Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language. To what family does your language belong? What sounds, words, or structures exemplify periods of contact with other cultures?
Learning the roots and history of one language would definitely help me understand the historical settings and reasons behind the modern usage of certain words and grammatical structures. Korean is one of the oldest living languages in in the world. Hangul was invented during Chosun Dynasty by King Sejong. It belongs to the Koreanic language family. The Korean language was deeply influenced by Chinese language and even till this day Hanja which is originated from Chinese characters is still in use in Korean language. Nowadays, the influences from English have been reflected on the modern Korean language. Exotic words, such as 커피/Keopi/ which means coffee, sound very similarly to the sounds of those words in English. Other words like 도서관 /doseogwan/, which means library, have similar sounds to the pronunciations of the same words in Chinese. When studying new vocabulary, it is useful for me to relate the sounds and meanings of certain Korean words to my background in both Chinese and English in order to quickly master those target words.
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