Amanda Takes Off...

"[Good Man], how many words is 할 수 있다? One, two, three?" Koreans are rather lazy about spacing words. 할수있다, 할수 있다, 할 수 있다... Eh, whatever.

"Four," he replied.

"Four?" I'd never seen 할 수 있 다.

"Yeah, 할...수...있...다."

Turns out, you don't count words in Korean, you count 글자 (syllables).

I finished Pippi (in Korean) Saturday night. I started reading it November 9th, so it took four weeks to finish it. It was surprisingly enjoyable. I rarely used the dictionary, guessed at a lot of meaning, and didn't worry (too much) about parts I didn't understand.

I studied Spanish in high school for one year and in college for two years. Apparently this was supposed to make me functional in the language (ha!). Yet I was never asked to read a book for pleasure in Spanish. We always studied the language deeply—focusing on short passages and chewing them up and spitting them out. This meant that I always focused on the vocab I didn't know and I didn't really grow confident in my ability. I wonder if my attitude would've been different if I'd been given the option to just...read.

To that end, I am reconsidering my language learning goals for 2010. I usually set goals based on my Sogang books and then I fail because I get stuck on lessons I don't like, such as pharmacy words (I'm looking at you, Sogang 3B, lesson 3!).

Instead, I've decided to read 1,000,000 글자 in Korean in 2010.

One million words averages out to 2,740 words a day. Pippi was about 62,000 글자. If I'm really going to reach this goal, it means most of my pleasure reading will be done in Korean.

Since it's hard to get books I like in Korean around here (even at the Korean bookstore), my list of books to buy has gotten longer.

Books
Three Pippi books
Diary of Anne Frank (and the cartoon version)
Half Magic
Super. Naive.
Chronicles of Narnia (complete set)

I also have 소나기 (a Korean tale) and some other short stories to get through. I'm sure I'll think of some more books to add...

삐삐, 186쪽

다음아는 응접실에 가서 벽지에다 커다란 그림을 그렸다. 빨간 드레스를 입고 검은 모자를 쓴 뚱뚱한 부인 그림이었다. 부인은 한 손에 노란 꽃을 들고 다른 손에는 죽은 쥐를 들고 있었다.

"야! [굿멘]야. 여기 와 줘!" Hey, [Good Man]! Please come here.

Good Man entered the bedroom. "응?"

I read some sentences to him and then switched to English. "Does that say that Pippi was drawing a big picture...somewhere in the house?"

"Yes."

"And it was a woman with a red dress and a big, black hat? And she held a green—"

"Yellow."

"Yellow flower in one hand? And a dead rat in the other?"

Good Man nodded.

I shook my head. "Man. Pippi is weird."

What in the hell is North Korea doing?

North Korea said Monday it would issue new won currency this week that would in effect lop two zeros off the old -- requiring 1,000-won bills, for example, to be exchanged for 10-won notes with, theoretically, the same buying power. It said it would limit the amount of old currency it would accept in exchange, to the equivalent of about $40 worth at unofficial exchange rates.

[...]

[Open Radio for North Korea] also reported that the exchange restrictions did not apply to Chinese people inside North Korea and, as a result, some North Koreans were trying to exchange old money with Chinese.

Meanwhile, college students were told they could exchange only the equivalent of about $9 in old money, reported Good Friends, a Buddhist charity group based in Seoul and Washington with a network of contacts in North Korea.

It also reported instances of wealthy people from cities rushing to rural areas on Monday in hopes of buying commodities with the old currency before people in those areas heard about the exchange process.

So the communist country and its Dear Leader takes care of the citizens by limiting their savings to $9 or $40 unless they're Chinese, in which case they can have as much money as they want? Nice way to treat your pure Korean blood.

A few weeks ago I wrote that my limit in reading Pippi (or anything else) in Korean was about 20 minutes.

Well, Sunday night I broke through. I finished the circus chapter and read the entire burglar chapter in 삐삐. It took me 45 minutes. And I understood damn near everything in the burglar chapter. I was enjoying myself and didn't want to stop reading.

Now I'm on the coffee party chapter and back to feeling more confused.

Sigh.

Pippi Longstocking is one of my literary heroes. She's street smart, funny, and sassy. And she lives alone and doesn't go to school. At nine!

So it should be no surprise that I own several copies of the book. I own two in English (the one I got in second grade...and the one I bought in Korea), one in Swedish (Pippi Långstrump), and one in Korean (삐삐 롱스타킹).

Pippi was written by Astrid Lindgren, a Swedish author, so the English is a translation of course (by Florence Lamborn). And I find it very interesting to see how the translators deal with this book.

In chapter 4 ("Pippi börjar skolan," "Pippi Goes to School," "어린이에게 학교가 팔요한 이유 단 한 가지"), Pippi goes to school.

In the Swedish version she learns the letters i and o with the words igelkott (hedgehog) and orm (snake). When she's shown the o/orm, she's told that the snake is in the shape of an o. (There's even a picture to go with it in the book.) She says the i looks a streak with a fly over it. She says the o reminds her a time she dealt with a snake in India...

In the English version she's shown an i for ibex and s for snake. The S is in the shape of a snake, as you can imagine. She says the i looks like a fly speck and the snake reminds her of India...

Of course, Korean doesn't use the Latin alphabet. She's shown a ㄱ with the example of 고슴도치, which is hedgehog. (No, I did not know that word before reading this book, and it's not a word I will bother memorizing.) She's shown a picture of a snake to teach ㅂ (뱀). Pippi says ㄱ looks like a rod with fly poop (똥) on it. (I don't get why it's fly poop...maybe Brian's theory that Koreans like poop is true.) And for ㅂ, she goes on about the Indian snake.

In the Swedish version, when talking about a math problem, the monetary unit was kronor and öre (of course). The English version uses quarters and cents. The Korean version uses kronor and öre with a translator's note.

I wonder how other non-Latin alphabet languages make a letter look like a fly and a snake...

Paul has an interesting discussion about journal writing in a foreign language going on in the comments section of a recent post.

One of the comments left was that the writer tended to write simple sentence in Japanese that he knew were correct. I wrote that I've read that students don't get much benefit from corrections (whereas reading seems to improve writing). And Paul (and a few others) commented that keeping up a journal can be hard in any language because sometimes you just don't know what to say.

One of the reasons I included writing in my Korean study plan was because I think writing is important. And when I write in Korean, I can post it on my Cyworld page and share it with Good Man's family. But I limited it to one page a week (though I usually go over that) so as not to force myself to write more than I can really think of. And I write simple sentences.

I used to try and use new structures and I used to try and make sentences with complicated structures. Now I write what I think it right (even though it's not always right). And despite the studies that show corrections don't help, I post my writing on Lang-8. I do so more to get feedback on how understandable my writing is, rather than to get corrections. Of course, that feedback often comes in the form of corrections. But the most useful feedback is the form of the feedback itself.

"I don't understand. What do you mean?" means I have obviously failed at communicating. "I think I understand, do you mean...?" means I've mostly failed. "You need X instead of Y" is a correction but I was probably still understood.

"I understood X but we usually say Y" is a correction. "You could say X instead of Y" is showing another way to use the language. "괜찬은데 위에는 계속 반말로 하다가 여기서 존댓말 쓰니까 이상합니다. 그냥 '식당을 알아?' 라고 쓰는게 자연스럽습니다" is a "that makes sense but sort of sounds funny in Korean because you just changed tones completely" point. My usage was not wrong but it wasn't exactly right.

These various corrections show me how well I'm using what I think I understand. I've found that the more I use structures I think I know (instead of using structures I think I should know, or structures that look fancy) the more of those really useful, "you could also..." corrections I get. And those sorts of corrections make my reading clearer...which in turn makes my writing clearer, which...

I've been reading in Korean nightly for about three weeks now and I've realized that 20 minutes at a time is my Korean reading limit. It doesn't matter what I'm reading—a graphic novel, a children's book with illustrations every few pages, a newspaper article, something online—and it doesn't matter the time of the day or night. After about 20 minutes my brain stops understanding what I'm reading. I'll try to force through it only to realize I didn't get a word of the last half page I was reading.

I'm starting to accept it. As I learn more Korean and study more consistently and get used to reading in Korean, my endurance will increase!

(Actually, the 20 minute limit it nice. I read 삐삐 in bed and I know in 20 minutes I'll be sleepy!)

Years ago, I set up my website's email to go to my Google Apps account. It involves setting MX somethings, and I don't even know what that means.

Whenever anyone comments on this blog, uses the Contact Me form, or registers as a user, I get notification of it.

Or... I used to.

It quit working several months ago and I was busying dealing with legally marrying Good Man and planning a wedding and dealing with immigration. And I could still see comments and who registered, so I figured, eh, glitch.

Well, tonight I went and logged into my host's email in a round about way and found several dozen emails dating back from February. Emails which were nice, and kind, and had questions, and expected a reply! Emails which used my contact form...

Dammit! I feel like an ass! I love getting reader comments and email and try to respond (especially to emails) and now I look like a jerk.

So if you randomly get an email from me tonight, answering something you asked me months ago... Sorry.

I called to Good Man from the bedroom. "천국 is 'heaven' right?"

"어."

I called out again, "So is 천사 'person living in heaven'?"

"Angel!"

"Oooh! So I was mostly right!"

"No, it's not person living in heaven. It's angel!" he replied.

"An angel is a person living in heaven."

Good Man partly conceded. "OK, part right."

I'm making a list of things to bring to Korea. I'm also making a list of things to do, people to see, and books and things to buy. These are in-development lists.

Bring
Clothes for Master's kids
Clarins glosses for Sister and Master's Wife
Obama gifts for Master
Vitamins and the like for Good Man's "health check generation" family members
Honey powder

Books
내 이름은 삐삐 롱스타킹 (만화 version)
꼬마 백만 장자 삐삐
삐삐는 어른이 되기 싫어
안네의 일기 (만화 version)

Buy
Socks
Notebooks
Stupid English t-shirts
More $10 pencils
ETA: Glasses! Where else can you get my prescription and frames for under $100? (No idea how the weak won will affect it, but I'm wearing some awesome $50 glasses right now...)

See
Good Man's Family
Master
Diana
A and CH (Jeonju friends)
Aunt Mo

Do
Go to a 찜질방 (never done it, seriously)
Photography with Sister
Learn to make gimbap well
Go to Jeonju to meet Good Man's Family
Taekwondo (!)
Meet Paul