We are back after some life-induced stop-and-go, including 2/3 of our household getting COVID among several other stressful life things - thank you for your patience (and thanks especially to our guest for his patience!).

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Guest: Dr. Andrew Cheng

Background:

Andrew had a Fulbright teaching position in South Korea for two years after college as a native English teacher.

He then went to grad school at Berkeley, studying under Dr. Keith Johnson, and got interested in sociophonetics. He wrote a dissertation on Korean Americans and bilingualism.

After a postdoc at UC Irvine, he is now at Simon Fraser University. He has branched out from Korean and also studies other areas.

Research: Fundamental frequency and bilingualism

How do languages fundamentally differ? There’s been a lot of research on this. To some extent, it’s easy to see - e.g., Korean and English have different sounds. But what about fundamental frequency (vocal fold vibration rate - commonly thought of as pitch). How do languages differ along this axis? The study by linguist Andrew Cheng that we're talking about today looked at this aspect.

Most studies compare two separate groups of people who speak each language, but what about if you look at the same people speaking two different languages - i.e., the same exact bodies (same vocal apparatus)?

Pitch is the perception of the fundamental frequency.

Andrew worked with 2nd- and 1.5-generation Korean Americans who learned both Korean and English simultaneously or nearly so. Korean Americans and other overseas Koreans are commonly known in Korean as gyopo.

Today’s word: Gyopo 교포

People of Korean ethnicity who live in other countries - Jaymin has always conceptualized it in opposition to yuhaksaeng 유학생, study abroad students.

There are stereotypes about how gyopos speak Korean (accent) in Korea, but Andrew emphasizes that the Korean they speak is totally valid and is definitely real Korean.

Methods:

Andrew’s paper: He interviewed the same people in both English and Korean, with an activity that served as a buffer between the two parts - just basic conversation, really.

Then, he used a specific software to analyze the recordings and find which was higher/lower in fundamental frequency.

There were theoretical reasons why he wanted to recruit from both 2nd and 1.5-generation Koreans, but in the end, there was no significant difference in pitch between the two groups as adults.

But for all, the fundamental frequency was higher when they spoke Korean than when they spoke English.

Analyzing Jaymin's Korean and English.

Andrew analyzed Jaymin speaking in Korean and in English. They found that, contrary to Sara's personal perceptions, he followed the pattern of Korean being higher in pitch than English. (Jaymin didn't have exactly the same language learning profile as the participants in Andrew's research, having learned English mostly in his late teens, but it was interesting to see the pattern continue in this casual analysis.)

Raising bilingual kids

Jaymin and Sara discuss their experience trying (failing?) to raise a bilingual Korean-English kid, and Andrew discusses his newer work on French/English bilingualism, bilingualism and pragmatic cues, etc.

Find Andrew Cheng online:

@LinguistAndrew

Website: http://www.sfu.ca/~aca301/

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hanmadikorean@gmail.com with any comments, questions, or requests

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Keuriseumaseu: Syllable structure in Korean

Word and meaning:

크리스마스 Keuriseumaseu means Christmas

Origin:

It comes from the English word Christmas

Cultural Contexts:

Dating etc. (see the Hanmadi post on Christmas at https://hanmadikorean.com/christmas/)

Linguistic element: Syllable structure of Korean (Young-Mee Yu Cho)

General syllable structure: Aslam, M., & Kak, A. (2007). English Syllable Structure. In Introduction to English Phonetics and Phonology (pp. 60-68). Foundation Books. doi:10.1017/UPO9788175968653.005

“Every language manifests a particular way of combining its sounds to form meaningful words or parts of words, called syllables. Each language puts certain restrictions on these possible combinations. For example, in English we can't have a word which begins with a consonant sequence bfj, zbf or tzp. When we analyse what restrictions (and regularities) are found in the language under study, we are studying the syllable structure of that language. We can divide words into one or more syllables. For example, tin has one syllable, brother has two, important has three and computer has four syllables each.

A syllable is a group of one or more sounds. The essential part of a syllable is a vowel sound (V) which may be preceded and/or followed by a consonant (C) or a cluster of consonants (CC or CCC) (see below). Some syllables consist of just one vowel sound (V) as in I and eye/aI/, owe/ə/. In English, a syllable can consist of a vowel preceded by one consonant (CV) as in pie/paI/, or by two consonants (CCV) as in try/traI/, or by three consonants (CCCV) as in spry/spraI/. The vowel of the syllable may also be followed by one consonant (VC) as in at/æt/, or by two consonants (VCC) as in its/Its/, or by three consonants (CVCCC) as in text/tekst/or by four consonants (CVCCCC) as in texts/teksts/.”

Maximal syllable shape is the syllable type that contains the most possible segments in onset and coda positions, for instance CCCVCCCC in an English word like strengths (https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/el_centro_research/5/) 

Spanish: CCVC

Japanese: CV

Hawaiian: CV

Really different from English.

CGVC (onset consonant glide vowel coda consonant)

Note how the syllabic structure is actually embedded in the writing system.

값, 삶, 없[다]: alone, only one consonant surfaces, but in certain environments, the other does as well.

And additionally, some sounds can’t come at the beginning or end of a syllable. E.g., “sh” ; “ng” (as in English).

And some diphthongs don’t work in Korean as single syllables. E.g., “I”

Christmas: How many syllables? In English, 2. In Korean, 5.

Other examples:

프렌드 friend - clusters not allowed

콩글리쉬 Konglish

arbeit

ice cream

Sandwich

Wine

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Sources:

Young-Mee Yu Cho. Syllable-based Phonological Processes. Lucien Brown and Jaehoon Yeon, eds. The Handbook of Korean Linguistics. Wiley; 2015. 22-40.

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hanmadikorean@gmail.com with any comments, questions, or requests

Website: hanmadikorean.com

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Theme music:

Words for talking about COVID-19 in Korean

As with other languages, a lot of new words have entered Korean during the pandemic, and other older words have come into wider use.

New words (neologisms) can be borrowed (i.e., a word used in another language is brought into the language you’re speaking, with a similar or sometimes a somewhat different meaning); or created from “scratch” or by combining parts of other words.

Some COVID-related words in Korean:

코로나 - korona - COVID-19

Korean word for quarantine:

자가격리 - jaga gyeongni - quarantining at one’s own house - literally, own house quarantining.

Sino-Korean word; not newly coined, but in more frequent use. Doesn’t actually have to be at one’s own house.

Korean word for mask scofflaws:

턱스크 - teokseukeu - when someone wears a mask down on their chin instead of over their mouth. Yes, these people exist everywhere! From native Korean teok 턱 + last two Koreanized syllables of 마스크, English mask

Korean word for social distancing:

사회적 거리두기 - sahoejeok georidugi - social distancing - Sino-Korean + Native Korean. Essentially a literal translation 

Korean words for contactless/virtual things during COVID-19:

언택트 - eontaekteu - probably a new coinage for COVID - un as in English un-, tact from English contact. So no contact, basically - people used to use it a lot from things happening over Zoom rather than real life; contactless deliveries; etc.

비대면 - not face to face (literal translation) - a Sino-Korean word that has been replacing (or has replaced) 언택트 

랜선여행 - laen-seon yeohaeng - virtual travel - 랜 from LAN as in the English abbreviation LAN for those really fast Internet cables (랜) + 선 line (which together mean ethernet cable in Korean) + 여행 travel

Korean word for preventive measures during COVID-19:

K-방역 - K-bangyeok - Korean preventive measures - K as in Korea/Korean (e.g., K-pop); the things Korea did to keep COVID from getting to crazy levels the way it did in the US and many other countries that didn’t implement such strong measures.

Korean words for a future with endemic COVID-19:

위드 코로나 - wideu korona - from English, “with Corona,” as in “living with Corona” - adapting to a life in which COVID-19 is endemic

단계별 일상 회복 - dangyebol (stage by stage) 일상 (everyday life) 회복 recovery  the word the government is pushing to replace 위드 코로나, essentially meaning the same thing.

Do you know any other COVID-related Korean words? We’d love to hear them if so!

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Follow us on social media:

@HanmadiKorean on Twitter

hanmadikorean@gmail.com with any comments, questions, or requests

Website: hanmadikorean.com

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Theme music: The Boating Trip by LATG Music.