I've been a little quiet for the last few weeks, I was back home in Australia for a month. I'm back now!
I was amazed how much Korean is spoken in Australia. Maybe it's because I haven't been back since learning Korean, but there's really a lot. It seemed like every time I went on a bus or walked around any busy area, I'd hear the lilting language that we all love so much. I'd say that Korean was one of the most spoken languages in Sydney, other than English.
I even had a chat with a nice 어머니 at our local market who politely chided me for dropping off the 요 at the end of all my sentences (that's the intimate politeness level, right?) She wasn't shy about telling me in English "in Korean, when we wish to be polite, we say 요". Oops.
To be honest, when I first started learning Korean, I didn't picture myself being able to use it much outside of Korea, or maybe East Asia. But it seems that Korean is much more widespread than I thought. Without exaggerating, I could say that I overheard a Korean conversation every day of the week. I heard Korean spoken more than many other "major" languages like French, Italian, Cantonese, and probably just as often as Standard Chinese, Arabic etc.
I'm just wondering how much Korean is spoken throughout the world. Is there much Korean spoken where you are? Do you find yourself regularly overhearing Korean conversations on the bus/train?
. But whenever I am out in a public place I typically hear Korean if I am paying attention.
(Don't worry, I didn't actually do that. I just thought about doing it 
)
I have to tone down my enthusiasm a few notches. 
. . . but now that i'm much more progressed i've come to realize, somewhat sadly, that koreans conversations are largely just as banal as any English speakers would have and surprisingly, i also realized that most of the normal/easy-to-understand krn convo's i hear now get put into the background chatter (just as most other normal convo's i hear would).
