Everything is back to okay. When I got to work it was like the weekend never happened. She can never stay mad at me. It's great.
I had Korean class today. I feel like I'm really learning a lot. The thing that makes this class so great is that the teacher actually spends time teaching us how to form our own sentences. I'm so tired of the Korean language books I've bought. Every book has some dialogue in it that you will only use once or twice in your life. You're supposed to learn vocab through these dialogues, but when you think about it they're really retarded. How can I use the vocab if the books don't actually teach me how to make my own sentences using said vocab?
A couple shining examples of this: one book has a great conversation between a FOTB (fresh off the boat) and a Korean stewardess on an airplane. How often will I have that conversation? Maybe 3 or 4 times in my life?
Another example is an amazing dialogue about how spring will come soon. Yes, I can use that gem once every single year!!
Another awesome one is talking to a travel agent about going to Jeju-do. I'm so happy that now I know how to make reservations. Of course, I hope she doesn't throw me any curve-balls, like asking me if I want to go in any month that isn't March.
Here's another good one: I can say that the food I'm eating is too spicy. This one is awesome, because Koreans invented spicy food, so they know that no foreigner could possible enjoy Korean food, because it's so spicy. As we all know, chili peppers only grow on the Korean peninsula. I think it would be much better to change this dialogue to the foreigner saying "This food is too salty, did you just empty the entire salt shaker in this chigae?"
And now, I know how to write a classified ad if I'm ever looking for a roommate as well. That'll really come in handy. I really wish I would have known how to do that years ago, because the first thing I needed when I got off the plane was the ability to use Korean to look for a roommate. Awesome.
I love this teacher. I can now say what I want to do. When I want to do it. I can ask questions about things. I can actually conjugate verbs. Of all the books I've looked through, not one of them actually has detailed descriptions on how to conjugate verbs. You'd think that might be something important when you're learning a language.
I actually wrote 8 sentences for homework. I studied about 5 different books before going to this teacher and the only sentences I knew where "I can't speak much Korean" and "Can you give me a discount." Cute maybe, but still pretty worthless if you're actually trying to communicate.
That's it for today. Tomorrow morning I'll be watching the B's play the Islanders. Hope they keep putting the puck in the net.
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Your insight to trying to learn a language from a book reminds me of my french classes or traveling Europe in the late eighties with only an Italian dictionary. On a separate subject have you heard the Swedish rock group TSOOL? Are there any Korean rock bands that you'd recommend?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I started a blog called worlddesignfamily which I've never publicized and thus have never received a comment and the other blog that we built is theousgame which also has received very little traffic. Taking time to keep up a blog site isn't in our family/work schedule right now. Good luck with yours.
Patric,
ReplyDeleteI looked at theousgame blog and it looks interesting. I think it's a good idea to have the kids who've played your games make posts on there.
It is hard to get traffic to a blog. It takes time, and you have to consistently make posts. If you only make one post every few months you'll never get much traffic.
I'll check out TSOOL. Korean music sucks. I've heard there are some decent indie bands up in Seoul, but there's nothing here in Busan. When I came over I was hoping I'd be able to catch an occasional Japanese punk/rock band over here, but the Japanese bands don't really ever play here.