I don’t know how many of you are aware, but I’m a bit of a crazy person, and so I decided to start learning Korean too. Mind you, I blame Lilli (from Twitter) for it, because she was the one poking me to do (^_^;)
My studies aren’t being intense, or very serious, aside me having learnt to recognise the alphabet in one day, the pronunciation is way too hard to actually be able to learn it effectively. It also has a lot of rules, and a very kind soul from Twitter linked me to this website with lessons and explanations about Korean, which also lists the pronunciation rules.
The rules are craaaazy, you don’t read as it is written, which is my nemesis in languages, and a big reason why I never took to French even tho I learnt it for 3-4 years in school before dropping out (^_^;)
In counter point, Spanish is very easy to me (Portuguese as native language means I can read French and Spanish, Spanish specially well), so I’ve been seeing how much I know using Duolingo. Mostly because Duolingo is cute, but doesn’t have any Asian languages, so I’m waiting for them to add Korean or Japanese.
My Korean studies are having a Memrise + website combination, but tbh, it just makes me really fond and glad I decided to study Japanese instead (⌒_⌒;)
I’ve been trying to decide what I want to do with my future (job/work related), and if I go into tourism I’ll have to learn 6 languages total: English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, and I forget the 6th one haha ORZ
I have confidence in my English, written and spoken, but the rest is nope. Spanish I need to have a deeper level with it to be able to speak naturally like I do with English. French I don’t even remember from school much, I blame my brain flushing out everything after every year xD
Italian/German I’ve never studied and tbh, are pretty daunting. Italian is a romance language, which means I’d have an “easy” time learning it, but that isn’t all true considering my difficulties with speaking French. German is Germanic and a true nightmare for pronunciation…
/sighs deeply as she stares into space
In the end, Japanese is the best and easiest for my soul ;_;
/has continued to procrastinate on her JP studies for 5 month now
:””’D
Oh wow, that’s a lot. I actually thought Korean was easier than Japanese because all you need is learning hangul and then you can focus on vocabulary and grammar. Also, when I made a first attempt to learn Japanese I just couldn’t go past Hiragana xD
Good luck with your studies, I think learning languages is very interesting although a little frustrating sometimes ^-^Uu
I started learning korean this year and I’m still a beginner, but there are many resources online (I specially enjoy youtube videos) but I find the listening part quite hard! koreans speak so quickly ;A;
I would also like to share a few websites:
I found http://www.talktomeinkorean.com/ as a great source of information, as well as ebooks. They have a looooot of lessons as either video or podcast (or both).
This channel is also helpful https://www.youtube.com/user/GoBillyKorean!
There are also a few free learning resources here http://www.sejonghakdang.org/sjcu/home/main.do which is the official website of the King Sejong Institute
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OMG, thanks so much for all the links&resources! You’re a godsend (๑♡3♡๑)
Korean is harder because the words+pronunciation themselves are harder, Japanese is easier to hear the words and say them xD;
I definitely understand, my first time learning JP I only got around 100 kanji before I couldn’t take any more :’)
oh man, yeah, they speak so quickly and it’s hard to make out words ;_;
Oh, good luck with your studies! (*^3^)
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I can’t imagine learning a language like Korean. English is my native tongue, but even so my grammar is weak. I live next door to Spain and still struggle to speak Spanish.
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Korean is hard because of the pronunciation, but I feel as long as we want it, we can learn anything we choose to do d( ・ω´・+)
Definitely agree with you that I still my English weak, I need to study more advanced vocab, since I still struggle sometimes. My self-taught ways are lax because I only do it until I can pass by. I need to fix that xD;
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oh wow that’s so awesome!! i’m a native spanish speaker so i can generally understand stuff in italian and french because they just sound similar but don’t know the languages xD i’ve also been meaning to learn japanese but i don’t actually do much practice so obviously i’m not improving orz
i also want to learn korean for uhh BL purposes >_> lol!
will you be writing about your progress? and idk stuff you use to study? i always find posts like that useful and fun to read (i love languages)
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Sister languages are great because of that, tho I find French is the most remote of the romance languages. It feels like it has more connections to germanic languages than romance XD;
Japanese you can improve a lot if you are exposed and study a lot of vocab, you can build from there up really |`・ω・)9
KOREAN FOR FANART AND FAN COMICS YES /cries at all the Daiya stuff she can’t read
Oh, that’d be a nice thing to do. I’ll cobble one together then~!
I love when people do it too |`・ω・)
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I know but I’m just so bad at self studying orz I’ve been at it for years but haven’t really applied myself ;_; as for german and stuff, I’ve never really liked into what the language is like but that’s true, I find Italian to be so much easier to decipher then French 😛
I know right, just dying to know what they say but language barriers!!! #cries
Awesome! I can’t wait :”D
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Self-studying is hard for me too, mostly because I lose motivation easily xD;
Language barriers suck :’D
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Oh good I’m not the only one. I got 96 or so Kanji memorized then went back to my keigo and realized I was so focused on Kanji I was starting to lose it. Haven’t picked it up again in a couple months.
German btw, is very easy to learn and the sentence structure doesn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. Stick to hoch deutsch though of course. I was fluent in a year.
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Kanji is indeed hard to store in the brain without constant use ༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽
WOA, really? THAT’S AMAZING GIRL
I’ve always heard it was hard because of the pronunciation @_@
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Oh wow! I’m always really impressed by people who can speak more than one language -it’s such an amazing skill. I did learn Korean for a month when I was on an exchange program, but tbh have forgot pretty much everything
for some reason I find Japanese a lot easier >_<!
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JP IS A LOT EASIER, LIKE SUPER EASIER EVEN WITH KANJI, cause it’s easier to hear and sound them out ;_;
Wow, that sounds like lovely program, it’s normal to forget what isn’t used a lot ☆(・ω・*)ゞ
I find people that speak multiple languages fascinating, polyglots have the secret sauce xD
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