I posted this three years ago about learning German and it applies to me so much more now.
This is exactly how I feel when learning Korean. When I speak, I don't think people understand a word I'm saying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yJ_HrZImWQ
Showing posts with label Foreign Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foreign Language. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Motels, Fire and Tsunamis
On Sunday, I was studying for my Korean test on Monday (which went quite horribly. I got a 38% on the writing part of the test. How embarrassing. Eventually I'll learn Korean....maybe....... perhaps.......probably not.) My friend was helping me by going through my notes and asking me various questions and I would answer them verbally, which actually did help because I got a high score on my speaking test. Apparently I should have been responding in writing. I discovered one of my problems may be my spelling.
We had learned a bunch of different ways to say "wear" or "carry" in Korean. They have different verbs for every single type of clothing/accessory/bag/passport you may be carrying or wearing, which makes it a little difficult. But I had written very diligently in my notes, "I am carrying my passport" then gone on to my next sentence. As my friend looked through my notes, she said "you spelled passport wrong."
English spelling of a Korean word: Passport is "yeo gwon" Motel is "yeo gwan."
I had written "I am carrying a motel with me." Oops. That may be one of my various issues with learning Korean. But, I am trying hard. Eventually it will come.
Quick student story:
Scenario: create a country and trade with other countries for resources
Student 1: We have oil, so we will burn your buildings and steal your resources.
Student 2: Well, we have water so we will send a tsunami to put out the fire and flood your country.
Student 1: We have oil, so we will burn your buildings and steal your resources.
Student 2: Well, we have water so we will send a tsunami to put out the fire and flood your country.
Me: Ummm, that's not really the purpose of this project.
Monday, February 20, 2012
How can you fallacy!
I am starting a new Korean Drama. I'm 30 minutes in an it's already intense. It's called "The Moon that Embraces the Sun" otherwise known as 해를 품은 달. The person that I thought was the main character just got killed by a cow...or rather 4 cows tied to each of her legs and arms and forced to walk, so she dies by getting ripped apart. Luckily that wasn't shown. There are a few mistakes in the translation. At one point someone yells, "HOW CAN YOU FALLACY!" among other things.
Also, a lady in my Korean class has climbed Mount Everest, so clearly I need to get a move on in life. She's fascinating to talk to. She was telling me about visiting India and how "People are REALLY living there. More than anywhere else." We ride the same bus, so I'm waiting to hear more interesting places she's been to.
Also, I'm starting up a bit of a language exchange slash hanging out with my hairdresser/friend and her friend, which should be quite a bit of fun I think. So far, we're trying this thing where I speak in Korean (or attempt to but I have no vocabulary) and they fix my grammar and they speak to me in English and I fix their grammar. Hopefully, my Korean can continue to improve a bit. I'm hoping that speaking more will help. We shall see!
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Prepositions
I am attempting to learn prepositions in German. They are hard. But I also think they are throwing off all my English prepositions. I am learning German and my English is deteriorating. Oops!
Monday, May 4, 2009
Hungary Trip Number 2!
I headed again to Hungary this weekend to visit Nora and her family. Lily (Nora's sister) was graduating, so I went to her graduation party on Thursday night, which was fun. There were a lot of people there and many did not speak English. However, some spoke German so I was able to talk to them for a bit which was kind of cool! One girl probably about my age spoke just a little German and English, so we just sort of yelled words at each other, which we both found rather hilarious. On Friday, it was May 1 which is a holiday here so we went to a couple of the festivals in Budapest which were interesting. They were incredibly crowded, but they seemed to sell everything! There were also some rides and things but we just looked. I saw some baby ducks which were quite cute.
We then went to the Jewish synagogue, which is called the Dohány Street Synagogue. It's the second biggest synagogue in the world, second only to the one in New York. On Sunday, I went inside and it was amazing!! It really is gigantic. It was designed by Christian architects, so it looks like a cathedral in design but is obviously a Jewish Synagogue when looking at the decorations. I learned that it survived WWII because it was inside the walls of the Ghetto in Budapest, so the Allies didn't bomb it. The Nazi's didn't bomb it either because the Gestapo was stationed inside the synagogue. As a result, very little damage was done to it during the war. I also learned that 600,000 out of the 800,000 Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust, even though the deportation didn't start until 1944! But that number means that out of every ten people killed in the Holocaust, 1 was Hungarian. Our guide said that 25% of the people killed at Auschwitz were Hungarian. which was quite horrible to learn. There's even a mass grave in the gardens of the synagogue because they had to bury those that died in the ghetto (about 3,000 I think) somewhere but the Jewish cemetery was outside the ghetto walls. So they buried them in the gardens, which was against anything they would have done in normal circumstances. There's also a memorial garden that has the names of people who saved Jews during the War. Their name's were on the wall if they saved anyone. If they saved 1 person they were in the wall next to someone who had saved thousands. It was quite the wake up call to see all of that in person.
In happier news, On Saturday we went into the countryside of Hungary. We drove through a town called St. Andrew (except its in Hungarian so Szentendre) through the countryside to a town called Visegrad. We went up to the castle there which had an amazing view! It was of the Danube and the bends with hills and trees. The castle was very cool too and quite old. There was also a lizard there. Then we got some soup in the town. Then we drove to Esztergom, a town on the Danube across the river from Slovakia with a gigantic and very beautiful cathedral. We went inside the Cathedral which was great (see pictures) THEN we drove across the river into Slovakia to see the cathedral as it was meant to be seen (from the river). So I have now officially been to Slovakia for a full 15 minutes. We then headed back to Budapest, stopping at the weird architecture at the Catholic University (a tilted dome)...we had dinner that night and went to bed relatively early. Oh and on Friday night we watched Twilight. Which is still cheesy. But that's ok.
Sunday after visiting the synagogue I took the train back to Vienna. Good heavens it was FULL! I asked a girl in the hallway if it was always that full and she said that she'd never seen a train that packed before It about 30 people in the hallway at LEAST. Luckily I reserved my seat!! I ended up in a compartment with 5 guys from Austria, who I think heard me speak English with one of the girls in the hall and didn't realize I also spoke German. That meant I could understand them when they were speaking about the girls butts and how hot the women were who walked by our compartment. It was rather uncomfortable slash hilarious. I watched The Devil Wears Prada on the way back, along with Bend it Like Beckham. In other news, my new German teacher said to me today, "You speak perfect German." That's all.
Pictures of Hungary: http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a353/LaurenHillard/Hungary/
We then went to the Jewish synagogue, which is called the Dohány Street Synagogue. It's the second biggest synagogue in the world, second only to the one in New York. On Sunday, I went inside and it was amazing!! It really is gigantic. It was designed by Christian architects, so it looks like a cathedral in design but is obviously a Jewish Synagogue when looking at the decorations. I learned that it survived WWII because it was inside the walls of the Ghetto in Budapest, so the Allies didn't bomb it. The Nazi's didn't bomb it either because the Gestapo was stationed inside the synagogue. As a result, very little damage was done to it during the war. I also learned that 600,000 out of the 800,000 Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust, even though the deportation didn't start until 1944! But that number means that out of every ten people killed in the Holocaust, 1 was Hungarian. Our guide said that 25% of the people killed at Auschwitz were Hungarian. which was quite horrible to learn. There's even a mass grave in the gardens of the synagogue because they had to bury those that died in the ghetto (about 3,000 I think) somewhere but the Jewish cemetery was outside the ghetto walls. So they buried them in the gardens, which was against anything they would have done in normal circumstances. There's also a memorial garden that has the names of people who saved Jews during the War. Their name's were on the wall if they saved anyone. If they saved 1 person they were in the wall next to someone who had saved thousands. It was quite the wake up call to see all of that in person.
In happier news, On Saturday we went into the countryside of Hungary. We drove through a town called St. Andrew (except its in Hungarian so Szentendre) through the countryside to a town called Visegrad. We went up to the castle there which had an amazing view! It was of the Danube and the bends with hills and trees. The castle was very cool too and quite old. There was also a lizard there. Then we got some soup in the town. Then we drove to Esztergom, a town on the Danube across the river from Slovakia with a gigantic and very beautiful cathedral. We went inside the Cathedral which was great (see pictures) THEN we drove across the river into Slovakia to see the cathedral as it was meant to be seen (from the river). So I have now officially been to Slovakia for a full 15 minutes. We then headed back to Budapest, stopping at the weird architecture at the Catholic University (a tilted dome)...we had dinner that night and went to bed relatively early. Oh and on Friday night we watched Twilight. Which is still cheesy. But that's ok.
Sunday after visiting the synagogue I took the train back to Vienna. Good heavens it was FULL! I asked a girl in the hallway if it was always that full and she said that she'd never seen a train that packed before It about 30 people in the hallway at LEAST. Luckily I reserved my seat!! I ended up in a compartment with 5 guys from Austria, who I think heard me speak English with one of the girls in the hall and didn't realize I also spoke German. That meant I could understand them when they were speaking about the girls butts and how hot the women were who walked by our compartment. It was rather uncomfortable slash hilarious. I watched The Devil Wears Prada on the way back, along with Bend it Like Beckham. In other news, my new German teacher said to me today, "You speak perfect German." That's all.
Pictures of Hungary: http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a353/LaurenHillard/Hungary/
Thursday, April 16, 2009
German is hard.
So I have learned that German is rather difficult! There are far too many ways to say "the" with akkusativ, dativ and nominativ cases. Throw in masculine, feminine, neutral and plural and many issues begin happening for native English speakers who just use "the." The possible "the" words are "der, die, das, dem, den, other der, other den etc" Just saying "the" is so much easier! Also, there are too many ways to say "your, yours, mine, theirs, ours. And all of these make it very easy to say things like "She buys shes lamp." Also, I knew this but you definitely can't translate German directly. For example "Anton will heute nicht ins Kino gehen" means "Anton doesn't want to go to the movies today," but directly translated it says "Anton wants today not to the movies go." And just for simple things it's very different to us English speakers For English the subject always comes first. But in German, if they say "today" or "yesterday" then you have to say (in German obviously) "Today went I to the store." I'm sure I'll get it into to my head one of these days but at the moment it's rather difficult!!
Video number one of the day: Why can't this happen in real life?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UE3CNu_rtY
Video number one of the day: Why can't this happen in real life?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UE3CNu_rtY
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Another pretty spring day...
First of all, my feet are attempting to detatch themselves from my ankles in the form of blisters. And all the bandaids and tape in the world are not helping. This is ridiculous
Secondly, I am enjoying class. It's really fun and everyone in the class is great. I went to pizza with a couple of them after class (Liviu and Hyojeong) which was fun. The pizza was really good, especially after my dinner last night.
I then wandered back to my apartment to change my shoes and put my books down. I once again went in search of Hundertwasser house without success. I'll try again tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I've got it figured out now and will be able to find it tomorrow. I'm also thinking of going to Schonnbrunn Palace. I hope it's a nice day again! It was about 65 degrees again which is quite wonderful!
I learned today (and after the walking the wrong direction on Mariahilfstrasse) that as soon as I enter a Ubahn, when I exit I will have lost all sense of direction. Again, I wandered the wrong way when exiting the Ubahn in an attempt to get home. At least this time I figured it out earlier! I tried my icky pasta from last night again today just to see if my tastebuds were being weird last night. They were definitely not. It was still gross...oh well. I made some Pesto which was quite good. And Elice, I had some yogurt. I have discovered the yogurt is quite amazing! Other than that my day was uneventful! Well, I did see an add on facebook that read, "Insemination? Go to storklink.com!" But it was a nice day!
Thursday, April 2, 2009
From class to icky spaghetti...
So yesterday if you couldn't tell from my post I was feeling a bit apprehensive about my classes and not being able to meet people. But I'm ok now. Class was fun! I got there on time today! I sat next to two guys, a guy from Korea named JK and Liviu from Romania. First off, during break I'd like to point out that JK said to me "You're from Seattle, do you go to U-Dub?" Yes and he said it like "U-dub" and I was very confused as to how he knew we called it that. His girlfriend goes to UW and she calls it that. Liviu asked me where you had to live in Washington to get to Seattle by boat. He watches Grey's Anatomy, along with a few other American shows. Class was relatively uneventful...still primarily review.
I couldn't find a notebook yesterday so Liviu offered to show me the store where you get them, which would have been great except the store isn't there anymore. He's going to get me one near his house and I'll pay him back tomorrow. I still can't believe I didn't think to bring a spiral notebook. I then returned to my apartment after class to change my coat since it was getting rather warm. I put a light jacket on and went in search of Hundertwasserhaus. However, after writing extensive directions on how to get there I still got lost. So I of course just wandered for a while. It was 65 degrees and I was very hot in my jacket but I stayed out for a few hours. In my wanderings, I passed a store that only sold toilets. There were about 10 in the store and were mounted about 5 feet in the air. I bought some ice cream and understood the lady when she talked to me...kind of. And I swallowed a bug.
Also, for dinner I made what I thought would be good spaghetti. But good heavens that sauce was gross. The weather report shows warm weather here and very warm in Budapest! I'm excited!
Pictures from today!
http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a353/LaurenHillard/Vienna%20Day%208/?start=80
Also, for dinner I made what I thought would be good spaghetti. But good heavens that sauce was gross. The weather report shows warm weather here and very warm in Budapest! I'm excited!
Pictures from today!
http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a353/LaurenHillard/Vienna%20Day%208/?start=80
Friday, March 27, 2009
Things I learned today...
Things I learned today...
1. When someone asks if you want them to take a picture of you, remember to unzoom your camera or you will end up with a wonderful picture of you standing in front of a white van and nothing else.
2. When taking pictures of cool buildings, be careful of the advertisement in the corner of the picture because it may be of two people who are very naked.
3. The National Library is enormous
4. Apparently, the proper etiquette when a taxi honks at you for crossing the street when he was driving is to give him a rude hand gesture, yell at the car then proceed to open the passenger door and yell more. Then look at the taxi driver as if he was being ridiculous for honking...
5. The horses that are connected to carriages have little holder things along their tail that catches their poop.
6. The Dogs in Austria can smell fear too.
7. Said dogs hang out near the National Library and may decide to chase you.
8. Said dogs know more German than I do
9. I can't speak German.
10. I can't understand German.
11. I can read German a little bit.
12. 5 people can fit, with luggage, into one very tiny car.
13. When renovating a statue, they put what looks like a tiny little house on top of the building that looks as if a tornado plopped it there.
14. The Weird Golden Dome mentioned in previous blog has grown a mustache.
15. When wearing black shoes and white socks, be careful if it rains because black shoes will turn your white socks, and your toes, very black
16. Occasionally it is very hard to find a crosswalk.
17. Specifically near previously mentioned golden dome.
18. And when trying to get to this building
19. Which is usually around the time a policeman drives by and prevents you from j-walking (not by saying anything but by showing up and you not wanting to get in trouble)
20. My arms need to be longer and my hands need to be bigger in order to take a picture of myself that actually has a background in it.
21. The advertisements on websites are now in German and say things like "Would you like an American green card? Live and work in America!" except in German
22. Also, when wandering around by yourself in a foreign country, the song "I will Survive" may pop into your head...In Ellen Degeneres' voice.
23. When wandering Vienna aimlessly, you can find a TON of cool things
Such as Minoretinkirche, a church built in the 1300's, which have obviously been added on to over the years, seen below.
And the many other pictures of today I have here: http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a353/LaurenHillard/Vienna%20Day%202/
1. When someone asks if you want them to take a picture of you, remember to unzoom your camera or you will end up with a wonderful picture of you standing in front of a white van and nothing else.
2. When taking pictures of cool buildings, be careful of the advertisement in the corner of the picture because it may be of two people who are very naked.
3. The National Library is enormous
4. Apparently, the proper etiquette when a taxi honks at you for crossing the street when he was driving is to give him a rude hand gesture, yell at the car then proceed to open the passenger door and yell more. Then look at the taxi driver as if he was being ridiculous for honking...
5. The horses that are connected to carriages have little holder things along their tail that catches their poop.
6. The Dogs in Austria can smell fear too.
7. Said dogs hang out near the National Library and may decide to chase you.
8. Said dogs know more German than I do
9. I can't speak German.
10. I can't understand German.
11. I can read German a little bit.
12. 5 people can fit, with luggage, into one very tiny car.
13. When renovating a statue, they put what looks like a tiny little house on top of the building that looks as if a tornado plopped it there.
14. The Weird Golden Dome mentioned in previous blog has grown a mustache.
15. When wearing black shoes and white socks, be careful if it rains because black shoes will turn your white socks, and your toes, very black
16. Occasionally it is very hard to find a crosswalk.
17. Specifically near previously mentioned golden dome.
18. And when trying to get to this building
19. Which is usually around the time a policeman drives by and prevents you from j-walking (not by saying anything but by showing up and you not wanting to get in trouble)
20. My arms need to be longer and my hands need to be bigger in order to take a picture of myself that actually has a background in it.
21. The advertisements on websites are now in German and say things like "Would you like an American green card? Live and work in America!" except in German
22. Also, when wandering around by yourself in a foreign country, the song "I will Survive" may pop into your head...In Ellen Degeneres' voice.
23. When wandering Vienna aimlessly, you can find a TON of cool things
Such as Minoretinkirche, a church built in the 1300's, which have obviously been added on to over the years, seen below.
And the many other pictures of today I have here: http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a353/LaurenHillard/Vienna%20Day%202/
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