blogging.

So, before I continue to write more entries, I have to clear something up.

Sometimes people ask me things like... "why do you blog? It's nice to blog, but isn't it very limiting because it's on the internet and thus public information? Don't you write completely different from if you were to write in a personal journal?"

My answer to this is:

I blog because I'm in Sweden, which is a place completely different from home, and I feel like a have a unique perspective. Honestly, I don't know how many other people in this world can say that they are a Korean American that studied abroad in Sweden. Maybe 5... maybe 10?

Given the population of the world and the length of the world's history plus the other factors like the fact that I study linguistics, the fact that I love the IPA, and the fact that I love music... yes, this makes my perspective distinct. A ratio of 1:world population.

I don't mean to put myself on a pedestal or anything... I just think that it would be selfish of me not to blog. I think I may have said here before that I'm a huge fan of [[open source]-like] things and sharing knowledge -- sharing everything that I have and know... which leads to the question of: "isn't it limiting to write a blog and don't you write in a completely different way?"

You would be surprised.

I would say that it is limiting in a sense, but in a good way. Meaning, I try to cut out all of the personal reminders and blah-blah-blah things I might write in a personal journal like:

"ahhhhhh..... well.... ok. It's 2:32am right now and I'm so tired" |
"oh self, why can't you stay awake and do your homework?" |
"Take out the compost tomorrow morning before school so your room doesn't stink." or
"don't forget to take your laptop with you to school on Wednesday."

Another difference would be that I would address a personal journal in second person singular, but you, the web audience, in second person plural... for the most part. This inevitably changes the voice, not just the pronoun. Humor also becomes an integral part of lots of things I write here because I am McDonald's... I love to see you smile. Well, that is if I could see your face while you are reading this.

:: wow, that wasn't funny. Please excuse that last pun ::

So, another big reason I keep a blog is so that I'll have something compiled that I can look back on to remember all of the things that I did and thought -- all of the things I learned. Plus, you can add pictures so easily to a blog! It's much harder with a journal and we all know that text is much more entertaining with pictures. Oh, so here's one to fill the quota:














Yes... so furthermore, keeping a blog like this will probably show me how my English writing and language skills have changed over the past few months. I've noticed (in speaking) that I'm using a strange Swedish style intonation when I ask questions in English now. And, I'm becoming something of a dialect box, whatever that may mean to you.

Okay, well I think I've said enough. In other words, I've spent too much time on this post. I hope it was worth writing. I think I'll be glad I wrote it when I look back.

förbjudet att...

So, this isn't really a good picture because someone already thought they were funny by adding the umlaut marking on 'mata' to become 'mäta' causing the meaning of this sign to be something like: "Forbidden to compare the animals," or to be parallel with English standards: "Do not compare the animals."














For me though, I had a moment of interference by the Spanish in my brain and I thought this sign said: "Do not kill the animals," and I was like...

:: duh ::

and obviously, it means: do not feed the animals.

Swedish-English Accent

There was one day in class that I got really bored because the lecturer was reading directly from the text I had read the previous night, but instead of falling asleep I decided to take linguistic (phonetic) notes on her pronunciation of the text she was reading. It was actually ended up being very fun to go through that text and start to recognize and predict patterns. She had a very strong and typical Swedish-English accent and I am glad I brought the text with me to class that day.

I have been very interested in different accents of English for a little while now and I even have a book entitled Accents and Dialects for Stage and Screen (:: oj, why can't I underline in this interface ::) by Paul Meier. I found this book online and it is sooo awesome! It comes with CDs and uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to help teach accents to actors/actresses. Not that I'll be doing any acting anytime soon... but it's super fun nonetheless. It is helping me to keep up with my IPA reading abilities and it's not just broad transcription either. There are some very narrowly transcribed things that use diacritics and suprasegmentals that man kan säga är a little advanced, like the marking for extra short (in Italian), or lowering maybe (in French).

Anyways, I have started on a project for myself to basically write the chapter for the Swedish dialect. It has been a lot of fun and is helping me to understand phonetic mistakes that Swedes make when speaking English. But, we all know that lexical mistakes are the most fun... you know, like the ones that happen because of direct translations.

Oh and there are words that Swedish and English share that are what I think is called false friends. A couple fun ones are: fart and mambo. I can't help but giggle a little (at least inside) when people say that there's a lot of mambo in Stockholm or reading something like "fick lite för hög fart," which sounds like it means you had a fart that was a little to loud (and that you might be holding in) or "full fart framåt," which I would really rather not try to explain.

So, I hope this post has pleased those of you that were waiting to read a real "linguisticky" post. That is, of course if you do faktiskt exist... in my nearly invisible audience. Yes, käraste församling... Gud vi tackar dig.

Kiruna & Abisko cont.

Sorry... now, after a long pause, I am back and I would like to continue right where I left off.

So, being in Kiruna and Abisko was quite amazing. Getting there, on the other hand... not so much. It took 20 hours to get there, and 23+ hours to get back. Despite the long trip, I found ways to entertain myself. Aside from trying to sleep, I spent lots of time learning some language basics in Russian, Italian, Slovenian, Japanese, and French. Overall, it was a good time and I learned a lot. I'd like to share one really funny French tongue twister I learned. Below you'll find three different transcriptions for each line of the tongue twister.

The top line is a pseudo rhythmical transcription:
(| = barline, Q = quarter note, O = eighth note, o = sixteenth note).
The second line is the French language original.
The third line is the English translation.

O | O O O O o o O Q |
Combien sont ces six saucissons ci?
How much are these six sausages here?

O | O o o O O O O Q |
Ces six saucissons ci sont six sous.
These six sausages are six 'sous'

o o | O o o O O O O Q |
Si ces six saucissons ci sont six sous.
If these six sausages here are six 'sous'

O | O o o O O O O Q |
Ces six saucissons ci sont très chers.
These six sausages here are very expensive.

Hopefully that made some sense. The funniest part is that these lines fit into bars of music, but I'm sad that it looks so terrible here and that I couldn't find a better way to transcribe it.

Here's a picture of the sandwiches I kept making throughout the trip to tide me over.














And, an example page from my multi-language linguistic study notebook.














Moving on, we snowmobiled out 11 km into the wilderness to try to see some Northern Lights in Kiruna and we sort of saw some, but it was cloudy so we couldn't see them well. I guess I was lucky to see any at all though.

As for the Ice Hotel... this has been a place I knew about and wanted to visit for just over five years, so it was nice to finally be able to go. I should've realized how cold it was going to be though. I think they they to keep the whole Ice Hotel under -5 C at all times. Pretty cold if you ask me. Beautiful though. Here's one more picture from there before I take my leave.

not a superhuman, after all...

So, I found out yesterday that I'm really not a superhuman after all. I feel like most people my age or younger have this feeling like they are invincible or something, but we're really not and it's sort of an important realization to have... Not that you should let anything limit your goals and aspirations, because I'm still a firm believer in "if you put your mind to it, you can do it," and "most people are reasonable, that's why they only do reasonably well," but one should at least be aware of the sort of physical boundaries that exist. You know, the ones that determine your health at least.

Basically, what I found out yesterday was that I cannot go a full day just eating chocolate and cakes, and drinking only coffee, water, and orange juice. Actually, in some cases I think I might be able to handle this, but I think in combination with my lack of sleep and all of the running around I do all day... this was not a good and I paid for it yesterday.

I was over at my friend Mira's place studying Swedish after a long day of running errands, going to a short-film exposition, and hanging out at a coffee shop. I had only been eating sweets all day because I woke up late and didn't have time for breakfast... AKA: I bought 100g of dark chocolate before heading to the library. My mind was working very hard, as I was doing some very intense linguistic work with the Swedish.

My goal was (and still is) to create subcategories within the group 4 strong verbs where the subcategories actually fall into subgroups that follow a certain pattern (namely, ablaut or umlaut). In doing this, I need to know roughly what the vowel space looks like for Swedish so I can decide whether to call it ablaut (vowel reduction) or umlaut (vowel fronting)... basically. This has been something that has interested me for a while, and now it is useful because I'm taking a Swedish course again. Hopefully if/when I finish this, I'll post it to my Swedish website so people can see my work and use it to help them learn Swedish. I'm a huge advocate of shared knowledge and all things that are "open source," if you haven't noticed. I just hope that what I create is accurate and valid. If it's not, I'll at least have had good practice with the verbs. :P

Anyways, I just had some rice with kimchi and two fried eggs (a true Korean meal) and I'm making some 보리차 (barley tea) right now to fill and calm my stomach. Then, I think I'll have fully recovered and I can't help but thinking God is so kind for giving me such a mild scare. Finding out that I'm not invincible could have involved breaking my leg or getting hit by a tram or something like that, but instead I just felt faint and disoriented and just threw up a few times. God is great. And so is rice, kimchi, and barley tea.

:)

Good thing I'm well now though, because I'm hosting a meeting for this Swedish-Language student group I formed last week. We're called "The Swedish Language Alliance." Pretty bad-ass, I know.

funny, ha ha.

So, our Scandinavian Studies class went on a tour of some old houses in Slottskogen today and this really funny thing happened. Well, it was funny to me at least, because I had slept a total of about 5 hours in the past two days before going on this field trip and I didn't eat breakfast before going. Yes, so I was basically running on empty. Here's one picture:














Anyway, we were at this old house that was renovated to be used as a folk dance hall and the lady there was telling us about provincial costumes and stuff (not the house in the picture).

This lady was flipping through a book and showing us pictures of things and she said something like, "... and this is a picture of when the pope came to Sweden," but it sounded like she said "...and this is a picture of when the poop came to Sweden." I'm fully aware that Swedish vowel sounds can be and are in most cases very different, but I guess I never heard a Swedish person say the word "pope" before.

I die when I hear funny language jokes, so after a few moments I started cracking up!! It was so hard to hold in this laugh, but I felt like I needed to or else people would think I'm laughing at the provincial costumes or something, which I was not!! I started coughing to cover my laughter and I almost left the room. Stupid thing was, I kept thinking about it off and on for the next 15-20 minutes that we were there and I almost started laughing again every time I thought about it. You know when you're trying to hold in a laugh and you basically have a body spasm and expel a bunch of air through your nose? Yeah, I was having these spasms and I hope Akane, who was standing next to me, didn't think I was just blowing air into her ear or something.

Well, here's a few more pictures before I end this post.