A stressful thing about English is when you make a mistake and you’re like “ah sorry I spelled / phrased that wrong, English is hard” and native speakers are like “no actually that’s correct too! both are accepted, don’t worry there’s no solid rule :)” as if that’s not ten times worse from a non-native speaker’s perspective. We are begging for solid rules—well at least French people are, we’re lost without them. Please just let us know which of these two spellings is a felony. Where’s your national academy of little guys with little swords telling you off for forgetting an esoteric grammar rule they made up in the 1650s?
I was tagged by @bulletproof-korean to answer these questions about languages. Thanks for the tag. ^^
1. what languages are you/have studied?
My native language is Filipino. I can speak English and I’m currently learning Korean. I’ve studied Hokkien back in high school but that was years ago and I don’t remember anything at all now.
2. how long have you been studying?
I’ve known how to speak English before I entered kindergarten. I’ve only studied Hokkien for one year. I’ve been learning Korean on and off since after I graduated from college in 2011.
3. did you learn through class or self-study (or both)?
I don’t remember how I learned English. I just remember watching a lot of English cartoons. Also, English is like a second language here in the Philippines. We have English classes so it helped a lot in improving my skills. I’m learning Korean through self-study because there are no Korean language classes here.
4. why did you decide to learn this language?
English is part of our curriculum so I’ve been taking English classes since kindergarten. Then I took a Hokkien class in high school out of curiosity plus I was so into F4 that time. I wanted to learn Mandarin but I wasn’t allowed to join the Mandarin class because their lessons were way too advanced and it was impossible to catch up because they’ve been learning it since kindergarten.
I like k-pop and Korean drama so much that I decided to learn Korean language. I didn’t really have any goals when I started learning Korean, I just thought it would be fun to be able to understand what they were saying. But I fell in love with the language and now I appreciate it and study it not only because of k-pop or k-drama but also because it’s kinda fascinating how it sounds more romantic or more meaningful in Korean than when it’s translated to English.
5. what was a major highlight/milestone in studying this language?
I don’t think I have a major highlight or milestone when it comes to English unless you count the times I won in spelling bees and story writing contests in school. Lol!
But for Korean, one of the major highlight was being able to work in a Korean military base camp in 2014. A group of Korean soldiers were deployed here to help with the rehabilitation. They were looking for interpreters and I was the only native in the city who knows Korean language.
There are other highlights/milestones like getting TOPIK Level 4 and winning a Korean speech contest. You can read more about it here.
6. what was the hardest thing about studying this language?
It was difficult to construct sentences at first since the sentence order in Korean is different from English. Well, it wasn’t that big of a deal when I’m just writing down sentences for my diary or replying to someone in chat since I can just erase and rephrase. But when I had my first conversation in Korean, it was a scary experience since I needed some time to organize my thoughts before I can come up with a response that makes sense.
7. what resources did you find most useful for studying this language?
I studied Korean using a lot of textbooks. Some grammar patterns were very similar to each other and yet one cannot be used in certain situations so I had to refer to a lot of different books to know more about the similarities and the differences between two very similar grammar patterns.
For reading, I’m very fond of reading Korean webtoons. That’s where I learned phrases that Koreans usually use on a daily basis. Textbooks are good when you’re learning grammar but some sample sentences are too weird to be used in daily life so I suggest reading materials that natives read like webtoons.
For listening, I’m focusing on improving this skill nowadays as it is one of my weakest. I’ve recently started watching Korean Youtube channels to train my ears to listen to how Koreans normally converse. I listen to male youtubers, female youtubers, youtubers who have a 사투리 accent to train my ears in listening to different kinds of voices and speaking styles. I understand well enough to know what they’re talking about except for when they use slangs and words I’ve never encountered before.
8. any top tips for studying this language?
You have to constantly challenge yourself to study materials that are a little higher than your current level. Try to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while. But don’t be discouraged when you don’t understand everything.
When you’ve reached the intermediate level, try to read or listen to stuff that natives read or listen to like webtoons and radio shows. When I took the TEFL course, I learned that people who are learning a language should listen to or read authentic materials meaning stuff that natives would normally listen to or read because this is where you will learn natural expressions or expressions used in daily life.
9. whats your next major language goal?
My goal for now is to improve my listening skills because the last time I took TOPIK, I had a hard time in the listening exam.
10. anything we can do in the tumblr community to get you there?
If you guys know any interesting Korean Youtube channel, please let me know.
