I have nominated the below groups as our sister groups. Feel free to post here and request that I add any others to our family.
1. Chinese Study Group
2. Japanese Study Group
3. East Asian Languages Group
I won't be keeping a running list of who's joined our group. Feel free to come and go at your leisure as a student of Korean, or a person curious about this lone modern Koreanic language*. We welcome all who are curious about South and North Korea, with an eye to critically thinking about these countries and their role on the global stage. If you are part of the Korean diaspora, we gladly welcome you to join us as well. Contribute to the group bits of your experience as a Korean-American, or Korean-Canadian (or any of the other Korean immigrants to other countries) and give us all insight on your life. Or, perhaps you're a Korean national. Wonderful! You have a different view to share from people belonging to the diaspora, and you can all complement each other.
Of course, if you just want to listen to old SNSD songs and analyze their lyrical content, that's perfectly fine. Let's just try to make it a learning exercise as well as one of enjoyment.
This group is for discovering new things about your language of study, whether that be honing in on dialect, asking why idols address certain people with the formal polite form and not others, or getting into the nitty gritty of language to become a Korean master.
When you make your first post, would you mind answering some questions for me? Be as brief or as detailed as you like. You don't have to answer all of them, but please answer enough that we can get an idea about you.
- Why are you interested in Korean?
- What is your goal for this language? That is, would you like to speak at a college with academic level Korean, decode messages for the military with your superior listening ability, or just browse idols' tweets on Twitter?
- Answer the above even if you're a native or heritage speaker. We've all got something to learn, even as people with a certain degree of knowledge or head starts.
- Do you have a favorite Korean language song? If so, what is it? Embed the video in your post if you like.
- What is your favorite feature of the Korean language that you've encountered so far in your studies? Be as technical as you wish, or just fangirl in layspeak about the logic of the language - we don't care how you express it or what your knowledge base is.
- Have anything else you'd like to share about yourself? Go ahead!
We're all here to help each other. If someone has a basic question that can be answered easily, answer politely and direct them to the appropriate article, lesson, or Reddit thread. Or answer here if you feel you're knowledgeable enough. But please don't try to create a "blind leading the blind" situation - if you don't know the answer with a fair degree of certainty, find a source to back you up so the person you're helping can make their own decision. (I say this because of my experience moderating a Korean course where I and many others were out of our depth.) This helps if you're wrong or unclear in your initial post and others who may know better than you see your mistake - you can at least defend yourself by saying you linked to a good site where your point was explained with more clarity than you could have mustered, at least at the time.
I also ask that this thread be a place that allows for multiple points of view to grow and flourish (without breaking the forum rules, of course). So if you don't like k-pop, are on the fence about bullying in South Korean schools, or just love Korean and have no reason to give you credence, then we're glad you're here. Just be rational. Write as coherently as you can and explain yourself so others can understand you - and if not accept your viewpoint - come to appreciate that you can have one that differs from theirs.
Let's get this party started.
*Some people consider the Jeju dialect to be a language in its own right, therefore giving birth to two Koreanic languages.