of chopsticks and a spoon. With a few exceptions, all the other food is shared out of common serving dishes. Unlike in Chinese or Japanese dining, the rice and soup bowls are never lifted off the table. Both the rice and the soup are generally eaten with the spoon. The chopsticks are used for eating the other food (except, of course, shared soups), which may be taken in mouthfuls straight from the serving dishes, or placed momentarily on a small plate or in the rice bowl.
Usually there are one or two largish centerpiece dishes, like the bulgogi pictured here. We can call those "main dishes". Everything else in the meal is "side dishes" (banchan 반찬). The number and variety of side dishes is staggering. At some meals, especially at the cheaper restaurants, you might only have one or two side dishes. At fancier meals there may be dozens crowding the table, presenting a complex arrangement challenge to both servers and diners. The best known of the side dishes are the kimchis (gimchi 김치, though I'll continue to spell it as "kimchi"), of which in turn there are hundreds of varieties. There is generally always a kimchi present, so if there's only one side dish, it'll be a kimchi.
In the picture above, there are three side dishes, two of which are kimchis. We've put the two kimchis on one plate, which isn't really proper. One is a cabbage-leaf kimchi (the best known and most prototypical type), and the other is a radish kimchi. The third side dish, which is in a square plastic container at the back of the frame, is fried anchovies.
Korean food is famous for being spicy hot (maepda 맵다). It's certainly not true that all Korean food is spicy -- some of it borders on the bland -- but it is true that there is something spicy present at almost every meal, even if it is just a kimchi. And some of the spicier Korean dishes can rival South Indian or Sichuan food in their ability to induce pain.
As Erma has pointed out, Korea is both a rice culture and a soup culture. You really should have both at every meal. More on this in a bit.
Let's take a look at part of a menu for one of the cheap restaurants near campus that caters to students. This is the kind of restaurant where each person in a party will order and eat their own main dish, and share only the side dishes that are placed on the table. It's not uncommon to see pictures on menus in Korean restaurants, which is a great help to both the novice language learner and the novice Korean food eater. The menu pictured here is posted outside the restaurant door, so you can have your order ready the moment you sit down.
The first nine items are all cooked and served in stone bowls (dolsot 돌솥). (This isn't mandatory for these dishes, but it's a common method of cooking.) The bowls are remarkably good at holding in the heat. The stews usually arrive literally boiling hot, and can remain too hot to eat for more than ten minutes after they are set down at the table. (If the spiciness doesn't make you sweat, the heat will.) Notice how red the items in the third row are; that's a good indication of the spiciness level.
All twelve of these dishes can be categorized in simple binary fashion: they are either rice dishes or soup dishes. If you order a rice dish, you'll get a little bowl of soup on the side. If you order a soup dish, you'll get a little bowl of rice on the side. This is in conformity with Erma & Lance's Law of Conservation of Soup and Rice, which states that at every meal each person must have both soup and rice. (Let me know if you can figure out a way to contort the name of the law into a memorable acronym.)
Let's take the dishes in order, starting from the top left and working across and down.
Top Row
1. Yukkejang 육계장: A very spicy soup with shredded beef.
2. Bulgogi Dolsot Bap 불고기돌솥밥: Bulgogi (grilled beef strips) on rice.
3. Jeyuk Dolsot Bap 제육돌솥밥: Pork on rice.
Second Row
4. Kimchi Al Bap 김치알빕: Kimchi and roe on rice.
5. Dolsot Bibimbap 돌솥비빔밥: Bibimbap is one of the most famous Korean dishes. Literally "mixed rice", it consists of ground beef, various julienned vegetables, hot pepper sauce, and sometimes an egg, served over rice. The diner stirs it all up before eating it.
6. Budae Jjigae 부대찌개: A jjigae is a thick and spicy stew. Budae means "military unit". This dish is supposed to be jjigae the way soldiers eat it. (And every single male in Korea serves in the army for several years, so they've all had this.) Basically it's a jjigae full of disgusting processed meats, like SPAM, and kimchi. (The picture shows the ingredients dry. When cooked and served, it will look as red as the dishes in the next row.)
Third Row
7. Kimchi Sundubu 김치순두부: Sundubu actually means sundubu jjigae. Sundubu is soft tofu. So this is a soft-tofu jjigae with kimchi. One of my favorite Korean dishes, it's delicious, with great texture, and very spicy. Notice the raw egg cracked into it. The egg will cook in a minute or two in the boiling liquid.
8. Chamchi Kimchi Sundubu 참치김치순두부: Same as the above, but with chunks of canned tuna as well.
9. Chijeu Kimchi Sundubu 치즈김치순두부: Chijeu is just a Korean pronunciation of the English word "cheese". This is kimchi sundubu with, apparently, a slice of American cheese on it. It's not clear to me or Erma why anyone would want to eat this, and we haven't tried it.
Bottom Row
10. Ojingeo Deopbap 오징어덥밥: Squid fried in spicy sauce over rice.
11. Omeu Raiseu 오므라이스: Omeu is short for "omelette"; raiseu is English "rice". I think both the name and dish come from Japan. As you might guess, it's an omelette on rice.
12. Kimchi Bokkeumbap 참치볶음밥: Kimchi fried rice.
The prices on this menu range from 3300 won to 4000 won, or about $3.50 to $4.25 at current exchange rates. The portions are large and the food is healthy and filling. Plus you get side dishes, and side dishes always come with infinite refills at no cost.
(Interesting aside: From the descriptions of Korean dishes I've read in my class textbook, it appears that Koreans are very sensitive to how many colors a dish has. Almost every description says whether a dish has "just one color" or "a variety of colors" in it. This is not something I would ever think to include in a discussion of European cuisine.)
This is also the kind of food we've been getting in the student dining hall, although there you pick up the side dishes and put them on your tray along with your main dish, so you can't get seconds. All told, Erma and I are probably eating this sort of low-end Korean food for over half of our lunches and dinners.
Though it's not obvious from the menu I've shown you, Koreans eat a lot of seafood. Makes sense: it's a peninsular country. Among the most popular for eating are squid (ojingeo 오징어), small octopus (nakji 낙지), and large octopus (muneo 문어). Americans are often squeamish about these creatures, or at least about seeing them whole instead of cut up into bits. But Korean have no such compunctions. Here's a signboard outside one of the restaurants that's on our walking route to the subway through Shinchon:
The name of the restaurant, written on the top of the sign, is Nakji Chingu 낙지 친구. It means "Octopus Friend". But if you look carefully at the pictures, you'll see that this restaurant is no friend to the octopus.
Of course, as in many other countries, the cuisine is too rich and varied to capture in its entirety with a few generalizations. But that won't stop me!
Although the more rarefied examples of Korean cuisine can be quite delicate and sophisticated, the basic dishes that you see everywhere and that are a staple of home cooking are not terribly complex. I hesitate to use the term "unsophisticated", because it sounds pejorative. And I certainly don't mean to say that the food isn't delicious -- it is. But there isn't the kind of high aesthetics that you see, for example, in the best of French or Japanese cooking. Korean food is hearty and filling. Many of the best dishes, like good Mexican food, involve throwing a lot of ingredients together and then cooking them for a long time until they turn into a big flavorful saucy mush.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the meals we made at home recently provides a good illustration of the basic components of a simple Korean meal.
Each person is given an individual serving of rice and of soup -- the latter of which can come in a number of different guises. Each person also has a pair of chopsticks and a spoon. With a few exceptions, all the other food is shared out of common serving dishes. Unlike in Chinese or Japanese dining, the rice and soup bowls are never lifted off the table. Both the rice and the soup are generally eaten with the spoon. The chopsticks are used for eating the other food (except, of course, shared soups), which may be taken in mouthfuls straight from the serving dishes, or placed momentarily on a small plate or in the rice bowl.
Usually there are one or two largish centerpiece dishes, like the bulgogi pictured here. We can call those "main dishes". Everything else in the meal is "side dishes" (banchan 반찬). The number and variety of side dishes is staggering. At some meals, especially at the cheaper restaurants, you might only have one or two side dishes. At fancier meals there may be dozens crowding the table, presenting a complex arrangement challenge to both servers and diners. The best known of the side dishes are the kimchis (gimchi 김치, though I'll continue to spell it as "kimchi"), of which in turn there are hundreds of varieties. There is generally always a kimchi present, so if there's only one side dish, it'll be a kimchi.
In the picture above, there are three side dishes, two of which are kimchis. We've put the two kimchis on one plate, which isn't really proper. One is a cabbage-leaf kimchi (the best known and most prototypical type), and the other is a radish kimchi. The third side dish, which is in a square plastic container at the back of the frame, is fried anchovies.
Korean food is famous for being spicy hot (maepda 맵다). It's certainly not true that all Korean food is spicy -- some of it borders on the bland -- but it is true that there is something spicy present at almost every meal, even if it is just a kimchi. And some of the spicier Korean dishes can rival South Indian or Sichuan food in their ability to induce pain.
As Erma has pointed out, Korea is both a rice culture and a soup culture. You really should have both at every meal. More on this in a bit.
Let's take a look at part of a menu for one of the cheap restaurants near campus that caters to students. This is the kind of restaurant where each person in a party will order and eat their own main dish, and share only the side dishes that are placed on the table. It's not uncommon to see pictures on menus in Korean restaurants, which is a great help to both the novice language learner and the novice Korean food eater. The menu pictured here is posted outside the restaurant door, so you can have your order ready the moment you sit down.
The first nine items are all cooked and served in stone bowls (dolsot 돌솥). (This isn't mandatory for these dishes, but it's a common method of cooking.) The bowls are remarkably good at holding in the heat. The stews usually arrive literally boiling hot, and can remain too hot to eat for more than ten minutes after they are set down at the table. (If the spiciness doesn't make you sweat, the heat will.) Notice how red the items in the third row are; that's a good indication of the spiciness level.
All twelve of these dishes can be categorized in simple binary fashion: they are either rice dishes or soup dishes. If you order a rice dish, you'll get a little bowl of soup on the side. If you order a soup dish, you'll get a little bowl of rice on the side. This is in conformity with Erma & Lance's Law of Conservation of Soup and Rice, which states that at every meal each person must have both soup and rice. (Let me know if you can figure out a way to contort the name of the law into a memorable acronym.)
Let's take the dishes in order, starting from the top left and working across and down.
Top Row
1. Yukkejang 육계장: A very spicy soup with shredded beef.
2. Bulgogi Dolsot Bap 불고기돌솥밥: Bulgogi (grilled beef strips) on rice.
3. Jeyuk Dolsot Bap 제육돌솥밥: Pork on rice.
Second Row
4. Kimchi Al Bap 김치알빕: Kimchi and roe on rice.
5. Dolsot Bibimbap 돌솥비빔밥: Bibimbap is one of the most famous Korean dishes. Literally "mixed rice", it consists of ground beef, various julienned vegetables, hot pepper sauce, and sometimes an egg, served over rice. The diner stirs it all up before eating it.
6. Budae Jjigae 부대찌개: A jjigae is a thick and spicy stew. Budae means "military unit". This dish is supposed to be jjigae the way soldiers eat it. (And every single male in Korea serves in the army for several years, so they've all had this.) Basically it's a jjigae full of disgusting processed meats, like SPAM, and kimchi. (The picture shows the ingredients dry. When cooked and served, it will look as red as the dishes in the next row.)
Third Row
7. Kimchi Sundubu 김치순두부: Sundubu actually means sundubu jjigae. Sundubu is soft tofu. So this is a soft-tofu jjigae with kimchi. One of my favorite Korean dishes, it's delicious, with great texture, and very spicy. Notice the raw egg cracked into it. The egg will cook in a minute or two in the boiling liquid.
8. Chamchi Kimchi Sundubu 참치김치순두부: Same as the above, but with chunks of canned tuna as well.
9. Chijeu Kimchi Sundubu 치즈김치순두부: Chijeu is just a Korean pronunciation of the English word "cheese". This is kimchi sundubu with, apparently, a slice of American cheese on it. It's not clear to me or Erma why anyone would want to eat this, and we haven't tried it.
Bottom Row
10. Ojingeo Deopbap 오징어덥밥: Squid fried in spicy sauce over rice.
11. Omeu Raiseu 오므라이스: Omeu is short for "omelette"; raiseu is English "rice". I think both the name and dish come from Japan. As you might guess, it's an omelette on rice.
12. Kimchi Bokkeumbap 참치볶음밥: Kimchi fried rice.
The prices on this menu range from 3300 won to 4000 won, or about $3.50 to $4.25 at current exchange rates. The portions are large and the food is healthy and filling. Plus you get side dishes, and side dishes always come with infinite refills at no cost.
(Interesting aside: From the descriptions of Korean dishes I've read in my class textbook, it appears that Koreans are very sensitive to how many colors a dish has. Almost every description says whether a dish has "just one color" or "a variety of colors" in it. This is not something I would ever think to include in a discussion of European cuisine.)
This is also the kind of food we've been getting in the student dining hall, although there you pick up the side dishes and put them on your tray along with your main dish, so you can't get seconds. All told, Erma and I are probably eating this sort of low-end Korean food for over half of our lunches and dinners.
Though it's not obvious from the menu I've shown you, Koreans eat a lot of seafood. Makes sense: it's a peninsular country. Among the most popular for eating are squid (ojingeo 오징어), small octopus (nakji 낙지), and large octopus (muneo 문어). Americans are often squeamish about these creatures, or at least about seeing them whole instead of cut up into bits. But Korean have no such compunctions. Here's a signboard outside one of the restaurants that's on our walking route to the subway through Shinchon:
The name of the restaurant, written on the top of the sign, is Nakji Chingu 낙지 친구. It means "Octopus Friend". But if you look carefully at the pictures, you'll see that this restaurant is no friend to the octopus.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Haksaeng saenghwal
It sure is fun to be a student again.
Sure, it can be busy and tiring. Four hours of class and three to four hours of homework, review, and class preparation make for full days, with the brain firing on all cylinders through most of it.
And, granted, the language learning process itself is fraught with frustrations, especially with an aging brain that doesn't always do for me what I'm used to expecting of it. There's just so much vocabulary to learn, so many grammar points to master. And if you really want to learn, you have to go out and actually talk to people, making mistakes and wondering what they are saying back to you. For someone who has tendencies toward shyness and perfectionism, it's a situation that alternately (or simultaneously) produces feelings of humiliation and exhilaration.
Even taking all that into consideration, though, this sure beats my regular life. The gazillions of to-do lists that used to clutter and dominate my life are a thing of the past. The hassles and anxieties of tending to the job, keeping up the house, doing a million errands, meeting deadlines ... they've all kind of sloughed away, like an uncomfortable extra layer of skin. It feels like I'm ten years younger. I go to class, I sit at home or in a cafe and do my homework, and then there's even a little time to read or post a blog. Every day I get something done, I make some progress, and I have some fun. I'm already wondering why I'm going to go back after only three months ....
Here's my student ID card, newly issued. If I feel ten years younger, perhaps it's no surprise, given the date of birth they've put on it.
Sure, it can be busy and tiring. Four hours of class and three to four hours of homework, review, and class preparation make for full days, with the brain firing on all cylinders through most of it.
And, granted, the language learning process itself is fraught with frustrations, especially with an aging brain that doesn't always do for me what I'm used to expecting of it. There's just so much vocabulary to learn, so many grammar points to master. And if you really want to learn, you have to go out and actually talk to people, making mistakes and wondering what they are saying back to you. For someone who has tendencies toward shyness and perfectionism, it's a situation that alternately (or simultaneously) produces feelings of humiliation and exhilaration.
Even taking all that into consideration, though, this sure beats my regular life. The gazillions of to-do lists that used to clutter and dominate my life are a thing of the past. The hassles and anxieties of tending to the job, keeping up the house, doing a million errands, meeting deadlines ... they've all kind of sloughed away, like an uncomfortable extra layer of skin. It feels like I'm ten years younger. I go to class, I sit at home or in a cafe and do my homework, and then there's even a little time to read or post a blog. Every day I get something done, I make some progress, and I have some fun. I'm already wondering why I'm going to go back after only three months ....
Here's my student ID card, newly issued. If I feel ten years younger, perhaps it's no surprise, given the date of birth they've put on it.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Hangeullal
Today, October 9, is a holiday in Korea. Not a major holiday -- most everyone is working and shops are open -- but a holiday of note nevertheless. Today is Hangeullal: Hangeul Day. Hangeul is the name of the Korean alphabet, which is one of Korea's proudest cultural achievements. We had the day off from school.
Today, then, seems like an appropriate time to explain some things about the Korean writing system for those of you who are unfamiliar with it.
1. Hangeul 한글
There aren't too many alphabets that are celebrated by national holidays. (Does anyone know of any others?) There also aren't too many alphabets whose invention can be traced to a specific time, place, and person. But the Korean alphabet is one. It was invented in the mid fifteenth century by the great King Sejong. (There is speculation that the alphabet was actually invented by a committee appointed by the king, who then took credit. But King Sejong was actually very talented and learned. It's quite likely that he was the driving intellectual force behind the alphabet, even if he did have some help from advisors.)
Before the invention of the alphabet, there was no simple or systematic way of writing the Korean language. Literate Koreans wrote in Classical Chinese (much the way that medieval Europeans wrote in Latin rather than in their spoken vernaculars). The invention of Hangeul paved the way for the formulation of a truly Korean literate society, although it took several centuries before it became accepted to write formally in Korean instead of Chinese.
To the untrained Western eye, Korean writing doesn't look alphabetic. Take a look at this Korean sentence, randomly chosen from a web site:
한국 민속촌은 서울에서 30분 거리에 있으며 365일 언제든지 관람 하실 수 있습니다.
It looks like it is made up of Chinese-character like rectangular blocks. But this is a false impression. It is actually made of alphabet letters arranged into rectangular blocks.
For example, the first word of the sentence is Hanguk, meaning "Korea". It is composed of six letters: ㅎ (h), ㅏ (a), ㄴ (n), ㄱ (g), ㅜ (u), ㄱ (g). (Yes, I know, the last one should be a "k". I'll explain later.)
When writing Korean, the letters are always grouped into syllables. The first three letters make the syllable "han", so they are grouped together: ㅎ +ㅏ + ㄴ makes 한. The next three make the syllable "guk", so they are grouped together: ㄱ + ㅜ + ㄱ makes 국. The letters are arranged top-to-bottom and left-to-right within each block. The arrangement of the letters within a given syllable block depends on the particular letter shapes (of the vowel letters, to be precise), so that the blocks end up being neither too high nor too wide.
It's pretty neat that when you look at Korean writing you can see not only the letters, but also a clear delineation of the syllables. Even without knowing any Korean at all, you can tell that the first word in the sentence above (한국) contains two syllables and the second one (민속촌은) contains four syllables.
Influence from Chinese is certainly a major factor behind the way Korean writing is structured, even though Chinese is not written alphabetically. Chinese characters are rectangles that are slightly taller than they are wide, and each one represents a single syllable. Korean syllable blocks have the same overall shape and proportions as Chinese characters, and represent the same unit of speech. So it would have made sense to 15th-century Koreans to create rectangular written units representing syllables. And as a result, Hangeul syllable blocks and Chinese characters blend together well when intermixed in a single line of text.
2. Morphophonology
Although the Korean alphabet is extremely well designed, and although in almost all cases the spelling of Korean words uniquely encodes their pronunciation (by which I mean that, if you understand the rules of the alphabet, you can correctly pronounce any written word even if you've never seen it before), it is not the case that there is a one-to-one correspondence of written letters with pronounced sounds.
One reason this is the case is that Korean has very complicated morphophonology. Put simply, morphophonology refers to the way that pronunciations of word parts change when those parts come together to make words.
This concept can be illustrated with an example from English. Consider the word "electric". It ends in a "k" sound. And as part of the word "electrical", it also ends in a "k" sound. But when the noun-forming suffix "-ity" (cf. conformity, equality, etc.) is attached, the pronunciation of "electric" changes so that it ends in an "s" sound. In written English this change of pronunciation is masked, because we spell the "electric" part the same way regardless of the pronunciation. There's a disadvantage in that: the spelling doesn't consistently tell you about the pronunciation. But there's an advantage too: you can immediately spot the common root that the words "electrical" and "electricity" share, in a way that would not be as obvious if you spelled them "electrikal" and "electrisity".
Korean is full of this stuff -- there's tons more than in English.
For example, consider the Korean word for the Korean language. It's a compound word. The first part is Hanguk 한국, which we've seen above. The second part is mal 말 "language". When these two word parts combine, the -k ending of Hanguk turns into an "ng" sound, and the resulting word is hangungmal. But the spelling doesn't change: 한국말.
The fact that the spelling doesn't change is hugely helpful if you want to understand the meanings of unfamiliar written words. When you see 한국 at the beginning of 한국말, you know the word has something to do with Korea, even if you don't know what the second part of the word means. But there's also a big disadvantage of you are a new learner of Korean: you have to remember to change the pronunciation of the last consonant from "k" to "ng". It's a regular rule -- "k" always changes to "ng" before "m", in all Korean words -- but it takes time for non-native speakers to internalize it.
3. An aside on cognitive processing
Koreans are very proud of their alphabet, and they should be. It's not just a matter of national pride -- it's their own alphabet, invented by one of their greatest rulers, and intimately connected to their beloved national language -- but also of usability. The alphabet is beautifully designed, flexible and efficient, and extremely functional.
[It's also linguistically very sophisticated. Those of you with linguistic training will appreciate two amazing, and inter-related features, of the Hangeul letters. First, the basic letter shapes are based on the appearance of the articulators when pronouncing the sounds represented by the letters (as seen in mid-sagittal section, of course). For example, ㄱ, which represents the plain velar stop, is meant to look like the curved tongue back raised up against the velum. Second, letters representing sounds at the same place of articulation are distinguished in a consistent way. For example, aspirated sounds are written with letters that are modified from the letters that write the unaspirated sounds through the addition of a single stroke. So, in a sense, the writing system is featural, as well as phonemic, syllabic, and iconic.]
But I think it does have some disadvantages. From a cognitive processing point of view, I suspect that it is not an easy alphabet to read. This is because different syllables can end up looking very similar to each other. It often takes top-down processing--that is, educated guesses about what syllable one is likely to encounter in a particular context--to read quickly. Otherwise, you have to slow down and peer really closely.
For example, look at these three syllables: 홍, 흥, 훙. Yep, they are all different. The first and last letters are the same in all three: ㅎ (h) and ㅇ (ng). But the vowel in the middle is different. The three vowels are ㅗ (o), ㅡ (eu), and ㅜ (u). Those little stems on the "o" and the "u" become so short that they are nearly invisible. Native speakers aren't much bothered by this because the other syllables in the word will clue them in to which of these three possible syllables is being written. But if you don't know Korean well, you've got to squint a lot to figure out what's going on.
Let's try blowing those up a bit bigger, shall we? [Note: If they don't look bigger for you, try increasing the font size in your browser.]
See the difference now?
4. Transliteration
The nature of the alphabet and the complex morphophonology (sound changes involved in word formation) present interesting challenges for transliteration. What's the best way to render Korean words in the Roman alphabet for foreigners?
In these blog entries, I've been following the guidelines of the Korean government's Revised Romanization of Korean, promulgated in 2000, with one modification. (The one modification is that I write "sh" where the official Romanization has "s" whenever the actual pronunciation is closer to the English "sh" sound. For example, the neighborhood near us called Shinchon is officially romanized as Sinchon. But the first syllable sounds more like English "shin" than like "sin".)
The question that arises with any transliteration is: should you be trying to represent the original written form, or should you be trying to represent pronunciation?
For example, consider the by-now familiar letter ㄱ (g). It is consistently pronounced as "g" at the beginning of a syllable, and as "k" at the end of a word. So should the word for Korea, 한국, be transcribed as Hangug or as Hanguk? The former transliteration more accurately represents the written Korean form. It's also relatively easy for a Korean speaker to create the romanized form, since there is a one-to-one relationship between the Korean letters and the Roman letters. But for an American tourist with no knowledge of Korean who is reading a street sign, the latter is preferable because it is more likely to result in an accurate pronunciation.
A more complicated question arises with the word for "Korean language", 한국말. Should it be written Hangugmal, Hangukmal, or Hangungmal? The last is the only one that a foreign reader who doesn't know Korean will pronounce with any accuracy. But, it's impossible from that transliteration to either (1) recognize the component Hanguk "Korea" in the word or (2) be able to reconstruct the original Korean spelling. Where that "ng" appears in the Romanization, the original Korean letter could be either ㄱ (g) or ㅇ (ng), and there is just no way to know which it is.
For the most part, the Revised Romanization opts for representation of pronunciation rather than written form. But there are still a few tricky things you need to know if you want to be able to pronounce the transcribed words in my blog entries.
1) The letter combinations "eo" and "eu" represent single vowel sounds. "eo" is the vowel sound in English "hum". That's why I said in an earlier post that Chuseok is pronunced CHOO-suck. As for "eu", there is no real equivalent in English. But it's not so different from the vowel in English "full". (So pronounce the last syllable of Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, so that it rhymes with "full".)
2) Sometimes you will see double letters, like "tt", "kk", "pp", "jj". These are "tense" sounds. They sound rather sharp and strident. For our purposes, it's okay to just pronounce them like their single-letter equivalents. (That won't work if you're really trying to speak Korean though!)
3) The vowel sounds written "e" and "ae" are both pronounced the same, like the short "e" in an English word such as "bed".
By the way, the Korean word for "day" is nal 날. But Hangeul Day (한글날) comes out as Hangeullal (as in the title of this post). Yep, more morphophonology!
Since this post is already way too long (has anyone actually made it this far?), I'll talk about the role of Chinese characters in Korean writing -- a subject near and dear to my heart -- some other time.
Today, then, seems like an appropriate time to explain some things about the Korean writing system for those of you who are unfamiliar with it.
1. Hangeul 한글
There aren't too many alphabets that are celebrated by national holidays. (Does anyone know of any others?) There also aren't too many alphabets whose invention can be traced to a specific time, place, and person. But the Korean alphabet is one. It was invented in the mid fifteenth century by the great King Sejong. (There is speculation that the alphabet was actually invented by a committee appointed by the king, who then took credit. But King Sejong was actually very talented and learned. It's quite likely that he was the driving intellectual force behind the alphabet, even if he did have some help from advisors.)
Before the invention of the alphabet, there was no simple or systematic way of writing the Korean language. Literate Koreans wrote in Classical Chinese (much the way that medieval Europeans wrote in Latin rather than in their spoken vernaculars). The invention of Hangeul paved the way for the formulation of a truly Korean literate society, although it took several centuries before it became accepted to write formally in Korean instead of Chinese.
To the untrained Western eye, Korean writing doesn't look alphabetic. Take a look at this Korean sentence, randomly chosen from a web site:
한국 민속촌은 서울에서 30분 거리에 있으며 365일 언제든지 관람 하실 수 있습니다.
It looks like it is made up of Chinese-character like rectangular blocks. But this is a false impression. It is actually made of alphabet letters arranged into rectangular blocks.
For example, the first word of the sentence is Hanguk, meaning "Korea". It is composed of six letters: ㅎ (h), ㅏ (a), ㄴ (n), ㄱ (g), ㅜ (u), ㄱ (g). (Yes, I know, the last one should be a "k". I'll explain later.)
When writing Korean, the letters are always grouped into syllables. The first three letters make the syllable "han", so they are grouped together: ㅎ +ㅏ + ㄴ makes 한. The next three make the syllable "guk", so they are grouped together: ㄱ + ㅜ + ㄱ makes 국. The letters are arranged top-to-bottom and left-to-right within each block. The arrangement of the letters within a given syllable block depends on the particular letter shapes (of the vowel letters, to be precise), so that the blocks end up being neither too high nor too wide.
It's pretty neat that when you look at Korean writing you can see not only the letters, but also a clear delineation of the syllables. Even without knowing any Korean at all, you can tell that the first word in the sentence above (한국) contains two syllables and the second one (민속촌은) contains four syllables.
Influence from Chinese is certainly a major factor behind the way Korean writing is structured, even though Chinese is not written alphabetically. Chinese characters are rectangles that are slightly taller than they are wide, and each one represents a single syllable. Korean syllable blocks have the same overall shape and proportions as Chinese characters, and represent the same unit of speech. So it would have made sense to 15th-century Koreans to create rectangular written units representing syllables. And as a result, Hangeul syllable blocks and Chinese characters blend together well when intermixed in a single line of text.
2. Morphophonology
Although the Korean alphabet is extremely well designed, and although in almost all cases the spelling of Korean words uniquely encodes their pronunciation (by which I mean that, if you understand the rules of the alphabet, you can correctly pronounce any written word even if you've never seen it before), it is not the case that there is a one-to-one correspondence of written letters with pronounced sounds.
One reason this is the case is that Korean has very complicated morphophonology. Put simply, morphophonology refers to the way that pronunciations of word parts change when those parts come together to make words.
This concept can be illustrated with an example from English. Consider the word "electric". It ends in a "k" sound. And as part of the word "electrical", it also ends in a "k" sound. But when the noun-forming suffix "-ity" (cf. conformity, equality, etc.) is attached, the pronunciation of "electric" changes so that it ends in an "s" sound. In written English this change of pronunciation is masked, because we spell the "electric" part the same way regardless of the pronunciation. There's a disadvantage in that: the spelling doesn't consistently tell you about the pronunciation. But there's an advantage too: you can immediately spot the common root that the words "electrical" and "electricity" share, in a way that would not be as obvious if you spelled them "electrikal" and "electrisity".
Korean is full of this stuff -- there's tons more than in English.
For example, consider the Korean word for the Korean language. It's a compound word. The first part is Hanguk 한국, which we've seen above. The second part is mal 말 "language". When these two word parts combine, the -k ending of Hanguk turns into an "ng" sound, and the resulting word is hangungmal. But the spelling doesn't change: 한국말.
The fact that the spelling doesn't change is hugely helpful if you want to understand the meanings of unfamiliar written words. When you see 한국 at the beginning of 한국말, you know the word has something to do with Korea, even if you don't know what the second part of the word means. But there's also a big disadvantage of you are a new learner of Korean: you have to remember to change the pronunciation of the last consonant from "k" to "ng". It's a regular rule -- "k" always changes to "ng" before "m", in all Korean words -- but it takes time for non-native speakers to internalize it.
3. An aside on cognitive processing
Koreans are very proud of their alphabet, and they should be. It's not just a matter of national pride -- it's their own alphabet, invented by one of their greatest rulers, and intimately connected to their beloved national language -- but also of usability. The alphabet is beautifully designed, flexible and efficient, and extremely functional.
[It's also linguistically very sophisticated. Those of you with linguistic training will appreciate two amazing, and inter-related features, of the Hangeul letters. First, the basic letter shapes are based on the appearance of the articulators when pronouncing the sounds represented by the letters (as seen in mid-sagittal section, of course). For example, ㄱ, which represents the plain velar stop, is meant to look like the curved tongue back raised up against the velum. Second, letters representing sounds at the same place of articulation are distinguished in a consistent way. For example, aspirated sounds are written with letters that are modified from the letters that write the unaspirated sounds through the addition of a single stroke. So, in a sense, the writing system is featural, as well as phonemic, syllabic, and iconic.]
But I think it does have some disadvantages. From a cognitive processing point of view, I suspect that it is not an easy alphabet to read. This is because different syllables can end up looking very similar to each other. It often takes top-down processing--that is, educated guesses about what syllable one is likely to encounter in a particular context--to read quickly. Otherwise, you have to slow down and peer really closely.
For example, look at these three syllables: 홍, 흥, 훙. Yep, they are all different. The first and last letters are the same in all three: ㅎ (h) and ㅇ (ng). But the vowel in the middle is different. The three vowels are ㅗ (o), ㅡ (eu), and ㅜ (u). Those little stems on the "o" and the "u" become so short that they are nearly invisible. Native speakers aren't much bothered by this because the other syllables in the word will clue them in to which of these three possible syllables is being written. But if you don't know Korean well, you've got to squint a lot to figure out what's going on.
Let's try blowing those up a bit bigger, shall we? [Note: If they don't look bigger for you, try increasing the font size in your browser.]
홍, 흥, 훙
See the difference now?
4. Transliteration
The nature of the alphabet and the complex morphophonology (sound changes involved in word formation) present interesting challenges for transliteration. What's the best way to render Korean words in the Roman alphabet for foreigners?
In these blog entries, I've been following the guidelines of the Korean government's Revised Romanization of Korean, promulgated in 2000, with one modification. (The one modification is that I write "sh" where the official Romanization has "s" whenever the actual pronunciation is closer to the English "sh" sound. For example, the neighborhood near us called Shinchon is officially romanized as Sinchon. But the first syllable sounds more like English "shin" than like "sin".)
The question that arises with any transliteration is: should you be trying to represent the original written form, or should you be trying to represent pronunciation?
For example, consider the by-now familiar letter ㄱ (g). It is consistently pronounced as "g" at the beginning of a syllable, and as "k" at the end of a word. So should the word for Korea, 한국, be transcribed as Hangug or as Hanguk? The former transliteration more accurately represents the written Korean form. It's also relatively easy for a Korean speaker to create the romanized form, since there is a one-to-one relationship between the Korean letters and the Roman letters. But for an American tourist with no knowledge of Korean who is reading a street sign, the latter is preferable because it is more likely to result in an accurate pronunciation.
A more complicated question arises with the word for "Korean language", 한국말. Should it be written Hangugmal, Hangukmal, or Hangungmal? The last is the only one that a foreign reader who doesn't know Korean will pronounce with any accuracy. But, it's impossible from that transliteration to either (1) recognize the component Hanguk "Korea" in the word or (2) be able to reconstruct the original Korean spelling. Where that "ng" appears in the Romanization, the original Korean letter could be either ㄱ (g) or ㅇ (ng), and there is just no way to know which it is.
For the most part, the Revised Romanization opts for representation of pronunciation rather than written form. But there are still a few tricky things you need to know if you want to be able to pronounce the transcribed words in my blog entries.
1) The letter combinations "eo" and "eu" represent single vowel sounds. "eo" is the vowel sound in English "hum". That's why I said in an earlier post that Chuseok is pronunced CHOO-suck. As for "eu", there is no real equivalent in English. But it's not so different from the vowel in English "full". (So pronounce the last syllable of Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, so that it rhymes with "full".)
2) Sometimes you will see double letters, like "tt", "kk", "pp", "jj". These are "tense" sounds. They sound rather sharp and strident. For our purposes, it's okay to just pronounce them like their single-letter equivalents. (That won't work if you're really trying to speak Korean though!)
3) The vowel sounds written "e" and "ae" are both pronounced the same, like the short "e" in an English word such as "bed".
By the way, the Korean word for "day" is nal 날. But Hangeul Day (한글날) comes out as Hangeullal (as in the title of this post). Yep, more morphophonology!
Since this post is already way too long (has anyone actually made it this far?), I'll talk about the role of Chinese characters in Korean writing -- a subject near and dear to my heart -- some other time.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Eumshik 2: Yori
We have pictures of a few things we've cooked.
Alert readers will recognize the first two from an earlier post.
Breakfast: toast with butter and jam, fruit.
A word about toast may be in order at this juncture. When I lived in Hong Kong, I also didn't have a toaster and wanted to have toast. I remembered that my grandfather had taught me how to toast a bagel over an open gas burner, by sticking a fork in it and moving it gently back and forth over the flame. That was the first thing I tried, but you can't hold up a piece of sliced bread with a fork. It doesn't have the same solidity of structure as a bagel half. I tried using chopsticks and a spatula, but it was too difficult to hold and maneuver the bread while exposing it to the flame.
The next thing I tried was frying it in a little butter, à la a toasted-cheese sandwich. But that was a mess.
At some point I tried just putting the bread in the hot dry pan, and it worked like a charm. I have no idea to what to attribute this flash of inspired brilliance.
Anyway, here's our first home-cooked dinner. A full description is in the OfficeTel entry.
The tofu-pepper stir-fry came out surprisingly good even though I had almost nothing to work with. It's flavored with just soy sauce and sesame oil.
Last weekend we decided to try to make pancakes for breakfast. That meant finding a mix, since it wouldn't make sense to invest in flour: we're only here three months, and there's no oven for baking. We found a Korean product called Hat-Keik Karu 핫케익가루, "hotcake powder". (Below the product name it says, I think, "Make and enjoy delicious hot cakes in no time".) You'll note on the package that it is served with butter (or is that cream?), syrup, raspberries, and a mint leaf. We decided, with regret, to make do without the raspberries and mint leaf.
Oddly, although the Koreans make their own pancake mix, we couldn't find Korean syrup. (Maybe it's available somewhere.) So we got imported Japanese syrup. It says on it ケイキシロップ keiki-shiroppu, "cake-syrup", and partially obscured in the lower-right corner メープルタイプ meipuru-taipu, "maple-type", a clear indication that there is no maple in there whatsoever.
We added milk and an egg, and cooked 'em up. Not great, not terrible. I think the bag was intended to make enough to serve four or five people, but the two of us tried to eat it all ourselves. Didn't manage it. Had to put some away for later.
Oh, that's a persimmon (gam 감) in the background.
We (read: Erma) have been making some Korean food as well. Here's an action shot of bulgogi 불고기, which is one of the best-known Korean dishes, in the making.
[Linguistic note: bulgogi means literally "fire meat".]
That's carrots and onions in the pan. The beef (in the background, mixed with scallions and soy sauce) is Australian. Erma and I don't eat beef at home, unless it's organic, natural, grain-fed, or otherwise immunized against mad-cow disease. So we were a bit dismayed when we learned that a few weeks ago imports of US beef into Korea had resumed and reached high volumes. Australian beef at the markets is all branded as "Australian beef: clean and safe". I think they are trying to corner the suspicious-of-American-beef market in Korea.
Here's the tasty finished product:
This picture is actually a great illustration of the basic elements of a Korean meal. More on that later.
Alert readers will recognize the first two from an earlier post.
Breakfast: toast with butter and jam, fruit.
A word about toast may be in order at this juncture. When I lived in Hong Kong, I also didn't have a toaster and wanted to have toast. I remembered that my grandfather had taught me how to toast a bagel over an open gas burner, by sticking a fork in it and moving it gently back and forth over the flame. That was the first thing I tried, but you can't hold up a piece of sliced bread with a fork. It doesn't have the same solidity of structure as a bagel half. I tried using chopsticks and a spatula, but it was too difficult to hold and maneuver the bread while exposing it to the flame.
The next thing I tried was frying it in a little butter, à la a toasted-cheese sandwich. But that was a mess.
At some point I tried just putting the bread in the hot dry pan, and it worked like a charm. I have no idea to what to attribute this flash of inspired brilliance.
Anyway, here's our first home-cooked dinner. A full description is in the OfficeTel entry.
The tofu-pepper stir-fry came out surprisingly good even though I had almost nothing to work with. It's flavored with just soy sauce and sesame oil.
Last weekend we decided to try to make pancakes for breakfast. That meant finding a mix, since it wouldn't make sense to invest in flour: we're only here three months, and there's no oven for baking. We found a Korean product called Hat-Keik Karu 핫케익가루, "hotcake powder". (Below the product name it says, I think, "Make and enjoy delicious hot cakes in no time".) You'll note on the package that it is served with butter (or is that cream?), syrup, raspberries, and a mint leaf. We decided, with regret, to make do without the raspberries and mint leaf.
Oddly, although the Koreans make their own pancake mix, we couldn't find Korean syrup. (Maybe it's available somewhere.) So we got imported Japanese syrup. It says on it ケイキシロップ keiki-shiroppu, "cake-syrup", and partially obscured in the lower-right corner メープルタイプ meipuru-taipu, "maple-type", a clear indication that there is no maple in there whatsoever.
We added milk and an egg, and cooked 'em up. Not great, not terrible. I think the bag was intended to make enough to serve four or five people, but the two of us tried to eat it all ourselves. Didn't manage it. Had to put some away for later.
Oh, that's a persimmon (gam 감) in the background.
We (read: Erma) have been making some Korean food as well. Here's an action shot of bulgogi 불고기, which is one of the best-known Korean dishes, in the making.
[Linguistic note: bulgogi means literally "fire meat".]
That's carrots and onions in the pan. The beef (in the background, mixed with scallions and soy sauce) is Australian. Erma and I don't eat beef at home, unless it's organic, natural, grain-fed, or otherwise immunized against mad-cow disease. So we were a bit dismayed when we learned that a few weeks ago imports of US beef into Korea had resumed and reached high volumes. Australian beef at the markets is all branded as "Australian beef: clean and safe". I think they are trying to corner the suspicious-of-American-beef market in Korea.
Here's the tasty finished product:
This picture is actually a great illustration of the basic elements of a Korean meal. More on that later.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Language learning
Many people have expressed surprise that I am taking Korean along with Lance while in Seoul. These are not people who have ever actually heard me speak in Korean. Let me try to explain more about my level of proficiency in Korean.
Like many Korean-Americans, I grew up hearing more Korean than I spoke, so my passive understanding was much better than my active ability. I managed to become much better at Korean by studying it in college and in Seoul after college. And because of my training, I'm pretty knowledgeable about Korean linguistically.
However, my fluency is still terrible. If you were to talk to me in Korean, you would think that I had barely started learning the language. Since I look like a normal Korean person, but I don't sound like one, I tend to get weird looks and questions, so I've generally avoided speaking Korean when I could. As a result, of course, I speak extraordinarily poorly given how much Korean I can understand.
Of course living in Seoul forces one to speak Korean more. I'm finding that being here with Lance is working out very nicely. The reason we are here is for him to learn Korean. I'm essentially just here for the ride. So when we go out, he's the one who does the ordering, because he's the one who needs the practice. Frequently I have to intervene because the conversation gets a little too hard for Lance. I find these situations where I have to speak Korean a lot less stressful than I would have in the past. For one thing, when I'm by myself I can just decide to avoid a situation that I think will be too difficult. But I don't want Lance to miss out on something just because I'm afraid of sounding foolish, so I'm more willing to try things when I'm with him. Also, Lance provides me some cover. When people see me with Lance, I feel like people will realize that I'm not a normal Korean person, and they won't be too surprised when I don't sound quite right. Finally, I'm finding myself to be fairly competent when we're out and about, and that feels pretty good.
So I'm at the Language Institute and working on my Korean. It's a little hard to be sure I've been placed into the right level, since I think my level varies so much in the different skill areas. And I'm torn between wanting to improve and to get my money's worth, and not wanting to work too hard. We'll see how it works out.
Like many Korean-Americans, I grew up hearing more Korean than I spoke, so my passive understanding was much better than my active ability. I managed to become much better at Korean by studying it in college and in Seoul after college. And because of my training, I'm pretty knowledgeable about Korean linguistically.
However, my fluency is still terrible. If you were to talk to me in Korean, you would think that I had barely started learning the language. Since I look like a normal Korean person, but I don't sound like one, I tend to get weird looks and questions, so I've generally avoided speaking Korean when I could. As a result, of course, I speak extraordinarily poorly given how much Korean I can understand.
Of course living in Seoul forces one to speak Korean more. I'm finding that being here with Lance is working out very nicely. The reason we are here is for him to learn Korean. I'm essentially just here for the ride. So when we go out, he's the one who does the ordering, because he's the one who needs the practice. Frequently I have to intervene because the conversation gets a little too hard for Lance. I find these situations where I have to speak Korean a lot less stressful than I would have in the past. For one thing, when I'm by myself I can just decide to avoid a situation that I think will be too difficult. But I don't want Lance to miss out on something just because I'm afraid of sounding foolish, so I'm more willing to try things when I'm with him. Also, Lance provides me some cover. When people see me with Lance, I feel like people will realize that I'm not a normal Korean person, and they won't be too surprised when I don't sound quite right. Finally, I'm finding myself to be fairly competent when we're out and about, and that feels pretty good.
So I'm at the Language Institute and working on my Korean. It's a little hard to be sure I've been placed into the right level, since I think my level varies so much in the different skill areas. And I'm torn between wanting to improve and to get my money's worth, and not wanting to work too hard. We'll see how it works out.
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