Slow-cooked Korean

[qeadz]

An attempt at a diary entry in Korean. I almost never write like this - usually I write as if I were saying it. So this is, as usual for this log, the raw uncorrected Korean!

일기 쓰는 시간!
이제 나는 HTSK’의 75 번쩨 레슨을 거의 다 마친다. 다음 달 내내 법문의 약점을 다시 연습할 것인다. 법문 빼고 검토하는 일이 없어서 좋은 점인 것 같다. 한국 드라마를 이해하는 능력이 아직 없는데 불구하고 내 생각에 진전을 진행됬다. 6 월 말에 난 CEFR에 ‘A2’ 정도 한국어 능력 대한 말할 수 있다면 좋겠다.
그렇다가 내 가족은 벤쿠버에서 다녀왈 것 때문에 한국어의 배우기 잠깐 동안 멈출 수도 있다! 하지만 그떼 아마도 좀 계속 배울 것인다.

Diary Writing Time!

I've almost finished the 75'th lesson in HTSK now. Throughout next month I'll practice my weak grammar points. Aside from grammar, things are good. Despite still not being able to understand Korean dramas, I think I've made progress. Hopefully I can say I'm A2 in the CEFR scale by end of June.
Then my family are coming to visit Vancouver so for a little while I might even stop my Korean study! But I'll probably continue doing a little study then regardless.

(As always the English is a bit more advanced than the Korean. It would pain me to actually write what I said in Korean.)

[qeadz]

Well, the correction is in! Oh man. So far to go!

법문 should be 문법. I know this! Why did I get the syllables swapped? derp...

것인다 should be 것이다. I could excuse myself by saying "I never write diary style so thats why" but really there is no excuse. Its very basic elementary conjugation which I have gotten wrong. Hope of being A2? Not with writing like this. Its embarrassing.

다녀왈 should be 다녀올. Typo! Oops.

There were some other corrections, but on the overall it wasn't terrible (elementary conjugation errors aside). Pretty much every time I write 'freestyle' in Korean, I find I'm trying to express things which 'bend' my knowledge of grammatical principles or words. So I just throw in what I hope makes sense and invariably get it rephrased or corrected.

In this bit of writing I felt my big gamble was:
6 월 말에 난 CEFR에 ‘A2’ 정도 한국어 능력 대한 말할 수 있다면 좋겠다.

I really had no idea how to express it. Heres the corrected version:
6월 말에 난 CEFR에 ‘A2’ 정도의 한국어 실력으로 말할 수 있었으면 좋겠다.

[qeadz]

A couple of things have happened recently to spur this post:

First I stumbled upon this in Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Korean/comment ... _you_know/

Now there aren't too many replies but it really shows up how differently learners evaluate themselves. Sure some learners may have learnt a more broadly applicable set of words than others, but I'm going to hazard a guess that it's tough to get to a couple thousand words without knowing most of the words from ones own study material.

I suspect most sets of study material aimed at beginners will have an extremely high amount of vocabulary in common - because the old "I'm a student" "I'm eating at a restaurant" "I'm going on holiday" are such good places to start.

The other thing which happened recently is that I was having dinner with my wife and some friends of ours. Upon arriving, one Korean friend chatted with my wife in Korean for a couple of minutes. I tried to follow the conversation.

What I did hear was that police had come and there was an investigation. Also talk about the 'incident'.

What I did not understand was anything about what the actual incident was (other than catching who was involved in this 'incident').

Afterward it was repeated in English as the friend assumed that, given I've been studying Korean, I'd been able to follow what was said. (She was quite surprised when I said basically "I have almost no idea what you said!").

Without going into detail, what she was describing would not be a typical event but the description of it would be well told with vocabulary which is not specialized or particularly formal.

So with my vocabulary being fairly small, but a good couple thousand words, what did this get me? Well I suspect the optimistic language learner would say "I basically just followed their conversation!" pointing out the understanding of 'police' and 'investigation'. However I have a very different view. To me the real meat of what was being told was the event which caused the police to show up. So in essence I caught bits 'here and there' but missed the message.

This furthers my point of view that I'm going to need to triple my vocabulary (and probably at least triple the amount of time I spend listening to spoken Korean) to really break into regular conversation. It may be that I require even more effort! I won't know until I get there.

So this lead me to thinking: what exactly qualifies as 'smalltalk' ?

To take a random example of small-talk I had in the elevator for our apartment building (and I don't remember exactly what was said):
Random person: "Oh you're living one floor under ground zero for the flood! How is it?"
Me: "Well you'll see when I reach my floor, but they've had to pull up all the flooring and remove the skirting boards. The water got in everywhere! Hopefully they'll sort things out with the insurers and get the foyer area restored."
Random person: "Yeah. It was a tenant breaking a sprinkler, wasn't it?"
Me: "Yep. Luckily we weren't directly underneath so our apartment doesn't have any significant damage. However on the night it happened I could hear the guy across from us mopping up water in his apartment!"

To me life it full of small-talk. THAT is small-talk.

However I suspect to the optimistic language learner, they would consider themselves quite capable after this kind of conversation:
Random person: "Oh you're living one floor under ground zero for the flood! How is it?"
Learner: There was lots of water. <pause> In future <pause> I hope it better becomes.
Random person: "Yeah. It was a tenant breaking a sprinkler, wasn't it?"
Learner: Yes. I am unhappy. A different guy <pause> in <pause> a <pause> different apartment was cleaning <pause> because so much water. <pause> At night. When water came.

Now I would LOVE to be able to freely have the second conversation - it would be a big milestone if I could do that without pausing between every second word to think. HOWEVER that is, to me, not really participating effectively in an adult conversation.

In my opinion the former conversation is a very high bar to set, but it *is* a great example of the kind of smalltalk I have with other random native speakers of English.

But clearly the latter conversation would be a strained conversation between the speakers in which the learner is barely managing to navigate the exchange. So I believe there is an inbetween conversation in which the learner has improved vocabulary, better grammar, and some degree of fluency in that they can overcome simple sentences without any significant pauses in the sentence.

Am I setting myself an unreasonably high bar for being somewhat proficient in smalltalk?

[Sayonaroo]

I think that bar is fine. you gotta speak a lot to improve.

[leosmith]

This furthers my point of view that I'm going to need to triple my vocabulary (and probably at least triple the amount of time I spend listening to spoken Korean) to really break into regular conversation. It may be that I require even more effort! I won't know until I get there.

Keep in mind that the listening skill level required to follow natives conversing amongst each other is far higher than to hold a one-on-one conversation.

[qeadz]

Keep in mind that the listening skill level required to follow natives conversing amongst each other is far higher than to hold a one-on-one conversation.

This is a good point. I'll allow myself a *little* slack on this one, but it was more of a monologue while the whole event was told. And as such not too dissimilar to me just listening to a podcast entry or such.

At any rate there is a lot of ground I do want to cover in the next year.

It is unfortunate that I've been fairly sick for 3 weeks now, and as such I've had a dip in my enthusiasm for Korean and ability to pay attention to it. One can't study with a 'cloudy' head

[qeadz]

EDIT: This intentionally written in a 'as if I were speaking style'.

KR: 다음 주에 저는 한국어의 진전을 검토하로 했습니다. LingQ의 통계에 의하면 지금까지 207000 이상 한국어 단어들을 읽었어요! 일주일 5 번쯤 LingQ에 수정을 하려 글을 게셨습니다. 그렇지만 말하는 연습을 아직도 못했습니다. 과거보다 요새 더 진전을 보일 수 있어도, 새러운 한국 오디오에 들을 때 차음으로 들으면 그의 내용을 이해할 수 없어요. 더 해야 하는 일이 있는 것 같아요.

EN: I've decided to review my progress in Korean next week. According to LingQ's statistics, I've read more than 207000 words in Korean thus far! A good 5 times every week I've posted something written in Korean to be corrected on LingQ. However I still haven't done any speaking practice. Even though I'm seeing progress compared to the past, whenever I hear any new audio in Korean, I find I can't understand it the first time through. It seems I have more work to do.

[qeadz]

The review begins. For the first part I decided to take an excerpt of text above my level and, with dictionary in hand (virtual!), attempt to translate into English. I did not obey the sentence structure as dictated by the Korean (thats actually really hard to do), but instead attempted to render the *meaning* of the text in English.

Here goes:

사람이 건강을 유지하고 생명을 지속하는 데는 무엇보다 음식이 중요하다. 지역과 인종과 풍토에 따라 주식에는 차이가 있다. 우리나라 사람들은 밥을 주식으로 하는 데 비해 유럽 사람들은 빵을 먹고, 몽고나 시베리아 등 한대 지방과 농업보다는 목축업을 주로 하는 지방에서는 고기를 주식으로 한다.

For maintaining health and prolonging life, food is more important than anything. There is a difference in diet according to ethnicity and region. While Korea has a staple food of rice, Europeans by comparison eat bread. Mongolia, Siberia and other polar regions primarily farm livestock, rather than grow crops, eating meat as their staple diet.

우리 조상들은 밥이 세계에서 가장 휼륭한 음식이라 생각하고 수천 년 동안 변함없이 주식으로 삼아 왔다. 조상들의 말을 빌리면 밥이 가장 훌륭한 음식인 이유가 바로 오행을 구비하였기 때문이라고 한다.

Our ancestors considered rice a most superb food, making an unchanging staple diet for thousands of years. To borrow the words of the ancestors, the reason rice is a superb food is that it is directly furnished by the five elements.

사람의 몸은 오행의 기질로 합성되어 있기 때문에 섭취하는 음식도 오행의 기운을 모두 갖춘 것이라야 함을 두말할 나위가 없다. 그런데 수많은 음식물 중에서 왜 오직 밥만이 오행의 기질을 모두 갖추었다고 하는 것일까?

A persons body is composed of the 5 elements' characteristics therefore it doesn't need to be said that food to be ingested is prepared with all the strength of the 5 elements. So why is it said that among a large number of foods and drinks, only rice contains all the characteristics of the 5 elements?

우선 쌀은 흙에서 생산되는 것이므로 토기의 집결체이다. 밥을 짓는 가마솥은 쇠로 만들었기 때문에 금기이고, 쌀을 솥에 앉히고 적당한 양을 맞추어 붓는 물은 수기이며, 나무에 불을 피워서 밥을 하므로 목기와 화기가 결합되었으니, 오행이 완전히 구비된다는 것이다.

Initially rice produced from the earth is gathered into earthenware. As the rice is made with an iron cauldron it is prohibited (taboo). Uncooked rice is placed in a pot and the correct amount of water is poured in by hand, wood is burned so the rice is combined in a wooden container, and is wholly infused with the 5 elements.

[qeadz]

I've highlighted the areas which I felt gave me difficulty while I was working through it. Heres why they gave me trouble:

1) 사람이 건강을 유지하고 생명을 지속하는 데는 무엇보다 음식이 중요하다.

The turning point around '하는 데는 무엇보다' is simply me having a poor understanding of the grammar involved. I did not have to look anything up in a dictionary. Initially I understood it to mean "Food is more important than things which people prolong life and maintain health with".

Of course I don't think this sentence goes both ways - grammatically I was wrong in my interpretation of it. However I did not realize this until I read the following sentence and discovered the discontinuity.

2) 기질로

I did not know this word, and upon looking it up, still did not know its meaning in this content. '기질' is listed as a disposition, tendency or cast of mind. I decided it would mean 'characteristics'.

3) 것이라야 함을 두말할

Once again grammar bites: the preceding clause is nominalized (correct term?) with the use of 것, but that then has 이라야 하다 added which is in turn nominalized again with 함을.

I can't explain exactly why this is confusing to me.

4) 집결체이다

The only portion of this which Naver knows is 집결. So perhaps '체' is a grammatical particle as of yet unknown to me. At any rate the construction didn't make sense because the way I read it was:
집결 (assemble,gather as a noun?) + 체 (?) + 이다 (exists)

So while I used 'is gathered' in the translation, I didn't feel comfortable using it as a verb.

5) 금기이고

I was simply off the mark using 'taboo/prohibited' and I knew it. The sentence didn't seem to make any sense.

The correction I received told me this context it means "the power (energy) of steel".

6) 하므로

I have no idea what '므로' is. A quick google shows it is lesson 103 in HTSK. Its simply something I was able to identify as grammar I had not covered yet.

7) 오행이 완전히 구비된다는

While I knew the literal translation would be '5 elements are being provided', but I couldnt really see it as a standalone sentence nor fit it to the sentence it was in and so I translated it as 'and is wholly infused with the 5 elements'.

However this is a departure from what the Korean says and I was corrected on this.

--
To see the corrections I did receive, they are in this Reddit posting here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Korean/comment ... anslation/

[Sc27]

However I still haven't done any speaking practice.

What methods will you use to practice speaking? Going for an Italki tutor? Or speak with your wife once in a while?