| [ EnglishOnly ] in KIDS 글 쓴 이(By): chilly (김규동) 날 짜 (Date): 1995년12월09일(토) 14시00분17초 KST 제 목(Title): Foreigner's singing contest.. I reckon this article which I am now writing would make me more notorious on this board. (This is my first writing on this board, though :> ) as anyone of you can easily recognise from my poor English, I am a Korean. So I may have somewhat different viewpoint for the foreigner's singing contest. I don't watch every contest that have ever held. And I didn't watch this year's one as well. So I think Tim may be the best singer in that contest. If Tim, you are reading this article, please relax and recognise that this article is NOT against you. As far as I know, majority (a great majority) of the grand prize in that contest so far have been awarded to the USA citizens. (I haven't seen any non-USA citizen grand prize personally. But since I don't watch the contest every year, I cannot say as such) I am not sure why. Do people from USA speak Korean best ? Do people from USA sing best in any language ? Last year, when I was in Australia, there was a conference on communication and acoustics called ICASSP, if you have something to do with Electrical Engineering as I have, you will know the conference since it is one of the biggest one in that field. I was working as a volunteering helper for that conference. I found an interesting paper on the linguistic capabilities of various ethnical groups. The conclusion of that paper was, among USA citizens, so called majority, especially from Britain, or around there have the best capability, French next, German next, .. some strange Asian countries next,.. japan second worst, and Korean worst. The conclusion was so clear that I had a curiosity on the methodology which was used for the survey. It looked in some sense quite fair. Since it is designed by a Britain-ancestered white blonde woman, it could not be better. But I could smell a strong stringent racism or a perfect ignorance on the difference of cognity among peoples. If the paper is correct, it is clear that USA people especially who has British Ancestry, French Ancestry, or German Ancestry will speak Korean best, sing Korean best. But is that true ? Many people from "States" say "all Koreans look alike" at first. And many Koreans cannot tell a white person from another white person at first since we are not accustomed to tell a stranger from another stranger. That's not a racism but that's the beginning of racism, I should say. Anyway, in that sense, people from "States" don't use the same criteria in distinguishing a person from others as Koreans use. In the same way, people from different ethnical group use different cognitive way in memorising, recognising objects. In that sense, the result of the experiment is already decided before the actual experiment since the method was optimised to show the cognitive way of British ancestered Americans. Return to the singing contest.. Some Koreans around me complained many times that that guy from "a strange country" is definitely best. But they never won any award. At least they could not get the grand prize.. Of course it's not possible for the foreign people who earn the prize can figure that the person himself(or herself) was NOT the best in that contest since Korean is a strange foreign language for them. And singing in such language is much more difficult since you should express the heart in it. Pronunciation is another problem. I want to ask the refrees of the contest, did you have a fair criteria for that ? If that is to satisfy the majority of foreigner in Korea, USA citizens, will they be happy for that if some of them could recognise that the grand prize is NOT awarded to the best ? I don't think so. USA citizens have the ration. As far as I know, they are fair enough, love fair competion and although they may lose with a fair competion, they won't like an unfair result. I expect a grand prize in the contest which is awarded to a person from a small country which I never know, whose language has never known to us.. And among them, if a person from USA will get the prize, the prize would be more valuable and will give them more happiness. -- Gyudong Kim % Dept. of Electronics, Seoul Nat'l Univ., Seoul 151-742, Korea chilly % Phone +82 2 880 7280; Fax +82 2 885 6993; Pager +82 12 845 3420 Fabiano % http://www.iclab.snu.ac.kr/~chilly, chilly@iclab.snu.ac.kr |