[xmca] Ggotssaemjuyi

Phil:
   
  You know the standard theory (Schmidt and Frota, Long, even Swain). The adult language learner "notices the gap" between input and output and then strives to eliminate it. It seems to me that there is another possibility that is far more important in the long run, and that is the learner, who is actually more cognizant of the gap between the limited number of utterances available for imitation and the infinitude of situations in which unique utterances are required, notices the gap and IMITATES THE GAP. That is, error goes from being inadvertant to being deliberate.
   
  Here's an example from last night. The weather is unseasonably cold here in Seoul for the end of March, and because I teach elementary school teachers, just about everybody has colds or flu being passed around by the children. This means that instead of:
   
  T: How are you all today?
  S: Terrible.
  T: Why? What's the matter?.
   
  We get conversations like:
   
  T: How are you all today?
  S: Fine.
  T: Why? What's the matter?

  We were all laughing about this, when one of my grads, Eunha, proposed:
   
  Eunha: I LIKE Indian Winter.
   
  Eunha and I then tried to figure out where this expression came from. On the face of it, the answer is quite easy: "Indian Winter" of course is a winter that is belated and extended into the spring in exactly the same way that "Indian Summer" (this is a New England expression, and probably doesn't apply Down Under is used to refer to a summer that extends well into November).
   
  Eunha notices the gap between "Indian Summer" and "Winter" which doesn't seem to have a comparable expression and then fills in the gap, not by imitation, for there is nothing to imitate, but by deliberate "error".
   
  But why imitate THIS gap? The answer is that there is a very poetic but almost completely untranslatable Korean expression for this state of affairs, namely "ggotssaemjuyi", which means, literally, the winter chill is envious of the emergent buds of spring. The real gap that Eunha was trying to fill was not the absence of a counterpart to "Indian Summer" but rather the absence of an English equivalent for "ggotssaemjuyi".
   
  David Kellogg
  Seoul National University of Education
   
   

       
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Received on Mon Mar 31 15:45 PDT 2008