I’m just writing a quick update about my linguistic status here.
I took the JLPT and won’t know the results until January. In the meantime, I’ve asked a friend from church to teach me Hangul, written Korean, so I can start studying the language.
Tonight we started with the basic vowels. For us English speakers, I’ll compare this to learning short vowel sounds. I don’t have my notebook next to me, but there are, like, 10 simple vowel symbols. They all represent the shape of your mouth when you make the sound. I guess I could stretch and say some of the sounds are a simple vowel with an extra line added, so it’s similar to the English phonics representation of a vowel with a line over it for long vowel sounds. Similar for native English education, perhaps, but Korean writing actually uses this in application. As far as I can tell, Korean is more similar to the phonetic alphabet than the way we write words in English. The prospect makes me giddy.
English upsets me as an international language because it is arbitrarily difficult to pick up due to its writing system. Stop skimming these words and read this.
No, like read it in your head in a voice.
Your voice is fine. Or another voice.
I suppose you could read it in Morgan Freeman’s voice. Imagine the gentle, subtle lilt on just the right words. Imagine the smooth grit, like calluses on the strong hands of a father cradling his child. It kinda makes you feel secure, makes a body want to relax. You want to lean back, close your eyes, and
OKAY NOW THESE ARE LETTERS AGAIN. If you’re any good at speed reading your brain picks up the words by sight and just relays the information to your brain. If I wree to puporselfuly mispslel tehse wrdos, yuo’d sitll be albe to raed it retalivley qiukcly if the frist and lsat ltetres are in the rihgt palce bceuase of how the mnid prcoesess vobacluray. I, however, read each word out in my head in most of my reading. Thankfully, English was my first language, so I know that head and bead are pronounced differently and the mouth makes different shapes to form them. I know that if I take “one” and put an “n” in front of it, it’s “none,” but if I put a “b” in front of it for “bone” it is no longer pronounced “one.” The English alphabet is outdated, arbitrary, and makes it harder to pick up as a second language. (And kids, if you thought learning all the exceptions in phonics was fun, wait until we get into CONJUGATION)
Now, I said my friend taught me simple Korean vowel Hangul tonight. Each represents a shape your mouth makes. Add one line to extend a vowel, but it’s still a simple vowel. I call it extended because the voice doesn’t stop it short and the mouth moves a bit more. Imagine the “ah”-like beginning of “octopus” and how it feels different from the “aw” in dog. I still don’t know how this is explained in Korean, but that’s how the vowels were explained to me and how I interpreted it.
I keep calling them “simple” because one Hangul syllable is made up of different parts that tells the mouth how to move. Then there are blends. Think about the sound “wa.” Say “wa.” In English, this is a syllable. Your mouth opens and your jaw separates once. In Korean it’s still one syllable, and as with many Asian pictographic languages, it takes up the space of one symbol. But the way the symbol is made is by merging the “oo” and the “ah” vowels into the same single symbol space. Try saying “wa” without making the “oo” sound with your mouth first and you’ll find it’s either impossible or you’re saying it wrong. By combining the symbols for the shape of your mouth into one syllabic symbol, as far as I know the system so far, it’s been set up to be understood intuitively once you get the basics. If you can read it, you can say it. If you can say it, you should be able to write it. If you can write it, you can look it up.
I learn best with simultaneous visual and audible cues, so I’m looking forward to learning more.
stevemanly 