Topic of conversation for Monday 21st July, 2008.
* * * * * * *
Uniquely Korean concepts
Premise summary:
Every language includes words which represent the thoughts and feelings of the people who speak that language. Every group of people has a history shared in knowledge and awareness if not in actuality. For that group of people (whether of a nation, region or smaller area, or even an online community) individual words can come to represent thoughts or feelings stemming from that shared experience and which thus – perhaps – require extra explanation to learners of that language coming from outside of that culture. … Or do they?
Questions:
1.) What words which express ‘uniquely Korean concepts’ can you list?
2.) How do you explain the meanings of those words in English?
3.) What is the history behind those words? How did they develop?
4.) Can you describe incidents – personal stories – which illustrate the meaning of any of those words?
5.) What words in other languages (including English) do you know which represent concepts which seem unusual to you, or to other Korean people of whom you know?
6.) What is your opinion of the definitions of these words, including ‘jeong’?
(See below the definition of this word for others words and active links to pages with their definitions.)
* * * * * * *
In class today we talked about:
the literal meaning of the word 정, and discussed some examples of what it looks like ie. we shared some stories about our own exprience of ‘jeong,’
we started talking about 효,
and 한,
and began to talk about 체면.
