Learning Korean 10: I told you so

In keeping with my decision to slow down and get my head out of the textbook (and ignore its demands that I keep cramming in vocabulary and new grammar), I've been focusing on one thing for about a month now: the indirect reporting construction. 

This is the "said that" construction, as in "I said that it was cold yesterday."

What makes this difficult (beyond it just being a new construction in Korean) is the different, but related, forms it can take: in the future tense, instead of -다고, -ㄹ거라고 is used

학생이 수업을 다녀요. "The student attends class."

저는 학생이 수업을 다닌다고 했어요. "I said that the student attends class." (Compare with 저는 학생이 수업을 다닐거라고 했어요. "I said that the student will attend class.")

In the future, it's 저는 학생이 수업을 다닐거냐고 물어봤어요. "I asked whether the student will attend class."

저는 학생이 수업을 다니는지 물어봤어요. How this differs from the form above, I don't really understand. I also don't understand what happens when subjects are omitted in these kinds of indirect statements and questions. The subtleties multiply. I'm just trying to keep up with the rudiments.

Incidentally, the direct reporting construction ("I said, quote, it was cold yesterday, unquote.") is very similar to the indirect reporting construction: instead of -다고 it uses 라고.

저는 학생이 수업을 다녀요라고 헀어요. "I said 'the student attends class.'" (Notice how the original sentence—학생이 수업을 다녀요—appears completely intact here, followed by 라고, which acts like a closing quotation mark.)

Anyway, this is what I've been doing: writing sentences and then "converting" them into indirect statements and questions, one after another, hoping the repetition somehow hammers it home.

On Tutoring

I just wrapped up another quarter of volunteer ESL tutoring at Seattle Central College. This was, I think, my fifth quarter, and I still really enjoy it. I like feeling that I can play a role in someone's life, helping to introduce them to English, to Seattle, to the US. I admire these students, who have probably had to overcome far more than I have, and I'm proud to have the chance to help them. Unlike previous quarters, this quarter I had only one student. R is from Somalia. She's peppery. That's the best word I can think of to describe her. She is prone to kvetch, not shy about complaining. But she warmed up to me, and we would laugh as we read together from her workbook or when I quizzed her on past tense forms.

I still think that's one of the toughest things about English. It's just so confounding, the way the language forces you to memorize unguessable exceptions to everyday words, words you'll use and encounter in every English conversation. It seems so mean. R had trouble with this. She couldn't remember some of the most common irregular verbs, and she resorted to a workaround: did leave for left. I told her that didn't sound very natural, but it was good enough for her.

Prepositions in general were difficult, too: I came six o'clock. The truck leave Somalia. She talked him.

Another thing many English learners, including R, have a great deal of trouble with is articles. I'm thinking specifically of the fact that English forbids certain nouns—singular count, or countable, nouns—from appearing naked: *I ate cookie. *We visited museum. *When playing soccer, the man broke finger.

In each of these almost-but-not-quite-English sentences, a singular count noun (cookie, museum, finger) appears without an article. (Actually, what they lack is a determiner, of which articles are one type.) You have to use a determiner with a singular count noun: for instance, I ate the cookie; We visited that museum; When playing soccer, the man broke his finger.

I have seen English learners from all kinds of linguistic backgrounds produce sentences like those, sentences with bare singular count nouns. This particular mistake seems pretty resistant to correction. In my solipsism I always wonder: How can they not hear how... unfinished that sounds? I know that's a dumb reaction. They don't hear it because they haven't yet mastered this arbitrary requirement of English. Just as I haven't yet mastered plenty of arbitrary requirements of, say, Korean (or any arbitrary requirements of Somali).

R and I ended the quarter on a good note. She told me more about her personal story, how she made her sometimes harrowing way to Seattle. And I was reminded, again, of the importance of language. How this person's experiences—all our experiences—are locked away inside until language can send them out into the world.

Korean Planets and the Days of the Week

Warning: This post is likely to be more error-laden than usual.

This is what my Korean teacher and I discovered during a recent lesson. The names of the days of the week and the names of the planets are related. OK. That's not so strange. English has Monday (moon day), Sunday (sun day), and Saturday (Saturn day).

The days of the week in Korean go like so:

Monday: 월요일 (weolyoil)
Tuesday: 화요일 (hwayoil)
Wednesday: 수요일 (suyoil)
Thursday: 목요일 (mokyoil)
Friday: 금요일 (keumyoil)
Saturday: 토요일 (toyoil)
Sunday: 일요일 (ilyoil)

This is where it gets good. Way back, centuries ago, Chinese astronomers could see five planets with the unaided eye, and they named them after the five elements. Mars was named after fire (which came to Korean as 화): 화성. Mercury was named 수성, after water (수). Jupiter was named 목성, after wood (목). Venus was named 금성, gold or metal (금). Saturn was named 토성, after soil (토).

The days of the week are actually named after the planets: Tuesday is Mars day, Wednesday is Mercury day, Thursday is Jupiter day, Friday is Venus day, and Saturday is Saturn day (hey!). That leaves Sunday and Monday, which (hey, again) are named after the sun and moon in Korean, too.

The Problem with English

Learning Korean, I'm usually so focused on a new system—trying to recognize patterns, remember details, and grasp nuance—that I forget I've already mastered a system: English. I'm volunteer-tutoring again, and my student this quarter is from Somalia. She is struggling with English, and today we went over an aspect of English that must drive English learners crazy: the tense system.

Sure, forming the past tense of most verbs is straightforward: add -ed (which has three pronunciations, of course—"t," "d," and "id"—which is its own small annoyance).

walk > walked
stare > stared
compute > computed

But even though this is the standard method (referred to as "weak" by grammarian-type people), there are a great many verbs that don't fall in line:

sing > sang
swim > swam
give > gave

Imagine that you're trying to learn this system, which we should probably call a "system." Maybe by this point, you've tried to find a pattern and you've thought, "Most verbs add -ed, but with some short verbs with an i, you change the vowel to a." Nice try.

fling > flung
bring > brought
hit > hit

How are you supposed to get your head around the fact that the past tense of catch is caught? "Maybe," you might reason, your desperation growing, "words that end in a -tch sound have these bizarre past tense forms?" Words like teach (taught)?

Sure they do.

reach > reached
search > searched
etch > etched

"Maybe common words are more likely to have irregular ("strong") past tense forms? Please!" After all, look at do (did) and see (saw).

But no.

talk > talked
say > said (strange spelling and slightly off pronunciation, but this is basically say + ed)

I'm not even talking about the bizarre words (be and go) that have past-tense forms that come from a different planet. (This happened through a process called suppletion, where two different words get married and adopt a strict division of labor.) And then there's stand (stood) and make (made) and hold (held).

And what happens when you consider the third principle part of verbs, the past participle? This is the form used in the passive and the so-called perfect forms:

watch > watched > watched (this is the typical “weak” verb pattern)
drink > drank > drunk (three different forms of a “strong” verb)
take > took > taken (three different forms that work differently from drink)
sit > sat > sat (two different forms of a “strong” verb)
run > ran > run (two different forms, but following a different pattern from sit > sat > sat)
put > put > put (only one form!)

The patterns go out the window. The bottom line is that while there are indeed generalizations, they will only get you so far. What you'll have to contend with is memorizing the past tense and past participle forms of tons and tons of verbs.

And what about the places where even native English speakers disagree? What's the past tense of spit?

I'm not suggesting I'm the first person to notice all this. I'm probably more like the billion and first. And there's plenty more to say about the patterns and the exceptions and the exceptions to the exceptions.

Professional intellectual and interesting person Steven Pinker wrote a whole book about this, and it's a real page-turner! (It's actually really good. You should read it. It starts with this phenomenon and ends up getting into the mysteries and wonders of the human mind. Seriously.)

I'm going to try to remember all this when I'm struggling with Korean (that is, always and at all times). Every language has its hurdles, and this is definitely one that English sets up in front of beginners. So the problem with English is really the problem of every language: it's hard to learn it on purpose. When you learn it as a baby, it's easy. Yes, you'll make mistakes, but you won't know they're mistakes, and you'll correct them gradually and automatically, as your knowledge of the system grows and becomes more sophisticated.

Then there's prepositions. And the way you can make what are essentially new verbs with them: do in, take over, buy out... And the proper use of articles! And contractions! And...

Learning Korean 9: I was right!

It's a not-so-great thing to be right about, but I was right that the verb 무섭다 (museopta) is confusing. I could never remember whether it means "to be scared" or "to be scary." It seemed like there were plenty of other similar pairs I had had trouble with, but I looked up 무섭다 many times.

At my lesson today, I brought it up with my teacher. Her answer: it can mean both, so my confusion is completely warranted. What a ... relief? Context determines what meaning is intended, and certain situations trigger different verb forms that prevent ambiguity. For instance:

괴물이 집에 왔는데 난 무서웠어! (A monster came to the house! I was scared/scary.) Only "scared" makes sense given the context. 

괴물이 무서워해. (A monster is scared/scary.) Because the (let's call it) 3rd-Person Internal State form of the verb is used—무서워 + 하다—the only possible interpretation is that this is a statement about the monster's internal state: The monster is scared. 

Then there's what happens when the adjectival form (무서운) is used, but I've already forgotten which meaning this suggests. "Scary," I think. 

(There might also be subject/topic nuances, too, but if so, I've forgotten them, and probably didn't understand them anyway.)

Korean Mnemonics 6: juniors and seniors

I have a hard time keeping the Korean words 선배 (seonbae "senior") and 후배 (hubae "junior") straight.

Then I remember (or try to remember) that seonbae and senior start with the same sound.

Sometimes it just takes a while for a word to sink in deep enough that no tricks are needed to keep it lodged firmly in memory. Multiply this problem by hundreds or thousands of tricky, easily confused or forgotten words, and it's a miracle anyone can ever learn another language. How many tricks and shortcuts will I need to come up with? And how am I supposed to remember them?

Listen to Ancient Languages

Have you ever (I mean "always") wanted to know what ancient languages actually sounded like? Here's your chance:

Are these accurate? How should I know? What do I look like, some kind of Proto-Indo-European guy? But it's still fascinating, just to imagine these long-dead tongues brought back to life.