I was first introduced to Korean culture around middle school when I made my first Korean friends. It was also the time when my close cousin started showing me Korean pop (Kpop) music videos, which I often found pretty catchy. From there on, my curiosity about Korean culture grew and I started watching Korean dramas and variety shows and, more often nowadays, Korean cooking and lifestyle channels on YouTube. I also enjoy reading weekly webtoons made by talented Korean webtoon artists and writers. After all these years of reading English subtitles, I’d say it’s about time I learn a thing or two about the Korean language.
I like the sound of the Korean language, and its Hangul writing system seems very systematic and clever. I think Hangul actually requires less memorization than Chinese, because it’s an actual alphabet so words can be sounded out from the alphabet characters they contain. In other words, I think I’ll need to learn Hangul first to build a strong foundation.
By the end of this semester, I hope I’ll be able to hold a 5-minute conversation with a Korean speaker and to build a decent vocabulary that will allow me to pick up on basic Korean conversations. I’d also like to master Hangul and to be able to sound out characters even if I don’t know the meaning of the word yet. But, one baby step at a time.
Comments