What's your motivation to learn Korean?

[Alexis]

I'm really surprised that I'm the only adoptee here thus far...

trust me you're not alone...remember this is only the active forum community posting and doesn't represent all of the students learning from KC101 in the world. KC101 has a lot of followers worldwide who don't post in the forum.

I don't want to speak out of turn but I can say that last summer I ran into a downright genuine, awesome group of people all in your position (but from America). We were all attending the same korean language program (in Seoul) so it was all good!

and speaking of your experiences in restaurants, ( http://www.koreanclass101.com/forum/vie ... =6632#6632 ) some of my friends had the same problem. We came up with interesting reasons for how quiet they were at the table. excuses ranged from being on his cell phone to claiming he was chinese.

good times...

Yeah, I figured that.

And as for being Korean, but not speaking the language fluently, I dunno what I'm going to do if I ever go there! LOL. If I have problems in a mere restaurant, I don't know how I'll cope in the actual country! LOL.

[turkuase]

Well , it started like this...
i was on holiday last year and when i was zapping on tv i saw a korean drama(goong, princess hours). I spent the hole holiday with waiting for the episodes. When the holiday was over. I watched the drama again in korean with english subtitles. I realized that the korean language sound really diiferent and very beautifull. Then i watched a few other dramas. Actually i love korean movies more. Everytime , in holidays or in my spare time i watch a lot of korean movies. Even i have never met a korean before, i guess korean people are really niceand they have a good culture. I also think korea is a beautifull country. I can already write and read in korean, and understand a few things. I try to learn korean with the pdf s on this site in weekends and holidays. I think this summer i will totally concentrate on korean. I really want to be fluent in korean. If it would be possible ever i would like to visit korea and maybe live there. It s also possible in my country to study korean language and culture at just one university. I dont know yet what i would like to study. But it would be great if i could study korean and another study at the same time ant this university. Actually, i have at school german and french lessons, but i dont have the good feelings which i have while learning korean with these languages. I pay more attention to the english lessons since the korean lessons are told in english. I wish they could teach us korean in place of one of these languages.
In short i just love the korean language and culture, and wish to speak it fluent.
Well, this was my story... ( sorry for my bad english)

[matthew254]

hey there turkuase and let me be the first to say 안녕하세요!

Like you, Korean dramas helped to get me into Korean culture and language. 궁 was a fun drama, too.

May I ask what your native language is? Tell us more about yourself as we are a pretty diverse group of learners

Hope to hear more from you.

[erich]

Well I could have ticked 2 choices:
- I have a Korean partner
- to train my brain.

Originally, what made me start to learn the language was definitely to learn a language which was more of a challenge than any other romance or germanic language.

What keeps me motivated now is my partner and my kids

[karen]

I came to Korea to teach English for one year right after I graduated college. I didn't make any effort to learn the language that first year. But then I came to the end of contract and found the idea of going back to America depressing, so I signed up for a second year. That was when I decided to start learning. My progress is super slow but I keep plodding along. I finished my second contract and took a two month vacation away from Korea and missed it so much. I came back for a third year and don't have any plans on leaving for a while.

I recently started taking Korean classes at a 학완 so hopefully I can find the confidence to actually use the Korean I have learned. I am doing well in the class because I have been listening to the lessons on here for the past year.

[turkuase]

안녕하세요! Annyeonhasseyo everyone and matthew254 thank you for your reply.
I am actually turkish but i am born and grown up in the netherlands. So I live now in the Netherlands. I am busy with school so i cant visit this site very often (except in holidays). When i receive e mails from kc101.com i visit the site to look around whats new and to download the pdf s. I have downloaded the pdf s on my phone and when i am in a bus or in breaks on school i try to look at them. I am so motivated to learn korean. Even i have not much time to concentrate on 100% on learning korean i always try to watch korean movies. Even if i am in a bad mood they always cheer me up and make me happy.

Jeonun hanguk o chongmal choaheyo ( i dont know or the sentence is ok but i tryed to say that i realy like the korean language)

By the way where are you from , its nice to know that there are so much people from different countries and cultures who are trying to learn korean.

For the people who also love to watch korean movies i can recommend the site dramaclick.com

I hope we all can speak korean fluent (ever)

Annyong(kyeseyo)

[bthon]

During undergrad, I studied for a year at Ajou in Suwon and picked up the basics of Korean. I think Arabic or Mandarin might be more useful now that I am back in the United States, but I just hate to waste what I have already learned. I was hoping a year or two of study would give me a very basic level of proficiency, but listening to a few of the lessons, I am already remembering the trouble I had with conjugating the verbs and deciphering rapid conversations....

[ash4jae]

I love K-Pop, K-Drama, or other Korean pop culture

That was the start of it all. I fell in love with a Korean band - 동방신기 - and ever since then I became interested in Korea, it's culture, it's language, it's people, everything. I live in England at the moment, and a lot of the students in my class don't even realise that Korea's a country, so it's quite hard looking for lessons. I'm lucky that I found koreanclass101 although I'm not sure if my parents will allow me to pay which is not good. They want me to learn French instead

Sorry, that turned a bit rant-ish

[sakurakofahl]

My main reason to study Korean is interest; I've been studying Japanese for many years, and when I heard Korean on TV or in music I first thought that it was Japanese but was puzzled why I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying, and why I couldn't distinguish the sounds.
I read that in Korea (like many other East Asian countries) politeness is very important, but to my ears, being used to Japanese, Korean sounded very negative and impolite; many polite verb endings, to me, sounded very "wrong" since they sounded like the Japanese informal verb endings, and the "melody" sounded somehow complaining and accusing. It didn't make any sense to me.
Also the sounds themselves sounded very blurry, and I had no idea how to transcribe them into Roman letters.
The language was quite a mystery I got attracted to and wanted to "solve".

Some Korean friends said that the grammar and some vocabulary in Korean and Japanese are the same or very similar, so I thought it shouldn't be too difficult to learn. Also the culture itself having much in common with Japanese and Chinese culture would be interesting to compare with these two.

I have been learning in all 9 foreign languages (for just one year to several years, in school and by myself), and I thought Korean would be a good 10th one to make the "collection" complete.

I also have one practical reason to study Korean: now I'm teaching Japanese, and in order to understand my pupil's hardships and to not forget what it's like learning a language as an adult, I thought it would be good to study a new language myself from scratch too. And with my interest in East Asia, Korean being part of the LanguagePod101-series (I'm doing JapanesePod101), and the above reasons, the choice which language to study now was very easy.

[kyuree]

My main reason to study Korean is interest; I've been studying Japanese for many years, and when I heard Korean on TV or in music I first thought that it was Japanese but was puzzled why I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying, and why I couldn't distinguish the sounds.
I read that in Korea (like many other East Asian countries) politeness is very important, but to my ears, being used to Japanese, Korean sounded very negative and impolite; many polite verb endings, to me, sounded very "wrong" since they sounded like the Japanese informal verb endings, and the "melody" sounded somehow complaining and accusing. It didn't make any sense to me.
Also the sounds themselves sounded very blurry, and I had no idea how to transcribe them into Roman letters.
The language was quite a mystery I got attracted to and wanted to "solve".

I once talked to a Japanese teacher (she's Japanese) and she said she sometimes mistakes Korean for Japanese if she doesn't listen well enough. Also as a teen I bought Japanese dubbed animes and watched them at home, my mom would come in and say "Is that Korean?".
I found that funny. I guess the languages are qute similar but I can distinguish them well, maybe b/c I got used to Japanese in my teens??

It seemed that in Japanese a sentence ending in "yo" would be very rude and impolite. That's the impression I got. Like you know now, "yo" is a polite ending in Korean!! The irony.
In some ways Korean and Japanese are very similar and then again they can be so different. Japanese normally has the pattern consonant vowel, consonant vowel, etc. and the language is written in these kind of syllables; whereas in Korean the syllables are also written separetedly but w/ the option to have a "batchim", i.e. a syllable ending in a consonant. I think Japanese can sound very staccato and Korean "rounder".
Either way, I like both languages . Hopefully some day I will be able to learn more Japanese, I know some random words and I can read hiragana and katakana.
I'm happy writing Korean is way easier and doesn't necessarily need kanji/hanja...

[sakurakofahl]

It seemed that in Japanese a sentence ending in "yo" would be very rude and impolite. That's the impression I got. Like you know now, "yo" is a polite ending in Korean!! The irony.
In some ways Korean and Japanese are very similar and then again they can be so different. Japanese normally has the pattern consonant vowel, consonant vowel, etc. and the language is written in these kind of syllables; whereas in Korean the syllables are also written separetedly but w/ the option to have a "batchim", i.e. a syllable ending in a consonant. I think Japanese can sound very staccato and Korean "rounder".

Exactly, exactly. Well, "yo" in itself doesn't have to be rude, but if there is no "desu" or "masu" before "yo" it really sounds rude and disrespectful. (But I think it is pretty unlikely to use "yo" even in polite situations anyway so...) Also polite/formal Korean sentences can end with "da", and using "da" at the end of sentenes in Japan would never happen if a junior is talking to a senior...

And about the consonant system, I thought it was very strange because of Korea's location and its neighbour countries' languages, since neighbour countries tend to have similar languages and/or sounds, right? In Japanese the only consonant that could end a syllable is "n" (and a few others, since some vowels are silent after some consonants), and in similar way in Mandarin it's "n" and "ng", right? So hearing more ending consonants (which on top don't quite sound like their counterparts in any of the languages I've studied so far) in Korean was very strange and unexpected for me.
I have always been interested in sounds of languages and dialects, so hearing Korean is for me quite an experience!

[FeeBee]

Hello everybody~ =]

Should I tell my reasons for learning Korean?! ^_^

Actually, I don't know why. haha.
My native language is Cantonese (chinese),
The first time I went to Korea was about 8 years old.
I remember ski-ing there...
Then,
I moved to Canada Edmonton when I was 9.
I watched my first korean drama when I was 9...
But I forgot the name of it...
As I was a chinese girl who doesn't speak english AT ALL...
It was more important for me to learn English at that time.

One day I went to a Korean Restaurant...
and i picked up my first Korean word (Thank you )from the waiter..!
That night, I searched on the internet to know more about Korea.
Their Culture, their language, their foods, there EVERYTHING.
I wasn't obsessed yet...

I stopped after awhile, because of school work, and work.

Now... I am currently studying in Switzerland.
At my school, there are TONS of koreans =D
not really ... tons but.. alot. XD
And NOW I am obsessed.

But... what's really my motivation?!
... A korean boy.
One night he said to me
"Sorry... my english is not good. But if you understand Korean.. I would tell you many things about me."
... Get it?! XD

I just love EVERYTHING about KOREA.
Everything.
<3

=) Thx for reading~

[rooraa]

아아아아~! FeeBee씨의 이야기는 너무 귀여워요!! >_<
Have you been able to communicate with that korean boy more lately?

[FeeBee]

아아아아~! FeeBee씨의 이야기는 너무 귀여워요!! >_<
Have you been able to communicate with that korean boy more lately?

와카카!!
Thanks for showing interest XD!
We... are currently in a weird relationship =___=
We see each other a few times a month.
He KINDA knows i'm learning Korean. But... Thinks i'm just playing around.
*sigh* =)

[jeroen888]

I guess I'm studying Korean because of 이효리 . I first heard her music about 2.5 years ago and really liked it, but didn't understand anything she was saying. Then I saw 주몽 last year in January and got kinda frustrated by reading the subtitles all the time so now I'm studying Korean Studies in the Netherlands. So turkuase you should come have a look one day . There's only 10 people studing Korean now so we'd be happy to have some more people at the faculty. You can combine it with something else like communication or journalism or computer science or whatever. Leiden University has a lot to offer I think.