New Language Challenge Begins: Fluency In Korean

I am so jealous! I’m learning Korean now from home, using Integrated Korean for grammar, Skype with people I’m met through italki.com, and the Hippocrene Korean Standard Dictionary (the only one organized by Hangeul that I could find, but I don’t like the font). I’m absolutely loving the process of learning this language. Not being in a position to travel and living in a small town with no Korean population, it will take me longer than I would like, but I hope to make fast enough progress to start learning Vietnamese within the next few years.

I am learning languages based on places I want to travel to in the hopes of having a better experience if I know the language, not knowing how much time I will have in each place since I cannot know what the future holds :)

Hi Theresa :)

It’s definitely more of a challenge when you’re isolated from the target language community but thankfully I’ve found Koreans to be really enthusiastic about helping people (both the ones I’ve met here in Korea and back home in Australia). It’s great that you’ve been able to find Skype partners.

I’ve only been here for a few days and I love this place already.

I’ll be uploading lots of video over the coming weeks and months about the Korean language and culture so keep checking back :)

Hi again. I forgot to add that I can’t recommend enough that you learn Hangeul. I hate hate hate the Romanization of Korean. In my opinion, the two traditional methods of Romanizing Korean don’t reflect the real language in any meaningful way, the pronunciation is confusing at best, wrong at worst, and it’s very difficult to look things up in a Romanized dictionary. Also, Hangeul is cool! :)

I agree with you on that one. I can’t stand reading transliterations in any language. I’m quickly getting better at Hangeul because of all the signs here :)

Hello Donovan,

I’ve been following your blog for a while, and I’m excited to learn that you’ll be moving to Korea. Personally, I live in Seoul and I try to make it to the LanguageCast meetings as often as I can. I hope I get a chance to meet you at some point. I’m American, but I certainly wouldn’t mind talking to you in French (that way we both get some practice in).

Have a safe trip,
Liz

Thanks Liz.

It’ll be great to meet you. Looking forward to it :)

I don’t have any tips, but Korean is definitely on my hitlist (I have a fascination with different language scripts), so I’ll be following it with great interest!

If you find any good music, please share.

But most of all good luck!

Thanks, mate :)

Hey Donovan,

First of all, thank you for all your great posts! I really agree with the idea that you’re trying to inculcate - Don’t focus too much on grammar, focus on getting used to the sound and HEARING the language.

I was born Chinese so Mandarin is my first language, and when I immigrated to Canada I picked up English relatively fast. With hindsight, it DID seem like you are right! I never learned English grammar or took any grammar lessons, I just kept speaking and writing the language, making plenty of mistakes along the way, eventually going from speaking broken to fluent English. My parents ask me “how did you become proficient in English grammar? We’ve been studying English grammar for years!” I shrugged and smiled at them, “time does wonders.” Also, I spoke more than I studied the language. However, I did spend a lot of time acquiring vocabulary, I think that is essential to learning the language as a non-native speaker.

I am currently learning Japanese on my own, and heck, is it hard! Japanese is somewhat similar to French in terms of complex conjugations, and I’ve studied French in middle school. I don’t know, but sometimes I really wonder how do Japanese children learn the complex grammar? I mean I tried really hard to recall the way I learned Mandarin as a child, but in my opinion Mandarin is just too easy compared to Japanese! It has no grammar! It has no verb conjugation! So I was never faced with such problem in the first place, and thus I absolutely have no experience learning a language with a extremely complex grammatical system. English has some conjugations, but not to the extent of “conditional“, “provisional”, “subjunctive” and things like that. Plus Japanese also has honorific which makes it twice as hard.

I would like to know, how do French kids, Japanese kids, or kids whose first language requires heavy conjugation learn the language? Is it still by mimicking adults that they manage to do this? But it just seems too intimidating and a little hard to believe that KIDS can pick up SUCH complicated grammar without ever learning grammar.

Please enlighten me,

Thanks,

Lilly

Hey Lilly!

Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for the compliment on the posts :)

It is exactly the same no matter what the grammar’s like. Grammar complexity is irrelevant. The Japanese kids learned Japanese the same way you learned Mandarin - they just repeated what they heard their parents say, making lots of mistakes and over time became native speakers. There’s no difference in the way they learn.

Forget about the honorific system and all the complexities - just focus on one formal style of speaking and repeat content exactly as you hear it from native speakers (and the dialogues on your course books). Over time, everything else will work itself out.

This is my approach to Korean (which is as complex as Japanese). I arrived here in Korea less than 5 days ago and could only say a few basic phrases but I’ve already absorbed huge amounts of the language (with limited time because I’ve been busy starting my new job and organizing my apartment).

I’ll post videos every couple of weeks so you can see the progress I’m making without grammar study.

Hopefully I’ll make it to Japan soon too :)

Hey Donovan, sounds like a cool new adventure. I taught English on that little Japanese island just SE of Busan called Tsushima (you can see it from Busan) for a year. It’s a beautiful little island and there is a strong Korean influence (many of the Japanese students learn Korean in addition to English and there’s always loads of tourists form Korea visiting). When I was living there there were ferries (2 hour one-way trip I think) that go from Busan to Tsushima so you should try to hop on one if you get a chance to check it out. And if you make it out to Jeju island, I’d love to hear what you think. Always wanted to go there, but never made it out. Good luck with your new mission!
Aloha,
Gavin

Thanks!

I’m definitely planning to head to Jeju although the locals are telling me that the Jeju dialect is so different to mainland Korean that nobody here understands it. Apparently it’s heavily influenced by Japanese. Should be a nice weekend trip though :)

Japanese has a reputation for being very difficult and, as you noted, it’s ranked by FSI as being in the ultra-hard category along with Korean, and I completely disagree with that, at least as it concerns spoken Japanese. Written Japanese I could see, because of the writing system, but the language itself uses very simple grammar and it doesn’t have any phonemes that English doesn’t, so it’s actually really easy for an English-speaker to learn to speak because you don’t have to learn to make any new noises like the “r” in French or Spanish. From what I understand Korean is somewhat related to Japanese and if the grammar is at all similar then I don’t know what the hell this “Korean grammar is crazy hard” crap is because Japanese grammar is among the simplest in the world.

I’ve heard the Koreans can be very xenophobic, and you’re going some place other than Seoul (Seoul’s the only city where they’re at least somewhat used to seeing foreigners, from what I hear) so this should be interesting...you might do well with the girls, though ;)

Looking forward to hearing your reports.

Cheers,

Andrew

I haven’t experienced any ‘xenophobia’ or mistreatment so far. People seem lovely. Georgia was probably the most ‘xenophobic’ (I don’t like that word!) country I’ve been in but I loved it there.

Japanese and Chinese writing is difficult and there’s no way around it because they’re character-based. Korean on the other hand has an alphabet which is really easy to learn.

Looking forward to sharing my experience with you too :)

Donovan,

I’m jealous!! What an amazing opportunity.

I’ve got to focus more on setting up my life so I can spend most of it moving around, studying languages. I’ve been in the same city now for a year (although had 3-4 months of total travel time) and I’m getting anxious.

Congrats on setting this up,

Jared

Thanks Jared.

Just got in last night and already loving the place. :)

Have you made any plans yet to head to Italy for some practice?