아주 Nice!

안녕하세요 (annyeonghaseyo), friends! How are you? Are you ready to go back to the prof? Today’s post will be intercultural. I want to talk about learning another language. We know about this. I’m not going to tell you about the stages and all that. I want to talk about my personal experience so far. Two months ago I decided to learn Korean. You may ask, why Korean? I don’t know. I feel attracted to the language, the people and the culture. I really enjoy learning something new and challenging.

Am I too old to learn another language? Meh, I  think age is not a barrier to do something you like. I know I want to do a lot of things in my life no matter what. When I was I kid, I wanted to learn a lot about animals, science, and different cultures. Then I thought, “When I grow up, I wanna be famous, I wanna be a star, I wanna be in movies. When I grow up, I wanna see the world. Drive nice cars. I wanna have groupies.” To quote the PussyCat Dolls. Actually, when I was a kid, I hated English. It was too complicated for me. Then, I’ve realized that all my favourite TV shows and songs were in English. So, I had a reason to learn it. I was very bad at learning languages at school. I had to learn English and French. In secondary school, I had a teacher that changed everything for me. He made me realized that learning English shouldn’t be a painful process. At the moment I started enjoying the lessons, I fell in love with the language. There are a lot of things that are important when learning a language, but motivation is the number one for me.

As I told you before, I am a person that needs to do something new because I get bored very easily. It’s not that I get bored learning English. In fact, English is helping me a lot with Korean. How would you ask? Well, learning the phonemes, places of articulation, and sounds in English, has helped me a lot. I feel so happy when I can use something from English with this new language.

The Korean Language

The first time you see the Korean alphabet (or Hangul) you want to quit. It looks really difficult. The first time I saw the alphabet, I found it challenging. In the first lesson, we studied the vowels.

It is important to say that the Romanization is not always exact. If you are studying from English to Korean, pay attention to the sounds. The same if you are doing with Spanish. For example, the consonant “ㅂ” (b) could sound more like a “P” in English. In fact, certain names that start with “B” in Korean tend to sound like a “P” in English. For example, the last name Park should sound like Bark, but nobody would like to have that last name. What I do is to mix the languages up. Don’t tell my teacher. This is our trust circle. For example, the consonant “ㅈ” sounds almost like the “dʒ” sound in English. In Spanish, we don’t have this sound, so I’m using everything I saw in Oral. In the consonant “ㅊ” I can use the “tʃ” sound like the one in Nature. In the consonant “ㅉ” I can use the “ch” like the one in Chancho. It is not cheating. 

What’s more, English has helped me to make my sounds more natural. For examples, the following consonants are all aspirated: ㅋ (kh), ㅌ (th) and ㅍ (ph). Thanks to English I know how to make these sounds without much effort. There are other sounds that we don’t have in Spanish and in English.

But stop talking about the sounds and all that. Something that I love about studying this interesting language is the culture behind it. Do you know that are different levels of politeness when you speak in Korean? These levels show the formality or informality of the situation. In Korea, you have to be careful who are you are addressing to.

안녕하세요: anyonghaseyo: hello (formal)

안녕: annyong: Hello (informal)

Words also change according to the level of politeness.

아버지: abeoji: Father (formal)

아빠: appa: Dad (informal)

Some words change if you are a girl or a boy.

누나: Nuna: Older sister (if you are a boy)

형: hyeong: Older brother (if you are a boy)

언니: eonni: Older sister (if you are a girl)

오빠: oppa: Older brother (if you are a girl)

Different from English, Korean makes no distinction for the choice of verb to be (am, are, is) between pronouns. You have only one form of the verb to be: 이다 . Again, this will change according to the level of formality. 

Speech Level	Plain Form	Formal Polite	Informal Polite	Formal Casual	Informal Casual
is, am, are	이다	입니다	이에요/예요	인다	이야/야

Ok, now we need to talk about numbers. There are two numeral systems in Korean: the native system and the Sino- Korean system. The native numbers are used for numbers of items (1-99) and age, while the Sino-Korean system is based on Chinese numbers and are used for dates, money, addresses, phone numbers, and numbers above 100.

The first time I saw this table I was like...

You may think, I’m crazy, for learning this language. But let me tell you that it looks difficult, but once you've learned the alphabet, it is a piece of cake. Except the cake is on fire, and you're on fire and everything is on fire because you're in hell. Hahaha, I love it. I love learning something so unique. Whenever I do something right in Korean, it makes me happy. I also enjoy making mistakes because I’m learning. The first thing I learn in Korean was how to say: 배고파요 (be go pha io) (I’m hungry), which is a sentence we should all learn in every language. Just in case.

What’s more, I downloaded a Korean dictionary with pronunciation. It is really helpful. I’m reading children’s book in Korean to acquire more vocabulary. I’m watching TV shows in Korean, too. I used the language with my family a lot. They can’t speak Korean, but I should practice with someone. And they can’t understand me so is a win-win. As I told you in another post, I think that learning something new can help you to be happy and breaking the routine. In my case, it is working. I love it.

다음에 또 봐요: daume ddo bayo: see you again next time!

Links: http://www.sayjack.com/blog/2010/06/18/verb-to-be-in-korean/
https://zkorean.com/korean-alphabet-hangul
https://bijuarukei.wordpress.com/2015/06/14/korean-lesson-no-1-korean-alphabet/
https://hanguladay.com/korean-numbers/