#ji learns korean

[thinking-ji]

Korean Update #1

It’s been a couple of days since I started properly studying Korean!

Day 1 (4/29): Used this website and found the comic within especially useful. Learned the consonants and vowels. Still was confused about vowels, e.g. the difference between ㅐ and ㅔ. Contrary to what was advertised, I spent just under an hour (not 20 minutes) to understand and internalise the new information. Pretty good!

Day 2 (4/30): Pinned these two new Hangul flashcard decks to my Tinycards dashboard. The latter has been pretty helpful for quick revision purposes.

Interim (5/1): Didn’t really touch Korean.

Day 3 (5/2): Headed to work today, so had very little time to revise. Used the second Tinycards deck to revise for about 3 minutes before going in for my shift. Felt pretty dejected while revising in the evening, because I forgot quite a number of Hangul character romanisations. Journal entry below pretty much sums it up (‘mr IQ 148’ refers to Kim Namjoon...):

Day 4 (5/3): Spent the morning in the library and started on the Tuttle Elementary Korean Workbook I purchased a while ago. (Later, I’ll update this post with the pages I attempted.) Managed to put my Hangul knowledge to good use and I think I’m slowly getting the hang of it! I’m still confused about the pronunciations for the combined-vowel characters (e.g. ㅘ). Hopefully, I can clear that up soon.

All in all, I’m pretty optimistic about the direction my learning is going.

[thinking-ji]

First Impressions of Hangul

I just looked up the web for some Hangul table or guide to start with, and I found this, and had the shock of my life (lol)...

Compilation of Hangul learning tools: How to Study Korean, Unit 0 zKorean, Appearance and Sound of Hangul JosefWigren.com, Korean Hangul in 20 minutes (this is the most tempting to me, but it’s definitely not going to be a quick fix...) Guide to Korean, Learn Hangul in Less than 2 Hours

I ramble below the cut.

This feels like a complete culture shock to me. I’m not used to seeing this many new characters and new ways to write things, and I honestly can’t imagine memorising all of them. I’m feeling a little disheartened, but I suppose that’s how it is with every new language, right? Just have to get through the initial fear and everything will be fine with practice and consistent revision.

But this is different. With Japanese and Bahasa Melayu, there were similarities in their writing systems with Mandarin Chinese and English (respectively), so it wasn’t too hard learning to pronounce words and write the characters. Even katakana was fine for me, because I could relate them to Chinese characters. (Ha! Suck it, everyone who made fun of me for taking my second language seriously.)

I guess I’ll have to pull through... At least for the content, if not for ease of reading video subtitles, interviews and Korean celebrity gossip (even though I’m not big on Korean culture)... /cries.

I’m realising that my motivation for learning Japanese is way different than that for Korean. I probably learned (and am still learning) Japanese because it’s rather easy and I’m good at it. But before even properly starting on Korean, I’m already shying away... TT Well, whatever.

[thinking-ji]

I’m learning Korean!

One of my biggest regrets is not tracking my progress in learning Japanese. Without the reflection and recap that come with journaling every study session, I realised that I lack the discipline to truly go somewhere with learning a new language. So, here goes.

Since a couple of years ago (read; about 10 years ago), I’ve been mildly interested in K-culture. I have a couple of favourite K-Pop artists, but I don’t follow them religiously. Yesterday, I discovered CHANNEL GIMCHEOLSOO on YouTube, which features stunning, simple filmography. I was finally pushed over the edge and decided to learn Korean after I missed their 8-hour long livestream yesterday. I seriously wanted to know what they were saying the whole time, instead of just gushing at their cats. LOL

I also think this is a good time for me to pick up Korean. It’d be interesting to discover the differences between Korean and Japanese while learning these languages side-by-side. As I’m already fluent in Mandarin, I think I’ll hold up alright. Perhaps the only -- and worst -- problem I’ll encounter in learning Japanese is Hangul. It’s really, really different from the Chinese characters I’m used to seeing. The various romanisations of each Hangul character will probably make it worse. That’s considering that this problem has already arisen, even while I’ve been learning Japanese, whose characters are relatively well-defined in terms of pronunciation.

I also want to find out how my mastery of Korean and Japanese will differ due to my learning journey. For Japanese, I started out watching anime and listening to Japanese music, before starting on Duolingo/Tinycards courses that were pretty easy, so I breezed through them without much revision, lol. Now I’m suffering when it comes to Kanji.  Therefore, I’m much better at speaking and listening to Japanese than reading and writing it. Since I don’t consume much Korean media and I’m starting out by picking up its writing system, I reckon I’ll wind up better at reading and writing Korean than speaking and listening to it, haha. But I’m determined not to let that happen!

I headed down to Kinokuniya this afternoon to get a Korean guidebook. (While I was there, I also picked up TRY! JLPT N5.) I’m excited to see where this goes!