After getting settled back home I have tried to make time in my week for Korean to keep some consistency. Although I already knew that I much prefer in-person classes over online this was especially true for my SDLC meetings with Jannette. While I am very grateful to have technology so that we are still able to meet and stay in contact I am tremendously disappointed we cannot meet in person. But life goes on and so did my studies! For these couples weeks following spring break I asked Jannette if we could cover pronouns. I had been wanting to learn pronouns since I made my learning plan as I think they are a very essential part of grammar to learn. There were some major differences between pronoun usage in English and Korean that I will get into but first we started by identifying the types of pronouns we were going to learn and we focused on personal and interrogative pronouns.
In terms of complexity, the interrogative pronouns were the easiest to follow. These pronouns are used to form questions and are very commonly used as the pronouns include the words what, which, whose, whom, and who. In addition to reviewing the main interrogative pronouns, we also learned the six main question words who, what, when, where, why, and how. In Korean these words translate to 누구 (who), 언제 (when), 어디 (where), 무엇/뭐 (what), 왜 (why), 어떻게 (how). While these words are used to ask questions, I read that in Korean if you are asking a question that does not require the use of a question word then nothing in the sentence changes structurally and only intonation is used to denote a question (reference: https://www.howtostudykorean.com/unit1/unit-1-lessons-17-25-2/lesson-21-asking-questions-in-korean-why-when-where-and-who/). This is a bit different than English since we add a word like “do” or “did” to the beginning of a question if there is no clear interrogative pronoun (ex. “Do you like to watch TV? Or have you eaten yet?). Grasping these pronouns made sense and worked similarly enough to English.
We then moved to the much tricker personal pronouns. As I’ve mentioned before one of the hardest parts about learning Korean for me so far is the honorific system and knowing when to add and correctly use the right ending to make something formal or informal. Honorifics and speech levels play a role in personal pronouns too. This means that when using pronouns, mostly first and second person pronouns, there are two ways to say them based on the status or age recipient party of the conversation. For example, if I want to say “I” I may use 저 (jeo) which is the humble/formal version or 나 (na) which is the less formal version. After writing down these pronouns and noting the differences I was still trying to grasp my head around which pronoun to use when. This will take some time but it is essential to know.
Another difference between pronoun usage in English and Korean is the lack of true third-person pronouns in Korean. These pronouns are replaced by the use of personal names or titles and because of this repetition in sentences that pronouns are used to resolve is allowed in Korean. Another interesting divergent point between English and Korean is the use of the pronoun “you.” English speakers use “you” all of the time but that can be very bad form in Korean. Using “you” incorrectly can actually be quite disrespectful and give off the wrong meaning. Examples like these show the importance of learning the culture of a language in conjunction with a language. Using a pronoun incorrectly may give you away as a foreign speaker and cause offense.
As a very clearly non-native speaker of Korean, learning these cultural and linguistic differences will help me be more knowledgeable and culturally aware. Although I am still very happy I get to connect with my language partner I am really sad our semester changed so drastically especially since I am a senior. This has also made me realize that I wish I had started taking the SDLC program before now so that I could continue working with Jannette and really get conversational in Korean. I am a bit frustrated and upset about how this semester will end but since SDLC is independent I can at least continue my studies.
I also read about Korean word families known as 합성어 (hapseongeo) or compound words. Since I had taken one year of German I was very familiar with compound words since German uses them A LOT. In my German class, we would sometimes just try to pronounce these compound words since they were so incredibly long and difficult. In Korean though these compound words share some of the same elements because they belong to the same word families. For example, if I want to say any of the languages I know they will all end in the same syllable, 어 (eo). There are many patterns like this in Korean so if I learn these then I will possibly increase the speed that I can learn new vocabulary. Patterns like these help build a linguistic intuition and really help you navigate a new language and guess what a word might be. When I was learning Spanish after I realized that I could form any word ending in “tion” by adding “ción” I could make over 20 new words just by picking up on that pattern. I plan to keep a note of the patterns I pick up in Korean and see what kind of new words I can learn.
While these past two weeks have come with a lot of emotions, I can safely say that my feelings toward Korean are still all positive. I really am enjoying the SDLC program still and being able to learn a language on my own. Jannette is fantastic and I like being able to learn alongside Pri since we can ask each other questions. I wish culture were a bigger part of many of the other language classes offered at UR. Often these classes do have a small culture section in the textbook but at least for Spanish 221, these were very small passages or outdated. I really love learning about Korean culture with the language especially since they are so connected. Next time I hope to learn some new topics and maybe even time. Until then stay safe everyone!
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