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Language: Korean

  • Apr 07, 2012
  • 08:32 PM

First Language Attrition: Why my parents and I don't speak the same language (audio)

James Kim / 89.3KPCC
I have always had a tough time understanding my parents. Not because we’re from different generations, or born and raised in different countries; it’s that we don’t speak the same language. Growing up, I remembered that my Korean was actually pretty good. My mom said that I “spoke Korean very well for seven years.” But afterwards, I “stopped speaking Korean and only spoke English.”
  • Apr 05, 2012
  • 12:14 AM

Death To The Space Bar (video)

John Herrman / BuzzFeed
"You could type a whole sentence without using a space," SwiftKey's Joe Braidwood told me. "You could write an entire essay, though you might get every word you want. Technically you could write a novel without spaces." No more slapping the spacebar every half-second. No more stretching your thumbs.
  • Apr 02, 2012
  • 06:11 PM

Culture Ministry revamps Korean language-learning website

The Korea Herald
The Culture Ministry has launched an updated version of its online Korean language learning center to promote globalization of the language, officials said on Monday.
  • Mar 27, 2012
  • 12:16 AM

Facing Challenges as Dual-Language Programs Grow

Eleanor Yang Su / KQED
About 50,000 students are enrolled in dual-language programs in California, state Department of Education officials say, and about half of them are English learners. Ninety percent of the programs offer Spanish as the second language, followed by Mandarin (4 percent), Korean (3 percent) and other languages (3 percent).
  • Mar 27, 2012
  • 12:03 AM

Korean language classes thrive in Ridgefield, Palisades Park

NorthJersey.com
Bergen County's growing Korean population is driving efforts to expand language classes at more area high schools so students can learn not only the basics of speaking and writing, but the Asian country's culture, as well.
  • Mar 22, 2012
  • 03:03 PM

Dual-language school programs growing in popularity

Eleanor Yang Su / California Watch
From Chula Vista to Laguna Niguel and Sacramento, public schools are creating dual-language immersion programs at a fast pace. The California Department of Education estimates there are 318 bilingual immersion programs in the state, up from 201 in 2006.
  • Mar 21, 2012
  • 07:35 PM

Korean Language Institute Celebrates Its 200th Graduation Ceremony

Arirang
The Korean Language Institute at Yonsei University celebrated its 200th graduation ceremony on Wednesday. honoring more than 5 decades of teaching the Korean language and culture to students from around the world.
  • Mar 21, 2012
  • 10:57 AM

Now playing: Bard in 37 languages

Sarju Kaul / The Asian Age
For the first time, it is hosting 37 international companies, including two from India, to present all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays in 37 different languages. Theatre companies from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas will present plays in 37 different languages during the six-week drama festival, Globe to Globe, which is part of the World Shakespeare Festival due to run till November.
  • Mar 08, 2012
  • 01:23 PM

Is the Korean language really an orphan?

Alex Baratta / The Korea Herald
...And while all Koreans know that their alphabet, by extension a part of their overall identity, was single-handedly created by King Sejong, a question mark still persists regarding the origins of their language. Until around the 1960s, the Korean language was widely believed to be part of a hypothesized language family called “Ural-Altaic.”
  • Feb 22, 2012
  • 05:26 PM

Hangeul and Its Inventor Get Global Academic Attention

The Chosun Ilbo
King Sejong the Great, who is credited with inventing the Korean alphabet or Hangeul, is getting attention from linguists around the world. In its "Fifty Key Thinkers" series, British publisher Routledge devotes a chapter to the Korean monarch in the "Fifty Key Thinkers on Language and Linguistics."
  • Jan 12, 2012
  • 12:27 PM

Omron smartphone app comes close to instantaneous text translations

Minoru Matsutani / The Japan Times
Omron Software Co. has developed a smartphone application that translates short English, Korean and Chinese written phrases into Japanese in less than a second.
  • Dec 30, 2011
  • 07:41 PM

After Kim Jong Il’s death, a Korean language class shifts format

Geoff Decker / GothamSchools
Students in Democracy Prep High School’s Korean classes typically learn words that boost their vocabulary and develop basic grammar — standard fare for introductory foreign language instruction. But this week the lessons took a turn for the geopolitical. Youngjae Hur greeted his students yesterday with an unusual pop quiz in English and asked them to define words such as “despotism,” “denuclearize,” and “repressive.”
  • Dec 17, 2011
  • 12:01 PM

Learn tourists’ languages – Masidi

Jenne Lajiun / Borneo Post
...“I am proud of my language, but if I were to use the Dusun language to sell to foreign tourists, I won’t go far,” he cited, as an example. He urged those in the industry to perfect their command of the English language and not be shy to learn and use it.
  • Dec 15, 2011
  • 05:38 PM

'Korean language scientifically superior'

Shin Hae-in / The Korea Herald
“When we say Korean is superior, we are basing this on scientific examination. The Korean language’s method of making sound through a combination of vowels and consonants is very scientific and economical, even,” professor Sohn of the University of Hawaii told a news conference in Seoul, Thursday.
  • Nov 30, 2011
  • 11:47 AM

The lost decade: learning Asian languages

Greg Jericho / ABC Online
As someone who has not always been Julie Bishop's biggest supporter, it was rather intriguing to find myself nodding as she put forward the idea that the teaching of Asian languages be made mandatory in schools. This desire for Asian language education is a rather interesting position for a member of the Liberal Party to take ...
  • Nov 22, 2011
  • 02:09 PM

Sohn receives Korean honors for language work

Cheryl Ernst / UH System Current News
...A prolific writer, he is the author of Korean Language in Culture and Society (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2005); The Korean Language (Cambridge University Press, 1999); Korean (Routledge, 1994); Linguistic Expeditions (Hanshin, 1986); and numerous articles. He directed a 10-year project, funded by the Korea Foundation, to develop 21 Korean-language textbooks and a dictionary of grammar and usage, all published by the University of Hawaiʻi Press.
  • Oct 18, 2011
  • 05:50 AM

Distinct dialect of Jeju threatened with extinction

The Korea Times
JEJU ISLAND (Yonhap) -- A favored destination for honeymooners and vacationers, the island of Jeju, off the southern tip of Korea, is most welcoming to outsiders but can be difficult to navigate due to its language.
  • Aug 22, 2011
  • 09:58 PM

‘Hallyu an asset for Korean studies’

Claire Lee / The Korea Herald
When Professor Sohn Ho-min started teaching at University of Hawai’i some 40 years ago, only about 30 students would sign up for its Korean classes. Meanwhile, Japanese classes were enjoying enormous popularity, having more than 1,000 students packed into classrooms. Even Chinese classes had at least 300.
  • Aug 12, 2011
  • 12:48 AM

Language-obsessed teen has tongue operation

Ninemsn
A 19-year-old British student obsessed with Korean culture has had an operation to make her tongue longer so she can speak the language.
  • Aug 08, 2011
  • 04:58 PM

Korean language center to open in Indonesia

The Korea Herald
About half of the student body at Buton is from the Cia-Cia, a tribe of some 80,000 people in Bau-Bau. Two years ago, the tribe chose Hangeul to preserve its fading language and began offering a Korean language course at elementary schools.
  • Jul 22, 2011
  • 12:02 AM

South Korea to open language school

Himalayan Times
The Culture Ministry and International Korean Language Foundation has selected 10 institutions to run Korean language classes in France, China, Thailand, Russia, Vietnam, Nepal, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan and Cambodia. Last year, some 7,780 people across the globe attended Sejong Hakdang classes to learn the Korean language.
  • Jul 16, 2011
  • 02:32 AM

Korea to build Hangeul museum in Seoul by 2013

Kim Yoon-mi / The Korea Herald
Work will begin on a museum of Hangeul, the Korean writing system, at the National Museum of Korea in Seoul on Wednesday.
  • Jun 21, 2011
  • 03:05 PM

'In China, thou shalt speak the people’s language'

Sunny Lee / Korean Times
BEIJING — A Korean businessman in Beijing once boasted of his epic story of “scaring off” a police officer by speaking poor Chinese, when he was caught while speeding through a red light on his motor bike. Eventually, the police officer let him go, due to the language barrier, after a few futile attempts to talk it through with the foreign traffic-rule violator.
  • Jun 12, 2011
  • 10:58 PM

John Burroughs Teen Is South Korea Bound

Lori Rose / Patch.com
The 17-year-old Webster Groves student will spend six weeks in South Korea, immersing herself in the language and the culture. She is traveling there as part of a State Department program aimed at promoting the study of languages not typically taught in American schools.
  • Jun 11, 2011
  • 11:14 PM

Bay Area School Gets Korean Language Class, With Help From Korean Government

New American Media
Only 60 U.S. public schools, from elementary to high school, currently offer Korean as a second language, and two-thirds of them are concentrated in Southern California, home to one of the largest Korean communities outside of Korea.
  • Jun 08, 2011
  • 01:16 PM

A gov’t that’s often lost in translation

Ser Myo-ja / Korea JoongAng Daily
The embarrassing translation errors in Korea’s free trade agreements have revealed the government’s weakness in translation skills and a startling overconfidence in its civil servants’ foreign language abilities.
  • Jun 03, 2011
  • 09:32 PM

Korean Language and Culture Center opens at Minsk university

National Legal Internet Portal
According to the rector, the university added the Korean language to the curricula in the 2010-2011 academic year. Currently, 13 Belarusian students of the English department are learning the Korean language. Natalya Baranova also noted that the Korean Embassy has been actively involved in the development of the Korean language teaching school in Belarus.
  • May 30, 2011
  • 03:25 PM

Study of Korean language growing yearly in Taiwan

The China Post
SEOUL -- The test of proficiency in Korean, or TOPIK, is gaining popularity in Taiwan, as more people are showing interest in learning the language. The number of those taking the exam has increased by double-digit percentages since it was introduced in 2005.
  • May 29, 2011
  • 09:43 PM

Jeju's 'endangered' dialect

Anne Hilty / The Jeju Weekly
On Jeju Island, the local dialect is still viewed by those over the age of 40 as a means of deep bonding with other Jeju people. In a recent linguistics class of approximately 100 students in Jeju National University’s Department of English, a request for a show of hands of those who use the Jeju dialect elicited a confirmation from fewer than a dozen students.
  • May 15, 2011
  • 08:35 PM

Why can’t Asian Americans speak their native tongue?

Northwest Asian Weekly
A child can be bilingual if the parents speak both Asian and English languages at home. But there are unusual circumstances. “Most of the third-generation Japanese Americans don’t speak Japanese,” said Charlene Grinolds.
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