SDLC 112 Fifth Learning Journal

[Hongzhen Chen]

After learning all the vowels and consonants, we practiced reading some Korean words. This week, we learnt the vocabulary of vegetables and fruits. For example, fruit names: 사과 - apple, 포도 - grape, 바나나 - banana, 버찌 - cherry, 키위 - kiwi,배 - pear, 토마토 - tomato, 레몬 - lemon. Vegetable names: 파 - spring onion, 버섯 - mushroom, 고추 - chili pepper,두부 - tofu, 감자 - potato, 부추 - chives, 대파 - leek, 무 - radish. At the beginning, it was really hard for me to combine both vowels and consonants together to come up with the pronunciation, especially when there were two vowels in a letter. I had to look at each vowel and consonant's pronunciation every time. However, as I practiced more, I became more familiar with the consonants and found some rules in the combination of words. There are certain words that follow after each nouns so when I see the first vowel I could guess the pronunciation of the whole. Also some Korean pronunciations are very similar to Chinese pronunciations and meanings, so once I understood the meaning of each letter, it became easier for me to memorize and use the law in other words.