In the past two weeks, I've had two Korean classes. Every class I have a great harvest. Firstly, I learned 14 consonants, which are ”ㄱ”(Gi yeok), ”ㄴ”(Ni eun), ”ㄷ”(Di geud), ”ㄹ”(Ri eul) , ”ㅁ”(Mi eum), ”ㅂ”(Bi eub), ”ㄱ”(Si ot) , ”ㅇ”(Ie ung), ”ㅈ”(Ji eut), ”ㅊ”(Chi eut), ”ㅋ”(Ki euk), ”ㅌ”(Ti eut), ”ㅍ”(Pi eup), ”ㅎ”(Hi eut). For me, the pronunciation of Korean is a little special, because in Korean, the pronunciation of “r“ and “l” is the same, so the pronunciation of ”ㄹ” is between “r“ and ”l“, and closer to the pronunciation of ”l“. Therefore, when learning Korean at the beginning, we would read the Korean by looking at the Roman pronunciation, which would write ”r“ and ”l“ respectively. However, when reading, they were all close to the ”l“ pronunciation, which made me prone to make mistakes in learning. Besides ”r“ and ”l“, ”f“ and ”p“ are also very similar in Korean, and are represented by ”ㅍ”. Ms. Kim told us in class that the Korean pronunciation for pork is the same as for fork， and there are many foreign words in Korean, such as English words, but the pronunciation is somewhat different because of their different pronunciation habit.
After studying 14 common consonants, we learned 10 common vowels, which are ”ㅏ”(a), ”ㅓ”(eo), ”ㅗ”(o), ”ㅜ”(u), ”ㅡ”(eu), ”ㅣ”(i), ”ㅐ”(ae), ”ㅔ”(e), ”ㅘ”(wa), ”ㅝ”(weo). After learning the vowels, I could read simple Korean words by combining consonants and vowels. The composition of Korean is very simple. You can get the correct pronunciation by reading the vowels or consonants you see from left to right from top to bottom.Take “하” for example, ”ㅎ”(Hi eut) plus ”ㅏ”(a) then we get “하”, which pronounce as “Ha”. And if we add a ”ㄴ”(Ni eun) at the bottom, we can get “한”, which pronounce as “Han”. I can now read most of the words I see, though I don't know what they mean. During the class, Ms. Kim gave us the lyrics of “Arirang“, a traditional Korean song. When I got them, I could read most of the words. Ms. Kim showed us the BTS‘s version of Arirang performance video, we can correct our pronunciation by listening to songs. We also learned simple greetings like "hello" and "goodbye”. There are two ways to say "goodbye" in Korean, “안녕히 가세요” and “안녕히 계세요”. If I go out with my friends, I will say “안녕히 계세요” to others when I leave and I will say “안녕히 가세요” when someone leave.
I also watched two episodes of the TV series “Crash Landing on You” in these two weeks. In addition to South Korean language, I also heard a lot of North Korean language while watching. Although I could not understand it, I can tell there are many similar syllables. The TV series was just released and is still in serialization,therefore, many of the clothes the heroine wears are fashionable elements and colors. Ms. Kim said green, yellow and pink would be popular colors this year, as would flower patterns. In the next class, we will start to learn simple vocabulary and grammar, and we will start to learn the less common consonants and vowels.
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