The learning objective of the first week was to learn pronouns and possessive pronouns. The ultimate objective of learning different types of pronouns was to be able to talk about myself and about other people with more ease and flexibility. For instance, my hobby is listening to music, her university is big and so forth.
As a result, I had asked Suyeon to teach me pronouns and possessive pronouns and how to use them in sentences. She was really nice to prepare a grammar sheet listing all the pronouns, with examples of uses according to the context. Although I had learned pronouns last semester, we went into greater with Suyeon. I learned that not only do different subjects have different pronouns, they also two forms: formal and informal. For example, the pronoun "I" is "na" for informal and "cho" for formal. Simillarly, there are formal and informal forms of every pronoun.
In addition to formality, different endings are added to the pronouns when they occur in different types of sentences. In a sentence like "I am a student" where "I" is the subject we use "naega" instead of "na". On the other hand, in a sentence where "I" is the object such as "You called me" we use "naleul" in stead of "na". Similarly, all the pronouns change slightly according to the sentence structure. As a side note, there is no separate word for "also" and "too" in Korean, so "me too" is "nadoo" which is a different variation of "na".
As Suyoen, was telling me about the different endings of pronouns, I realized that I was already familiar with them and I had also been using them all the time in my head while watching Korean shows. Therefore, the grammar made more sense to me then. However, I also realized that even though it is very different from English, I did not find it strange because Bengali has a very similar structure and that I have been instinctively using it all the time.
I also realized that mastering the interchange of different forms of pronouns will be possible only through a lot of practice. In order to use it smoothly while speaking, it is necessary for it to come naturally and instinctively. Thus to get maximum exposure to Korean, I have asked Suyeon to use only Korean during the tutoring sessions and I try my best to answer in Korean, even if it is in broken sentences.
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