I have started to write in Korean through mostly text messages. At first, I started mainly having to text my parents in Korean. They would not necessarily correct me, however, I would see what they wrote and began to correct mistakes. If I wrote, “되서" and my parents used “돼서,” in the next text message, I would keep that in mind and change it the next time I text them. I do not really write free hand as much as possible because I somehow cannot make my handwriting in Korean look neat and clean. This is why I try to avoid it as much as possible. Personally, I think Korean is a very difficult language to write neatly when writing free hand. There are a lot of different characters that need to fit under one area. For example, for English, all of the characters/letters have their own space. However, for Korean, there are words like “안녕하세요" or “닭강정 먹고싶어요" in which there are multiple characters combined under one space.
I’ve started to see better now just how different Korean is compared to English. I realized that with Korean, we switch up the subject and the verb. For English, the verb comes before the subject. For example, in this sentence, “Go buy the store,” the verb, “buy” comes before the subject, “store.” However in Korean, it would be written as “가게를 사요.” “가게" is store and “사요" means to buy. So, the subject comes before the verb. Sometimes, I get this confused a lot between Korean and English, so when I start talking to my parents in English, I tend to text them in English too that day. However, when I talk to my parents in Korea, I constantly text my parents in Korean to avoid confusion.
Comments
Similar things happen to me when I'm speaking English with my friends. I would notice my grammar mistakes after saying the sentence out loud, but my friends will still get what I meant and will not correct me. Sometimes I would correct myself before they even say anything. The reverse of verbs and subjects in Korean was confusing to me as well, especially when I tried to translate the sentence to English.
When writing in Korean, I also have trouble figuring out which vowel to use because in some situations, there can be two or three that sound alike. It's great that you're learning from your parents through text and correcting the mistake. Do you tend to text your family members in Korean? I have recently tried to use more Korean when texting my parents, but still text in English with my siblings.
This is a difficult but also enlightening stage becoming more bilingual. I went through the same thing in Spanish when I studied abroad. I was forced to communicate only in Spanish with my host family because they didn't understand any English. They rarely corrected my mistakes, even though I wish they had, but I would catch onto what they would say correctly versus my mistakes. Also, I would encourage you to try and write freehand sometimes! It is really difficult because you have to kind of mentally plan the syllable before you write it which is tedious, but it would be good to get used to it!