A Page Dedicated to Randomness.
This page will change every so often (fortnightly maybe) and the previous page will be moved to the blog.
This Week: Henry's Korean Article
안녕하세요, Anyong-haseyo, Hello
Ever since watching Stairway to Heaven (천국의 계단, Cheon-guk Ui Gyedan), I have had a fascination for the Korean language, even though it was the Mandarin version of the drama. I stared at the writing and I was convinced that I would dedicate myself to learning it. Within a matter of weeks, I found myself capable of ready Korean characters with ease, due to the simple alphabet. It only takes a matter of hours before anyone could master it. Below is a table of all the character values in Korean (from Omniglot <-- One of the wonderful sites for scripts. ^_^ You'll find me there with Awyis and Dn'alan).
Spend some time learning the alphabet, write down the character and then test yourself, sing the alphabet out loud. I was once able to do this but since then, I have forgotten much of it. >_< School and the general wanderings of the path have led me away, but I really want to get back onto the original road and bring along a few of those leaves and twigs that I encountered down those little alleys of wonder. ^_^
Test yourself with some of these words, I'll provide the meaning. The answers to their pronuciation is at the end of the article.
밥 - cooked rice
한국 - Korea
말 - language
하다 - to do
일 - one
동물 - animal
개 - dog
삼 - three
The Hangeul (한글) alphabet is described as one of the most ingenious inventions, it wasn't developed over centuries like many other languages, but instead, due to the fact that the Koreans found it hard to explain themselves using Chinese vocabulary as well as limiting the number of people who could actually be literate due to the complexity of the Chinese writing system (한자, Hanja in Korean). Scholars met up together to devise a new system, they based the Hangeul alphabet on the way that you pronounce the consonants, and for the vowels, they used theories derived from Yin Yang.
I've always had a love for languages, I started learning Cantonese when I was only about 5, but unfortunately, because I was still young, the new language rapidly wiped out my original mother tongue: Hakka. I've managed to grapple a few bits and bobs from Hakka, I can listen to it with ease, but to speak it and to curl my tongue in such an odd way proves a much harder task - maybe increased due to the fact that I don't really have much chance to speak it. Living in England has also hindered my Cantonese, over the years and being in an English environment, has made me find myself less and less amidst Chinese writing. This has resulted in me losing a large portion of writing and reading Chinese and the only methods that I can learn them is through my parents and the small selection of books that I have to hand. Thankfully though, for Year 10, I revived my Chinese skills and was able to get an A* for my GCSE Chinese.
During primary school, I attended after-school Spanish lessons as well as French, but my real love lay in Spanish so I continued that into high school and even to GCSE level. I dropped French after Year 9 but I still manage to understand the basic sentences of French, whereas, I can almost read a passage of Spanish with relative easer.
In the year 2005, I attended a Summer School run by NAGTY at the University of Leeds, there, I took an East Asian Languages course where I learnt Thai and Mandarin. I remember a few characters of Thai and I can speak some basic sentences of Mandarin. At this course, I met a Korean boy named Yaejoon, I was only able to say "Hello" - 안녕하세요 (Anyong-haseyo) and "How are you?" - 잘 지냈어요? (Chal chinaessoyo) at that time.
To me, if you have time to learn a language, learn it. I'm sure it will help you in the future! ^_^ Good luck. Buena Suerte! 행운! 祝你好運!
Answers:
밥 - pap
한국 - han-guk
말 - mal
하다 - ha-da
일 - il
동물 - dong-mul
개 - gae
삼 - sam