Eureka!

The other day I asked the Romgi, “Can you tell I’ve been gaining weight?” (I was instructed by my doctor to do so.)

He tossed me a quick look of panic. How to respond? My face was a blank, so he couldn’t tell if I wanted him to say yes (I am supposed to gain weight, after all) or no (who wants to gain weight and look like it?).

Then: “The only way I can tell is that you say the numbers on the scale are going up.”

…I didn’t even know there was a right answer! Bravo, husband!

The Article Translated

Keep in mind that Koreans have a different idea of what makes in into an article. Here is my basic translation of the written about the Korean speech contest.

This year, BYU held its 21^st annual Korean Speech Contest. The Contest was held April 11^th in the BYU Conference Center.

The Korean Speech Contest was the brainchild of two of BYU’s most passionate and visionary professors in the Korean department, Kim Cha-Bong and Lee Ho-Nam. They created the contest as a way for students to hone their skills in spoken Korean.

Roughly 50 students of Korean, professors and various members of the Korea community gathered together as the meeting began. Kim Hui-Jeong, dressed in elegant tradition Korean attire, welcomed the group with her rendition of the Korean classic “Arirang” played on the kayageum.

Nathan Markel conducted the meeting, and welcomed everybody to the competition. He introduced the given topic of the contest, Korean culture. Many in the audience were pleased when he announced that after the contest, there would be a barbeque afterwards. In honor of the Korean culture, bother Korean-style ribs and kimchi were prepared.

He also introduced the judges for the event: Professor Heo Yang-Hoe, a professor at UVSC, Gwan Guang-Hak, a teacher at the local Korean language school, and Professor Julie Damron, a BYU professor of linguistics and Korean.

This year, the competition was split into three different groups: beginner, advanced, and open. Most speakers chose topics that reflected the differences between American and Korean culture they had observed in their travels to Korea, and continued study of the Korean language. Topics ranged from Korean etiquette, the flavors of Korean food, to the importance of friendship in our lives.

This year’s top honors went to Jarom Hillery with is speech titled “The Korean Alphabet and the Phagpsa Script.” His speech examined the origins and unique characteristics of the Korean alphabet. Jarom is currently majoring in Korean, and has been studying the language for over 5 years. In 2006, he traveled to Korea as an exchange student and studied at the Korean Language Institute at Sogang University. In the speech he commented that “King Sejong created the Korean alphabet with the idea that even a fool could learn it in 10 days, but even after 5 years of study, there is so much I do not know.” In a later interview he revealed his plans for the future: “I plan to continue my study of Korean, and I hope to some day work for a company founded in Korea.”

Original Article By:
Sung Daye

I'm a Winner!

Every year (for the past 21 years) the BYU Korean Language and Culture Club hosts a Korean speech contest. It usually happens during the winter semester. For two years, I have tried to enter into the contest. I have always found out about the contest after the deadline. This year, however, I was able to submit a speech in time for the contest.

There are quite a few native Koreans here at BYU, so they do have rules about who can enter teh contest. You can’t be a native Korean speaker, and there are different categories that depend on the length of time the language has been studied. I entered the advanced division, which is basically the one for returned missionaries. The prizes vary from year to year, and have ranged from a trip to Korea to gift certificates at a local Korean restaurant.

The topics are supposed to be about some aspect of Korean culture, whether it be food, history, language or anything in between. My speech was about a possible relation between an alphabetic script written during the Yuan Dynasty in China and the Korean alphabet, written 200 years later (I know most of you are thinking, “wow… really interesting stuff there Romgi…”). You don’t have to memorize the speech, but you kind of get bonus points if you do.

Speaking of points, each speech is rated by the judges based on content, relevance, difficulty of vocabulary, correct use of vocabulary, pronunciation and intonation (there may be some other categories… I’m not really sure).

So I memorized my speech, and I won! This happened almost a month ago, so you might be asking yourself why I am writing about it now. Provo has a fairly well established Korean community, and they have a newspaper that is published monthly. I am in the paper, as it talks about the speech contest. The girl Roni tutors is the girl who wrote the article. If anybody wants a translation of the article, just say so in the comments and I’ll post a translation.