- Reflect on your experiences of (trying to) read and write in your target language.
While I initially thought that learning to read and write Korean would be one of the hardest parts of learning the language, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Korean was not the complex character based language that I had originally expected. The Korean alphabet is surprisingly simple and intuitive and I have really enjoyed learning it. The competitions my language partner holds have been really helpful for cementing my understanding of the basics of the alphabet. However, as I learned more Korean I came to realize that there are some strange rules that come into play on rare occasions. I'll see radicals in strange positions in characters or complex arrangements of characters that work together to create new sounds and I won't know how to interpret them. There are also many situations where slang in Korea distorts characters into new words which are hard to decipher. Overall I have found the Korean alphabet to be easy to learn but hard to master.
Comments