#choice words

[dd-is-my-guiltypleasure]

[wholenessblooming]

Christmas Carols

Children do not always mean

hope. To some they mean despair.

This woman with her hair cut off

so she could not hang herself

threw herself from a rooftop, thirty

times raped & pregnant by the enemy

who did this to her. This one had her pelvis

broken by hammers so the child

could be extracted. Then she was thrown away,

useless, a ripped sack. This one

punctured herself with kitchen skewers

and bled to death on a greasy

oilcloth table, rather than bear

again and past the limit. There

is a limit, though who knows

when it may come? Nineteenth-century

ditches are littered with small wax corpses

dropped there in terror. A plane

swoops too low over the fox farm

and the mother eats her young. This too

is Nature. Think twice then

before you worship turned furrows, or pay

lip service to some full belly

or other, or single out one girl to play

the magic mother, in blue

& white, up on that pedestal,

perfect & intact, distinct

from those who aren’t. Which means

everyone else. It’s a matter

of food & available blood. If motherhood is sacred, put

your money where your mouth is. Only

then can you expect the coming

down to the wrecked & shimmering earth

of that miracle you sing

about, the day

when every child is a holy birth."

Margaret Atwood (excerpt from the book Choice words by Annie Finch)

[validwarriorcatsnames]

[rustbeltjessie]

My Excuse: I Had An Abortion. What’s Yours?

       after Paul Verlaine

One can’t begin to assume how much room there is in a room. The joy which overtook you, my friend, had roots in my abdomen. The desire, I thought,

the desire-brimming dream broke down when I tried to draw it out. None of my best enemies had even the appetite for vocal violence—their horror at the living lacerations and the local nightmare! Little limbs overrode the afterbath. My robes felt able-bodied. I matured.

I could grow back the legs I never knew I’d lost. My palms felt softer and the training overcame all ways to water. But disquiet is a problem of dialect, and sex is an unusual number. In my torso: the open mouths of all kinds of dead informants. I’ll pardon your please, roll back your torment, torch all the long confessional letters, only, stop leaving me messages.

—Laura Wetherington, from Choice Words: Writers on Abortion

[bitpsychic]

Cain: Don't ever speak to me that way in the OR again.

Kit: I should say the same to you.

Cain: I can say whatever I want. That's the difference between a surgeon who bills eighty million dollars a year like me and... one that bills two.

Me: *puts on my Kit Voss protection squad t-shirt, hat and backpack* NO ONE TALKS TO MY GIRL THAT WAY

[marineashnalikyan]

Governments are ruled

by power,

business is ruled

by money—

only God is ruled by love.

[canefought-a]

*goes on the dash* oh yeah this was a very bad idea.

[studiousbees]

What’s the difference??—Making choices in Korean

Hello, everyone! Back again with another “What’s the difference??” post. This time we’re going to look at choice words in Korean. This post is actually inspired by a question someone asked on Reddit about the difference between seven (seven!) decision/choice words. I answered the question very briefly, but now I’d like to look at the words in more detail. 결정하다, 정하다, 마음먹다, 결심하다, 고르다, 선택하다, and 취하다... what’s the difference? Let’s find out!

결정하다 (決定)

We can consider 결정하다 as a pretty standard word for “decide.” You can use this when you make pretty much any sort of decision.

내년에 일본 여행 가기로 결정했어요. (I decided to travel to Japan next year.)

대학교 가서 뭘 공부할지 결정했어요? (Have you decided what you’ll study at university?)

정하다 (定)

정하다 is not so much as “decide” as it is to “set” something, like guidelines, rules, a meeting time, or something like that. 

동료들하고 의논해서 연수 날짜를 다음 주 금요일로 정했어요. (After consulting with my coworkers, we set the training date for next Friday.)

정해진 시간에 만나서 같이 출발합시다. (Let’s meet at the decided time and depart together.)

마음먹다

마음을 먹다 is a phrasal verb that is used to express making up one's mind about something. There is a nuance of difficulty here, like the decision was not made lightly, or perhaps that you were hesitant or nervous beforehand and just decided to go for it.

태형 씨는 마음먹고 태국에 이사가기로 했어요. (Taehyung made up his mind and decided to move to Thailand.)

마음에 걸리는 할 일이 있으면 계속 끙끙 앓느니 차라리 마음 먹고 해버리는 게 낫다. (If there is something that you have to do weighing on your mind, it is better to just make a decision and do it than complain about it.)

결심하다 (決心)

결심하다 is similar to 결정하다 but has a stronger sense of conviction about it. It’s also similar to 마음먹다, but with less hesitation and more firmness. We could translate it in English as “to resolve, to determine.”

아이가 태어났을 때 유찬 씨는 가족을 위해 금연을 결심했고 이제 담배를 안 피운 지 거의 5년이 됐어요. (When his child was born, Yoochan resolved to quit smoking, and now it’s been almost five years since he last smoked.) 

너무 오랫동안 마음에 안 드는 일을 하던 효정 씨는 더 좋은 직을을 찾기로 결심했다. (Hyojung, who had been doing work she hated for too long, set herself to finding a better job.)

고르다

고르다 means “to choose” or “to select.” You can use it when you pick something.

나는 아무거나 좋아서 네가 골라. (Anything is fine with me, so you choose.)

오늘 중요한 면접을 봐야 돼서 옷장에서 가장 예쁜 원피스를 골라 입었어요. (I have an important interview today so I chose the prettiest dress in my closet to wear.)

선택하다 (選擇)

선택하다 is very similar to 고르다, with the small difference that it sounds a bit more... academic? formal? I’m not saying it's a particularly formal word, but it is approximately the Hanja equivalent of 고르다. It’s pretty normal for Hanja equivalents to sound a bit ~fancier~ than their native Korean counterparts.

옵션들 중에서 하나를 선택하세요. (Please select one of these options.)

돈을 아끼려고 더 저렴한 걸 샀는데 사용해 보니까 잘못 선택한 것 같아요. (I bought the cheaper one to save money, but having tried it out I think I chose wrong.)

취하다 (取)

Lastly, we have 취하다! This word means to choose in the sense of taking up or enacting something. For example, you can use this verb when you talk about enacting a policy, taking up a particular stance on something, and so on.

네오나치들은 백인 우월주의 자세를 취한다. (Neo-Nazis take a position of white supremacy.)

질환관리본부 바이러스의 확산을 막기 위해 급한 조치를 취했다. (The Center for Disease Control took emergency measures to stop the spread of the virus.)

With practice, you can make the right choice (haha) between these verbs every time!

Happy studying~