The "You" Dilemma

Korea is a hierarchical society and this is clearly reflected in the language. One thing that definitely needs some time getting used to when learning Korean, is how to code switch in different contexts depending on who you are talking to. There are the different verb endings, different verbs altogether for 존댓말 (polite speech), different counters and the use of the particle 시. 

One headache sometimes is making sure you use the correct "you" in different situations. There are so many terms which are used to mean "you" in Korean like 언니, 선생님 and particles to attach to people's names like 씨 and 님.

I went to Spongemind's soundcloud to see if they had any new episodes out and I saw there was a new one called "How to address others in Korean". (Spongemind is a podcast done by a Korean and an American that is about how to learn languages, specifically English and Korean. They provide content in both English and Korean. They also have a Youtube Channel. The American, Jeremy, has a Youtube channel called Motivate Korean that I also subscribe to). Normally I try to listen to the Korean Spongemind content when the topic of the podcast is general, like "How to study vocab" or something like that. This time around I had to listen to the English podcast "How to address others in Korean".

Johnson and Jeremy covered all the bases in this podcast. I really enjoyed listening to it. I wished they had talked a little more about 그 쪽but whatever. From this podcast I learned something that is most interesting. Jeremy was making a joke that he wished that he could just refer to people as "you" when speaking Korean to avoid the confusion and awkwardness that sometimes is the result of the many ways to say "you". Johnson then told him that in the past people actually used to do this. The example he gave was "You는어떻게 생각하세요?" I found this extremely funny and interesting. I ask my Hellotalk friend about this and he confirmed. Wow. Just wow. He said that he never used it himself but he mentioned that to him "Come here, you" sounds a lot less harsh than "너 이리 와".

The drama the Entertainer is finally over. Yeah, I know. That was kinda out of the blue. Anyhow, in the last episode one of the band members confesses his love for the CEO of the company. In normal conversation he would refer to her as 대표님. When he confesses, this is what he said " 전 대표님을 좋아해요." I was the person who translated this line in the episode (Read about me and subbing on Viki here). I translated it to simply "I like you". A more literal translation could have been "I like you (Miss) CEO". But for a confession who would be that formal? In his case, because of their relationship he had no choice but to refer to her as he did. How nice would it have been if he could have said "저는 you를 좋아해요.".

Korean Handwriting

One of the first things people normally do when starting to learn Korean, is to learn how to read and write Hangul. Of course, after this much time spent with the language, I can write it well enough even though I may not use the correct stroke order.  Reading Korean handwriting can sometimes prove to be quite a challenge. TTMIK has a book out called Hangul Master to help not only learning how to read plain text but also how to read handwriting.These days, looking at my own handwriting, I think it looks a bit childish. When I was in primary school there was a book on how to write cursive. Ever since I saw a lady sign something using cursive, I wanted to learn how to do it and so I finished the book. My handwriting now is a combination of cursive and plain writing. I wanted to see if I could learn the same thing for Korean.

I looked around the internet and I saw a few posts about Korean handwriting, but nothing really particularly focusing on cursive. My great idea therefore was to base my new handwriting on a font. I just did a random Google search and found this font which I find quite pretty and decided that I would use it. In the process of changing my writing, this font would also help me to understand other Hangul fonts as well, since some of the characters were quite different.

Unfortunately, after testing it out, I realized that there is a lot of variation. For example, depending on the vowel following the consonant, the consonant was written differently. My own handwriting definitely would be inspired by and not an exact carbon copy of the font. Nevertheless, I decided to see how much variation was in the font by typing in the basic consonant-vowel combinations as well as double consonants (beginning and ending).

Sample showing the variation of the characters

From the document I created, I just chose which consonant variation either was easier to write or looked prettier to me. Here is my result.

I can't say if my new handwriting looks better than the old handwriting but I can definitely say that it looks more mature.

Getting to be a Viki Subtitler

If you are learning Korean and don't know about Viki, then you must be learning Korean because you like Kpop and not Kdrama. Viki is one of the main places that international fans go to watch not only Korean TV shows but other shows from around the world. On Viki all of the subtitles are written by volunteers. One day I was so bored that I decided to watch Ji Sung's Entertainer even though there were no English subtitles written on the site yet. Surprisingly, I was able to understand quite a bit. I then came up with the oh so bright idea that I should try to become a subtitler for the drama.

In order to be a part of the team, I had to audition by submitting two one-liners to the sub team leader. The first one was taken from a scene from My Love Another Star and the other from some other drama. The line in MLFAS was relatively easy to understand but I don't think I did a great job translating it to English. The second was quite difficult. It was the audio from a news report and had all kinds of words I had never heard in my life. I sent in both of my attempts and the kind-hearted lady let me be a part of the team. I was sooo excited. I got to work right after that. For my first episode I wrote over 100 subtitles. I was so proud of myself. After the subs were done, I watched the part that I subtitled over and over smiling like an idiot.

Fortunately for me, there is a very hardworking volunteer who adds Korean subtitles as soon as the drama is segmented. For the segments I can't fully understand from just listening, I can attempt to translate by reading. I just have to try my best and hope to last until the final episode without being kicked off the team because of poor quality work.

My lovely subtitle

My Korean Subtitles Badge . ONLY 1000 more?? ㅋㅋㅋ

What I Have Learned/Confirmed From Adding Subtitles
1. I can understand a lot more than I thought

2. My vocabulary is very limited

Even though I can understand quite a bit, there is even more that I can't understand. I read somewhere that during the intermediate stage of studying a language, one should focus a lot on vocabulary. I think that is true. I know a fair set of grammar patterns but they become fairly useless if I don't know the vocabulary to go along with them.

3. Many words can be guessed from context

4. Context is key for pronouns

Korean allows for the regular omission of pronouns in sentences. Due to this, 먹었어 could be I/You/He/She/They ate. If you don't pay attention to what is going on in a scene, you could use the wrong pronoun. Unfortunately I fell victim to this once but never again.
 
4. Subbers donate a lot of their time

5. A lot of Korean does not translate very well into English

6. Translation is an art 

On the subbing manager's page she had this posted

"In evaluating a translation from Korean into English, certain general rules can be set out although perhaps not everyone will agree with all of them:

1. Grammatically correct Korean is to be translated by grammatically correct English.
2. Plain Korean sentences should be represented by plain English sentences.
3. Complex Korean sentences are to be translated by complex English sentences.
4. Ordinary, everyday Korean vocabulary is to be translated by ordinary, everyday English vocabulary; abstruse or high-level abstract vocabulary by terms of a similar level
5. Natural-feeling modern Korean prose should be translated into natural-feeling English prose. Excentricity of style should be indicated by excentricity of style. One Korean paragraph should usually be represented by one English paragraph
6. A lively narrative style must be translated by a lively narrative style. A plodding style demands a plodding style.
7. Every word found in the original should be respected and be represented in some way in the translation, although the great difference between the languages means that there can be no such thing as a ‘word-for-word’ translation.

--Brother Anthony of Taize . Translating Korean fiction into English: theory and practice

I think that these rules are great but they require a lot of practice to follow them and always be able to produce natural sounding sentences. 

7. A lot of the subtitles on Viki must not be completely accurate if they let somebody like me on a subbing team. LOL