Learning Korean

Looking back over what is now almost two weeks in Korea I can say that I have learned very little Korean. I find it difficult to remember how long it was before I started making meaningful progress in learning German, but I suspect that it will take a lot longer to befmore I begin making progress in learning Korean.

At present I am trying to get grips with the script and learn at least a word a day. Things are slowly improving – I can now identify my town’s name, some basic vowels, the dictionary is slowly becoming more easy to use, I know some basic words and even some very basic phrases.

Despite these improvements I am learning far more slowly than I would like, and even once I have managed to translate a word my pronunciation is invariably incorrect – sometimes to the point of being unintelligible. An added complication is that words, depending on their context, can take on a number of different and unrelated meanings.

Another problem is that I’m at school until five each day, without much of a lunch break, and when I get home I am exhausted. As a result I rarely sit down and make an effort to learn new words during the evenings.

We tend to underestimate how much being in a foreign environment takes out of us. During my first months in Germany I experienced the same sense of exhaustion at the end of each day – and consequently spent a lot of time sleeping. I remember the ribbing I took from my friends when I returned to SA, and how much their teasing irritated me. Over enough time I came to wonder whether I did indeed waste opportunities by sleeping to much. Being here however reminds me how tough the initial months in Germany were.

I also remember the frustration I felt at my SA mates teasing once I returned home. Not because they were teasing me – but rather because their teasing conveyed a total lack of understanding of my experience. None of them had ever faced a similar situation, and I don’t think that any have since.

Learning Korean is going to take a long time but once my life settles into a routine I hope to start making meaningful progress.