During the last couple of weeks of Korean, our little group (Jannette, Mallory, and I) joined in on a Zoom call together. We discussed how Korean had been going and shared a google document where we organized everything we learned throughout the semester. I couldn’t believe the list. From starting with the bare basics of learning the alphabet, to making words, understanding grammatical aspects of the language, and eventually speaking phrases that we could dissect and understand. Further, we truly were so lucky to have a native speaker, Jannette, guide us throughout our language learning. I have learned so much about the Korean culture and it was so special to have been able to have Jannette to connect everything we were learning to apply it in real life instances. This was especially valuable because it’s a hard thing to learn out of a textbook and regular classes. I have seen so much of what I have learned about the culture and language come into play in the Korean dramas. It has really helped me appreciate and understand what is going on more deeply; especially in terms of their actions and the culture surrounding everything going on. Upon our reflections and look back on the semester, as a group we then filmed our podcast together to share our experiences which is posted on Mallory homepage and also my home page.
One of the final things I learned with the help of online resources and Jannette was how to conjugate verbs. There are many forms of each tense, just like in English. However, I just started with the general idea of how Korean verb conjugation works in the present tense. Korean verbs have a form called “dictionary form” which are manipulated by dropping the 다 on them and adding the appropriate ending to conjugate. Luckily, unlike Spanish, there isn’t a different form depending on which pronoun is being used. It generally goes from the dictionary form, to the verb stem, and to the informal polite form. A common theme all throughout the entire language learning process has been the importance of the ending of the words being a vowel or consonant. This again comes into play when conjugating verbs. I am so glad Jannette helped me learn Hangul so well. She believed having a strong foundation in it was so important and I am especially thankful the deeper I get into my language learning.
So in almost all regular conjugations, conjugating verbs depend on the verb stem ending-vowel/consonant and the verb stem vowel-bright/dark. Although the vowels don’t have color, the whole idea around bright and dark vowels is based on how they sort of sound. Vowels likeㅏ,ㅗ are bright vowels whereas vowels likeㅓ,ㅜ are dark vowels. For example, the verb “to see”=보다, after taking the ending off, contains a bright vowel ㅗ, whereas the verb “to eat”=먹다, contains a dark vowel,ㅓ. I think this is fascinating that the vowels can be classified as bright and dark. In English, aeiou all sound pretty bright to me so I have been having a lot of trouble distinguishing the types of vowels when I try to conjugate. Sometimes even the pitch of how I say them makes it sound brighter than it actually is supposed which is a huge challenge. Conjugating is hard! Even for the simple present tense conjugation there are two forms depending on the structure of the verb block.
One form is when there is 받침 (Batchim), which is a very complicated idea where 받침=bottom consonant and only the last consonant is counted in conjugation. This is something I am very confused about and researching more to understand. First the 받침 way is as follows: if the verb stem vowel, contains a bright vowel, then the ending 아요 is attached. For instance 보다 as mentioned, contains a bright vowel, so the verb conjugated is written as 보아요. However, if the verb stem ending has a dark vowel, then 어요 is attached instead. For example, since 먹다 has a dark vowel, it is conjugated as 먹어요.
The other form without 받침 is slightly different. For example, “to go”=가다. 가다 ends inㅏafter the 다 ending is removed. Therefore, there is no 받침 and the 요 ending is used. Hence, it is conjugated as 가요, which means “I go.”
Conjugation in Korean is very complicated! Even the basic present tense case has me extremely confused at the moment. I have been using this online website I stumbled upon in which you can practice conjugations through games: https://conjuguemos.com/activities/korean/verb/1.
This has been helpful since practice is one of the best ways to build up skills and get comfortable with a new concept. I know it will only get more complex with all the tenses and levels of respect later on. I am trying to take it slow to grab a better foundation earlier on. By far, I want to say conjugating has been the biggest challenge yet. I plan to keep practicing throughout the summer to hopefully get the present tense conjugation down soon, and then work to learn the other tenses!
I am extremely thrilled for the summer since I will be able to dedicate a lot of time to Korean. Overall, I am so happy to have taken SDLC 105 and 110 because they have truly given me such a strong foundation to be able to continue learning. It also helped form close friendships with such wonderful people I got to work with, Jannette and Mallory. I am grateful and look forward to continuing learning throughout the summer. Even now, Mallory and I Zoom constantly to hangout or study together. In the summer, I am excited to watch Korean shows or movies together, share our progress, and help each other to keep up the language skills we have gained. Another exciting thing I look forward to is a little plan Jannette, Mallory, and I made together. We will all be in Richmond during the summer if things get a little brighter with Covid-19 so we have made a point to have a reunion and go get Korean food together if we are no longer in quarantine. Yum! The whole experience with SDLC has exceeded my expectations, and I am so happy to have taken this course. I plan to detail how the semester went in my last reflection essay if you want to hear more. For now, thank you so much to Michael, Jannette, Mallory, and SDLC community in 105 and 110 for such an amazing last semester at UR!
These are the multiple resources I used as well:
http://www.learnkoreanlanguage.com/Verb-Tenses.html
https://www.howtostudykorean.com/unit1/unit-1-lessons-1-8/unit-1-lesson-5/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvE67CopRbM&t=1s
Replies
I did not found the conjugation part to be that difficult at first, but after I learned about conjugation for different tenses, I got a really bad headache. the most difficult part for me is what you mentioned in all the regular conjugation, conjugating words depend on the ending vowels. I still can't memorize all stem for each different vowels or consonants. the conjugation defiantly made Korean so much harder compare to other language