Korean will be my first fresh undertaking in language learning since 2013. As most of you know, I have had my hands quite full in learning Mandarin Chinese from zero hour up. I now feel the time has yet again come to invite a new challenge. Ever since I have seriously studied languages in a primarily autodidact fashion, I have thus far had the privilege of experiencing the following great milestones:
2010 - German Language (Jan 2010 - March 2011; Dec 2011 - April 2012) -- to B2
2011 - Portuguese Language (March 2011 - July 2011 - June 2012 - August 2012) -- to B2
2011 - French Language (July 2011 - December 2011; April 2012 - June 2012) -- to high B2
2013 - Mandarin Chinese (March 2013 - September 2013; January 2015 - Present) -- mid B1
2016** - Korean Language (August 2016 - ) -- A0
The dates in parenthesis are the time periods when I studied those languages exclusively. For a big part of 2012, and all of 2013 and the first half of 2014, I studied French and German in a rotating schedule that went from a few weeks to eventually a few days. In between, I would mix Portuguese at times to the rotation. In the second half of 2014, I did work in German, French, and Beginner's Mandarin. In terms of medium term plans, I am still fully and wholeheartedly committed to my Hindi project, it just will have a bit of a later starting date.
That's the overall background. Now to Korean. Why Korean, why now? It is just a matter of both allure and practicality.
Why the allure? Basically, due to the friendships I have made here in China with Koreans, who have been mainly affable, warmhearted, and polite. They thus attracted me to their culture, and obviously, I want to learn to speak to them in their native language. Simple as that.
Practicality? I get a huge vocabulary discount from my increasingly solid Chinese lexicon, English words abound, plus modern Korea has switched to using Hangul almost exclusively, which is an alphabetic script that can be learned in 72 hours. Both of these facts will save the me countless hours I have (and still am), spending learning Chinese vocabulary and characters. Finally, with tons of friends to practice with in the near term, and a few who are willing to invest time to help me for free, to not use this window of opportunity while it is open would haunt me well after it is gone.
So that is the intro. I will in the next few days and weeks, before really beginning my studies, issue some other thoughts, introduce my learning materials, and ask for suggestions in terms of courses, online material, as well as any tips from fellow Forumites who have been on the road I am about to tread.
If I may be allowed some literary discretion, I should rather just say that on my way to the Chinese Galaxy, through my starship's window I glimpsed the "Great Korean Spiral Arm". I have now decided to explore it. I have done this four times before, but every new time is just as exciting as all the others, and as before still causes some apprehension! But the decision is made. Setting course。。。
안녕하세요 ! (of course
)
but I've started studying Korean only January of this year. Due to laziness, I still haven't gone through the pronunciation rules in detail. I think going through that quickly can be quite useful in the future. Also, even though I watch a lot of shows, I don't shadow enough. I'll definitely start doing that because Korean has weird intonation/stops/pauses/whatever it's called. And a pet peeve of mine that I see my classmates do: using romanization! I think it's better to write in 한글 to train not only spelling, but also pronunciation. I noticed that those who use romanization can't read Korean text quickly. 