Jeju-eo Project Update

About six months ago, I introduced my self-directed research project about Jeju-eo, the endangered variety of Korean spoken on Jeju Island. Since then, I've been happily busy with the linguistic documentation work which I received a small Fulbright grant to do.

In January, I met with a professor of Jeju National University to get his insight and some inside information on what language activism looks like on the autonomous island province of Korea. Then, nothing happened for a while.

This is me giving my presentation on Jeju-eo at the Fulbright Spring Conference 2014. Even without anything concrete to show, I went way over time! But people gave me very positive feedback, at least! Photo taken by Katelyn.

It was not until April, during the Fulbright Spring Conference, that I actually had the opportunity to do any fieldwork! After giving a presentation of my research at the conference itself (which was a bit lacking, in my opinion, since I didn't have any actual data to show yet), I spent an entire afternoon with five native Jeju Islanders who helped me make recordings.

The fieldwork was fun but a bit nerve-wracking, at least for the first part. Through a friend of a friend, I met an elderly couple who live in a rural area outside of Jeju City. They are known to be very involved in the local language activism community, so fortunately, they were very willing to talk about Jeju-eo with a complete stranger, and told me many stories. For example, they explained why Jeju-eo sounded so clipped (shortened words make communication across long distances easier when wind is constantly blowing over the island) and highlighted the main differences between Standard Korean and Jeju-eo.

The nerve-wracking part was that I felt way out of my depth in terms of language ability. These people spoke no English, so all of our communication was done in Korean. It was tough for me to explain exactly how I needed them to elicit the words I wanted to record. Also, there was a lot of ambient noise in the recordings, because we were meeting in their house, which meant that they offered snacks and were busy eating them the entire time. Also, the background noise of refrigerators, clocks, and a farm have probably ended up in these recordings.

The friendly and hospitable first group of consultants. They welcomed me to come back any time in the future!

My second group of consultants were much easier to work with, since they were a mother and a daughter, and the daughter happened to be an English teacher. Again, I was connected through a friend of a friend, and again, even though I was just this random kid with a microphone, they were enthusiastic about helping and showed a great deal of generosity.

Because the linguistic barriers were no longer an issue, the second recording session went much more smoothly, and we worked for over an hour to collect over one hundred words, including many that are unique to Jeju-eo. These are the recordings that I have been putting into the Jeju-eo Online Talking Dictionary.

Ah, yes, the dictionary. The big project. I can freely admit that the lexicographical process is much more of a mountain than the molehill I expected it to be. Although I returned from Jeju Island happy and ready to dive right into the splicing, transcribing, annotating, and uploading work required to build up the dictionary from nothing, well, all of that work took a lot more time than I'd planned for. Weeks went by, and then months, and still I never got close to finishing. Then the semester got busy, and I had to put my project on hold.

Back when I did online lexicography in college, it was as part of a team. Despite my experience -- or perhaps beacuse of it? -- I underestimated my ability to do all the work on my own!

Finally, in early June, the deadline for my final report drew nearer, and I realized that it was now or never. I spent hours upon hours one weekend churning out data, giving myself just enough to work with for a few key observations in my report, and finished the eight thousand-word paper just before the deadline! This wasn't the worst I've ever procrastinated, but -- whew! -- It certainly was a wake-up call to the kind of work I might be doing in grad school. Note to self: no full-time jobs when you're doing full-time research, too. :)

Anyway, what I have to show for my work now is a modest online dictionary of Jeju-eo that you can browse at your leisure here. It's not complete by any means, and it's also imperfect. (This is mostly due to my imperfect translations and transcriptions. I do need help with the Korean, so if you know anyone who's willing to lend a hand or an ear, let me know!) But, as my friend Coby put it, "Something now exists that didn't exist before because of your work. That's awesome!"

In other news, I learned that a Fulbright Junior Researcher for the 2014-2015 grant year is going to be doing a similar project! Actually, let's be real here: her project is essentially exactly the same as mine. But she will have full funding for a year's worth of research and dictionary-making, and she will also be based on Jeju Island, so she can develop better connections and do more in-depth fieldwork. I've already been in touch with her, and I'm excited about the prospect of collaborating.

June's a Circus

Hello, world. Would you look at that, we're halfway through 2014. Whew. Just a few updates for today!

1. My 3rd-year students' writing portion of their final exam includes a post on our class blog. They will get a few extra credit points if their post gets a lot of views, likes, and comments! So please take some time to look at the nine most recent entries (all made in June) and comment on anything that interests you. Thanks in advance! Here's the blog.

2. I submitted my Castleberry project report on Jeju-eo yesterday. At nearly eight thousand words, I'm actually kind of impressed with my work, especially since this is the first paper I've written in two years (since I graduated from college, reeling from Honors exams). It's far from perfect, and in fact, my research isn't even finished yet, but I'm definitely glad to have finally crossed that hurdle. I'll post a more substantial update on my research soon.

3. This week, as I predicted about a month ago, is the week from hell. It began when I listened to thirty three-minute speeches in my classes today. Only 130 left to go in the next four days! But that's not all: my hardworking students took my offer to correct extra drafts of their speeches seriously, and as a result, the door to my office opened countless times today as students came in shyly, holding out papers and hopes for last-minute favors: "Teacher, can you please check this draft until [sic] tomorrow?" Even though I already corrected 160 drafts -- twice -- in the beginning of June, well... I relish a challenge. Bring it.

4. In one week, I will take my blackbelt test for taekgyeon. Another source of stress, I suppose.

Basically, the month of June has been very, very busy so far, and the end is just coming into view. After next week, it'll be downhill coasting all the way to the end. I'm a bit excited and a bit nervous. In addition, it seems as if grad school stuff is picking up, too. The other day, I received an email that included the names of Cal Linguistics' entering class of 2014: my six soon-to-be classmates! Although I resisted the urge to Facebook stalk them all, I did Google myself really quick, just to see what would come up. And, well, you don't have to scroll for very long to find this blog.

I of course welcome friends and strangers alike to read about my life on my little corner of the Internet, but it sure is strange to think that people I am going to work very closely with for the next five years could know a lot more about me than I know about them before we even meet.

And now, apropos nothing, here is a photo I took at my favorite local bakery the other day.

Profound and mysterious bread. The best part is that this isn't even a mistranslation. 오묘하다 means profound and mysterious. I should have bought this to find out what exactly makes it so!

P.S. Happy Father's Day (back in the States) to my one and only Babi! I think he reads this.

Dropping by Jeju

Plush horses of Jeju!

Whew, a solid week of travel really knocked me out! Since Monday of last week, I've moved around via bike, bus, plane, ferry, rental car, hippie car, subway, tram, local train, regional train, bullet train, and even a sideways elevator; I've ventured across mountains, across and above seas, and to an uninhabited island, stopping at ten cities along the way. And the first thing I did when I arrived back in Changwon was go to taekgyeon practice.

So now I'm exhausted. Fortunately, I have a solid week to refresh and look back on a great week that really made my vacation seem like a vacation before flying off somewhere else. Part 1: Jeju Island! I went to meet with a professor for consultation about my Castleberry research project but also spent some time with Fulbright friends.

On Monday morning, I got a sorely needed haircut, cleaned up my apartment, and then left for the airport. As usual, it took about a minute to get my boarding pass and get through security; though I was hours early, I passed the time with a book, The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester, which was gifted to me by a good friend. It was late afternoon and getting dark when I arrived on the island, but I found my way to my friend Vika's apartment in Jeju City and we caught up, her telling me awesome stories from her recent trip to Laos.

A 돌하르방 at the entrance to JNU

On Tuesday morning, after a paradoxically calming and invigorating yoga session at Vika's favorite local studio, I took a nice brisk walk to the nearby Jeju National University. You can just see the peak of Mt. Halla from the campus; South Korea's highest mountain was covered in snow. At JNU, I met up with Professor Yang to talk about my research project on Jeju-eo. The meeting was fruitful and encouraging in some ways but slightly discouraging in others. The good news is that Professor Yang is 100% on board with my project and thinks that it is an amazing idea and opportunity. The bad news is that, realistically speaking, it's going to be more difficult than I anticipated. We must figure out a way to conduct our own fieldwork (I had wrongly assumed that there would be an existing corpus of recordings of the language), and the timing is not ideal. Despite this, I had a great talk with the professor, gained a lot of useful information about Jeju-eo, and left the meeting feeling extremely encouraged about my prospects.

In the afternoon, Vika and I took a bus headed for the sleepy city on the south side of the island, Seogwipo. This express bus cut right through the island, climbing dizzily through the mountain roads for twenty minutes until we were surrounded by snow, then barreling down the other side for twenty minutes until we saw the beach again. It was an odd journey. In Seogwipo, we walked along the Olle Trails for some scenic views and visited the Jeongbang Falls (정방폭포), the only waterfall in Asia that falls directly into the ocean! Although it was cloudy out, it was still quite a sight, and even though it was the middle of winter, there were plenty of tourists, especially Chinese.

(An aside: a ticket to see the falls costs two bucks normally, but youth aged 24 or under can get in for one. When I saw this information at the ticketing booth, I realized that, it now being 2014, Vika and I, as well as everyone in the world born in 1990, were now 25 by the Korean system of age-reckoning. But we went for it anyway and showed our ID cards, and score! We got the half-price tickets.)

Jeongbang Falls on a cloudy January day.

Vika and me at 정방폭포

After some more hiking, chatting, and eating delicious Jeju oranges, which are now in season, we met up with some of the Fulbrighters who live and teach in Seogwipo. We hung out in Jessica's apartment and ate tons of cookies while laughing over travel stories and commiserating about graduate school and those onerous applications.

For dinner, we went to a popular barbecue restaurant that Kristen has gone to many times before with her school faculty. It's called 새섬갈비 (Saeseom Galbi/BBQ), and it's amazing. The black pork (흑돼지) is so thick, and the side dishes are good. Prices quite reasonable for the portions. I'd definitely go back, but the best part of the dinner, of course, was sharing it with friends.

At the end of the day, Vika and I took the bus back north to Jeju City; flying through winding, dark roads in the rain (no lights except those from passing cars on this terrifying route) was pretty nuts, but our bus driver seemed to know what he was doing. And on Wednesday morning, I left a cold and rainy Jeju to board my flight back to the mainland. Goodbye, Jeju! I'll be back again soon.

Pure yum. I used to be a vegetarian, but in Korea I'll enjoy a grilled pig any day.

Dinner with friends! Left to right: Jessica, Kristen, and Vika, all of whom are going to go on to achieve amazing things. And then there's me. Taken by Taxi.

제주어 (Jeju-eo)

Map of Korea, Jeju Island in pink.

My friend Jessica recently brought to my attention the extremely interesting fact that there is an endangered language spoken in Korea! I used to think that Korean was essentially the only language spoken in this country. Then, I learned about 방언/사투리, the fairly dissimilar regional dialects that make it possible for a Korean to tell where you are from after a minute of conversation.

As it turns out, the local dialect spoken on the island province of Jeju (제주) is even more unique than the dialects of the peninsula. It is so different, in fact, that it is nearly mutually unintelligible with standard Korean. For example, Jeju-eo has retained a low-back vowel that standard Korean no longer uses, and its lexicon includes hundreds of words borrowed from Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese that don't all appear in standard Korean. In addition, standard verb endings, which are critical to Korean morphology, are completely different: compare Jeju-eo's 알앗수다 alassuda to standard Korean's 알았습니다 alasseumnida, both of which mean "I understand." Thus, a person from Seoul would not be able to understand most of what a Jeju Islander is saying if the latter is using Jeju-eo*.

Unfortunately, common use of Jeju-eo is slowly diminishing. Between 5,000-10,000 Jeju Islanders can speak it natively today, but the grand majority of them are senior citizens. Children are not being taught Jeju-eo at a rate fast enough to keep the language alive for the next generation. Consequently, a few years ago, Jeju-eo was classified as an endangered language by UNESCO.

This is exciting for me, because I want to become a linguistics researcher, and my passion is for endangered languages. Thanks to Jessica, I got a great idea for an independent research project for this upcoming semester. I will travel to Jeju Island, meet a professor at Jeju National University, and work on compiling an English-to-Jeju-eo online dictionary similar to the ones I worked on at Swarthmore. I received funding for my project from the Fulbright Korea Alumni Fund (also called the Castleberry Grant), and I'm thrilled that I can begin right away!

Here are some links to informative articles related to Jeju-eo:
- A professor at the University of Hawaii calls for the preservation and revitalization of Jeju-eo.
- A Jeju Islander reflects on the ongoing loss of Jeju-eo.
- A feature on a Jeju poet who writes only in Jeju-eo.

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*The "eo" (어/語) in Jeju-eo means "speech", which is normally translated as "language", as in 영어 ("English language"). It is also called 제주방언 ("Jeju dialect"), but it seems that native speakers prefer to consider it a language, as do I. This is more an issue of politics/semantics than linguistics, however.