In the past two weeks, I’ve learned a lot of new things. To begin with, there were certain vowels whose sounds I simply couldn’t differentiate, so I sat down and properly understood how they are different. The vowels are: 와 워 왜 웨 외 위 의. Another thing that I learned that’s a part of Korean basics is the numbers in the native Korean number system. In class we played a game called 뽀성 in which you say every number except the ones that are multiples of three (multiples of three are replaced with the word 뽀성). Later on I practiced the numbers by myself by doing sudoku. I absolutely love sudoku so I picked up an easy sudoku puzzle and wrote it down in Korean and then solved it in Korean; then, I solved it in English and checked my solutions. This actually helped a lot more than I originally gave it credit for because while doing sudoku you can’t just go sequentially from 1-9, you need to look at every number randomly as it is and in relation to another based on the information you have. This helped me recognize numbers even when they’re out of order, on their own. Attached below is a picture of the first sudoku puzzle I solved in Korean.
I’ve even started watching K-dramas to get a better understanding of conversational Korean. This has given me more insight into the sentence structure of Korean, and how to distinguish between formal conversation and informal conversation. This has made me better listen to Korean and distinguish between the sounds. Infact, when I went back and listened to a couple of BTS songs that I listened to long before I started learning Korean, I realised how different the actual song is from what I used to hear it as. For example, a part in their song Boy In Luv actually has the rapper reciting the first 8 Hangul consonants, and another song Blood,Sweat, and Tears has the boys singing ‘원해 많이 많이’ which I always heard as ‘money’ instead of ‘많이 (mani)’ which means ‘a lot’. K-dramas are turning out to be one of the most helpful things in my learning plan because I’m not only getting better at listening to Korean, reading Korean, and conversing in Korean, but I’m also getting an insight into Korean culture through these dramas, and I’ve been able to think in Korean because of them. For example, due to the huge amount of anime that I’ve watched, when someone is being cute I think ‘kawaii’, and now I’m able to think ‘귀여워 (gwiyeowo)’ instead. Not only this but when I want to say sorry I’m actually able to think of either ‘미안해’ (informal) or ‘죄송합니다’ (formal) depending on the situation. This makes me really happy because it’s a good foundation for me to learn Korean as itself instead of by mapping it onto English.
Moreover, I got the Korean keyboard for both my laptop and my phone which makes learning Korean on the go super fun and has helped me get used to Hangul well. The other day, I typed out an email to Professor Sumi 75% of which was in Korean!
Now, I’d like to start working on forming good sentences in Korean by paying close attention to the grammar and learning sentences which are more relevant to my situation as a college student like ‘do you have homework’, or ‘do you want to get lunch together?’, and other such sentences. The grammar is going to take a lot of work but I’m looking forward to it!
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