Category: Korean

WOTD：Ramen

That’s not Korean

Much like the commonalities of dumplings across east Asia, ramen presents an interesting case for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparison. Let’s begin with the word and then talk about the actual food item. As pictured above on the lantern, “ramen” is written with the Japanese kitakana script, which suggests–despite its entry into English from the Japanese–that it is in itself a loan word. The beauty of blogging is that I can posit wild speculations without actually doing any research to verify this.

So, Korean uses a similar word as fitted to its phonetic system: 라면 (ra myeon). We should remember from the post on zhajiang mian that “myeon” is a functional morpheme in Korean for noodles and related to the Chinese character 面.

In China, ramen is rendered 拉面 (la1mian4), but this word is better translated as hand-pulled noodles and is most associated with the northwestern (read: Muslim) parts of China. Most notably, 拉面 pretty much also refers to freshly made noodles, while the instant packs are called either 方便面 (fang1bian4 mian4, “convenient noodles”) or 泡面 (pao4 mian4, “soaked noodles”).

So this is the key difference. We tend to associate “ramen noodles” as cheap stuff college students live on, while there is really a major difference between that kind of ramen (inspired by pulled noodles) and the real pulled noodles. To the best of my knowledge, in Japan ramen refers exclusively to fresh noodles (though the real star is the soup stock with every region of Japan claiming to make the best kind), while China uses different words, and in Korea, ramyeon either refers to the instant noodles or the kind served at a Japanese restaurant.

Korean Learning Progress

It’s been almost a month since I formally announced my plans to learn Korean, so now is as good a time as any to check in on how the mission is coming. I’ve been averaging several hours a day (usually most of the morning and a bit more in the late afternoon or evening) on Korean.

Apps

I’m two lessons short of finishing the tree on Duolingo, but it will be some time before I max out all the lessons to get all the “crowns.” Duolingo recently introduced a weekly leadership board, so that competitive element (to progress into the next league) has kept me motivated to do extra lessons everyday. Overall, I’m a bit bored of Duolingo.

I completely worked my way through one app called “Infinite Korean,” which drills up to 10 vocabulary items organized around topics (transportation, food, clothing, etc.) with a simple premise of picking the correct answer before the falling meteor hits the ground.

I’m also 85% through Korean on Lingodeer, which I think I might wholeheartedly recommend. It does look like it is designed by professional language teachers with more use of textbook style grammar exercises and a very systemic step-by-step approach. Each lesson is a little bit easy because it focuses on 4 sample sentences that just keep coming up with different tasks.

Podcast

I’ve barely started Level 3 of Talk to Me in Korean because I am not spending hours everyday out and about. It looks like it goes up to level 10, and 1441 unplayed episodes in the podcast feed, I’m certainly not going to run out of content.

Textbook

I’m really hating the Chinese-Korean textbook I brought with me, and instead of doing a lesson a day, I’m only covering one chapter every couple of days. I need to review more and go through the audio at least a dozen more times. The textbook is good because I am reading more than a sentence at a time.

There was a Level 1A Korean textbook in a bookcase at the hostel. I devoured that in a couple days (as it was 90% review for me). It’s also the textbook I’ve pushed on the other newbie learners in the hostel.

Life

I’ve definitely reverted into my natural state of introversion, getting by with minimal verbal interaction. It doesn’t take much Korean to order an americano, especially when the barista asks you “hot or iced” in English, and when shopping at a mart you just look at the screen with the total and hand over money.

I’ve got the Naver Korean-English dictionary app on my phone and if I am ever sitting around anywhere (such as a restaurant), I like to look up any words I see.

I’d guess that I “know” somewhere between 500 and 1,000 words by now, but I actually want to get a lot more precise. I’ve been thinking about starting up a database in an Excel file, much like I did with Chinese. I’ve been copying vocabulary into a notebook, but it is very disorganized with lots of repetition of words. I do pull it out occasionally to review a page or two, but not enough. I think I might wait until I finish the two learning apps, but it will be good to build a master list of vocabulary for a number of reasons: review, typing practice, identification of common words, a more precise count of how many words I know (or at least should know at this point), and a basis for a possible integration of Korean resources into my Chinese database.

Though Korean is turning out to be harder than I thought (in terms of so many rules and exceptions to rules regarding grammar and pronunciation), not only am I still confident of my ability to leave here a fluent speaker, but also a teacher of Korean. I’m already planning a mini-textbook on learning how to read the Korean alphabet.

WOTD: Dumplings

Whether called jiaozi, baozi, wontons, mandu, or gyoza, dumplings are delicious

Of course they are stuffed with kimchi

Dumplings are universal. To the best of my knowledge, every culture has some food item which consists of a starchy outside stuffed with filling. If we adopt a broad enough definition, everything from samosas and empanadas to ravioli and pierogi are types of dumplings. Needless to say, China has a ton of menu items that defy translation more specific than “dumpling.”

饺子 (jiao3zi) and 包子 (bao1zi) make up the core concept, though I consider jiaozi to closer to the Platonic ideal of a dumpling. 包, as we covered before, is a general term referring to the wrapping, while 饺 is a specific character for the food item. Jiaozi tend to be sorted by their method of cooking and filling (a.k.a 馅儿, “xian4r” covered here). Boiled (水饺 shui3jiao3, literally “water dumpling”), pan-fried (煎饺 jian1jiao3), or steamed (蒸饺 zheng1jiao3). Pork is the most common stuffing, especially paired with a single vegetable, though one can also get pure beef or lamb stuffed dumplings.

Jiaozi have thin skins while baozi are bread-y, but that distinction gets confused by regional specialties like 小笼包 (xiao3 long2 bao1 “small basket dumpling) from the lower reaches of the Yangtze (Nanjing through Shanghai) and 薄皮包子 (bao2pi2 bao1zi “thin skin dumpling”) from Xinjiang. Of course, we cannot forget wontons (rendered 馄饨 hun2tun), which are always served in soup and have extra skin hanging off them.

I suppose I could have complained that they were a little burned…

Dumplings in Korea and Japan are very similar to the prototypical 饺子, though Japan tends to fry their dumplings more often than China. Linguistically, Japan uses the kanji-equivalent of 饺子 (pronounced gyoza in Japanese). The relation is quite obvious. Korean, on the other hand, uses 만두 (mandu) as its general word for dumplings. This is also related to Chinese, except it derives from 馒头 (man2tou, a steamed bun). This is ironic because mantou are best described as baozi without any filling, which would exclude them from the dumpling family. Finally, I don’t know how widespread it is, but the fried dumplings I ordered (pictured above) had “야끼 교자” provided as explanatory text. Sounding that out, “Yakki Gyoja” sounds just like a transliteration from the Japanese (yaki being that super common element of Japanese grilling cuisine names: yakitori, teriyaki, teppanyaki, okonomiyaki, etc.).

WOTD: 自助餐

自助餐 (zi4zhu4can1), literally “self service meal,” is the Chinese word for buffet. Buffets in China are universally found in 5-star hotels and are similar to how we treat buffets in the US. Among the specialty restaurants that provide unlimited food, they adopt a number of limitations to make sure that they still turn a profit. For example, time limits are generally imposed (typically in the range of 90 to 120 minutes) and complex rule systems penalizing wasted food. The best items are nearly inaccessible behind a long queue where the food is either only served for brief intervals or limited to one portion per person.

Buffets in Taiwan, specifically the vegetarian buffets, are a different beast altogether. One fills up a plate as one wishes, but pays according to the total weight of the food. That also happens to be how 串串香 (chuan1chuan1xiang1, a type of Sichuan hotpot with skewers) is calculated, where it is easier to weigh the pile of skewers than count them.

While on the topic of unlimited food, free refills is 续杯 (xu4bei1, literally “supply more cup”), while if one is getting unlimited alcohol as part of a meal special or happy hour, the term is 畅饮 (chang4yin3, literally “free drinks” meaning “to drink one’s fill”).

Finally, the Korean for all-you-can-eat is 무한리필 (muhan ripil) which combines Chinese with English. Muhan based on 无限 (wu2xian2, “unlimited”), while ripil is a sound loan of “refill.”

WOTD: Gimbap

Korean sushi?

I don’t really have much to say about 김밥 (gimbap or kimbab), other than that it is probably one of the first words I learned in Korean and the cause of my initial awareness into the morphemes. 밥 (bap) is the word for cooked rice (as in bibimbap) and although 김 (gim) is the same sound as in kimchi, it actually means “laver” (the proper name for that seaweed wrapping). Also, gimbap is quite delicious.

Though it looks like a sushi roll, there is usually no fish and definitely no raw fish in there. The pictured rolls both contain scrambled egg, ham, pickled radish, some other veggies, and their respective titular ingredients: tomato and chili pepper. The chili pepper gimbap was way better than the tomato one, despite being the place’s signature item.

WOTD: 炸酱面

Would you like some noodles with your sauce?

炸酱面（zha2jiang4 mian4, “fried sauce noodles”), aka “noodles with fried bean sauce” is one of those dishes that I strongly associate with Beijing, though its origins lie in Shandong. Aficionados of Chinese cuisine would note that Beijing food (and all cooking in northeast China) is rooted in 鲁菜 (Lu3cai4 “Shandong cuisine”), one of the 8 great schools of Chinese cooking.

I’ve always loved proper 炸酱面 because the noodles are thick and chewy, and remind me of freshly made spätzle, while the freshly shredded cucumber and radish (or even more veggies if you get lucky) offset the rich and salty sauce.

Zhajiang mian is also a Korean dish (in a sense). Alternately called 자장면 짜장면 (jajangmyeon / jjajangmyeon), it is clear we are talking about the same dish linguistically. In culinary terms, Jajangmyeon is its own dish in Korea. The sweeter sauce is full of onions and seafood (instead of just salty beans and pork scraps).

As a certain podcast host would say, always read the plaque. Interestingly enough, Incheon claims Jajangmyeon as one of its specialties, though it gives credit to the influx of Chinese workers in 1884. Apparently, they would make the sauce in China and carry it across on merchant ships, serving it on freshly made noodles.

Is Korean hard?

I’ve got this crazy notion that Korean is an easy language to learn. It’s probably just hubris, but I’d like to explore the idea. Mind you, I consider Chinese an easy language, so I may be peculiar to begin with.

At this point, I’ve finished reviewing the first half of the Korean textbook, almost finished review Talk To Me in Korean Level 1, and have 82 crowns in Duolingo. (For more on these, see here). Also, when it occurred to me to download a Korean dictionary on my phone, I also went ahead and picked up a couple other language learning apps to check out.

Why Korean should be hard

  • Politeness levels. Korean has several levels of speaking/writing ranging from very informal to very formal. Not only does one have to learn entire sets of grammar for each level, but it is also necessary to use them appropriately depending on who you are speaking to.
  • Grammar. Like Chinese, Korean does tend to be “telegraphic,” i.e. leaving a lot of information (especially about the subject of the sentence) to context. However, Korean is highly inflected with the particles attached to the ends of nouns to indicate whether they are the subject, theme, object, location, etc. and endings to verbs reflecting not only politeness level but also tense and aspect.
  • Pronunciation. Korean phonology is quite different from English, with more explicit use of unaspirated consonants and a ton of vowels that are rather difficult to distinguish between. Like Japanese, Korean has a fuzzy boundary between “l” and “r” as represented by the letter “ㄹ”. (btw, I’m not familiar with any part of China where there is confusion between “l” and “r”, so if you are going to make racist jokes, at least get the stereotype correct).
  • Numbers. Korean uses two sets of numbers: Native Korean numbers and Sino-Korean numbers which were borrowed from China back when “Chinese” sounded more like Cantonese. The native Korean numbers are crazy like English where there is only a murky connection between “two”, “twelve”, and “twenty.” (Unlike Chinese which is uber-logical with the “two”, “ten-two”, and “two-ten”). Some of the numbers also change when paired with measure words. (I believe Japanese also does this, and Chinese only does it for the number 2). Also, measure words!
  • Phonological Rules and Coarticulation. So, unlike Chinese where a syllable is a syllable, Korean–despite being written in blocks of syllables–has complicated rules where phonemes shift to the next syllable or change depending on if it is being followed by another syllable or what the next syllable starts with. These rules are even reflected in the grammar where the particles used depend on the sound structure of the word or there are direct spelling changes in the conjugation to make it easier to pronounce. Most European languages do this to, but when it’s your native language you don’t think about it.

Why it is “easy”

Despite all that, I still feel that Korean will be easy to learn. This is primarily do to the fact that Korean not only has an alphabet, but it is a beautifully designed alphabet that seriously only takes a day to learn. (Compare that to the half a semester in college dedicated to learning the Arabic alphabet). Once you have an alphabet you can wander the streets looking at signs and playing your own personal version of “Hooked on Phonics” and this is where the “Korean is easy” notion really kicks in. I’m honestly astounded by how many loan words are floating around, both from English and Chinese. Maybe I’ve been in China too long, where loan words are highly “sinified”, but I really didn’t expect to see so much English. Consider the following vending machine:

How about a cuppa?

A quick little Korean lesson first: 커피 (keo pi) is coffee (“p” usually substitutes for “f”). The top row says 밀크커피 (mil keu coffee) , 살탕 커피 (sal tang coffee),트림 커피 (keu rim coffee), and 블랙 커피 (beul laek coffee). So saltang is the Korean word for sugar, but the other three just sound out milk, cream, and black. I know for a fact that Korean has its own words for milk and black. In fact, milk is available on the bottom row, where it is properly written as 우유 (woo yoo).

I think a lot of the English loan words are just market-level stuff, but the Chinese goes deeper. Riding on the subway, every stop is written in Hangeul (Korean script), hanzi (Chinese characters, though sometimes I feel they are pulling double duty as kanji also), and English. With the hanzi and Korean syllables aligned, one quickly notices that more than 90% of the subway stop names sound a lot like the Chinese, e.g. yongsan instead of longshan, dongdaemun instead of dongdamen. I’m just guessing here, but I think there was an analog of the Norman invasion (which infused English with French vocabulary) between China and Korea.

So, to answer the question is Korean easy? If you already speak English and Chinese, maybe. Being “literate” allows one to engage with much more of the language much quicker, not only can one shortcut a lot of vocabulary by recognizing loan words, the higher volume of linguistic input powers incidental learning.

I have also heard that speaking Korean makes it much easier to learn Japanese.

WOTD: 部队火锅

Before…

It’s weird coming to Korea when one is only familiar with the food through the context of China. I know the names of several classic dishes in both English and Korean, but have no idea what it would be on an English menu.

部队火锅 (bu4dui4 huo3guo1 “army hot pot”) is a dish that I always assumed the Chinese were taking some liberty with their translation. The Korean for which is 부대찌개 (budae jjigae), so one would be forgiven for thinking that 部队 (bu4dui4) is just a sound loan, while 火锅 (huo3guo1) is a slight improvement over jjigae (a general term for stews) since it is cooked on the table. I always figured the “army” aspect of it described the way that a lot of people could eat from the same pot.

In truth, the 部队 refers to American troops, who apparently introduced the key ingredients during the Korean War. Though the ingredients vary depending on the “flavor” you order, they almost invariably contain hot dogs and spam (or other off-brand processed “ham”). America’s contribution to Korean cuisine. I didn’t realize how popular Spam is here, but I have seen several stores selling gift baskets of Spam.

…and after.

This particular pot was kimchi flavored of course.


WOTD: Bags

My worldly possessions

I was working Korean in Duolingo and I came across the following:

공공칠가방
gong-gong-chil ga-bang

I immediately recognized the root 가방 as “bag” (which in my semantic space is centered around the prototypical schoolbag) and since it was a Numbers lesson, the first three syllables correspond to 0-0-7. So, a “James Bond bag,” or a briefcase.

Chinese, unfortunately, is not so creative in its description of briefcase, the two main ways of saying which are 公文包 (gong1wen1bao1) and 皮包 (pi2bao1). 包 works in Chinese as a general term for bags or anything with wrapping (e.g. see the Oscar nominated animated short Bao), and the modifiers work by describing what is stored in the bag (公文, “public documents” or briefs if you will) or what the bag is usually made of (皮, “skin” i.e. leather).

I really like the word 皮包 (pi2bao1) because it is also used in the compound word 皮包公司 (pi2bao1 gong1si1, “briefcase company”). As one can imagine, a company based out of a briefcase may not be the most reliable, so it refers to fly-by-night operations. Do be careful with 皮包, however, if you reverse the order of the characters, you refer to a portion of the male anatomy that is removed in a circumcision.

包 (bao1) is an extremely productive character making up 288 words in my master list of Chinese words. Ironically, however 包 is not used to describe luggage, which is 行李 (xing2li5, “travel plum(?)”). 李 is a strange character. Its base meaning is plum, it is a very common surname, and it shows up in the word 行李.


Korean Learning Plans

I’ve dabbled with Korean on and off for the past 2+ years, and have recently gotten it into my head to finally commit myself to obtaining (conversational) fluency. The plan is to basically live there for two months (starting next week), and spend a couple hours a day on self-study, specifically Duolingo, a textbook written in Chinese, and the wonderful podcast TTMIK. While working on this self-improvement project, I hope to also direct this blog towards random musings on the learning process.

For the record, I have been to Korea twice so far, totaling almost three weeks in the country. I didn’t know any Korean prior to my first trip to Seoul in 2016, but after a few days, I had picked up the alphabet and was wandering the streets and subways sounding out all written signs to see if I could recognize any words through their similarity to Chinese or English.

About half a year later, a friend of mine announced her intention to take a semester of Korean lessons at my university, and in a show of solidarity I picked my own copy of the required textbooks and self-studied for a month or two. I only managed to finish the first of the two textbook set.

Second half of Elementary Korean textbook

Planning to visit Korea a second time that summer and wanting to be better able to communicate, I must have watched about a dozen instructional videos on YouTube before I found the “Talk to Me in Korean” podcast, which I started listening to. Korea was to be the last stop on a roughly eight-week tour taking me through Singapore, Thailand, and Japan, so, though I was most motivated to learn Korean, I was also a little distracted by the other languages. By the time I made it to Busan, I “knew” maybe enough to fit on a notebook card.

Cheat Sheet

After the trip, I rapidly forgot all the Korean I had studied, only briefly touching it for a couple weeks last Spring when I found it on Duolingo after finishing Spanish. However, I hadn’t reviewed or studied Korean until about two weeks ago, when I shifted the focus of my daily foreign language study over from German.

In these two weeks, I’ve been hacking away at Duolingo (57 crowns so far!) and spending a bit of time every day reviewing the Chinese textbook, and I have surprised myself not only by how much was still kicking around the old memory banks, but also how quickly I’ve incorporated new vocabulary. I am feeling very optimistic about how much progress I can make once I land at Incheon.