Korean

Rasha and I had decided to learn a new language together and we chose Korean.

 Korean School, 1950s

If you had read my blog seven years ago you'd know that I was interested in Japanese and had private tutoring at my home every week.

Well when my tutor suddenly had to move to China, I was left with no teacher for a long while. Three years later, they got a new teacher but she wouldn't do private lessons. I hate going to classes, I much prefer they come to me hehe, so I decided to learn it on my own but never really bothered.

For a little while, my friend, who worked at the Japanese Embassy, helped me a little with my Japanese as I helped her with her Arabic, but those lessons were useless. I sort of given up after that...but now when we started Korean, I miss Japanese hehe.

When I decided to blog again, I started revamping my Japanese blog because I wanted to start that again, but I still felt it would be more fun to learn with someone, rather than on my own. I wanted Russian, since Rasha was also learning the basics years ago and it is one of my favourite languages, but we didn't go with that because it's even harder to find a tutor for. Anyway we wanted something neither of us had a basic understanding about, so we went with Korean.

 BIGBANG, MADE Album 2016

We love listening to BIGBANG, a Korean band, so we usually watch any variety show they're on, but it's sometimes hard to find translations. Plus we'd like to understand the lyrics word by word rather than getting just the gist of it through translations.

Learing languages can improve your memory, creativity, mathematical ability, multitasking ability, increase your attention span and could also protect you against Alzheimer. So, we decided to try doing beginner level in our favourite languages and then choose one to concentrate on after, and eventually all, insha'Allah!

Plus it's a great way to understand people and cultures and most importantly...inside jokes haahhaha

My favourite languages:
  • Japanese
  • Russian
  • Chinese
  • German
  • Latin 
  • French
I used to hate French because everyone expected you to learn it if you were thinking of learning any language. Plus I felt my family always forced me to love it, that's why I stayed away from languages.

Even at university, as we were allowed to take languages alongside our degree, I was still scared to take up Japanese as much as I wanted to because I was afraid my family would think it was a waste of time.

Anyway that's all in the past.

Korean wasn't actually on my list but it's still a nice language and we thought it was probably easier to learn than chinese. Besides there is a Korean Cultural Club here so it was convenient and most importantly there is private tutoring at home. Korea is one of the most places I want to visit and I hope this dream will come true for me soon insha'Allah.

We already had two lessons where we learned the very complicated alphabet system and now we can read anything Korean hehehe. The first lesson was extremely slow because we had to learn about the history of the language. It was still very interesting to learn that King Sejong - a Korean ruler in the 14th century - created the language, so that Koreans can learn their language using their own characters instead of Chinese.

The tutor is very nice and he called us genuises hehe for learning everything very fast. I'm looking forward to the next lesson as we'll start learning to communicate!

I won't create a special blog for Korean because maintaining a blog takes a lot of time and effort but I will just update here on my progress in the future.

PS. Many many years ago, we took a beginner's course in Spanish. I think I understand some jokes more now hahaha. I really enjoyed that course even though it was at the institute. The class was multicultural so it felt like we were in "Mind Your Language" hehehe

Comments

  1. I miss the gang in the Spanish class...hahha.
    I really like Korean and the class is fun, but I’m looking forward to learn another language after the basics heheh!
    It’s a shame we couldn’t learn the languages we wanted to learn, nothing has changed now, only us...we stopped caring hahah.
    My favourite languages by order :
    1- Russian, Latin, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin)
    2- German, Japanese, French
    3- Italian, Chinese (Cantonese)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OOPS! I forgot to add Arabic to the list even though it is my favourite! AND English!

      I love all on your list too and I also like Turkish but maybe it's popularity in Arabia made me like it a little less hehehe

      I can't wait to finish the basics too hehe ON TO THE NEXT! (Joe's father)

      Delete
    2. How did I forget English and Turkish...but true, I also like it less now that it’s super popular...shouldn’t be a bad thing really, but it is...hahha.

      Delete

Post a Comment