12 In Korean learning journey (:

Revisiting the basics with my…

My mum has started learning Korean.

..

.

Okay, not really. But she seems quite determined to at least learn how to read the Hangeul. As for understanding …. haha.

Throughout the 6 years of seeing me learn Korean, she has never really shown an interest in it. She does pick up random weird phrases from dramas etc, but she has NEVER tried to learn Hangeul. The closest she did was to listen to some random mp3 recordings from a book I used to have, which teaches vocabulary such as 배추, 양파 etc lol. But she didn’t want to learn Hangeul.

BUT. When I received Billy Go’s Korean Made Simple to review, she showed an exceptional amount of interest in the book. o.O I have had so many books but she never bothered to look at them. After I’m done with my review, she proceeded to claim the book as her own -.- and I think I remember tweeting some time back about how she said that she will study and be better than me in Korean HAHA.

NOW SHE HAS STARTED (okay la I don’t feel threatened at all lolol)

These days, when I get back home from work, she will bombard me with questions on pronunciation hahahaha.

It’s really interesting to see her (struggle to) learn Hangeul and it reminded me of how foreign and (at times) difficult I found the pronunciation to be. Everything seems like a DUH given to me now, but now that I look at her progress, I remembered how I had some difficulty with the ㅈ sound and differentiating between ㅗ and ㅓ. And wondering if I should pronounce ㄱ as k or g, ㄷ as t or d etc.

My mum is worse though hahahaha. I nearly puke blood trying to get her to see ㅗ as OH and not OR. But I did ban the usage of romanisation HAHAHA.

Come to think of it, Hangeul is not as easy as people believe it to be. xD My mum was kinda quite happy with her progress and said that she will catch up with me soon at this rate(?) until she flipped to the chapters ahead and tried to pronounce 갑니다 as kap-ni-da. I was like gleefully telling her (super 幸災樂禍)that there are sound changes and proceeded to tell her it should be pronounced as a sound and she was like … . . . HAHA

Okay, I’m just very amused.

Brings back SOOO much memories of my own learning journey.

I can’t wait to see her struggle with the reinforced and aspirated consonants hahahahahahha.

(provided she doesn’t give up already)

(I’m terrible, ain’t I?)

p.s. She has found her bias in Kpop. hahahaha. I’m guessing that’s a motivation for learning the language? lol

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12 Comments

  • Reply
    Oegukeen
    27 September, 2014 at 11:28 AM

    Haha, that’s awesome. I’ve been learning Korean for a few years but I feel like my mom picks up more from dramas than I do from textbooks. Yesterday she knew 역사 means history and I didn’t 😛

    • Reply
      Hangukdrama
      7 October, 2014 at 2:18 PM

      ㅋㅋㅋ you need to watch more dramas! 😛

  • Reply
    Prashanth
    27 September, 2014 at 3:29 PM

    Your blog posts are funny and amusing Shana. My mother watches Korean dramas almost daily. She seems to be highly addicted. Initially, back in 2008, when I first got into Korean dramas she was clueless why I was spending late nights watching those dramas and going to my new job late. She wanted to check them out and she got herself addicted to them since that day until today.

    I wish I could teach her Korean but I don’t think she would allow me to do that because I am failing miserably to get her even learn English. She just shuts me off. I hope one day she magically wants to learn English and Korean both and asks me about it, just like your mother.

    Thanks for sharing your experience.

    I didn’t knew you wrote an e-book, or may be I just forgot (sorry). I’ll check out and may be even share it with my students (I’m teaching GoGo at Pegasus, I think you know about this society unless you forgot about it).

    Good day.
    Prash.

    • Reply
      Hangukdrama
      7 October, 2014 at 2:27 PM

      hahaha I don’t really teach her much though, more of like guiding her when she needs it. So I’m like the mp3 version HAHA.

  • Reply
    Orekei
    28 September, 2014 at 6:34 AM

    Hi! I was just wondering where you started learning Korean. I’ve seen some of your videos showing your Korean notes, plus I’ve learned the basics of Hangeul (from KoreanClass101). I want to know, did you go into practicing reading Hangeul right away without knowing what the words mean? Or did you have to learn the language first and the meanings? Sorry for bothering >~< This is my third language (other two are Filipino/Tagalog and English~ i learned these while growing up), and I've never done any other lessons aside from Latin in school. I'm learning Korean for fun, though! Thank you for your help!!!

    • Reply
      Hangukdrama
      7 October, 2014 at 2:28 PM

      Hello! 😀 yep i definitely did. It’s important to learn how to pronounce properly right from the start

  • Reply
    Edna
    28 September, 2014 at 9:26 AM

    My mum can read some hangeul but will translate them into Chinese before reading them out to avoid sounding weird XD

    • Reply
      Hangukdrama
      7 October, 2014 at 2:29 PM

      hahaha as in using Chinese words to pronounce? xD

  • Reply
    BGBK
    30 September, 2014 at 10:17 PM

    wow now we know who you resemble!

    • Reply
      Hangukdrama
      7 October, 2014 at 2:29 PM

      hehe I think I’m the role model 😛 ㅋㅋㅋ

  • Reply
    ethel
    7 October, 2014 at 1:27 PM

    HAHA ur mum damn cute! my mum picked up some random phrases from dramas and when she came to korea she just spouted random stuff out at the store owner to get discounts ^^;;;;;

    • Reply
      Hangukdrama
      7 October, 2014 at 2:29 PM

      wahahaha did it work? 😛

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