Song of the day: Bad Girl, Good Girl by Miss A
It's always exciting when I get letters or packages in the mail ~ anything other than bank statements or political adverts. So, you can imagine my excitement when this arrived:
Lots of Silver Spoon sugar? O_o
Nope...turns out it was a box full of Korean textbooks!
Thirteen in total! This is probably one of the best deals that I have ever found on Ebay, since the books came in total to be £1.70. I had to arrange for a courier (£6.96) to get them delivered which was a little troublesome but in the end, I paid less than £10 for this! ^_^
Now, if you've read one of my older entries, you'll see that when I made my New Year resolutions, one of them was to work on my foreign language skills. So why Korean? Improving my Chinese would make more sense! Well, whilst I'd been going out with SJ, I'd started to learn a bit of Korean so decided to keep on going and actually commit to it this time (after saying this about Italian and Portuguese >_<). I figured that Korean would be easier than Chinese since the language has a phonetic alphabet...and so far, that has definitely been the case! Also, wanting to understand the dramas and songs has been excellent motivation for me! :) If any of you guys are thinking of learning, then I recommend the following resources: ♥ Talk to me in Korean
♥ Korean Flashcards
♥ Luke Park's Grammar Guide
It's never easy to learn a new language, but these fun resources ease the gradient and definitely make it much more exciting, especially the TTMIK podcast lessons. I really like how the teachers there always joke around and how the lessons refer back to each other so it feels like there is a story being told too ~ thanks to 6theorians for linking me to that site!
As for my Mandarin skill level, that isn't so clear cut ~ whilst I'm able to understand and maintain (with effort!) an everyday conversation or barter with a street vendor, there are also a lot of holes in my knowledge, grammar and vocab. At best, you could say that I'm lower intermediate. I think that I'm at the stage now where the only way that I'll be able to improve would be to study it intensively as a full time occupation, or to throw myself into China for a year...neither of which look very realistic at the moment! It is a shame, but I know I'm not the only one who struggles with their "native" language...if you are like this too, then let's form a support group! ^_^
All my love,
Yishi xxx
wow o many textbooks! Korean looks hard but I heard their grammar is similar to Japanese grammar. Good luck with it! Do share studying tips too.. I have been hitting a wall a while with the Japanese. I think it's the motivation wall :P I don't speak mandarin but I do with Cantonese and I definitely know what you mean about that "struggle" I went to Chinese schools for years!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I heard that Japanese and Korean are really similar too! I was always put off Japanese by the many different ways of writing but maybe I can try it if I get better at Korean.
DeleteAww, keep on going with the Japanese! So you can get by with English for work?
And oh man, same with the Chinese school story. I went for years and didn't improve one bit! :(
So many textbooks~ >u< But that is an amazing deal! o:
ReplyDeleteI know (or rather, heard) that Korean is very, very similar to Japanese, so you can probably pick up Japanese once you get a basic grasp of Korean! (Plus, you can watch dramas to study Korean! :'D You picked a great choice~)
I totally understand you regarding Chinese. I'm the same as you - I can maintain conversations, read, and write (okay, not so much hand-write, but I am able to recognize the characters when I type it out), but there are some vocabulary challenges I face (in other words, my vocabulary is pretty limited). uvu I find that going back to China - even for a month or two - will greatly improve Chinese! I'm planning to go back this summer, so hopefully, my Chinese will improve. uvu You could try it too (another thing you can try, if you have relatives or penpals in China, is to get a 'qq' - there is an English version of it - and just chat with them through that)! :'D I also like to read Chinese BSS forums (with a nciku translator add-on for firefox for words I'm unfamiliar with). uvu It helps!
Haha, dramas was the main motivation to study it...You should definitely recommend me some to watch! xD
DeleteOoh, thanks for the tips. I probably won't be going to China this summer but you are so right - any time back there will triple my language skills! :)
Ahh...Nciku it's sucha life saver...it saved me last year when I took a module in Chinese at uni!