Last week I took my first ever Korean class with Professor Kim. We had a quite small class size, which I like because then everyone gets more chances to ask questions and practice more conversation wise. In the class, we started with a introduction video to Korean on YouTube. That video helped me to understand some basic information about Korean as a language. Professor Kim introduced us to IPA------International Phonetic Alphabet. IPA was quite a helpful tool for me when I started learning English because I could easily read out the words with IPA’s spelling by the side even though I don’t know the words beforehand. In the same way, IPA can also aid me with pronouncing Korean syllables.
Professor Kim gave us two handouts in addition. The first handout is “Quick Guide to Hangeul”. It provides the consonants and vowels. The second handout is some more specific information to the consonants and vowels. The first handout additionally describes how syllable blocks (Korean words) are formed with certain rules. Each syllable block at least has a consonant and one vowel, and sometimes with a third optional final consonant. This is the “minimum two letter rule.” Every syllable is either structured vertically or horizontally, and it must start with a consonant and then vowel. The vowel will be in the middle if the optional consonant is present. There are some other rules about silencing the vowels’ sound given specific circumstances.
I learned some other significant things about Korean. Korean is more towards unsounded voices. So that’s why it would sound softer than some other language which are more prone to sounded voices. And when Professor Kim gave us our Korean names with the closest pronunciation, I discovered that Korean doesn’t have the “l” sound so my Korean name will be pronounced like “Ranqin” rather than “Lanqin”. These details about the phonology and other structures in Korean will definitely save me a lot of time when learning Korean.
This week, I will focus on mastering Hangeul, especially the sounds of the vowels and consonants. Right now I want to focus more on the speaking and listening than reading and writing. Professor Kim said that for starters in Korean like me, I should not try to memorize how the syllables are written, but on how to speak some basic things like self-introduction and short phrases. The resources I will use for these are the handouts given to me, YouTube videos that teaches the Hangeul. Additionally, I found the Chinese version of the book that Professor Kim recommended--- Yonsei Korean 1-1. The book uses some Chinese characters as approximates of the vowels and consonants in Korean. That can actually help me better than IPA in some ways. I think the best thing to do is to reinforce those sounds multiple times. Repetition of sounds for me is one of the most useful ways for me to remember them, especially if they are short sounds like the vowels and consonants. I want to use visual materials combined with auditory ones since I believe a combination of them will be more effective than just a single kind. So far, this method is working, and I am continuing this method with the Hangeul.
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