I have been reviewing Hangeul and learning some basic words and conversations in Professor Kim’s class. I didn’t go to class this week since I was out of town for most of the week, but I did go to both the Wednesday and Saturday class for the week before. I feel that by getting familiar with Hangeul, it is getting easier for me to read the characters even though I don’t exactly know the meanings.
The practice of the basic conversations definitely reinforced my memory too. We practiced on self introduction, including saying our names, greetings, what we do(college student), our major, and our interests. Korean as a language has many rules regarding manners. That’s why there are polite ways of saying things and a casual way. Usually when you are talking to people older than you or people you are meeting for the first time, you should talk in the polite way. For example, when doing the self introduction, we will say 저는 instead of 나는. Some other words we learned for basic conversation include 남자 친구(boyfriend), 여자 친구(girlfriend),예쁜(pretty),귀엽다(cute),이름(name), 대학생(college student).I learned how to say yes and no, to say I have/not have something, like/do not like something. And we also learns some basic sentences like what, why and how. These kinds of basic sentences would really help to express a lot of things.
We took a quiz in the Saturday class, and it made me realize that even though I am familiar with the sounds of consonants and vowels, I still do not know the written forms well enough. Another thing other students and I all discovered in that class is that some consonants and vowels have different forms of writing. And sometimes it really confuses us because what Professor Kim wrote on the board looked completely different from what the vowel/consonant is on the Hangeul handout. It took us a few minutes to clear this with Professor Kim, but we are all glad that we solved that problem.
On the Wednesday class, we were discussing that we would learn some Korean songs together as a class and maybe also watch a Korean movie. I recommended 사랑을 했다(LOVE SCENARIO) by iKON as one of the songs to learn because I think the song is really catchy and the words are easy to follow. I definitely like kpop but I have never really learned to sing a Korean song since I didn’t know Korean before. But I think right now learning one is a great opportunity to learn more about some Korean songs I love and improve my Korean skills.