Learn Korean: Part 1 – Asian Languages and Language Families
Learn Korean: Part 1 - Asian Languages and Language Families
So, you have always been fascinated by Asian culture have you? Maybe you are someone who loves the martial arts; kung fu, tae-kwon-do, or karate. Perhaps you are interested in the cool oriental stores and like to buy many things from them to decorate your house. Maybe you like the peaceful society you see depicted in some Asian films. Or maybe you are just incredibly in love with the Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.Whatever your interest is in Asia and its society, it could never hurt to know a little bit about the culture. In fact, learning about something more than is shown in action movies and your Korean dramas can be quite beneficial.My experience is with Korean culture and Korean language, but the culture is similar in most Asian countries. Language Families One of the main things you may have noticed is how incredibly different the Asian languages are from English. You come across languages such as Italian, Spanish, and French, and you can at least find some similarities in those languages and English. Yet there seem to be none between English and Asian languages! The fact is they just come from different language families. Most European languages will fall in the same language family as English. Many of these are in the Indo-European language families. Words will be similar between all of the languages that come from the same family.Asian languages such as Japanese and Korean are in the same language family, the Altaic family. You will find many similarites in these two languages. Mandarin Chinese comes from the Sino-Tibetan family.Altaic Family The Altaic family is named after the Alti Mountains. They are located in Central Asia. The Altaic Family consists of Turkish, Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese. Out of these, Turkish is the most western of the languages, while Korean and Japanese are more eastern.Sino-Tibetan Family The Sino-Tibetan Family consists of Mandarin Chinese. Languages in this language family are made up of one syllable words, but there are MANY. There is no simple alphabet to form these words, which causes the vast number of Chinese characters, making it one of the hardest languages to learn. You also must learn to speak, read, and write all separately. There is no reading a word and being able to speak it, nor can you hear one and guess on how it is spelled. Writing is still completely on it's own even if you can read, because you have to use proper stroke orders! Very time consuming to learn.There are also several tones in these languages. A change in pitch while saying a word could change the meaning of the word completely. It makes the language sound very pretty when spoken, but is incredibly difficult to learn! Sentence Structure As with many Asian languages, a common fact you will notice is many of the languages follow an SOV sentence structure. That is, Subject, Object, Verb. English tends to place the verb after the subject of the sentence. Asian languages place the verb at the very end of the sentence. The most important part of the sentence is saved for last 
Don't we all save the best for last?Although much of the culture evolves around the language, there is plenty more to culture. Korean culture is amazing in every way. Look forward to future articles covering Korean culture!http://www.learnkoreanlanguage.com is a site based on teaching the Korean language. It also provides details on Korean culture, Korean foods, Korean recipes, Korean music, everything Korean!
Why Laminate Flooring is the Perfect Choice for Families – Home-Improvement
Why Laminate Flooring is the Perfect Choice for Families
If you've ever had carpets or vinyl flooring you've probably had your share of stains, spills, and rips that no matter what you do, you can't quite wash out. Or perhaps the family pet has scratched the carpet edging, or even worse - had a bathroom mishap on the children's favorite playing area?Your flooring nightmares can finally end! Laminate flooring was designed to stand up to the rigors and demands of a busy family household and when compared to other types of flooring solutions easily outperforms in almost every category. Here our our top reasons for selecting laminate flooring for a family household:Laminate flooring is toughDesigned with a tough and durable wear layer, it is much stronger than most installed solid hardwood flooring, vinyl's, and carpets. It stands up much better to dents and scratches that the softer surface of solid hardwood floors, and is a much better surface to install if you have heavy foot traffic, kids, or household pets. Best of all - it continues to look brand new even after years of wear and tear.Stain, fade, and moisture resistantMost laminate flooring manufacturers offer triple warranty protection against stains, fading and moisture damage for 25 years. In contrast, solid hardwood floors are susceptible to wood grain staining, fading in repeated sunlight exposure, and are not a suitable floor for areas with high moisture or humidity levels.Laminate flooring is easy to installThe popular quality brands of laminate flooring have gravitated towards a glueless click together floating floor installation process. These floors simply need to be cut to size, clicked together, and are immediately ready to walk on or place your furniture. Most weekend do-it-yourselfers can handle this installation, but should expect to take 2 - 3 times longer than a professional installer.Laminate flooring is easy to clean and maintainSpills and messes easily clean up with a little soap and water thanks to the hard moisture and wear resistant surface coating. No residual stain or mess will remain and your laminate floors will continue to look brand new. No more run down and tired looking floors!Laminate flooring are a healthy flooring choiceWith regular cleaning cycles, laminate floors can provide a much cleaner and healthier living environment when compared to carpets. Less dust, pet dander, allergens and dust mites accumulate on the surface, and the laminate surface will not hold residual stain contaminants like a carpet will. Allergists will often recommend to their patients the removal of carpets from the living
space.Laminate flooring is economicalOnce you consider the costs of alternate flooring solutions over a typical laminate flooring lifespan it becomes an extremely economical solution. Carpets will require 2 to 3 replacements during this time, solid hardwood floors will require refinishing 4 to 5 times, and vinyl will need to be replaced atleast twice, or more depending on traffic loads.A worry-free family focused flooring surfaceKids can play toys on it, the dog can run through with muddy paws, the neighbor friends can visit with wet shoes, and the baby bottle spills all over the floor... not a problem anymore! Laminate floors are the perfect floor for busy families and growing households.To read more of the benefits and advantages of laminate flooring visit:
http://www.laminateflooringzone.com/laminate-flooring.htm S.A. Smith is a freelance writer, contributor, and editor of Laminate Flooring Zone and can be reached at http://www.laminateflooringzone.com
Cloning Advantage Super Families
Cloning Advantage Super Families
As the cloning debate of humankind continues we find ourselves in an interesting predicament. We see the need of self to extend past one's own lifetime as an innate characteristic; self-preservation has always been one of mankind's greatest drivers of motivation. World Religions in their haste to rally group support and social order amongst the masses have in fact been able to capitalize on this to a large degree, purposing the idea of eternal salvation for a promise of the individual in this life time to do as they are told and live their life in a certain way. That certain way includes among other things; not upsetting the current hierarchy of power. Human Beings obviously have questions which need to be answered such as; How did I get here, How did all this begin, what happens to me when I die and what will happen to the entirety of all I see in the end, when will it all end. World Religions can use these needs of the individual to know such things as a lever to control their psyche, by carefully answering all those questions in some sort of believable and yet un-provable way. Of course over time as more scientific light is shed on various subjects these religions must adapt their story line a bit to keep all the believers buying the storyline. Most of the most successful religions have done a good job of using vague comments on the answers so that they are able to adapt over time.As the language changes they can revert back to the old definitions, adopt the new ones, take a broader interpretation in a non-literal sense or stick with a fundamentalist exact reading. Often different groups in different regions or cultures may adopt all of these methods. Similar to our laws, where you as an individual can do anything you wish provided you have the right lawyer to re-interpret the law, use the letter of the law, use case law on either side to shed light on the grayness of the law. In the end all truth is relative from the perspective of the individual, judge or jury you see? Why is this important? What does this have to do with Cloning? Well simple, those against cloning are generally fundamentalist in thinking or they simply cannot comprehend the benefits or short falls which cloning might cause and therefore have sided with the fundamentalists views as a fall back position.Cloning has some serious advantages in that genetically speaking those who at first can afford to clone will come from men of means or of wealth. Having more than one of you might be an incredible leg up on the world no doubt. Many people with similar vision and skills will be able to do more with less and further ones efforts in society, business, leadership positions, etc. If entire family units are made up of those who are cloned, who pool resources they will in fact do better than families who are not working together so closely and are not cloned, lack the discipline of a purposeful and united vision or are diffused as each sets out into the world to make their way. Which is generally the case in America. Where we train our young to go out into the world get a college degree and go work for large companies or other families who own businesses and corporations. Those other families and their accumulated teams, corporations, networked groups and families thus use those who wish to make a name for themselves the opportunity to advance within a new family, the corporation. For this the rising young star can be highly compensated or economically enslaved if they fail to meet expectations of the whole of the family, corporation or it's shareholders.This of course we already know. As we watch the classic fight between union and company and the fights of corporations and families from many different countries work together at times and then duke it out in the market place at others, often enlisting government to tilt the field in their favor long enough to level another blow to their competitor. Meanwhile the young new entrant into the economic minded family is barraged with a number of decisions as to what they want out of their personal life for fulfillment as they sift through the mixed messages of advertising, peer pressure, religious doctrines, governmental rallied nationalism or attraction of a mate.The capitalist or founding families of the companies or those heavily leveraged in its' outcome and success reap from these efforts along with the individual rising star or up and coming if they are to treat their efforts and dedication the same way with the same convictions. This is done by incentives, stock options, golden handcuffs, great titles, social status and money, perceived wealth and/or the ability to further leverage future earnings through borrowing from credit unions and banks to live at a higher standard of living or in a belief system of quality of life and arrival to a new plateau in ones career? Is this good or bad? Well it just is and this need of the individual is balanced around the needs of the corporation. Again why is this important to cloning? Well in cloning those who are cloned can serve the needs of the individual advancement within the group in a way never before possible outside the close run wealthy class families.At first cloning will only be available to those who have the capacity to pay for it and only those who have out of country hideaways to do it, since the entire socio-economic models of capitalism currently in place in most countries might be in jeopardy as those with the capital could lose their power to those with the greatest number of inter-related family clones. In many countries we have extremely powerful groups of families and in some cases one family in control of the entire country, the people of these countries are allowed enough latitude of freedom as long as they perform for helping in the system. Those who do not go along with these pre-agreed upon methods are killed, exiled, leave, made slaves or are sent to prison. Those in charge continue to make sure they also rule over the form of government in such a way, which keeps them in power, wouldn't you? If your answer is no and you are benevolent by nature, it would not take you very long to convert.We need to be thinking if we are ready for a paradigm shift which might change the balance of power of Corporations by creating Super Families of Clones. Think about it."Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs