For the first meeting, I believe it went pretty well. Korean is a language I am not used to considering it uses characters instead of the typical alphabet that I am accustomed to. Which is why for the first meeting I wanted to learn the korean writing system called hangul.
Gajin, who is my assigned language partner, explained to me what exactly hangul is. She explained how one of the Korean kings, King Sejong, had created this system of writing so that it was simple enough for everyone to learn. She stated how the system is based on the common sounds that these people would speak, which is why Korean is one of those languages where the words are written just like they are pronounced. Knowing this made me feel much better because as we learned in class, languages such as English are difficult to learn due to the numerous complicated sounds that make up a word where the letters do not match at all.
During the lesson, Gajin also explained how there are 14 consonants and 10 vowels. She also explained that there is a certain when writing out words using the individual characters. If we are just using two characters, depending on what vowel is being used, the consonants would go on top while the vowel will be placed at the bottom or the consonant would be written first with the vowel right next to it. For example the word that Gajin had used for reference was for the first example was the word for please. As you can see the word is written as 주세요, with the vowels written below the consonants. As for the second example, Gajin used 이거, the word for here, and we can see how the two different characters are placed next to each other, with the consonants being at the front.
To start learning how to memorize the characters, I tried to associate a sound or letter that sounded close enough to the pronunciation. For example, for me, the character ㄱ sounds like the letter G, therefore I made a little note stating that. It was the same for the rest of the characters. This part turned out to be pretty difficult. That is because there were certain characters I could not pronounce correctly. The two that were most difficult was ㅈ and ㅊ. These two characters sound pretty much the same to my ear while Gajin kept repeating that it was not true. Koreans grew up knowing the small differences between the characters while I need to learn to hear those differences. For example, Gajin would say some words so we can see if I am able to write them down and one of them was 주세요. Despite the fact that I had not learned more about the vowels as seen in the second character, I also wrote the first part wrong. To me, 주 had sounded like 추, so when Gajin told I was wrong I tried to hear the differences between the two but it was difficult. Therefore I know I would have to learn to become more attentive of the pronunciation and make sure to revise hangul.
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