11/28/14 The real one

While I was looking for new phrases to learn, I happened upon a very useful phrase. 그것 한국말로 뭐라고 해요(Kŭ-gŏt han-gung-mal-lo mwŏ-ra-go hae-yo), which means how do you say that in Korean? I assume it is said while pointing to the object that needs to be identified. A little snooping around in the website I linked in the last post showed me a few interesting pieces of information:

• While normally in English one would ask "and you" after responding to someone's question in order to find out their answer, in Korean, the "you" is left out.
• Adjectives always come before nouns in a sentence.
• Titles like Mr. and Mrs. will always follow the person in question's name.

LAte

I missed last week's post, but here it is a week later! I felt like my current progress was a little slow, so I decided to try learning whole phrases. I found a website that I'll link at the end of this post. I looked up phrases that I might use if I found myself wandering around Korea. One of the most useful ones I found was  길을 잃어버렸어요(kil-eul il-uh-buh-ryo-so-yo) or I'm lost. 

I used http://www.linguanaut.com/english_korean.htm to find this phrase.

I have returned

First of all, I would like to apologize for missing last week's blog post.

This week I am working on improving my conversational speech. I found this video series on Youtube that helps with conversational Korean, pronunciation, and nuances in formality and politeness. I will provide a link to the channel in question at the end of this post.

I realized that looking things up is not enough to fully comprehend a language. In Latin, my teacher constantly tells us that participation in class is necessary for us to be able to completely understand the language. Even though Latin is no longer a spoken language, he believes that learning how to speak properly will help us comprehend the non-spoken parts of the language. I think that also applies to Korean, so I have decided to focus on holding a conversation.

Channel mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsgBUobNGksxIKTagZayKEw

Seeing Other's Progress

This week, my class was asked to take a look at our peer's 20% times. I looked at a couple and it was interesting to see how we all compared to each other progress-wise. Everyone seems to be really into their project and it's interesting to see how many unique projects there are. Looking through everybody's projects got me thinking on how I can improve my project, but I decided that I would rather not change my game plan this late into the assignment. I will just keep doing what I was doing and hope for the best. This is my project so I won't let somebody else make my decisions for me.

As for my project, I decided to make this a light week and stick with practicing the basics and improving my vocabulary a bit. I will follow up next week with(hopefully) a new topic. Personally, I was getting tired of learning verb tenses every week, so I'll try to switch it up for a while.

Thinking About the Final Product Again

As of now, I am sure of what I am going to do during my presentation. I am going to find a famous saying and decipher it. I have found an article on Korean proverbs which I will link at the end of this post. The website provides a basic translation, so I will try to find a deeper meaning within the quotes. By next week I will have decided on a quote and will start thinking about explanations. Despite the preparations, I have still not achieved what this 20% time was supposed to help me with. My grasp on Korean is poor and I do not think I can hold a conversation yet. So in the coming weeks, I will try to speak with my mentor in complete and correct sentences. I will report back on this in  a few weeks since it might be difficult to do.






The link mentioned: http://seoulistic.com/korean-culture/wise-korean-proverbs-to-live-by/

Future tense

This week I focused on future tense. In Korean, there are two types of future tense, probable and intentional. Neither are directly similar to English forms of the future tense, but they are easy enough to get a grasp on.

Probable future tense, as its name implies, tells what is likely to happen. The example given in the website reads, "I will probably eat" and "I will probably go to school tomorrow." It then gives the same phrase in Korean. 난 먹을 거에요. When I got to this point, I was stumped. For the other tenses, I already had a bit of knowledge on the area, but this time, I was in a completely new territory, so I decided to consult my mentor. He told me that this was the formal way of talking in the future tense and that the form that I am probably used to hearing is the informal way of speaking.

The second future tense form is the intentional future tense. In the intentional future tense, you add 겠(gess) to the end of the base verb. Then add 어 or 어요 to the word. This form is more certain than the probable future tense. There are less implications and more intents.

The rest of my time this week was practicing this form and the forms I learned in previous weeks.

Again, the website I am using to help me with verb tenses is http://www.learnkoreanlanguage.com/Verb-Tenses.html.

Preparing for My Final Presentation

Saturday, October 11, 2014.

After much consideration, I have decided on a final presentation that is both within my ability and plausible in the time I have allotted. I have decided to translate and decipher a Korean proverb; although, I have  still not found one. I plan to find the quote within the next couple weeks. I am sure that if I have trouble finding a quote or proverb, my mentor can assist me, so I am not worried about not being able to find one.

The three tenses I have learned in the previous weeks have been helpful in my understanding of the language. I think in addition to present tense, past tense, and infinitive tense, future tense will be the next tense to have a lot of real world use.

I did not want to overload myself the week before I took SAT subject tests so this week was not as accomplishing as I wanted it to be. Hopefully next week will be better since early applications for some colleges will be over by then.