This past month, I focused on my learning objective to improve my Korean pronunciation. My language partner, Jannette, and I thought that it would be a good idea to practice reading Korean and work on my Korean pronunciation by reading Korean song lyrics and singing Korean songs. We explored different genres including, ballads, k-pop, and R&B. I was definitely better at reading the lyrics to slower ballad songs than fast k-pop songs and I failed pretty miserably at rapping. However, it was a good and fun way to practice verbalizing Korean. Hearing Jannette’s fluent pronunciation also allowed me to compare and practice making the right sounds. After we sang the songs, we looked at the lyrics and used Papago to find the translations of any words that I was unfamiliar with. By doing this, I got to learn new Korean words from the songs we sang. Some words I learned were:
무뎌진: I got used to it
투명: transparent
그림자: shadow
화려한: glamorous
애태우다: worry/fuss about
Then, to practice using these words, I used them in sentences. For example, I said, “나는 너의 드레스가 화려해서 좋다.” This means, “I like how glamorous your dress is”. This exercise was very successful because it allowed me to grasp a fuller understanding of how these words would be used in an everyday context. Singing Korean karaoke was not only helpful in getting me to read and speak Korean, but I also got to learn more about Korean music culture, popular songs, and various artists in Korea. Although I was already familiar with the genre of Korean popular music (K-pop), Jannette shared some of her favorite Korean ballad songs with me, including 바람기억 (Memory of the Wind) by Naul and 너를 만나 (Me After You) by Paul Kim. I learned that there are a plethora of different types of music in Korea outside of just K-pop.
In addition to learning Korean through music, I accomplished my objective of learning the Old Testament books of the Bible in Korean- up until the book of Esther, which is the seventeenth book. This was not as difficult as I initially expected because some of the Korean names are pronounced similarly to the English names. For example, Ezra in Korean is ‘에스라’, which is read as ‘esra’. I also learned that ‘상’ (sang) means first and ‘하’ (ha) means latter. Samuel in Korean is ‘사무엘’ which is pronounced the same as in English (Sa-moo-el). So, 1 Samuel is 사무엘상 and 2 Samuel is 사무엘하. Learning this made it so much easier to memorize certain books of the Bible in Korean.
Comments
Grace,
Pronunciation is probably some of the hardest things in any language. It is one of the most significant markers that set someone who is fluent from someone who is proficient, so it's awesome that you are taking the time to improve. I also know that reading bible verses in Korean is very difficult, so kudos to you for doing it!