Time keeps passing so quickly but I feel like I am making progress with Korean! Although it has taken me a little longer than I expected I think I’m finally getting a hang of Hangul as it is easier for me to recognize and pronounce the letters. I still struggle with the layered vowels (ae, yae, e, ye, wa, wae, oe, wo, we, wi, ui) because they sound so similar to me. Even Jannette admitted that sometimes she and other native speakers have trouble differentiating or even use the wrong vowel. This was reassuring but as a beginner, I still need to work at knowing the differences between the vowels.
One of the most helpful activities we have done was a worksheet that Jannette brought. It was a list of the most useful phrases in Korean and on the left side was the written phrase with the translated phrase on the right-hand column. It was helpful because Jannette covered up the English translation and made us pronounce the phrase based on just the written letters. This was extremely helpful in allowing me to practice my Hangul and learning how to form words from the letters I had previously been learning. Although it was a slow process it was very helpful and I’m going to keep asking for Jannette to bring worksheets like these. This activity helped me in a multitude of ways as I had to read, speak, and practice my Hangul.
In our last session, Jannette also gave us a really cool sheet that showed us where anatomically the letters come from when speaking (I attached a photo of the page below). I found it helpful for me to visualize where these sounds should be coming from when I was speaking. Luckily, we are also talking about articulatory phonetics in class so I am able to learn about the field in a general sense and then apply these concepts to Korean through my individual meetings with Jannette.
Also in our meeting, Jannette has been very helpful in helping us distinguish between the formal and informal tenses. I learned two different endings to add to words that make a phrase formal. For example, by adding 요 (yo) to the end of a phrase it becomes more formal. Jannette is able to clarify and teach us some basic grammar which helps too. On my own, I’ve also been able to make some decent progress. Duolingo is a great resource and I do at least one activity in Korean a day. Doing the alphabet activities daily have been the most significant in strengthening my recognition and pronunciation of Hangul. On top of Duolingo, I also enjoy reading articles on the differences between English and Korean. As I’ve mentioned before, I just really like learning languages and taking the 105 course has taught me that I also like learning about linguistics and the way languages connect. I think I also like learning about the Korean language so much because it is so different than any of the other languages I have previously learned. I recently started reading about the elaborate honorifics system of Korean. I had heard before that learning the different formalities of speech was where Korean became very complex and now I know this is true. This fact has made me reassess my learning plan though. Since I mainly want to learn conversational Korean I have decided I would like to make more progress learning the informal forms of topics since I plan to mostly speak with friends making the formal part of speech less important for my current goals.
My goal for these upcoming weeks is to learn verbs and how to conjugate in Korean. I want to start the topic of talking about myself and say where I am from and perhaps even talk about adjectives or family members. Jannette is really great because she is very flexible and lets us tell her what kinds of things we want to learn. Slowly but surely I am learning more and more Korean!
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