For my man, Matt! And everyone else....

This blog is targeted specifically towards Matt and anyone else interested in the Korean language. There is a lot of resources out there and I found some pretty good ones with the research that I had to do. So I thought I would share them here. I know this will benefit him for sure. Shout out to autopilot mode, for pulling me through life.

http://aboutworldlanguages.com/korean


http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/korean.htm

"Save a language, Save a culture"

This article was pretty touching. The efforts of a man to establish a writing system and school for the indigenous people of the Hill Tracts in Bangladesh. The article itself has links to other websites like Omniglot.com and such. The whole thing started with a man, a nonfiction writer, discovering the epidemic facing writing systems of dying languages. His journey led him to a man who, by chance, originates from the Hill Tracts and is desperately trying to establish a system to preserve the native languages that seem to be pushed back by the majority power in the country. It looks like a long read and it includes more details than I can give, but it is an easy read and does not take up too much time.



This is a carving of the N'Ko script, a writing system in West Africa.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130628-endangered-languages-scripts-bangladesh-indigenous-cultures-world/

Find yourself...here's a map.

This is sort of an extensive article, it is a lot longer than the normal ones I find. However, it goes into more detail about how language effects our thoughts. It also opens up with a false claim that was made during the 40's by a, Benjamin Lee Whorf, who pretty much destroyed any research into how language effects our perceptions of the world.

What was interesting about this article was how it went into the existence of gender system languages and how by giving gender to objects we have this disposition on how we see things. There is sort of an emotional provocation that occurs in these languages than in languages like English, filled with their "it's." What I found most interesting, though, was how they explained that language doesn't barricade us from understanding concepts. "Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey." It's not what it prohibits us from thinking, but rather what it obligates us to think. 

Here's a link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I would probably recommend reading the parts that connected to bold lettering, to get the gist of the article.