While I am a native speaker of the Korean language, I did not know there are a number of confusing expressions and grammar. Not so long after, I realized that it is because a mother tongue language is obtained naturally without learning the meaning of every single word and thus how foreign language learners learn varies from how one learns a mother tongue. In this sense, if I aim for a Korean tutor, I should understand how Korean language learners other than native speakers approach to the Korean language. I discussed general questions I have had with my language partner Rachel, and therefore I could expand my thought, which I found very interesting and helpful for my future plan.
For instance, the Korean language requires to differentiate regular sounds (ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅈ) from tense sounds (or glottal sounds, ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ), of which letters are doubled from the corresponding letters of regular sound. I thought they can be understood straightforwardly since the letter are very intuitively made, which was not the case. I found that people usually have a problem differentiating them after I watched a video on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ckq9J_8AQqW/?igshid=MWI4MTIyMDE=). English is based on a different consonant system in which accents are different while quite similar. In this sense, I believe that it would be a more accurate approach to introduce how Korean letters are designed and, accordingly, how the pronunciations are induced in consideration of speech organ anatomy instead of just comparing Korean and English phonetics, one to one.
(source: LanGo Institute)
Also, the Korean language can convey various tones by using different verb conjugations. They include tense and formality as English also does, but Korean conjugates can mean more varied meanings. When one uses the conjugate “~군요”, one can express surprise like “I did not know that …” or “I just realized that …”. Korean conjugates are distinctive from English expressions in a way that people can express different tones by changing only the end of the sentence. (아니에요: It is not true. / No, it’s not ↔ 아니구나: I just realized that it is not true.) What is descriptive and wordy in one language can be very short and impactful in another language. Learning these expressions allows one to sound more native and thus be good at that language. I found this hard in learning English since even though I can easily understand such kind of expressions when listening, my English brain does not use them when speaking. Mere translations from one language to another cannot lead to obtaining a variety of expressions and words that people use in practice, which stresses the necessity of immersive learning.
While I can easily understand and use these pronunciations and expressions, it is still not true that I can explain them right away when someone asks me. Rather, I have to come up with a few examples and think about how to explain these precisely. In that respect, I will make categories of vocabulary and expressions that people might ask about.
Replies