A Zen approach to language learning (Asian languages, but mainly Korean)

[AndyMeg]

Last year I didn’t update my log often, but I hope to be more active this year.

Here's a link to my log for 2022: For 2022, a Zen approach to language learning (Asian Languages, but mainly Korean)

I still continue with the Zen mindset, so I wanted to keep the title of last year's log, but start a new log not attached to a specific year. Thus, I’m opening this new log.

First, some updates for what I said in my previous log:

A few weeks ago I started to teach basic Korean to an acquaintance's daughter and that kind of put me back on the Korean learning track.

I’ve continued teaching her. As she is still a child, I’ve been using the free ebooks from the series “Coreano para la Comunidad Coreana Hispanohablante” as my main resource, but I’ve been adapting the material to best fit her way of learning, keeping in mind her age (9 years old).

A few weeks later I also got a second student. She is a young adult and she was looking for a tutor in Korean as she was taking a beginner’s Korean class as a complementary subject for her undergraduate degree, but the Korean teacher was going too fast for her (covering 2 full units of the first book of the Cyber Korean series from the King Sejong Institute per session. Each session being 2 and a half hours long). The first book of the series covers about 2 or 3 grammar points per unit and doesn’t have a dedicated section for learning Hangul (the Korean alphabet), so she was struggling with understanding the material of the units because she hadn’t had enough time to master Hangul first. What I understood from what she told me, was that the teacher did explain the basics of Hangul during the first 20 minutes or so of their first class, but after that he moved right into the book’s units and never looked back.

I tutored her for the rest of the semester and she passed the class. After that, she told me she really liked my way of teaching her and would like to continue learning Korean with me. She told me that she would like to start back from scratch, so she could have a more solid foundation in the language (which I couldn’t fully provide for her during our tutoring lessons, as we had a curriculum to catch up to, so that she could pass the final exam at the end of the semester and we were short on time because they were already one third into the book’s content when we started our tutoring sessions). I did provide her with a solid foundation in Hangul and pronunciation, though.

After she passed the exam and finished her Korean course at university we started our new, more relaxed, Korean classes near the end of last year, but then we took a break during December and January and came back around the beginning of February this year.

Having two students in different developmental stages (one being a child and the other a young adult) made me have to use different resources and implement different approaches with each one. And I really enjoy using my knowledge on language learning in general, to help my students have a joyful learning experience at the same time they develop actual language skills. This whole experience has made me think that in the future I would like to make language teaching/tutorship a more prominent part of my life. But for now I’m focusing on my two current students, and on improving my own Korean, as I want to have a more solid Korean level so I can be a better teacher.

As my mindset is still that of a Zen approach, I’ll talk about my current Korean related activities:

- First, just preparing my classes and teaching the language has helped me fill in some blank spots I had and also improve in some areas as well (like my pronunciation, which wasn’t bad to begin with; but got a lot better after teaching my students).

- Near the end of last year I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab S (a series that comes with a pen) and it has increased my productivity exponentially (not only on the language learning/teaching front, but also in other areas of my life). One of my favorite features from the tablet is that I can point the pen to a text in another language and then a pop-up window powered by Google translate opens up and gives me an instant translation to any language I choose.

- I’ve been watching the animated series “Voltron: Legendary Defender” with Spanish dubs and Korean subs.

- In my log from last year I talked about an app called “Mirinae”. I used it for a while, but then got busy with giving Korean classes and other stuff in my life and stopped using it.

Early this year I was planning on using Mirinae again, but it had gotten out of beta and was no longer a free app. At that time I had to prioritize other things, so I didn’t subscribe to it. But last month they were giving a 50% discount for the annual subscription and I paid for it.

Now I started to read Korean Webtoons again using the “Google translate” pop-up function from my tablet whenever I need it; and if I need more info, I copy-paste the text and put it into Mirinae for a more exhaustive analysis and deeper explanations. I’m enjoying this activity a lot!

By the way, if you don’t know about Mirinae, here’s is a short video about it:



Mirinae also has Korean grammar lessons, but for now the lessons are mostly for beginner's level:

Mirinae Lessons




As for Japanese...

I bought more complements for the Kanji Study Android app (The KLC Graded Reading Sets and both the Essentials edition and the Expert edition of the Outlier Kanji dictionary) and I’m excited about starting to use them soon.

I also found some graded podcasts with Japanese subs, and I plan to start listening/reading to the whole series starting from the most basic level as a way to refresh my Japanese (because I haven’t been using it much lately).

Here a video from the Begginer's podcast playlist:



Here a more advanced podcast from the same author:

[AndyMeg]

For the last week or so, I’ve been mostly focusing on experimenting and deciding how to use the resources I mentioned in my previous post.

KOREAN

Mirinae

As with my current subscription I can use all the features of Mirinae, I decided to slowly go through all the grammar lessons they have so far (a total of 70 for levels 1 and 2; and just about 7 for levels 3 and 5). As far as I know, they plan to continue adding more lessons, and just last week they added a new one for level 1.

Having said that, the grammar lessons won’t be my focus, just a complement I’ll use whenever I want to. And I’m also not going to follow a strict order: sometimes I’ll go in the order they are presented, and sometimes I’ll just choose one at random. But I’ll probably try to complete all lessons from one level before moving on to lessons from the next level.

The general structure of the lessons is as follows:

1) A short definition of the grammar point and how it is used.

2) Lesson goal, which usually says: “You’ll be able to say these kinds of sentences at the end of this lesson!” And then proceeds to show me 2 sentences with their corresponding audio.

3) Then there comes the main part of the lesson, which is divided into 4 sections: Vocab, Grammar, Practice, and Culture.

4) For the Vocab part, we review some words we’ll use in the lesson (each word comes in hangul with audio and we can tap on it to either show or hide its meaning).

5) For the Grammar part, they explain how the grammar point works and how it’s used. At the end of the section they show variants of the grammar pattern, and you can expand the sub-sections to see the examples of each variant with the corresponding audio for each example.

6) For the Practice part, there are interactive activities like matching the grammar pattern with the right complement, complete a sentence for which you have the English translation, “click the syllables and spaces in the correct order” to form the Korean equivalent of a sentence they give you in English, and “unscramble the sentence”.

7) For the Culture part (which is probably my favorite!) they show you examples of how the pattern appears in native content like songs. So far they’ve always used embedded videos from Youtube; but sometimes the content is no longer available, or you need to go to Youtube to be able to watch it, which becomes bothersome because the embedded video had the specific part with the pattern selected and you could easily tap on the replay icon to repeat that part as many times you wanted; but when you go to Youtube it shows you the whole video and you have to look for the pattern on your own.

For one of the lessons, they showed me a video of a funny song I really like. It’s called “Super Tuna” (슈퍼 참치) and it was produced by Jin (진) from BTS (방탄소년단) and BUMZU (범주) just for fun. Here’s the video:



8) After the Culture part, there’s a final check, to see if we really understand how the pattern works and is used. After you answer correctly, you are congratulated (참! 잘했어요) and ready to move on to a new lesson.

So far I’ve gone through 4 lessons from level 1 (lessons 1, 2, 12 and 19).


In the past few days, Mirinae also added a new feature to its sentence analyzer section: a listening practice tool.

The listening practice tool comes with the following features:

• Choose among 3 different speeds: 0.75x, 1x, and 1.25x.
• Choose the type of voice: male or female
• Select words or phrases to focus on
• Loop playback to practice (the loop can be for the whole sentence, or just for isolated parts with at least one full word in them)

I’m happy about this new feature, but I’m still not sure how I’ll go about using it. For now I’m just experimenting with it.


Reading Korean Webtoons

I got bored of the Webtoon I was reading, and started to look for new webtoons to read.
I have a few pre-selected webtoons, but I haven’t decided on any one yet.


JAPANESE

Kanji Study app

I decided to focus my study of kanji around the KLC (The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Course) complement because that is the one which can best integrate all the other complements I have bought in the app.

My first step to have the integration up and running in the “Kanji Study app”, was to change the Kanji Mode from the “Kanji Kentei” (漢字検定) levels which had been my previous setup, to the “Kanji Learner’s Course” order.

Next I decided to go to the KLC official website and look for instructions about how the original author suggest to go about the learning process while integrating all the resources.

Here is what I found:

This guide updates and unifies the instructions across all components of the KLC series, including the main KLC textbook (The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Course or “KKLC”), the KLC Graded Reading Sets (GRS) ebook series, the KLC Green Book (writing practice workbook), and the KLC Wall Chart. The instructions given below are grounded in academic research on language acquisition and literacy learning—research whose insights the KLC series was carefully designed to apply.

TLDR: Quick summary of KLC study process

• With the KLC method, you will learn kanji in the context of extensive reading. Be prepared to spend at least half your time on reading exercises. Set your goal as learning to read, not “finishing” the kanji.
• Start your day’s routine by using the KKLC, the GRS, and the Green Book to review recently learned material.
• Then use the Green Book to preview the day’s new kanji, and note any that are similar. This will prepare you to focus on how their distinctions relate to their respective meanings.
• Study a small number of new kanji in the KKLC, following the detailed instructions given in this guide. The number should be small enough that you can keep pace with your practice work in the Green Book and GRS.

o Read the annotation to understand how the kanji’s form relates to its meaning(s).
o Familiarize yourself with the kanji’s range of readings, but—with limited exceptions—do not bother to memorize them.
o Using your knowledge of the kanji you have studied so far, actively puzzle out the reading and meaning of the example words before looking at their glosses.

• Use the Green Book to practice writing your newly learned kanji several times, following the stroke order given in the KKLC. Save the last four squares for later practice.
• Read the Graded Reading Sets for your newly learned kanji, aloud.

o Use Scrolling Mode to hide the phonetic and English glosses off the bottom of your tablet screen. Actively puzzle out the pronunciation of each word, the meaning of each word, and the meaning of the overall item, before consulting its glosses.

• Replace massive SRS flash card study with massive GRS reading practice

o The GRS will allow you to internalize kanji and important kanji-based vocabulary with little need of flash cards.
o Do not bother to make “sentence cards” out of GRS exercises, which fulfill the same purpose.”

I don’t have all the exact materials mentioned above, but I do have all I need to follow the instructions:

• I have the main KLC textbook.
• The KLC Graded Reading Sets (GRS) ebook series is integrated into the “Kanji Study app” as a complement, so I don’t need the actual ebooks.
• I don’t have the KLC Green Book (writing practice workbook), but I can easily replace it with the writing practice section that comes in the “Kanji Study app”.
• I don’t have the KLC Wall Chart, but the “Kanji Study app” has options that allow me to view the kanjis in a similar way to how they are shown and organized in the KLC Wall Chart.

In addition to that, I’m also using both the Essentials Edition and the Expert Edition of the “Outlier Kanji Dictionary” that I have as complements within the “Kanji Study app”.

Because the main KLC textbook shows and explains 4 kanjis per page, I decided to study the kanjis in groups of 4, so that I cover 1 page of the main textbook and complement it with the other materials before moving on to the next 4 kanjis of the following page.

So here is my current process:

1) I preview the kanjis I’m about to study by using one of the viewing modes in the “Kanji Study app” (either the “grid view” or the “compact view”. The difference is that in the “grid view” they show more information like key associated meaning, while in the “compact view” they just show the characters without any additional info).

While I’m previewing the characters, I pay attention to the similarities and differences I find among them.

The KLC series is divided into 23 levels, each level with 100 kanjis. I first make a big preview of the whole current level (100 characters) and then I make a smaller preview of only the characters I plan to study at that time (4 kanjis).

2) Then I open the main the main KLC textbook and go through the 4 kanjis of the current page.

3) After that I practice writing all 4 kanjis and take a small quiz within the “Kanji Study app”.

First, I take the quiz with the “show answer” enabled, as I first just want to practice the right stroke order.

Then, I disable the “show answer” option, so that I have to completely retrieve from my memory the actual form of each of those 4 kanjis so that I can draw them on the app.

I repeat both versions of the quiz until I achieve a 100% accuracy score in each one.

4) I go to the info area of each of the 4 kanjis I’m studying and read the subsections from the “Outlier Kanji Essentials Edition”, and the “Outlier Kanji Expert Edition”.

5) I open the “Graded Reading Sets” section in the “Kanji Study app” and go through the reading exercises available for each of the 4 kanjis I’m focusing on.

6) At the end of the week I review all the characters I’ve studied so far.

One thing to keep in mind, is that I don’t go through all of these steps in just one session. It may take me more than a day to go through all these steps for each 4-kanji group.

There are more things I want to say about the whole process, but this is already getting too long, so I’ll leave them for a future post.

Podcasts

So far I’ve gone through the first three podcasts from the easy playlist (YUYU NIHONGO PODCAST MINI). I think these podcasts are a great resource for beginners because, besides coming with the Japanese transcript, the author complements them with images/photos of what he is talking about.

For me, these podcasts feel like a relaxing way to ease back into Japanese. I’m happy that I found them!

JPDB

I got to know about the website jpdb thanks to golyplot's log. For now I'm just having fun exploring it and experimenting with different possibilities. And I just recently added it as one of my pop-up dictionary options while using the "Language Reactor" complement/extension in Google Chrome (mainly for Netflix and Youtube videos).

[AndyMeg]

As the name of this log is “A Zen approach to Language learning” I would like clarify what “a Zen approach” means to me.

Basically, it means that I’ll just “go with the flow” and keep things as stress-free as possible.

My priorities are to feel engrossed and/or have fun while learning.

With this in mind, I’ll just do the activities I genuinely want to do at any given time. And I’ll modify or eliminate activities that feel stressful to me.

In light of this, I decided to become more flexible with the Mirinae lessons, as just the other day I wanted to do a lesson for a grammar point I had just encountered in native material and wanted to clarify; but I didn’t do it because it was a Level-2 grammar point and I had previously decided to not do lessons from a higher level if I hadn’t finished the lower levels before. That was very stupid on my part, because I put an artificial limitation to my learning that shouldn’t exist. So I’m officially lifting that limitation now.

Another thing I’m changing, is the step 6 for Kanji learning:

6) At the end of the week I review all the characters I’ve studied so far.

I do find value in reviews and I actually enjoy doing the reviews, but I don’t want to force a rigid schedule for them (like every weekend, for example). Instead, I’ll review previously studied Kanji in between the start of a new batch of 4 Kanji.



KOREAN

These last few days I’ve been using Mirinae quite a lot.

I downloaded Mirinae’s Google Chrome extension, and have been playing with it.

Sadly, I can’t use the extension for reading Webtoons on my PC, as those are in image format and the extension doesn’t recognize the text there; but I can use it with any Korean text that is not an image. And, fortunately, my Samsung tablet is really good at recognizing Korean text in image format when I point towards it with the pen, so I can copy-paste the text from the Google Translate pop-up window into Mirinae’s Andrid app.

In summary, Mirinae’s web extension is great for reading long texts while on the internet in my PC; while Mirinae’s Android app is what I use while reading webtoons in my tablet.

As Mirinae’s web browser was not able to help me read webtoons, I decided to explore Naver’s webnovels section.

For now I’ve started reading a webnovel about Korean idols, as I’m familiar with the Kpop world, and I thought it would be easier to understand than other stories that also caught my attention.

I think I finally decided on a webtoon to read too; but I have yet to finish a chapter of either the webnovel or the webtoon.

For the webtoon I’m already familiar with almost all the grammar I’ve found so far but, as Korean is an agglutinative language, I like to see long sentences divided/analysed in Mirinae so I make sure I’m getting all the nuances.

In the webnovel I’ve found more grammar I’m not familiar with, but my main problem for a smooth reading both in the webtoon and the webnovel is my lack of enough vocabulary; so I’m going really slow with both.

I also started to watch a Korean survival reality show called “Siren” (사이렌) with the help of the “Language Reactor” extension in Netflix. I have dual Korean-English subs enabled, but the English subs are hidden unless I want to make sure I understood the Korean right.

Although I understand the meaning, I find the following type of construction somehow “funny” when I compare it with how it would be said in either English or Spanish:

미끄러지면 안돼!

(Which would be translated something like: “Don’t slip!” But literally is constructed more along the lines of: “if you slip, that’s prohibited/that’s a big no”). Although I just thought of a slangy way you could use a similar construction in Colombian Spanish: Si te resbalas, ¡pailas!


JAPANESE

I’m loving finally using the Outlier complements in a more structured manner. I’m learning so many interesting things about kanjis and even a bit of Chinese history with them!

Outlier Linguistics divide each Kanji into four types of possible components: form component, meaning component, sound component, and empty component.


Here a summary of what they say about each type of component:





I really like the division into these four types of components because it helps me make a lot more sense of each Kanji than just guiding myself by radicals. According to what I’ve understood from what the people of Outlier Linguistics say, radicals’ main purpose is to be able to easily search and find Kanji in a dictionary. They talk more in deep about this in the following post:

Getting radical about radicals: Why you should think of kanji in terms of functional components.

The expert section of the “Outlier Kanji Dictionary” complement usually shows how a character was “written” in different periods of Chinese history and using different types of materials. In relation to that, I found really interesting the explanation they give for 日:

As its original meaning was/is “sun”, at the beginning it was written as a round shape. But it was difficult to carve round shapes in bone (Shang Dynasty Oracle Bone Script), so it ended up being carved in a more square-like form; but that way it could be easily confused with other square-shaped kanji, so they decided to put a “distinguishing mark” at the center to avoid confusion. And that's why we have the form we know today: 日.

Talking about “distinguishing marks”, they show the example of 見, which at the beginning meant both “to see” and “to appear”. But, later, people decided to add a “distinguishing mark” to differentiate between both meanings. So, 見 kept the meaning of “to see”, but 現 became the new way of writing “to appear”.

[AndyMeg]

I was sick for a few days and then I focused on prep work for my July’s CampNaNoWriMo creative writing project; so I haven’t done much in relation to language learning for the past week or so.


KOREAN

One day I wanted to continue reading the webnovel, but as it had been a few days since the last time, I decided to read everything from the beginning again. I did reach a further point than what I had read before, so I guess I made some progress. But I’m still on chapter 1.

One new vocabulary that caught my attention was 가죽 (leather), as it is really similar to a word I’m very used to: 가족 (family).

A funny thing happened the next day when my sister and I started to watch a K-drama called “Tale of the Nine Tailed” (구미호뎐) with English subs: as the day before I had been reading the webnovel with the help of Mirinae, I subconsciously started to dissect the Korean dialogues I was hearing in the drama as they would be dissected in Mirinae. I wasn’t making a conscious effort for that, it just felt like a program running in the background of my mind while we were watching the drama.

From time to time I like to watch the video essays “boracity magazine” makes on Youtube. I really liked the last one I watched from her, titled “bts are rockstars”. I’ve been a fan of BTS (방탄소년단) for many years now, and I think the essay was spot on with some of the reasons why I love BTS so much.



By the way, this month we are celebrating their 10th year anniversary since their debut. Even though two of them are currently fulfilling their military duty, they prepared a lot of surprises for ARMY (their fans) before they left. Some hours ago they realesed this video of them singing live their most recent single that was a gift to ARMY:



And Jimin (지민) also recently released a live video of him singing my favorite (hidden) track from his solo album "Face": 편지 (Letter - Dear. ARMY):



A very popular phrase within the fandom is this: 아포방포, which is the shortened version of 아미 포에버, 방탄 포에버, literally meaning “ARMY Forever, Bangtan Forever”. It was first said by Jungkook (정국) some years ago.

I find it very interesting how Koreans tend to use a lot or koreanized English words and expressions in their daily lives. I like watching programs where they have to try to only use Korean words when speaking without adding any koreanized English into the mix. It's usually a big challenge for them. They tend to lose a lot of points!

[Lawyer&Mom]

I’m watching Tale of a Nine-Tailed now too! Great fun.

Okay, I’m super deep into KDrama and I’ve collected a constellation of actors I adore. So of course western media seems to only follow K-pop, about which I know next to nothing. (Apart from a few idols who pop up in dramas…) How does one get a taste of BTS, which is clearly the epicenter of the K-pop world? Where on earth do you start?

[Gaoling97]

That Outlier Dictionary is extremely useful. The people who made it clearly have put a ton of work into it and have a very good academic background in character etymology. I like that they provide sources that can even debunk a lot of folk etymologies. E.g. 道 has something to do with heads being carried through the streets...nope, it's just that 道 and 首 were pronounced similarly in Old Chinese. 黑 (Japanese shinjitai 黒) has fire on the bottom because things turn black when burnt...nope, it's a drawing of a person with a tattooed face, and the "fire" comes from a graphical corruption of what used to be a body.

Probably doubly so with Japanese. Considering the (as far as I can tell) extremely haphazard way Chinese characters were applied to Japanese, you're going to need all the help you can get lol (and I am glad I learned the characters through Chinese first).

(Incidentally, I think the way they are used in Korean is much more logical...or at least it was when they were still frequently used.)

[AndyMeg]

I’m watching Tale of a Nine-Tailed now too! Great fun.

Yeah! My sister and I are enjoying it so far!

Okay, I’m super deep into KDrama and I’ve collected a constellation of actors I adore. So of course western media seems to only follow K-pop, about which I know next to nothing. (Apart from a few idols who pop up in dramas…) How does one get a taste of BTS, which is clearly the epicenter of the K-pop world? Where on earth do you start?

I'll be happy to help you with this as best as I can.

Me, loving stories in any format, I've been usually more into Kdramas than Kpop as well, and it was actually thanks to a Kdrama that I got into BTS.

I've been a fan of Park Seo-Jun (박서준) since I first watched him acting in a Kdrama called "Kill Me, Heal Me" (킬미,힐미) back in 2015. And I was excitedly waiting for his new drama "Hwarang" (화랑) in 2016. In that drama, Kim Tae Hyung (김태형), a member of BTS, plays the character of Seok Han Sung (석한성). Here is an image of him in the drama:



Taehyung (태형) and Jin (진), another BTS member, sung a song for the OST of that drama, titled "It's Definitely You" (죽어도 너야):



Half of the Hwarang group were mainly actors, while the other half were mainly idols. For one scene they had to do an improvised sword dance and you can clearly see the "mainly actors" group being somehow awkward while the "mainly idols" group is having the time of their lives with the choreo :





If you feel interested in watching the drama, or if you have already seen it, maybe you'll enjoy watching "The Behind Story of HWARANG" video.

Thanks to the drama, some of the cast became really close with one another. Three of them (Park Seo-Jun, Taehyung/V from BTS and Park Hyung Sik) became really close friends, and together with Choi Woo Shik (who acted in the movie "Parasite") and Peakboy, formed what is known as the "Wooga Squad" in the Korean entertainment industry. Last year they even released a vacation trip reality show called: "IN THE SOOP : Friendcation" which is a spin-off of a staycation reality show, called "In the Soop", which featured all seven members of BTS.


Now, more onto BTS as a whole group, you may want to check out these two guides that are very complete, and complement each other rather well:

A Guide to BTS Members: The Bangtan 7

The Most Beautiful Life Goes On: A Story of BTS (2023 Update!)
(By the way, this guide says it's the 2023 Updated version, but so far it only goes up around early 2022. They may make a true 2023 update in the future, though.)

BTS' journey from rags-to-riches is one of the most compelling and inspiring real life "underdog" stories I've ever seen.

At the time of their debut, their company, Big Hit Enterteinment (빅히트 엔터테인먼트), was struggling a lot financially and was near bankruptcy. They bet it all on BTS.

At the beginning, around 2010, the concept idea for BTS (방탄소년단) was for it to be a hip-hop group; but in the end (by 2013) Big Hit decided to debut them as an idol group (probably because it was a "safer" bet). But, with the rappers being the first members of BTS to be recruited, they were at the core of their earliest songs and you could feel a heavy hip-hop influence in the group.

This is their debut song (you can turn on the English captions):



In this song they ask their audience about their dreams, and ask them if they will settle for what adults and society expect from them, or if they will put in the effort required and fight for their own dreams.

You can read the full lyrics (in Korean and English) here, with added contextual information to understand it better: No More Dream - doolset lyrics

(By the way, the doolset lyrics blog is a great place in general to get more context about the deeper meaning and wordplay used in BTS' songs)

When BTS debuted (in 2013), there were three big companies in the world of Kpop (known as "The Big Three"): SM Enterteinment, YG Enterteinment and JYP Enterteinment.

As Big Hit was a small company, they didn't have all the connections and money that "The Big Three" had, so BTS had a hard time finding spots to promote themselves in the traditional way (music shows, going as guests to variety show programs, being interviewed, etc.) So Big Hit promoted them in a non-traditional way: through Youtube videologs of the members even before their debut. Creating their own variety show called "Run BTS" (by the way, there's also a song by them with the same name, and another song called "Run"), doing livestreams (first in "Vlive" and now in "Weverse"), sharing behind-the-scenes content of them in their Youtube channel, doing travel/staycation reality shows (like "BTS: Bon Voyage" and "BTS In The Soop"), etc.

With all their non-traditional content and their authenticity, being very genuine and grateful towards their fans, the bond between BTS and ARMY bloomed and became stronger with each new struggle to overcome.

In 2016, BTS was the first idol group not part of "The Big Three" to win a grand prize. They were so surprised by their own win at that time, that you could see it reflected in their faces:



I think someone who played a huge part on BTS success was the founder of Big Hit Enterteniment: Bang Si-hyuk (방시혁). The one on the left was the slogan of the company for most of BTS' career:



I think the slogan "Music & Artist for Healing" really showed the values of Bang Si-hyuk (방시혁) and BTS (방탄소년단). Sadly, the slogan was changed in 2021 when the company expanded so much that it was rebranded and renamed as HYBE Corporation, and the label "Big Hit Enterteinment" was renamed as "Big Hit Music" and became a subsidiary of HYBE.

I think many factors helped the BTS members get really close to one another and develop a deep bond with each other: Bang Si-hyuk (방시혁) instructed from the very beginning for BTS to solve all of their conflicts as a whole group, even if the conflict was only between two members. And Kim Seokjin (김석진), even if he is the oldest, is very chill out about his age in the group, and not too strict or obsessed with hierarchy. That, plus their great leader RM/Namjoon (김남준), and all the struggles they faced together, among other things, helped all BTS members to become true family for each other. They have a very beautiful and deep bond you can feel whenever they interact with one another.

BTS were given more creative freedom than what's usual for most idols. They have actively participated (specially the rap-line) in the creation of their songs and albums together with the in-house producers, composers and songwriters.

BTS has released lots of songs, in diferent genres, most of them with deep lyrics, not only as a whole group, but also as sub-units (like the rap-line and the vocal-line, among others) and even solo songs and full solo albums (and/or mixtapes) as well. I love their songs, and they take them to a whole new level during their live performances. They are ones of the greatest performers I've ever seen.

Here some of their live performances:

As a whole group:





From the rap-line:



From the vocal-line:




Oh!, By the way, as you are interested in Kdramas, maybe you'll enjoy their Bangtan Universe (BU) storyline that runs through their MVs marked as "BU" plus other media content like notes, a webtoon and a game. In that storyline, they play fictional characters with the same name as their real-life names. Here's a trailer they made for a game based on that story:



The first video of that storyline is this one:



And there's an actual Kdrama, based on the Bangtan Universe Story, on the works (sadly, none of the BTS members will act in it). It seems the name of the drama will be "Youth" and here is a teaser:



Also, if you are interested in variety shows, maybe you'll enjoy watching "Run BTS". Here's a funny episode, from last year, of the BTS members trying to learn "Flying Yoga":





The Run BTS episodes used to be only on Vlive (which in now closed) and Weverse; but now they are also available on Youtube.

You may also want to slowly check out this multi-chapter fan-made documentary about the journey of BTS from their very beginnings:

THE RISE OF BANGTAN



There is a saying used by BTS and their fans (ARMY):

"I purple you" which is based on the fusion of the color purple that represents the bond between BTS and ARMY, and the phrase "I love you". The korean version is 보라해, which comes from 사랑해 (I love you) + 보라색 (violet/purple).

Nowadays the BTS members are slowly going, one by one, to fullfil their military duty. So far, two members (Jin and J-Hope) are already serving in the military and soon more of them will join. BTS is expected to resume full group activities around 2025 after all of them have come back from the military. For now they are mostly focused on individual projects, but still promoting as BTS.



I hope this post was somehow helpful to you.

With 10 years worth of content, there's so much to explore in relation to BTS.

I hope you enjoy your journey getting to know BTS!

And if you want recommendations about specific solo songs from each member, or want to ask anything else about BTS, I'll be happy to help you as best as I can.

[Lawyer&Mom]

Thank you for the comprehensive response! I love PSJ, and Heal Me, Kill Me! (He is a pretty good singer himself!) I haven’t seen Hwarang, but that sword dance was pretty funny.

Here’s another amusing PSJ, BTS and the difference between idols and actors story:

https://www.koreaboo.com/news/idol-vs-a ... s-kitchen/

[AndyMeg]

Thank you for the comprehensive response!

You're welcome!

I love PSJ, and Heal Me, Kill Me! (He is a pretty good singer himself!)

Yes, he is! He has a really sweet and soothing voice:

I haven’t seen Hwarang, but that sword dance was pretty funny.

Yeah!

Here’s another amusing PSJ, BTS and the difference between idols and actors story:

https://www.koreaboo.com/news/idol-vs-a ... s-kitchen/

So interesting! I had never thought about that comparison before!

Talking about PSJ and Taehyung/V, I don't know if you have watched PSJ's drama "Itaewon Class" (이태원 클라쓰). Taehyung/V from BTS sung a song for the OST:




By the way, there was a BTS song I wanted to recommend to you in my previous post but, as it was getting too long, I forgot. So I'll just tell you about it here.

The song is called "Spring Day" (봄날) and is one of my all time favorites from them. It has continuously been on the Korean Music Charts since its realase in 2017. Here's the MV:



Here are the lyrics (both in Korean and English) with added explanations: 봄날 (Spring Day) - doolset lyrics

Here is a fan's theory that digs deep into the hidden meanings of both the song and the MV:

BTS Spring Day MV EXPLAINED | Sewol Ferry, Snowpiercer & Survivors

And here an additional article about the topic:

BTS Spring Days and the Sewol-Ho Tragedy. A pure Magical Coincidence.

[AndyMeg]

Hi!

During June I mainly focused on preparing for July’s CampNaNoWriMo and left most of my language learning to the side.

Now, I’m participating in CampNaNoWriMo.

For my current writing project, I’m working using a mix of Spanish and English for my notes, story worldbuilding, storypedia and also for writing some scenes and dialogues snippets.

I’m not sure in what language the final story will be written in. Or, if I end with a hybrid, I’ll have to completely translate it to one language or another, or maybe to both at a later stage. For now, I’m just using the language that feels right at each moment.

I’ve been dealing with a cold since last weekend, but today I’m feeling a bit better and so I decided to do some language learning activities.

I continued reading the Korean webnovel’s first chapter from the point I had stopped at last time. I’m reading it using the browser complement version of “Mirinae” and I really enjoy how I have everything in one place (vocabulary, audio, grammar explanations, etc.) and how it makes the process better optimized than with other apps I had tried before. I actually prefer the browser complement for now, because for the Android app I need to take more steps in order to use the app (select the text by pointing with the pen to my tablet using the Google Translate pop-up function and then copy-paste it into Mirinae). I think this may be one of the reasons why, for now, I feel more inclined to use the web browser complement rather than the Android app, and thus, I’ve not been much into reading the webtoons lately (because I can’t use Mirinae’s browser complement for them and having to point the pen to my tablet and press the pen’s button each time and then copy-paste the text into Mirinae gets tiring after a while).

Now, changing topics a bit, do you remember the funny side-effect I talked about in a previous post?

A funny thing happened the next day when my sister and I started to watch a K-drama called “Tale of the Nine Tailed” (구미호뎐) with English subs: as the day before I had been reading the webnovel with the help of Mirinae, I subconsciously started to dissect the Korean dialogues I was hearing in the drama as they would be dissected in Mirinae. I wasn’t making a conscious effort for that, it just felt like a program running in the background of my mind while we were watching the drama.

Well… We’ve continued slowly watching the K-drama (with English subs) and the weird effect I described disappeared after a few days of not using Mirinae. I feel curious if the effect will come back now that I’ve started to use Mirinae again for reading the webnovel.

Talking about Mirinae…

I’ve started to watch a K-drama in intensive mode, using Language Reactor in Netflix and Mirinae. The drama is called “The Good Bad Mother” (나쁜엄마).

For this I have the auto-pause activated. It shows the Korean closed captions, and it has the English translation hidden. I also have the Language Reactor’s side panel open, so I can easily navigate between lines and use Mirinae.

First, I listen to the audio while reading the Korean closed captions and try to see if I understand the meaning. If there’s something I don’t understand, I use Mirinae via the side panel. And if after that there’s still something I would like to clarify, then I uncover the hidden English subs and read them.

Something I like more about Mirinae in comparison to Language Reactor is that it parses the lines more accurately, which makes the whole experience flow better.

I remember some time back when I used Language Learning With Netflix (A.K.A. LLWN, former name of Language Reactor) that it frustrated me when the words and grammar where not correctly divided, and so the definitions from the pop-up dictionary didn’t make sense for a particular line. The idea of using LLWN was to have everything in one place, but when I had to open another window to look for the definition of a word or for a grammar explanation, it took me out of the story I was watching and that made it lose part of the charm of learning while watching a drama or a movie.

I’ve heard that the team developing Mirinae are planning to expand their languages offer in the future. If they do, I’d be more than happy to try Mirinae with other languages as well.