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Beijing Welcomes You is an awfully catchy song (I guess that's the point, huh? ;)). I sent the video to my parents just for kicks and because I was curious how many artists they could recognize. I'm ashamed to admit that I only recognized two of them: Jackie Chan and Han Geng. My mom named about half of them, including Jay Chou. I have over 300MB of Jay Chou songs, but I can't recognize him by face. *epic fail* Same goes for singers like Jang Nara, Wang Lee Hom, Lin Jun Jie...I like their music, but I have no idea what they look like. ;;;

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The latest update about the Spider Issue:
My housemate is terribly good at finding spiders -- I could hear her banging on the wall with the sponge mop and occasionally shrieking. Somehow, within ten minutes of arriving at home, she located five spiders, and then I joined her in the shrieking and whacking and the "you kill it"/"no, YOU kill it!" -- we managed to kill three out of the five. 60% success rate: not bad for two bug-o-phobics, right? After I got back to my room and was comfortably seated in front of my computer, I saw a creepy crawly thing scurry across my desk. I immediately smushed it with some Kleenex and mentally congratulated myself for being brave. And then the revulsion hit and I was all, "aldjfadjOMG UGH...! *shiver shudder twitch*" Maybe I should consider exposure therapy. .__.

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I signed up for Korean lessons a few weeks ago, and now I have three weeks of Korean experience. :D [/Horio moment] And by three weeks I actually mean five hours. This is the first time in a very long while that I've wanted to learn something just for myself and not for school, CV-boosting, etc. Aside from learning the language itself, I also want to see how I learn (pick my own brain, or so to speak XD). With both English and Chinese, I'm fairly good with learning and memorizing new vocab. However, when it comes to memorizing a strung-together sentence, I falter. I'm awful with reciting poetry and I have a hard time memorizing lyrics as well as melodies. In other words, I am good at remembering (and making use of the) parts, but not the whole -- I wonder how this will effect the way I learn a foreign language.

Some of the people in the class are able to look at a Korean character and read it aloud immediately. I have to look at the character, decipher the parts, and translate it into a romanized version in my head, before I can pronounce the word/syllable. I'm probably faster at writing than I am at reading. >__O;; The thing that's slowing me down the most is the fact that I'm still thinking in romanized form, rather than instinctively recognizing the vowel or consonant (which will come with practise, I hope). When I think of Chinese words, I come up with vague images of what the character might look like -- the character might not be accurate at all, or I might be thinking of the semantic meaning of the character, but I would not be thinking of pinyin. With both Japanese and Korean, I always think in terms of romanization, which makes sense since the English alphabet is the most familiar to me, and thus my brain's default setting.

This whole "thinking in certain languages" thing has always been of interest to me. In high school, I used to go around to my bilingual friends and ask them what language their dreams were in, and then try to figure out whether their thoughts featured more of one language than the other. Upon occasion, when my thoughts wander, my brain switches between English and broken Chinese with random bits of French, Japanese, and, recently, Korean mixed in.

Speaking of French, I wonder if I will end up with better Korean than French at the end of the ten-week lessons. French was a mandatory class for six years -- I dropped it as soon as I reached grade 10. XD 20-hours versus six years...well, perhaps personal interest matters too since that does determines the amount of practise and use outside of class, so, who knows.

And speaking of Korean, the k/g sound is too subtle for me to figure out under which circumstances the consonant is pronounced "k" and when it's pronounced "g". Also, all the different writings for the "eh" and "weh" sounds drive me nuts. HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN TO USE. D: "ch" and "j" sound the same, and I don't understand the difference between "k/g" (kee-yuhk), "k" (khey-euk), and "double k/g" (ssang kee-yuhk -- and alksdfjl; at the double letters D:). It would probably be easier if I could type out the actual characters. But I can't figure out the Korean keyboard either (I know how to turn the function on...but each key stands for something different and if you press them in the wrong combination something funny comes out D:).

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eta: I originally uploaded this for

dear_whimsy, but in case some of you guys are interested, here are a bunch of songs (12, to be exact :D) by 12 Girls Band. Find out more about them at Wikipedia and sample some of their songs on Youtube. (I'm too sleepy to write anything coherent nrrrgh)

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the k/g sound is too subtle for me to figure out under which circumstances the consonant is pronounced "k" and when it's pronounced "g"

the ㅋ is a straight K sound, as in kite, whereas ㄱ is somewhere between hard G and K... i've found that ㄱ is slightly closer to the K sound when it begins a word, such as 규현 (Kyu Hyun XD). but ㄱ sound is more compressed when you say 한경 (Han K/Gyung) which contains more of a hard G sound in 경. possibly because less air travels from your mouth when you pronounce ㄱ as a second syllable. the correct phonetic terminology escapes me.

as for ch/j, it's probably a matter of listening to natives pronunciation as much as possible. i can see how it would be confusing, though.

fjskdl sorry if any of this is confusing? i'll be glad to further clarify with any of this; i'm sort of obsessed with phonetics/pronunciation. :D

i'm sort of obsessed with phonetics/pronunciation

This is definitely good news for me because I'm struggling with the transition from pronunciation to romanization to translating that into Hangul characters. X3

Is there a perceptible difference between the pronunciation of ㅋ and ㄲ? What about ㅍ, ㅂ, and ㅃ? Is there any way to know, based on the pronunciation or romanization of "eh", if a word is supposed to be written with a ㅐ or ㅔ? Also, speaking of Kyuhyun, his last name is romanized as "Cho", but the character used is ㅈ rather than ㅊ -- does that mean the romanization of ㅈ can be either "ch" or "j"? (Sorry for bombarding you with so many questions alkdafjsf;;;;)

Is there a perceptible difference between the pronunciation of ㅋ and ㄲ?

Yes. ㅋ is aspirated (that's the term I was trying to recall before ^^;) as in "kite". ㄲ on the other hand is fricative; the air that travels from the back of your mouth is more compressed, resulting in a more condensed/harsher "k" sound. It's very much like the "c" in "fricative" actually, or the "c" in "uncle" when you say it quickly.

What about ㅍ, ㅂ, and ㅃ?

ㅍ = aspirated P as in "pot"
ㅂ = It's close to the b in "boy" but slightly more aspirated, which gives it a lighter sound - this is why ㅂ might sound like ㅍ sometimes. ^^;
ㅃ = fricative P (or B) as in the second syllable of "pepper" when you say it quickly. Or the p in "copy". [edit: if you're familiar with French - it's exactly the same sound of the p in "pain" (bread)]

Is there any way to know, based on the pronunciation or romanization of "eh", if a word is supposed to be written with a ㅐ or ㅔ?

Technically, yes, there is a difference in pronunciation. Try this: loosely shape your lips into an O and say "eh". That's the ㅔ sound. Now try smiling and say "eh". That's ㅐ. You can tell that ㅐ is more open than ㅔ.

TBH, the difference is so subtle that most Koreans aren't anal about pronouncing them correctly in casual conversation unless one is trying to avoid saying a bad word or something. At least to my ears, all the "eh" sound the same unless someone makes the extra effort to enunciate them differently.

There's no way to tell apart ㅐ and ㅔ from romanization, though. For example, 제수 and 재수 would both be romanized as "jeh-su". (lol, why no I'm not brainwashed by Kpop) [edited for more accurate spelling...]

his last name is romanized as "Cho", but the character used is ㅈ rather than ㅊ -- does that mean the romanization of ㅈ can be either "ch" or "j"?

OMG I could write a novel about how Korean names are mis-romanized. T_T But yeah, 조 should definitely be Jo. My guess is that when Koreans first emigrated to the U.S. decades ago, Americans didn't know how to romanize surnames properly... and no one bothered to correct the spelling throughout the generations because those misspelled romanizations had become standard. So yeah, don't worry about surnames too much since those are pretty arbitrary. You'll just need to memorize the correct Korean spelling and the 'special' romanizations separately. ;P

Edited 2008-05-04 01:05 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations! I read the Wikipedia entry on Korean pronunciations, but your examples really helped a lot.

According to Wiki, there seems to be different romanization systems? And in the handouts that we got in class, there were also different spellings of the same Hangul characters (which drove me nuts because I was all, "oh noes, the pronunciation changed again D:").

You'll just need to memorize the correct Korean spelling and the 'special' romanizations separately. ;P

Okay, will keep that in mind. X3

different romanization systems

Seriously? That must scramble the brain. o_o I don't see why they can't set up just one, though, as I don't think the pronunciations are that complicated...?

oh and I just realized I totally misused the term fricative. *headdesk* jsdkl apparently I forgot all of my phonetics vocab but I hope you got the gist of what I was trying to explain, heh.

Wiki has a list of the different systems of romanization. There's a whole slew of different romanization systems for Chinese as well, it seems. Bottom line: Westerners like to over complicate things!

P.S. will snag the 12 Girls Band stuff when i get home - thank you!

I have more burnt on CD somewhere -- let me know if you want me to upload more! :)

:D i really like what i've heard! if you ever get the chance to upload more that would be super. ♥

Moar! :D

thank you! <333 i'm putting these on my ipod, they'd would go nicely with my daily walks. :D

When I am barely awake, I often say things in Mandarin. That's how I know it's my native language. :P

Out of curiousity, are most of your thought processes (like if you're thinking to yourself) in Mandarin or English? And what about when you're dreaming? Most of the time, everyone in my dream speaks English, even if in real life they usually speak Chinese.

Depends, really! I try to use Mandarin whenever possible, although sometimes I don't know the Mandarin terms. :P In my dreams, it really does depend on the setting...I actually had a dream this morning in which I spoke on the phone with my mother -_-, and that was definitely in Mandarin. XD

What about when you're talking to someone in English? Do you still think in Chinese and then do a quick (automatic, I guess?) translation before you speak? And what about when writing/reading something in English? Say you're reading a fic, and you're thinking, "wow, this part is so well-written" or "LOL, WHAT TRASH", are these comments in English or Mandarin? I hope you don't mind my brain-picking! X3;;; I find bilingualism + cognition fascinating, especially if the person is equally, or near equally, fluent in both languages.

haha, I don't mind! I think about stuff like this myself. XP

I don't do translations in my head. I perceive things in English and respond in English. Same with Mandarin. I typically respond to fic in the language in which it is written. :P

Wow Korean. I think it's with any language that it takes time to get used to. ^-^ With a few more weeks you'll be proficient enough I'm sure!

I always dream in English... sometimes Japanese! But I don't remember if I ever dreamed in Chinese before. But then again I don't dream of my family so perhaps that's why.

When I dream of family members, even if I consciously know that they only speak Chinese (like my grandmother or my cousins), they often speak English in my dream. I'm thinking maybe the amount of a certain language featured in your dream is proportional to how often you think in that language when you're awake. (yes, I do ponder about useless things on a regular basis XD)

I'm now addicted to Beijing Welcomes You :((((
Also, Jay Chou isn't in the music video :P And I only recognized Wang Lee Hom because he was in Lust, Caution...XD; But the girl at 3:26 is so hot :((( Alas, my thing for androgynous girls. :( And also all the cute boys :(

Aha! So my mother was wrong. Which one was Wang Lee Hom? (or rather, when did he show up?) I noticed that girl as well! I wonder who she is...

Wang Lee Hom is at 0:40 - he's the guy who does the calligraphy. :P And the androgynous girl is 李宇春 - super androgynous and cute :(

Oh, she's the infamous Super Girl? I heard that Super Girl isn't very pretty, but I guess those comments are based on the fact that she doesn't have the conventional female pop-star look.

She's not pretty; she's fucking hot :(

Hello new friend!

I love this entry. Mainly because I adore the field of linguistics and would study it if I wasn't studying art (I was a former linguistics major and really love language acquisition in particular... and sociolinguistics :D). I'm a bilingual English and Spanish speaker and am currently learning Japanese and am going to start Korean later this year (and have been dying to learn Mandarin). Most people think I'm nuts for wanting to study those three, thinking that Asian language = hardest in the world (when really, all languages are pretty much equally difficult to learn).

If anything, Japanese is actually easy for me since I've been listening to it regularly since I was around 11 and so I knew what to expect before learning it in a classroom setting. And since Japanese and Spanish use the same sounds, pronunciation wise it isn't that much of a problem so I speak it rather quickly and with less tongue twisting than say, a non-Spanish speaker. But regarding Korean pronunciation, mine is down the drain. -_-;;

The thing that's slowing me down the most is the fact that I'm still thinking in romanized form
Did you start learning in romanized form before they introduced the alphabet to you? For most people it's harder to transition if they started learning in romanized form in the beginning versus being introduced to the alphabet in the very beginning. Also language learning comes easier to some people so maybe you're in a class with a lot of gifted people ^^; It's something you have to fight though, so good luck with that!

And regarding consonant use, just try and and it will click when you least expect it. I had this issue with these two Japanese particles "wa" and "ga" (one a topic marker, the other a subject marker). It took me weeks of getting it wrong but now it's second nature for me to know which to use when. It's natural so I'd continue working at it and wait for the "click". As for Korean keyboard, good luck. I'm just as lost.

oh, and regarding which language I think in, it's almost always in English, even when I'm around Spanish speakers and listening to Spanish. Instinctively when I'm in Japanese class, I want to speak Korean because it's what I listen to most among the two even though comparatively I know less Korean. But I do tend to automatically speak/think in Japanese shortly after listening to it. :D

BTW I hope I didn't scare you with my long-winded comment. I just get so excited when I see a language related entry. I tend to write about it on my journal quite frequently. Sorry about that ^_^

No worries! I love getting long-winded comments and reading about what other people have to say on a particular subject.

Language is a pretty interesting subject, and I'm considering taking a psycholinguistics course next year. I was working in a lab about two years ago where the study involved Spanish-English and Chinese-English kids (the study had something to do with Chinese-English kids being better with English compound words while Spanish-English kids were better with morphemes...and the rest of the details escape me XD;;). The only Spanish word I remember from working on that study is "casa". ;;;;

We learnt the Hangul alphabet at the same time as learning the romanized pronunciations. And we learnt them in such a way that each Hangul character corresponded to an English word that started with the same letter (i.e. ㄴ looks like a nose and it has an n sound). It made memorization much easier, but it's harder to avoid thinking in romanized form.

I've never formally studied Japanese, but I find Japanese pronunciation to be easier than Korean as well. I wonder if I pronounce Korean words/phrases with an English or Chinese accent. XD

I think it's pretty awesome that you want to study all three! I've heard that Korean and Japanese are more similar in terms of structure and form, than compared to Chinese.

As for Korean keyboard, good luck.

I've seen those cute keyboard stickers floating around online -- since they're imported from Korea, they have the Korean alphabet on the stickers along with the English alphabet, so maybe I'll buy a set of those. ;)

Is English your first language? Or the language that you use the most? Chinese is technically my first language, but I'm far more proficient in English because I grew up speaking English and, like you, when I listen to or read Chinese, I still think in English.

I'm a native speaker of both since I was exposed to both since birth. But since I was born and raised in America, I grew up speaking mainly English (with a hint of surfer dude, but you can't tell online ^o~). I only speak in half Spanish to my mom though, and total Spanish to Spanish speakers. But if I know they speak English, then I'll speak that instead.

Japanese pronunciation is super easy since you only have pure syllables. The only time I have a problem is when you have "nr" together, like in "kunren". The easiest way for me to say it is "kunlen" which, even though is off from the correct pronunciation, it won't be caught by Japanese people since they can't differentiate between the r & l.

I think it's pretty awesome that you want to study all three!

Haha, thanks! I'm using the fact that Korean and Japanese are kind of similar to my advantage since they're both Subject Object Verb languages. And Chinese grammar is OVS like English (which I guess helps... in a way... but it doesn't make it any easier yet =/).

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