notes from shinsegae
so i'm currently at shinsegae and before that i was walking by the river with my family. my brother's exploring legos, my mom's looking up how to make eggtarts after eating an eggtart, so i'm listening to some podcasts and i'll be taking some notes
podcasts
Lingthusiasm Episode 106: Is a hotdog a sandwich? The problem with definitions
in this episode they talk about a bunch of is 'is X a Y?' debates and turned out some of my semantic spaces for english words were different from non-korean native speakers. here are some of them:
cup vs. mug: apparently Labov got a bunch of people arguing over if a particular container is a cup or a mug to get their vowels. for me a mug is always a cup. in fact, some of the first cups that were introduced to me were mugs if i recall correctly, and my prototype of a cup is a mug. also in korean a mug is 머그컵, or literally 'mugcup'.
shoe vs. boot: i was vaguely aware that most english natives1 think mugs aren't cups, but i was completely unaware that some people think boots aren't shoes. but then i googled it and most people think boots are shoes. cool.
Lingthusiasm Episode 107: Urban Multilingualism
- the first thought i had with this is 'i should use this info in my worldbuilding'
- also it was about minority languages though i didn't listen carefully, but they talked about both local and global efforts in language revitalization and i should check the resources they linked next time
encountering kids at the skypark
so today i met some kids at the skypark who apparently had their own lore, so when i first came inside the dinosaur (there's a dinosaur meant for kids to play inside, they go inside using the dinosaur's mouth and go out using a slide sticking out from the dinosaur) i saw a bunch of 6 year olds screaming "상어괴물 (shark monster) is here!" and it seemed like the closer i went towards them the more they were screaming, so i asked two of them "who's the 상어괴물?" and they pointed at me, so i thought i was suddenly a shark monster and i started playing around with them, until two other kids told me they were actually saying "선우괴물"(선우 monster, 선우 being one of the kids' names) but still the two kids i initially talked to was freaking out about me.
time passed, i somehow began to talk with two six-year-old girls. they asked which school me and my brother are, so i said i'm in middle school and my bro's in elementary school. and then they claimed to be good at english so i said in english, "cool then can you understand me right now?" and they said in korean "i can only understand easy phrases you know" and i was like "i literally said if you understand me. so what are your 'easy' phrases". so they said in english, "hi!" and i said "hey" and they said "how are you?" and i said "i don't know how to answer that question", noticing they're saying common phrases taught in school and trying to fling them out of the example dialogues in textbooks. they just responded with "i'm hungry!" and "i'm not hungry." so i said, "i should be hungry because i haven't eaten lunch yet, and i am hungry. my brother's not hungry."
and then my brother asked their opinions on k-pop, and for some reason the kids didn't know what k-pop was, but they knew k-pop demon hunters and suddenly started singing golden. and golden's the only song i fully memorized (or did i memorize takedown? idk) so i started singing it too and after a while 10 kids were just screaming "UP UP UP WITH OUR VOICES GOMORI GOMORI GOLDEN" and i was thinking 'wow i'm the only one who knows the correct lyrics but doesn't matter'
after singing soda pop and your idol, two girls insisted we should play outside of the dinosaur, so we went to the hammock under it. some kids ranging from age 4 to 8? were trying to shake the hammock and some younger kids were trying to get on it, so me and my brother decided to help them. i put some kids on the hammock (every time i felt like i was doing it wrong so i was like SORRY) and we shook it. in between some other boy who seemed about 8 years old joined to shake it, and a bunch of kids got off and on and on average there were like 6 kids screaming while being shaken. it was cool to be the oldest kid who leads the kids, because usually in school i'm the first year student who has to respect everybody and bow to them and everything. also looking at those kids just stress-free relieved my stress mainly around mistakes i made while interacting with people and my tests. (i do have to study for it tho, i'll do it after i write this)
and then me and the family ate lunch. my brother and mom shared 짜장면, i got udon, and it was the best udon i've tasted in ages. man kimbap place udon < school lunch udon < shinsegae udon. :þ
and that is it!!! :D
technically i'm a native speaker of english and mandarin. i don't speak a word of mandarin but i can still understand my mom.↩