Learning Korean

Actually starting

When I actually wanted to start learning Korean I didn't know where to start. I went online to do research but honestly if you type "How to learn Korean" nothing helps.

Eventually I thought that I should buy a Korean book, but I bought the wrong kind and everything inside uses these weird letters to help pronounce the Hangul. I'm very bad when it comes to memorizing things so I kinda gave up on the book. I did a little more research and then when I got up to the part where I searched on YouTube "How I learned Korean", I realized something.

If I learned Hangul using different kinds of website and apps then I should start practicing it before jumping into learning how to understand and speak it. So right now I have an app called Memrise, but I kinda gave up on it since it started going into simple Korean words like 안녕 (Annyeong - hi;goodbye) or 아니요 (Aniyo - No). I mean they are really simple words where you will need a lot in the future and are the most easiest to remember but then it started going into much longer words like 부탁합니다 (Butak Habnida - Thank you). I mean yeah still, you'll need it a lot in the future... But I want to practice my Hangul skills first.

When I read something in Hangul, I have to sound it out. It might take me a while to figure the words out, which is why I wanna practice to read faster even if I don't understand what it means. So for the next few days I am going to be trying to find websites that is completely in Korean to practice my punctuation.

Oh yeah, Memrise wasn't the only thing I used to memorize Hangul. I kind of used a template to remember, but don't follow what I did. Try Talktomeinkorean or Korean101 (or whatever it's called). I think it would be simpler that way that trying to learn using a template. Take some quizzes to help too. You should take a quick quiz on all the Hangul letters everyday even if you know none of them. Seeing the answers over and over again will make it engrave into your mind and you'll soon memorize it.

Some people could take just 30 minutes to memorize Hangul, but for people like me (who takes almost most then 2 weeks) KEEP TRYING! This is probably the first time I studied in my whole life ;~; Maybe that's why it takes me so long... Well I don't know.

Anyways, after you memorize Hangul then you should jump into reading it. As I said before, even if you don't understand what the words mean, try to read them. Increase your reading skills before you jump into learning the meaning. Even when reading it make sure you still take a quiz once a day just to refresh your mind. Sometimes you might even forget the words, just type down "Hangul letter" and it would give you a template, and look for that letter you don't remember. If it helps you could put our phone into Korean mode and get used to that...

This is only the start of learning Korean. For me, even while writing this I don't know how to speak Korean. This is why I think this is interesting. I'm learning with you and showing you what I'm doing that may help you too!

9/01