I’ve learned a lot from this course. Before taking this class, I did not imagine that we rely so heavily on linguistics. But it does not mean it is unnecessary. Thankfully, I learned the language structure of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in this class. It is helpful to study the following topics we argued indeed, like politeness, social situation, and masculine and feminine. Although it is hard for me to understand humble and honoring forms in Japanese at first, I get the meaning after I searched online or ask my friends.

One of the most intriguing topics for me is the “new masculine gender identities in East Asia.” I’ve watched several Korean TV series, and I noticed that the actors are “beautiful.” After taking this class, I learned that this new type of Korean male is called handsome flower men. They always wear eye makeup and have longer hair than city jade men.

I realize the importance of language, and this class changes my perspective on linguistics a lot. Language can not only affect society, and society can also alter the language uses. In addition, language also relates to one’s way of thinking. Language is an essential part of the culture. The reason for this is because the language has cultural characteristics. I have seen a sentence before: “the language of a society is an aspect of its culture; language and culture are parts and wholes.”

My learning approach for this class is to read the materials carefully before class and review each of the lecture slides seriously. That’s works a lot for me.

When I took this class, I feel that is difficult about the quiz, and it has lots of quizzes, it gives me more pressure. After some quizzes, I am used to finishing the quiz and read some articles before the class. I think that the professor taught the culture of different countries and the various languages in Eastern Asia. Like, the using of the verbs, the structure of the language, the meaning and different form used in the sentence, and so on. I am so surprised about the difference in language between Eastern Asians. Before I attend this class, I could not distinguish the kanji from the Chinese and Japanese, I do not know there was a different culture, and the meaning is not the same. This class gives me rich knowledge about the Eastern Asian language, and the discussion from class change my thoughts a lot. I can listen to others carefully and sometimes ask the question to other classmates. Besides that, I find more about the culture of Japanese and Korean. And know why people’s customs are different and the reason for their life. I feel it is interesting. Even though sometimes I think that problematic for me to remember more about the grammar and others, I still find fun from the study.

Before I took this class, I have always had the thought of there are no big differences between the countries in Eastern Asia even though I am from China. However, after taking this class in this term, my mind has completely changed. Many topics that we have covered in this class have really expanded my view. For example, the differences in politeness among Eastern Asian languages, gendered language, and different way of thinking based on different languages we speak. Besides, based on my last two researches on politeness and gendered languages in Japanese, I found a lot of interesting facts about Japanese. What’s more, before my researches, I used to watch the Anime like normal people do, now I will start to notice the differences of what the characters say and look them up.

Furthermore, many interesting topics that we’ve covered have really helped me learn a lot about the language, traditions, and culture of my neighbor countries. This class has raised my interest of visiting Korea and Japan and experience their culture in person.

One of the questions that has intrigued me the most was actually from our newest topic. If language effects how people perceive the world, and how differently speakers think from one another. I hadn’t thought of it much before this class and now thinking about it I am amazed at how much the way our languages are structured can effect what we perceive first and the results of thoughts all together. As, in class I thought it was interesting to know that English speakers when deciding if the person in the center was happy or not. A big percentage chose happy no matter how the surroundings were and only focused on the person in the question, while even in the other exercise with the fish tank. You see the difference that east Asian language speakers could have that instead of looking at the first thing they see and answering, they look at the bigger picture with everything included to give an answer. Also, the cow and grass picture was just another intriguing moment, as it wasn’t until now that there was a difference between how people categorize things and how relationships affect the result.

How I approach learning for this class, is just preparing myself to read the content more than once. So that I am able to fully comprehend and remember what I am reading/learning about. Flashcards also help me when trying to remember important parts of the lectures and readings that have shown up on quizzes and in the readings. This class has challenged my thinking when it comes to linguistics. In terms that I have learned more than I’ve ever really known about linguistics and it’s given me good insight within the three languages and in my own in this class. Also, learning that a lot goes into linguistics and there are several parts to it which opens my eyes to see just how complex languages can be and just how interesting that is. Seeing the difference between three languages that people tend to mix up, and understanding just how different they are as well as shared similarities between each other. As someone learning Japanese and Korean and has taken Chinese classes as well, this class actually gave me more knowledge that comes into mind as I am doing homework and practicing the language. It has made me think a lot more about the language that I am learning and overall has helped me understand it more from grammar to gendered linguistical features within it.

I think our class provides many interesting examples of the linguistic differences between English with East Asian languages and among Chinese, Japanese and Korean. For example, in week 10 classes, we learned about the differences in cognitive conception, languages in Eastern and Western visions. In Week 8, we learned about the new gender identities in East Asia. Although the new appearance has a different name in China (City jade men), Japan (herbivore boys), and Korea (Flower handsome men), they all show the change of modern society. We can use the culture to learn about linguistics and we can also use linguistics to show the culture. I am a native Chinese speaker and before our class, I have never realized that there is gender contrast in Chinese. It intrigued me that Chinese, Japanese and Korean all have gender contrast.

The organization of our course is very helpful for me to learn. I finish the reading and do the quiz to check if I miss some important points in reading. During the lecture, we have many pairs or small group activities to discuss what we learned and sometimes I can get some new ideas from other students. In lecture slides, there are many pictures that are very clear to help me to better understand the content. For example, the “Hello Kitty” pictures help me to understand the cuteness in Japan.  Discussion sessions help me to do the assignments by sharing ideas with other students who have the same interest as me in Korean. If I have some questions about the lecture and reading, I can ask other students or Hyunji during the discussion.

Thank you Kaori Idemaru and Hyunji Kim for teaching and helping!

The questions or issues that have intrigued me is that language and socialization is a powerful tool that is enable to shape each individuals thinking and process. For example, in class we discussed how East Asian languages and Americans perceive images differently due to the language structure. English is often taught in a way of categorizing and East Languages are in relations; thus, this difference in perception causes different answers. This was an interesting find because this roots back to the structure of languages, and how it affected the answers. Maybe there is a connection of a language being SOV and SVO that affects this perception? My reactions about this topic is that I believe languages  make individuals think differently and not linear to one another because how can everyone possibly be thinking or processing the same thoughts. It was very logical that everyone should be different thus a connection to the linguistic relativism. The approach I took on this class was the take notes on the readings because those readings reflect the in class lectures and made it very easy to understand in class. My approach on linguistics that every language provides a unique view, and this class further endorse my belief in languages regardless of what they are. This class did not challenge me to change as I was already an open person about this topic and already had a belief in linguistic relativism.

By far the most exciting topic to me has been the power of language in North Korea. When we prototypically think of propaganda, we often think of posters with powerful images and slogans. However, propaganda is perpetuated through all forms of written, spoken, and drawn expression, including language itself. While we didn’t spend very long on the topic, the idea of language as the vessel for power and oppression is incredibly interesting. The saying, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” isn’t true. Language can have a profound effect on people as illustrated by the media portrayal of NK’s Supreme Leader. More recently, the events in Hong Kong represent a backlash not only against the policies and actions of the Chinese government, but also against the rhetoric that has been used to suppress democracy. I do wish we could have spent more time on the topic, however the line understandably begins to blur between politics and language. 

I’ve maintained that I was an auditory learner in the first blog post and that has remained consistent. I feel I have learned a lot and there certainly wasn’t a wasted day in the class. All of the content was applicable, interesting, and taught incredibly well. Professor Idemaru is one of the most passionate professors I’ve had the pleasure of learning from.  Even though I’ve recently started participating more in class, I regret not doing so earlier. I do not think the class has particularly changed how I prepare or think. I feel my existing strategies have been successful for excelling in the class.

Overall, EALL 209 has changed my perception of Linguistics. I once thought it was a stagnant area of study, but now realize it’s an incredibly dynamic space with new discoveries being made every day. Everyone would stand to benefit from the knowledge in this class because it provides insight into language as well as people and cultures.

-Callum

This class has been a really nice culmination of my 24 credit focus on asia. This class did change my idea of what “linguistics” was. Before this class, I wouldn’t say I knew what linguistics was. Now, nearing the end of the term, I could probably explain in broad terms what a Linguist does. Linguistics isn’t just studying language, It is totally intertwined with every aspect of that culture the language belongs to. Language makes up a broad portion of a culture, and explains many phenomenon that only exist within that culture. A specific example of this would be Oppa in Korea. The word explains a lot about the culture of K-Pop and also fan culture.

The idea that society is shaped by language is extremely interesting to me. And it brings up a debate questioning if it is language that shapes society, or society that shapes language. All of these questions tie in really nicely with history, politics, and culture. As we have been learning most recently, we see that eastern and western societies process visual data and nouns differently than each other. These small differences in how a language is structured can actually shape how we process the world.

One of the most important realizations I have had in this class is the idea of Dyads and how gender bias is literally ingrained in the fabric of our languages. The broad inclusion of gender bias exists across eastern and western languages and really sheds light on the inherent sexism in all of our minds. The english examples include Good and Bad, Right and Wrong, Up and Down, Heaven and Hell. All of these word pairs include a positive-negative order. Man and Woman shows us how we may be subconsciously propping up this system of discrimination. It was crazy to me to see this in class because I had never given language a second thought as having the power to prop up discrimination.

I am very glad that this class was the last of my sequence of classes in my study of Asia for my business major. I think moving from the history of Japan, to the history of Asia as a whole, onto religion and philosophy has been an amazing progression for my understanding of the region of East Asia. Understanding language structures and cultural elements of asia is critical to understanding history and religion. They all play off of each other and support a holistic understanding of the region.

Thank you Hyunji and Kaori for doing such a great job at introducing linguistics to me and the class. I really enjoyed learning about the linguistic features of East Asia.

So far in the course, I have enjoyed the broad scope of linguistic elements we have studied. My focus is Korean, so I know far more about the grammatical structure of that language. Therefore learning about things like aspect markers in Chinese and humble vs. honoring form in Japanese has been the most interesting and new information. I highly appreciated the guest lectures and was happy that we were able to receive lessons about cultural aspects as well as linguistic function. My favorite guest lecture was about Chinese medicine, since the study of Chi and solving illness before it develops is far different than the usual Western practice.

The most interesting topic so far was girl graphs, as it gave insight to how certain minority groups in a population develop language that is only targeted to members of the same in-group. It’s also fascinating that the cutesy writing is derived by using the base characters of Japanese, and that is can be deciphered by speakers but it generally not used since it is difficult to read.

The course has challenged the way I think of linguistics by comparing and contrasting three different languages that may have similar words or grammar points. This has allowed for a deeper discussion into the development of language as a separate identity even in close proximity. I really enjoyed what I’ve learned so far and hope to use this knowledge towards more linguistic study in the future!