It took me a million years, but I finally finished typing up a four-page letter to my relatives in Korea, updating them on Mom's situation. You may recall that I had handwritten three pages of this letter over a week ago; in the end, I opted to type the whole thing out on the computer because of my poor Korean penmanship (it's not unreadable, but it is something of an eyesore).
Typing presents its own problems. I'm already a slow typist in Hangeul when I use a Korean keyboard; I'm even slower on my new American Mac, despite the Hangeul "keyboard window" that pops up to help you figure out where to put your fingers. I also spent a lot of time consulting an online Korean dictionary to make sure I was getting the medical terms right-- words like "tumor" and "edema" and "diagnosis" and "survival rate." In the end, I'm sure the letter still contains all manner of mistakes and horrifically nonsensical locutions; that's what I often saw, in English, from my students at Sookmyung Women's University. I'm proud of the efforts they made-- and truth be told, some students wrote excellent English-- but I'm pretty sure that my Korean letter looks as bad as many of the lower-level English essays I had to slog through.
I also added another four pages of pictures for my relatives. Some were recent pictures of Mom, both with and without her helmet, to give them some idea of how she looks, what her demeanor is, and who some of her friends are. I also included all the MRI images that I'd blogged, hand-labeling the printed images in Korean so that the relatives could better understand their significance.
All of that took me all night. It's 10:46AM now, and I need to get some sleep before our 3PM guest arrives. There's a chance I might be asleep when she gets here; in anticipation of that contingency, I've already set out instructions for Dad on how to prep lunch for Mom.
So: good morning and, uh, good night. Oh, yeah-- Dad will FedEx the letter tomorrow. He gets a 75% discount with FedEx because he's a former airline employee. We want the letter to arrive before Chuseok, one of the biggest national holidays in South Korea (October 3 this year). If it doesn't get there in time, the relatives will call on Chuseok, and they'll be in for a nasty surprise. I'd rather have them read the letter first, take time to absorb the shock, and then call me. We'll see if that's what happens.
_
Marathon
12 years ago
2 comments:
i think my (written and spoken) korean is much worse than yours; it takes me FOREVER (many many minutes) to type a single sentence in korean using one of the two standard keyboards.
that is until i got my mac.
i got a lot faster when i installed the GongjinCheong Romaja kb.
(system pref -> lang & text -> input sources -> hangul)
it sounds to me like youre probably NOT using gongjincheong... if you arent, give it a try. much much faster since you use the standard qwerty layout.
you type as you might guess except for just a few: the ones i have the hardest time are listed below.
use x for "이응" like so:
xe= 에
xae = 애
gweo = 궈
xwa = 와
my husband somehow missed the boat with korean typing and never learned. he types best with gongjincheong and told me about it.
dont know if my last comment went through. rats. i think i might have mangled it! i hate when that happens.
the short story is, try to install gongjinCheong kb on your mac if you havent already. (sys pref -> lang & text -> input source -> hangul).
when you use gongjinCheong use the qwerty kb with the "Revised Romanization of Korean" spellings (http://bit.ly/3ahAgu); you must use an x for the 이응 though:
xe= 에
xae = 애
gweo = 궈
xwa = 와
if you arent using it, hope this helps. i suck at korean and its helped me out a lot since i cant use the other two standard kbs.
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