Since I was never able to plan more conversation sessions
with Ana, I met with a different conversation partner instead for our first
session in the coffee lounge. Her name is Soongyu Kim, and it is actually what our
conversation starter became. Although Soongyu is female, she says that in South
Korea her name is commonly for boys. I am not sure if I understood her
explanation completely due to the language barrier and this being a complicated
subject. She said that her parents, like many others, took her to a fortune
teller to receive a name. Apparently, the fortune teller chooses the name based
off numbers and the time in which she was born, which I'm guessing is some sort
of astronomical formula or name numerology. Ultimately, she said her name had a
meaning but it was difficult to define in English. I had her describe it the
best she could and we came up with several great adjectives such as outgoing,
independent, and extravagant. For every word that we came across that she had
never heard of we looked up the definition on my phone to find out its part of
speech, the ways it can be used, and the definition itself. This ultimately
turned into a wonderful discussion about the different words, sentences structures,
and pronunciations of our own primary languages.
No comments:
Post a Comment