A bit about Korean Language

Although we now live in Kentucky, I'm still trying to learn more Korean. And even though daily tasks like buying groceries or figuring out what the buttons on the washing machine mean no longer help me towards this goal, bit by bit my Korean is improving.

I could go on a while about different language learning methods, but what I'm doing now is pretty fun and helpful. During grade school, most people experience the boredom that is memorizing vocabulary. You sit and stare at a list of twenty words and their meanings and try to make them stick in your mind. But hands-on experience makes learning so much more fun. So lately I just try to study Korean words and grammar in their natural context.

So here's what I study with these days. A blank notebook for writing, a Korean-English dictionary app on my cell phone and a Korean language novel - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Part 1.

I can't help but be reminded of my elementary education training. If someone were to assess my reading level, they would definitely say that this text is too hard for me and give me something more simple. Yet having read the Harry Potter series three times through, it is a story I know well. So as I struggle through the Korean edition, I can focus completely on just understanding the words, not the story. I read a sentence out loud, try to make sense of it, then take a closer look at any parts I don't understand. Unfamiliar words and grammar are written down in my notebook. I also write down particularly hard or long sentences in order to dissect them further - using notes and arrows and circles to clarify its different parts. Then I read on to the next sentence!

I don't memorize every unfamiliar word or grammar point as I go, but as I continue reading, these strangers reappear again and again, until finally they stick in my mind. It reminds me so much of what I learned about teaching new readers in elementary schools, or new learners of all kinds for that mater. "Accept approximations" our professors always said. We can't learn or remember 100% the first time through, but little by little we pick up bits along the way, and those small improvements are worth celebrating.

As I've studied Korean, I've learned some interesting bits about the language and particular words that I thought are worth sharing.

The Korean alphabet, hangul, is praised by linguists as one of the most efficient and scientific of all languages. It was created about 600 years ago during the rule of King Sejong, who now sits immortalized by the huge statue shown above located in the heart of Seoul. At the time, there was no written alphabet for the Korean language. Scholars used Chinese characters, but many common people were illiterate. There was simply no system to record the thoughts and expressions of the Korean language people spoke. And so Hangul was born.

So what makes it so special? I'll try my best to point out some things.

If you look at Korean writing, it can fit within a series of boxes. Like the writing on the statue above says 세종대왕. You could draw a box around each grouping of letters, kind of like this [세] [종] [대] [왕]. Each box is one spoken syllable. So with words in English (and many other languages) you can't tell how many syllables a word will be by just looking at it. "Hello" and "point" both have five letters, yet the number of syllables when spoken is different.

There are no capitals and lowercase letters in hangul. Can you imagine being a student and never having to worry about which words to capitalize?! The Korean language has other ways to show you that a word is special (like the name of a person or city), similar to what a capital letter does in English. And who needs to capitalize the first letter of a sentence anyways, periods tell us where sentences end and begin.



(We took the picture above at a museum exhibit teaching about the origin of hangul. It's located underground, and you enter it through an opening on the backside of the golden King Sejong statue. Below on the right was me trying to write hangul with a calligraphy brush in the same museum.)

I wish I could better pinpoint what makes hangul so special, beloved and admired by language professionals. I can say from experience that it is incredibly easy to learn. Most people can learn to read the Korean alphabet in just a couple of hours. I learned it easily during high school by doodling in the margins of class notes.

Written Korean does not use apostrophes (') and rarely uses commas. Reading with such punctuation helps you to identify specific ideas and split a sentence into different thoughts. In the Korean language there are tags you put at the end of words that convey the same meaning, but it takes some getting used to!

Every now and then, I come across a word in Korean that sticks out because I can't think of a direct English translation. Right now, I can only think of two, but they are my favorites so far.

그저께 (geu-jeo-kke) means "the day before yesterday".

모레 (mo-re) means "the day after tomorrow".

I just think it is so neat that there are specific words for these days!

So those are my fun tidbits about the Korean language and my self-studying. I hope this post didn't seem too dull or rambling. I just wanted to share a little bit of what I've been learning.