It’s so exciting! I’ve finally found something that I am better at than Ryan… It might be because I’ve been studying more, but it is so cool to have learned the alphabet and be able to read signs now. He’s catching on quickly as well.
We’ve learned a few more phrases too. We are off next week due to it being a holiday here (Chusok- similar to their Thanksgiving) and the following week we will be in Japan, but we have plenty of study guides to keep us busy.
We had our first class tonight and it will be interesting. It is an 8 week course on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4-5. The instructor is an officer from the Republic of Korea Navy Base. He lived in the U.S for 5 years and is Korean. We are going to learn the alphabet, how to write the characters, how to read and speak Korean. We are so excited! We’ll keep you posted on our progress, but we already know how to say the following words and phrases.
Hello
Goodbye
Please
Thank you
I’m sorry
I love you
How much does it cost?
And “No worries” (That’s a great one)
It’s pretty easy so far, and important to know these key phrases.
Whenever we would get a pedicure in the U.S, we were convinced that they were talking about us in another language. That is oftentimes the case here as well, but the Koreans are very nice and are probably saying, “who is that famous American?”
Here is an overview of the language.
Hangul: Korean in a nutshell In 1443, a quite literate and brilliant king by the name of Sejeong, and a group of liguistic scholars, invented the Korean alphabet, what is know today as Hangul. It was promulgated nationally as to increase literacy in 1446 In 1443, a quite literate and brilliant king by the name of Sejeong, and a group of liguistic scholars, invented the Korean alphabet, what is know today as Hangul. It was promulgated nationally as to increase literacy in 1446. Before, the Korean people expressed themselves in written form using Chinese characters. For those unaware, Chinese has around 50.000 characters. VERY COMPLICATED. This noble king felt compassion for his people and came up with a very analytical system. He named it ‘Hun-min-jeong-eum,’ which literally translate to “the correct sounds for the instrucion of the people.” Vowels: Initially, the signs for the vowels were, a horizontal line ㅡ, representing the Earth; a vertical line ㅣ, representing man; and a dot ., representing the sun. Every other vowel, was merely a more complex representation of these three intial symbols. Consonants: The consonants were ingeniously invented. Each one of the intial five consonants– ㄱ(k,g) ㄴ(n) ㅅ(s,t) ㅁ(m) ㅇ(ng). The most interesting feature of these consonants is that the shape of each one is how the tongue appears in the mouth upon uttering the sounds. The ㅇ is merely a glottal sound and, therefore, is a circle, representing the open throat. From these intial five symbols, another fifteen were added. But these additional fifteen are only modifications of the intial five. Each of these fifteen, excluding the ㅅ, can be pronounced in three different manners. Plain, Tensed or ‘doubled,’ and Aspirated–more air. Also, depending upon the consonants position, initial, terminating, or middle, they must be voiced or unvoiced. Really, Hangul, as the Korean alphabet is named, is the most ingenious writing system ever invented. And as a result of this, Korea has the highest percentage of literacy in the world–97.9 %. The language itself it an agglutinative language belonging to the Altaic branch along with Turkic, Tungusic, and Mongolian Languages collectively. Agglutinative languages are characterized by adding linguistic markers, or elements to individual parts of the word. Mostly, in Korean at least, to the adjectives and verbs. Nouns are not inflected. Nor do they convey plural or singular meanings. They are all gender, number, and person neutral. The normal word order of a sentence in Korean is the following: subject (if present), additional information–i.e. adverbs, qualifiers–object, adjective, verb. Many times, the subject is omitted but yet understood via context. Moreover, personal pronouns denoting possesion, person, and spatial differences–demonstrative, for example (this, that, these, those)–are very rare. For, most Koreans explain something in very vague terms; often mentioning the subject once and not again referring to it. I have thus far conquered all of the vowels and am slowly learning the pronunciation rules for the vowels. Because there are forty letters, and approximately sounds in the language, I am having some difficulty producing some of the aspirated and tense consonants. Well, there is your dose of boring language information. Check out this link: http://lei.snu.ac.kr/english/eng_pages/SE00233_00.jsp
