The task that I worked on this week was to review the batchim rules that I had learned last week. This also included diving into pronunciation and a bit of sentence structure. Somyung and I also reviewed some particles that I had watched videos on. This mainly focused on subject and object markers in a sentence. These are 은/는 and 이/가 respectively. These particles are essential to marking where the subject and object in a sentence are and most sentences will not make sense without them. We briefly discussed the other particles but they will come up when necessary.
The other topic that we touched on were verbs and the appropriate tenses that are associated with them. We looked into present tenses and learned that many Korean grammar rules aim to make speech as fluid as possible. Thus, rules are often based on if the word or words end with a consonant or vowel and giving bachims where appropriate. In present tense verbs, this was crux so that was not too difficult. The rules for past tense were much more complicated than this. There was a mechanical style to updating a verb to be past tense that involved removing 다, which signified a verb, and adding 었/았 depending on some conditions. There seem to be several rules that I have to learn through consistent usage and practice here. After adding these new characters, 다/어요, were added back to the end to conclude the transformation. After this, there are certain words that can be omitted. I have not yet learned the extent to which simplification is done but it is a part of Korean language to shorten things for convenience thus far.
We also jumped into the topic of facial features and body parts in general. We created a diagram of a human in an online whiteboard and named each part incrementally. This is very useful and fun since I did the drawing and writing of body parts. However, this does seem quite difficult to memorize.
One part of my practice plan that was quite helpful was using youtube videos to learn difficult grammar. The set of videos to learn Korean on youtube is quite extensive, which I appreciate and my language partner already had quite a few sources that could help me learn in depth some difficult topics. For example, I learned the significance and usage of some particles from watching channels like Korean Unnie and Talk to Me In Korean. I will continue using youtube to learn more about Korean grammar and also use it as a tool to immerse myself in Korean culture. Another aspect of entertainment that has been quite useful in learning Korean is Korean variety shows. One thing that I learned recently was how some English words and Korean words sound the same in a song even to native korean speakers. This technique was discussed in depth in the show How Do You Play regarding the song Maria. The word Maria is pronounced the same as the korean word for mean, 말이야. This type of word-play is very common in Korean entertainment.
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