Hello! Goodbye!

Hello all! So how’s the language learning going?  I’m proud to say I can pretty much read Hangul, though I don’t think I could spell the words out correctly just by hearing them.  Anyway, I guess the next step here is to learn basic important things to say like: My name is__, Pleased to meet you, etc.  I thought I’d put down some phrases here that I’ve learned so far that are important. Oh, and I got them from this book: http://www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?isbn=0071768718, in case anyone wants to go a little more in depth.  So ready?

안녕하세요!  Annyeong-haseyo!  Hello

Hey, hey, could you read that?  If you studied Hangul try to read them before you read the Romanization.  I’ll put them vertically so you can scroll down and hide the English. Do it! J

저는안입니다.

Jeoneun An (that’s me) imnida.

My name is Anne.

You can also say 이에요 (ieyo) instead of 입니다 (imnida) to introduce yourself. But imnida is more formal, so it’s best to just stick with formality.  Also, the character ㅂ is sometimes pronounced like an "m," instead of "b/p," when it’s follow by an ㄴ (“n” sound). Thus you say imnida, not ibnida or something else ridiculous.  Moving on!

이름이뭐여요?

Ireum-i mwo yeyo?

What’s your name?

뭐 (mwo) is also useful because it means “what.”  If you’ve ever watched kdrama you’ll notice people shouting Mwo? Mwo! Mwo?!?! all the time, so now you know. J

Next is this: 씨

Ssi (pronounced kind of like “she”).  

This is what you tack on to the end of someone’s name when you want to be formal, it’s like Miss/Mrs/Ms and Mr.  So for my name it would be: 안씨, but you can be informal with me. J

And finally!

만나서반갑습나다

Manna so pan gap seumnida.

Pleased to meet you!

And then you talk a little and it’s time to go.   Here are the two ways to say goodbye:

안녕히가세요

(don’t forget to try to read them first! No cheating!)

Annyeong-hi gaseyo

Goodbye (when you are staying and the other is leaving).

안녕히계세요

Annyeong-hi gyeseyo

Goodbye (when you are leaving and the other is staying).

So there you go! Altogether it looks like this:

안녕하세요! 저는안입니다. 이름이뭐여요? 만나서반갑습나다. 안녕히가세요/안녕히계세요!

Annyeong-haseyo! Jeoneun An imnida. Ireum-i mwo yeyo? Manna so pan gap seumnida. Annyeong-hi gaseyo/annyeong-hi gyeseyo!

Hello! My name is Anne. What’s your name? It’s nice to meet you.  Goodbye!

Hooray!  So now I’ll throw in a couple more important words:

Thank you: There are three different ways to say this, starting from the most formal down to the one you use with friends.

감사합니다

Kamsahamnida (most formal)

고맙습니다

Gomap seumnida (less formal)

고​마​워

Gomawo (only use it with your close friends!)

Unfortunately I think “please” is more complicated so I will leave that out for now. 

And finally, for funzies: 미국사람입니다.

Miguk-saram imnida.

I’m American!

Okay that’s all I got so far. I’ll continue to post important basic words and phrases, but perhaps I’ll move on to cultural stuff next time.  So ta ta for now!

안녕히계세요!

Shots are painful, so is language

Well, I started amping up the immune system by getting some vaccines the other day.  I think vaccinations are often overlooked by many when heading off to a pretty safe and modern area.  You think: South Korea, Seoul, Hyundai, safe!  Which is pretty much true, but as a citizen of America you've been prepped to handle common American diseases and not those in South Korea.  Let’s take Japanese Encephalitis for an example: most children in Korea under age 15 get vaccines for this disease, much like kids in America get vaccines for Varicella (Chicken pox) or polio.  So, yes South Korea is pretty safe, but holy crap! get your JE vaccine, and read up on wherever you're going, or you might have to pay the price. 

Concerning how to figure out what’s needed I recommend checking out the CDC website, which has a list of recommendations for travelers for pretty much everywhere.  Here’s the link to South Korea: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/south-korea.htm.  So far I’ve gotten an update on my tetanus, started the first of two vaccines for JE, and the first of three for rabies (yes you can get rabies vaccines! And no they don’t shoot it in your stomach, and no they won’t make you foam at the mouth). The rabies vaccines are more for people who will be staying in another country for a long time, and who might come in contact with animals.  I got mine because I am unsure where exactly I will be living, and let’s face it, better safe than foaming at the mouth.

But speaking about pain and foaming at the mouth, I don’t know about you, but I’m having real trouble figuring out how to say the Korean alphabet correctly.  The wikiproject is good at helping you keep pace and with preliminary memorization, but pronunciation is something you might need a little extra help with.  I’m sure there are more professional (and therefore expensive) ways to get good instruction…but there’s also youtube.  I thought I’d share a link I found helpful on pronunciation:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdiR-6e1h0o.  Professor Oh is a little bit silly.  That's the only way to learn.  :) 

And that’s all I got. I promise things will be more interesting after finals are over >.< But for now, I'll just leave you with a photo:  

Ramen fan!

Learning a Language: The Fumbling Phase

Hey all!  Here's post number two.  Just yesterday I got an email with some details about getting ready to go!  It's exciting, but a little bit stressful, what with all the  finals to get through first.  So far, this paper is done:

 But this one is not:
: (

But forget about that.  More interesting, was the email's declaration that all students must arrive in Seoul knowing, at least, how to read Korean.  So quick! Let's learn Korean! And also listen to me pontificate uselessly on how to get started on a non-Romance language.

And here we go...

Learning a language through a class is a luxury that most people don’t have.  At the moment, I’m in that camp. In addition to actually memorizing the vocab and getting the grammar all straight in your head, one of the most difficult parts about it is where the heck do you start?  This is the second time now I’ve had to start learning language stuff before going abroad, and ended up spending a lot of time floundering around in book stores trying to figure out which book will get me to the learn the most.  There’s no right way to figure out which is the best, but my advice is that you should pick the one that looks the most interesting, that way you’ll be excited to open it up and learn.  For example, when learning Japanese I picked up a strange little book that teaches the language through manga.  There’d be a little scene from some famous manga, and then the words and grammar and whatnot would be explained.  It might not be the most organized way to learn things, but I sure wanted to open it up each day and see what ridiculous thing I would learn about next. J That’s one piece of advice about getting started, but even before that, concerning what part of the language to do first, if you’re learning something like Japanese or Korean, you should absolutely go for the alphabet as your very first task.  There are ways to learn it all at once, the Rosetta Stone offers something like that, but just from my personal experience, it’s way too overwhelming and depressing to have phrases thrown in your face that are absolutely foreign in every way possible. 

Let’s use Spanish and Japanese as an example (assuming you don’t know either):  It’s easier to remember that “me llamo Anne” means “my name is Anne,” over remembering that わたしはアンですmeans “my name is Anne,” because at least in the first one you can read the darn thing.  When you know the letters, you can associate sound and letter with meaning, instead of a lot of pictures with meaning.  But you can forget about doing that with Chinese, if you want to learn that then you’re on your own. >.<     

I’ll add further support to this by saying that both of my abroad experiences, to Japan and now to Korea, required that all students learn the alphabets before arrival and beginning language instruction.  So there you go, official people think so too.

Okay now that I’ve rambled too much, let’s learn Korean!  The Korean alphabet, Hangeul, is actually a lot easier to learn than it seems.  Unlike Japanese, which has two alphabets and a terrifying amount of kanji (a derivative of Chinese), Hangeul has just 24 marks to memorize.  Hanja (I see it as the Korean version of Japanese kanji) isn’t used as much, and if you just want to read some stuff and talk to people, then you don’t really need to know it.  This is the source I plan to use to get started:   http://www.koreanwikiproject.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hangeul_step_1, and once you’re done with the lesson just click the “Next” button at the bottom.  J  Another word of advice: if you really want to get this in your head, you need to go slowly.  Especially with Hangeul, it’s so easy you might want to try and cram everything into your head at once.  I suggest taking a day or two to drill each lesson until practice becomes boring, before moving onto the next one.  For me, when I’m bored with what I already know and itching to get on with it, then that means I’ve got it memorized pretty well.  The key is not to just understand, but to get it in your head.

Well there you go!  So, bombs away, and we'll talk about language again when I (and you perhaps?) have got all the letters jammed into your squishy gray matter. 

You have to start somewhere, I choose here

This is a test... Hello! You know, figuring out how to make a blog is harder than it seems, especially when you're someone who would rather spend an hour whacking randomly at the keyboard in hopes that something intelligible will happen, instead of spending five minutes reading a simple set of instructions.  I hate instructions.

Anyway, I decided to create this blog because I think that, starting in a few months, I might have some interesting things to say.  Right now I'm a student about to graduate college, and on July 4th I'll be flying to South Korea for a year-long Fulbright ETA (English Teaching Assistantship), where I'll be teaching English to Korean middle or high-schoolers, and live in a homestay with a Korean family.  Exciting! : )  Just to give a little perspective, as of now, I know how to speak zero Korean and I know practically zero about Korean culture (gah!), which should make for an interesting learning experience.

As such, the purpose of this blog will be not only to talk about what I see and experience personally, but also to put down some interesting things about Korean culture, language, or anything else, that I hope followers (you will follow me, yes? good...) will find interesting as well.  I'd like this blog to turn into a sort of educational thing, as well as chronicle of my ridiculous attempts to understand a new culture. : )  So I hope to get comments from anyone who has something interesting to say, about South Korea or whatever, or any questions that I can try and answer to look up. Don't be afraid to ask hard or complicated questions, make me earn the privilege of having you as a follower!

So I thought I'd start here, on May 3rd, one hour after having finished my last class (FOREVER), and at the beginning of the sad and suffocating crush of finals.  I'm hanging out in the Huxler Reading room of Gilman Hall (that picture up there is what the outside looks like) at the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus.  It's pretty steamy in here right now, both from the sun shining maniacally at my face through the windows, as well as the mist floating up off the necks and armpits of terrified students.  And then there's me, writing a blog when I should be writing about Plato and Fitzgerald (did you know that her stole bits from his wife's, Zelda's, diary and published them when she told him not to?) Oh wait, I should also mention my major is Writing Seminars (fiction writing), with a minor in Anthropology and Environmental Studies. Whatever, I thought that might be relevant.

And wait! how long are these posts supposed to be?

I lost my train of thought.....anyway, this is where I am now.  Obviously, I've been a student for the past, well, for pretty much all of my time here on Earth, so I thought here would be a good place to begin, somewhere when everything is still familiar, because I've been told by pretty much everyone that this experience abroad will change me forever.  That's pretty terrifying when you really think about it: things will never be the same as they were, you can never go back to being who you were, all will be different forever and ever.  Yeah it's pretty damn scary, I can't freaking wait.