It’s spring break and after a tough week I just wanted to vegetate last night while cat sitting. I decided to pull up a movie and at first I tried to find Hero (??) on a streaming service for free, but discovered it was only for rent. I think is one of the best I’ve ever seen, with its gorgeous use of colors in storytelling. I was reminded of it because I started watching Avatar the Last Airbender and they take a similar approach for their use of elements.

My next choice was Mao’s Last Dancer, which I’d seen over winter break and loved for the cultural components that I could relate to. Again, I couldn’t find it on the services for free, so then I decided to browse available international titles. I don’t know why, but I was in a foreign film kind of mood. While I meant to find something in Chinese, I eventually came across The Beauty Inside and thought it had an intriguing plot.

How strange it turned out to be to listen to Korean, read English, yet hear some familiar phrases that sounded like Chinese. I’ve never really known much about Korean, so I was surprised at the multiple times I knew some of the words even as I was reading the translated subtitles. I can’t remember all the ones I encountered but I know that 15 was one of the examples.

In contrast to that, I have some experience with Japanese where I can read some of their characters and understand the general meaning, but their words sound nothing like Chinese. What a juxtaposition, to have one language that has similar pronunciation yet completely foreign characters while the other has similar use of characters yet completely foreign pronunciation.

I wonder then what, if any overlap occurs between Korean and Japanese?