Metacognitive language proficiency

For a while, I thought that language proficiency is about whether the processing is automatic or controlled. Native language processing tends to be more automatic, and nonnative language processing tends to start with conscious processing, and as one gets better, the performance becomes more automatic.

In my case, I know that my Korean is largely automatic and I know that my English still has some conscious tendencies.

However, depending on the situation, even native speakers have to make conscious effort in their language activities for better performance. Writing a dissertation, giving a speech, debating, persuading a potential client, etc., etc. The higher the level of processing, the more attentional resources are required for better delivery.

So is this like a U-shaped function? You start out with conscious processing, then it becomes automatic, then you get to do higher-level conscious processing?

Perhaps you could consider the higher level, deliberate processing of language as part of metacognition and differentiate it from the awkward second language performance. Yeah, both require conscious effort, but one is above the mundane requirements of making the utterances appear to be correct (grammar, accent, use of vocab, etc.) , while the other focuses on mostly that.


Will need to look more into metacognition and language to see if this is a viable point.

The horrors of R-L confusion

So far, the funniest examples of r-l minimal pairs I'd heard were "rice/lice" and "election/erection." I got another one.

I was talking with another Korean friend about kalbitang, which I could loosely translate as beef rib stew. My friend told me how her American roommate seemed disgusted by the dish when she had first described it to her. I was puzzled. What's so disgusting about ribs? Then she explained: she had meant to call it "rib soup" but what her roommate heard was "lip soup."

...yeah, I must admit, I enjoy tripes, tongues, kidneys, hearts, etc., etc., but the idea of eating cow "lips" did not appeal to me either.

How quaint are the quest chains in WoW.

Was talking with my husband about a particular achievement in World of Warcraft, and wanted to explain that in order to do it, you have to do a series of quests.
"You have to do a quain to do that."
was what came out of my mouth.

...quest + chain, no doubt.

toilet and twilight.

We were cleaning up the apartment because my father-in-law is coming.
Got the kitchen, dining room, and the living room done.
Before going to bed, hubby reminded me to clean up my bathroom tomorrow.
And he added something that sounded to me like: "Make sure the toilet looks invisible."
What?
What he had actually said: "Make sure that the Twilight books are invisible."
(My parents-in-law abhor vampires.)

I guess I was tired.

Pizza.

When I'm talking in Korean, and if I need to use a foreign word, generally, I try to pronounce it the way Koreans pronounce it. MacDonald becomes meckdonaldu and butter becomes buttoh.
However, some words get pronounced closer to their English pronunciation, sometimes without my awareness.

One of those words is pizza. Koreans write it 피자 which could be roughly transcribed as peejah. Apparently, they pronounce it like that, too, but I didn't notice it, and pronounced it 핏짜, intensifying the second consonant (like "cha"). Somebody pointed it out to me once and I was surprised.

Maybe to me, it was like pronouncing 자장면 (black bean noodles, written "Jahjarngmyon") 짜장면 (common pronunciation, "Chahjarngmyon"). Who knows.

Young + 젊은 = 엶은

So this morning I was dreaming,
I was with a group of people climbing a mountain
I was walking with my grandma (Dad's side)
and telling her about a movie
this movie had two protagonists,
I started with the older one
and then I wanted to tell her about the younger one
and at this point, when I wanted to say the word "young" in Korean
what came out of my mouth was something like "yulmun (열믄/엶은)"
and since I realized that this was not a real word, I repeated it several times
until the correct form finally came to me, "chulmun (젊은)."

Luckily, shortly after that, my alarm went off and I was able to remember this dream (as I believe that only interrupted dreams get remembered).

I have two possible explanations for this crosslinguistic word blending.
1. The English word "young" interfered with my Korean word retrieval.

2. The ambiguous nature of the consonant "ㅈ" (ch in word-initial positions but actually similar to j) confused me. For example, the "j" in German is pronounced like "y" in English, the "y" or "ll" in Spanish is pronounced like the "j" in English" in some parts.

1 is more likely than 2, and it is also possible that they both contributed to this error in my dream. I'm still rather amazed that this sort of thing happens in dreams at all.


Also, when I was describing the older protagonist to my grandma, I was telling her that he is going over to North Korea and will meet somebody named "Chu Gil Sang." While I said this word, I had "Chow Yun-Fat" in mind, but believed that "Chu Gil Sang" was his name. And as I said it, I realized that "Chu Gil Sang" sounds like "죽일상" which can be roughly translated to "a killer's look" and wondered what kind of a name that was, and why I hadn't realized it before.

Of course, after I woke up, I remembered that the actor's name is "Chow Yun-Fat," the Korean pronunciation being "Chu Yun Ball" and wondered where did that killer face name came from, and was surprised that I noticed the pun in that name at all because I normally don't notice those things unless somebody else points them out to me (usually my husband).

Dreams are intriguing.

Trunk or treat?

Is "trick" such a horrible word that Christians have to come up with a neutral substitute?