I am super excited with what I am currently learning. I have asked my language tutor to teach me simple phrases so I can be able to communicate my day to other people. For example, I have learned:
피곤해 : I am tired
추워 : It’s too cold
너 어디야 : Where are you
To be able to learn these phrases, I have begun conversing with my language tutor and my roommate. I realized that it was easier to remember these phrases if I kept saying them out loud in the right context. Usually, I would feel afraid or embarrassed trying to talk in another language. For example, with French, I barely talk in the language outside of class which has led me to not efficiently retain a lot of key grammar or phrases in my head. Therefore, learning from that mistake, I made to practice my Korean outside of these lessons and in order to become more comfortable talking and be able to memorize these key phrases. Which is why recently I have been able to keep expanding my vocabulary and actually have a small basic conversation with my roommate.
What also helps is that since I am becoming more comfortable talking in Korean, I am able to better improve my pronunciation. I would try to say what I want to say and my language tutor and my roommate would correct me to make sure I am speaking correctly. This is another aspect that I believe has greatly helped me become a bit more fluent in my target language. By having people correct me, I am able to remember the pronunciation better, which helps me become more understandable and people are able to comprehend what I am trying to say.
Through these recent lessons, I realized that I wanted to keep learning this type of informal language to talk with my korean friends or to talk to others when I eventually visit Korea over the summer. I am able to build a better relationship since I am now able to playfully converse with my roommate which I believe added another layer to our friendship since I am able to kind of break down this language barrier. My language tutor would teach me the formal way to say the sentence then would also help me with how to say that phrase in a more informal way to talk with friends. It is interesting to be able to learn both sides of the language and how subtle changes help indicate whether it is formal or informal.
One thing that I still need to learn is how to write in hangul. While I am starting to get used to reading, I still have trouble trying to write the phrases that my tutor says. So I need to keep revising and keep revisiting youtube videos in order to do so.
Comments
I feel the same embarrassment of speaking a language poorly to others. And as my language partner and I got more and more familiar in the semester, I feel more comfortable, speaking Korean to him despite mistakes. I think it's a great idea you could talk with your Korean-speaking roommate since you guys already know each other. I would reach out to my friends as well in the future. Embrace the progress you've made!