Sol's Log -- Spanish/Russian/Korean!

[Sol]

I'm halfway through my big notebook in only 1.5 months I've never enjoyed studying a language so much. Now I understand why you make so much more progress when you enjoy what you do!

Today I started on the Korean numbers and counters!




I'm averaging about 6-8 hours a week of Korean, which means that a year into my studying I should have 312-416 hours under my belt. According to FSI, it should take me 2200 hours to get proficient in the language as it is a category III language, so about 5-7 years.

It got me thinking that in the time it will take me to get proficient in Korean, I could get proficient in 4 languages of category I

[Sol]

Unfortunately I haven't been doing too much Korean this past week or two I've been spending the majority of my time on programming as it's getting quite urgent for me to learn and find a job with it.

I did manage to find some time today though, I don't want to forget anything or fall out of habit. I learned about telling ages and things like 1st/2nd/3rd.

저는 열아홉 살이에요 - I am 19 years old.
... in a week!

I'm going to go watch a Korean variety show now, I feel too exhausted to be doing anything else.

OH also I might get the chance to study abroad. The most likely countries are Sweden, Norway and Germany. An opportunity to learn another language?

If anyone can recommend a country where the education is cheap or free for internationals, feel free to tell me

[Sol]

I managed to do 2.5 hours of Korean today! Yay! I continued learning about 1st/2nd/3rd/etc and learned 처음.

I also decided to write a short paragraph in Korean for the first time and put it on Lang-8 for a native to correct... It was difficult but really useful having to go back through my notes and read through the concepts to piece together something that makes sense! So here it is:

안녕하세요! 재 이름은 설임니다, 저는 열아홉 살이에요. 그리고, 런던에서 살아요. 저는 나중에 처음으오 한국에 것이다. 한국어 매우 아름다워요!
Hello! My name is Sol, I am 19 years old and I live in London. I will go to Korea for the first time in the future. Korean is very beautiful!

Such a simple paragraph but seeing those Korean characters actually forming something understandable makes me so happy!

Also the country I will study in will most likely be Germany...time to start studying German perhaps?

[Vedun]

If anyone can recommend a country where the education is cheap or free for internationals, feel free to tell me

Щях да предложа Шотландия, но гледам вече си решил.

time to start studying German perhaps?

jawohl!

[Sol]

If anyone can recommend a country where the education is cheap or free for internationals, feel free to tell me

Щях да предложа Шотландия, но гледам вече си решил.

time to start studying German perhaps?

jawohl!

Бих искал да е извън Великобритания, и също да науча нов език!

[Sol]

So uhh... I started another language. German, because I might end up studying there in a year. I was just looking for an excuse to learn another language really! So far I really like it, it sounds cool, and German accents are adorable!

German was actually my first foreign language after English. When I was around 11/12 years old they were cycling us through Spanish, German and French in school, and I was assigned to German first for a third of the year. I found it incredibly fun and easy, maybe because it was my first foreign language I tried to learn (I didn't really try to learn English, I just "absorbed it" when I moved). Unfortunately they moved us into French and Spanish later. I would have continued with German instead of Spanish if my cousin hadn't joked that German sounded horrible (which it doesn't...:/).

Anyway I started Language Transfer German and Coffee Break German podcasts, along with using and taking notes from Duolingo German. So far so good!



Guten Tag! Ich bin Sol und ich lerne Deutsch.

As I do with every language I start, I use FSI difficulty rank to see how long it would take me to get proficient. German takes ~750 hours, which means about 107 weeks if I do an hour a day.

I find it fascinating how I am already able to piece together some sentences in German after only 2 days, something which has taken me 3 months to do in Korean. The difference in difficulty is mind blowing. This whole experience of learning different languages has made me appreciate the extreme simplicity of Spanish.

Also something weird has happened. My whole life I have wanted to live in boiling hot places, and suddenly I think I wouldn't mind living in a chilly country. I am becoming more like my dad every day.

[Sol]

Guyyys I'm so happy! So yesterday I started putting together sentences and putting them on Lang-8 to get them corrected, as producing/creating things yourself is always the best way to learn something. Obviously they had mistakes. But today I made a nice long sentence which had no mistakes!

저는 어제 두 시간 동안 TV를 봤어요. 그 방송 사회자는 이상했어요. 그래서, 저는 지금 두려워요!
I watched TV for two hours yesterday. The TV presenter was strange, so now I am scared!

I'm so happy! This sentences is probably nothing compared to what a real complicated sentence is in Korean, but it includes different tenses, subjects, objects, and time!

I'm on lesson 11/133. I can't wait to see how much I'll know by lesson 133!

Also I decided I'm going to separate my days like this:

Day 1: Korean (2 hours), German (flashcards)
Day 2: German (2 hours), Korean (flashcards)

Learning a new language warms my soul (as we say in Bulgarian).

[Sol]

Today I learned more about telling the time. Two things stood out:

다음 (next) and 하루 (one day). 다음 (da-um) because it's the name of the Korean online dictionary Daum, and 하루 (ha-ru) because it just sounds cool!

I also fixed up my Korean spelling LOL. I was writing ㅈ and ㅊ wrong. How I used to write them was how they are typed on a computer simply because I didn't know how to handwrite them, but it's really uncomfortable:



And now:



Much better, right?

Finally, I just noticed that the letter ㄹ is similar to the handwritten letter 'g' in Bulgarian:



Cool, right? I was struggling to write ㄹ for a long time, and today it dawned on me that I do know how to write it... just pretend it's the Bulgarian letter g lol.

[Sol]

So it turns out I won't be studying in Germany, lol. If I do it's highly unlikely. However, I really like German and will keep studying it! So this is the plan:

Korean: Main language. I love it so much, I could do 5 hours if I had the time! I do about 1-2 hours a day as of now.
Russian: Second main. Study for half as much as Korean, so if I study 2 hours Korean I do an hour Russian.
Spanish: To maintain/slowly improve here and there. To be honest I've let this one go the past few months so I need to start it up again.
German: Duolingo every day, small sessions throughout the week.

[Sol]

I am utterly obsessed with Korean. I can study it all day! I've started listening to Korean podcasts or audiobooks right before I'm going to sleep; I end up half-sleeping and half-listening to Korean for half an hour before I remember to take my earphones out and actually sleep. It's such a calming language! I finished Lesson 10 today and am moving on to Lesson 11 tomorrow. The sentences are getting a bit complicated. As always, a page from my notebook:



I also resumed Russian! I tried to focus on just one language, I really did, but every time I came across a Russian video on YouTube or heard Russian or just saw anything Russian, I felt a pang on the inside because I want to learn it so bad. So I started it again!! I am using the New Penguin Russian Course for Beginners, but I can understand much more than I should at this point in the book due to my Bulgarianism, so I find myself answering the questions I'm supposed to answer in English, in Russian:



I'm a bit unsure on how to write some letters. Is the lowercase T (that looks like "m") written with a line above or not? Do Russian write the two dots above their "e" for "yo"? Is lowercase G that squiggly thing that looks like the Korean ㄹ like it is in Bulgarian?