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So What's Your Story?

TheMingi
New in Town
Posts: 2
Joined: June 6th, 2008 3:07 am

Postby TheMingi » June 7th, 2008 7:58 am

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound biased against older people haha...

FlyAwayLove
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Posts: 7
Joined: May 7th, 2008 3:08 am

Postby FlyAwayLove » June 11th, 2008 7:01 am

seolli wrote:PSPS: Is there anyone here that's a TVXQ fan? *flails arms about* xDD

Hero. <3 DBSK <3

I started learning Korean because:

I love the culture
I love Korean guys :shock: Yeah, I went there! Everyone always comments on how Korean girls are beautiful so I'm allowed to talk about the guys, right? Korean guys are gorrrrrrrgeous.
I love K-Pop
I love the dramas!
I love, love, love, love, love, love, love, loveeeeeeee the Korean language. Love, love, love it. I've said the word love so much its starting to look weird.
&I love KoreanClass101. ㅎㅎㅎ :P If I hadn't found this site, I definitely wouldn't be learning Korean right now.

That Shinee song is great, by the way.

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seolli
New in Town
Posts: 8
Joined: May 18th, 2008 11:13 am

Postby seolli » June 11th, 2008 7:40 am

Hero. <3 DBSK <3


HOLY COW~ JAEJOONG<3333333

ahahha you're from what country?

rooraa
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Posts: 278
Joined: September 14th, 2007 2:09 am

Postby rooraa » June 11th, 2008 4:54 pm

I love both of you guys!! *turns on fangirl mode* DongBangShinKi rocks butt!!!

FlyAwayLove, you are sooo lucky you went to Korea!!! #($&#(& I'm so jealous!

seolli, yup I have to say TVXQ was a BIG factor in my decision to pursue learning korean haha

luckynomad
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Posts: 9
Joined: March 17th, 2008 4:47 am

Postby luckynomad » June 12th, 2008 4:11 am

My story is kinda odd. I wound up learning Korean due to my own laziness.
(Sorry if this is too long)
I spent several years in college studying Japanese and dreamed of going to Japan for a few years and becoming fluent and then perhaps moving back to the US. I took several classes on Japanese history and culture and read a lot of books about Japan. In my last semester of college I took a class about Korea basically because it fit one of my country study requirements and was at the right time of day. The teacher was a really old Korean man but he was really entertaining and became one of my most memorable proffesors. It was funny because he would always tell the class, "Now, when you go to Korea..blah blah balh etc." I would sit there thinking, "I'm never going to Korea. Why does he keep saying that?" However...I was really lazy and didn't get my JET application in on time. So after college I was sitting around for a few months with a serious travel itch. So eventually I decided to look for jobs in China and Korea and just wait it out there for a year until the next JET hiring season.
When I applied to a public school job in Korea, I got an immediate response saying they would hire me and that I would need to leave in 10 days. So I was pretty excited and spent the next few days running around getting documents faxed and other things like that. Threw some clothes in a bag, got rid of all my possesions and said see yah later ma and pa. I bought a Berlitz dictionary which would later turn out to be worthless because it was completely romanized, and a short book about learning Korean.
Needless to say, I was both excited and extremely nervous. I had little idea about what was on the other side of my plane ride. Just grabbing your bag and hopping a plane is quite a rush. Oddly, in Narita Airport I met a girl who had been teaching in Korea for 6 months and was coming back from vacation. Coincidentally we were both bumped up to 1st class! Never in my life had that happened, so I was under the odd assumption that we were bumped up because we were teaching in Korea. :lol: But with good reason because there were so many empty first class seats. Anyway, we talked for the whole plane ride and alleviated a lot of my anxieties.

So I came to Korea September 1, 2006. I decided that I rather liked living here and immediately decided that I would stay atleast 2 years. My plan was that I would live abroad for 10 years and divide that time between Korean, Japan, China, and maybe Vietnam. But Then I decided that I'd live in Korea for 3 years, and then 4 and I started realizing that I'd have to be living abroad for 20 years. Nowadays I'm thinking that maybe I won't leave at all. Instead after saving more money while working in the public schools for 5 years, I'll become fluent in Korean and get my MA TESL or Linguistics and then become a self-employed private teacher and just travel around Asia whenever I feel like it while living in Korea.
My learning has been almost completely self-study. When I first got here I started looking at the language and saw the striking resemblence to Japanese, which has made learning and using it much less difficult. I never really had to think about the word order because it was already imbedded in my head. Learning Hangul was not intimidating because I had already learned 3 scripts with Japanese.
For the first few weeks I would say things like "나를 가정 에 가다," when I was leaving work. I always spoke with the infinitive form for whatever reason.
I use just about every learning method you can think of in combination.
The funny thing is, I'm not a Koreaphile at all. My opinion of the country is very mixed. The language and culture do not suit my personality at all because I'm so laid back and really hate formality and obligation. It's for this reason that I really like the gyeongsando dialect lessons. The style suites me. I'll probably move there eventually.
I have no idea what my level is. I have friends who don't speak english whom I can converse with all day while understanding most everything, yet sometimes I will go back and learn some small thing that would be considered elementary, and I'll wonder why I didn't learn it before. My vocabulary is quite large and includes words like; conspiracy, nuclear weapon, omnipotent, official document, but there are still a lot of easy words that I won't know, such as, basket. I don't know why. So i'm all over the place in terms of level.
But yeah, Koreanclass101 has become my number 1 resource as of late. It's really great. Sorry for making this so long.

Pamela246
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Posts: 11
Joined: April 8th, 2008 3:06 pm

Postby Pamela246 » June 13th, 2008 9:08 am

Well, The reason I got hooked on Korean goes back to last spring when my daughter bought the film Old Boy - we both liked the film and she decided to search online for Korean music.
That was when the real fun started as we saw DBSK's Balloons video
:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc_j_WnY2P8
- from then on we spent many an hour watching all the game shows like X Man with DBSK in of course we both fell in love with Jae Joong :wink: - he is just perfect - all round entertainer and very easy on the eye to say the least!! (the Blonde guy in the film for those who don't know!)
Since then we now have over 30 korean films, an entire DBSK collection and are going to Korea for our holiday in 4 weeks time! (My husband was the one to suggest we go!) Just a shame DBSK will be in Japan!
I have also met so many online friends both DBSK fans and Korean language "buddies", all the Korean people i chat to are very friendly and we are meeting up with some of them when we go.
I have been to many foreign countries and always tried to learn basic things like - hello, please and thank you in the native language but this is the first time I have come accross a non "abc" type language. Also I don't just assume that everyone should speak English (although I am very thankful that most countries do!) so I decided to learn Korean and hope to be able to use what I have learned, Koreanclass101 has been a big help and I found Survival korean excellant for a quick fix of phrases to get me on my way -I just hope I say the right words as I don't have a very good memory! :?

the-resa-
Been Around a Bit
Posts: 22
Joined: March 4th, 2008 4:42 am

Postby the-resa- » June 16th, 2008 3:15 am

in my school, we could take up either a 3rd language or join a club. i decided to do with the former and so i took up korean. haha. but i joined a club ultimately too.

i used to like this boyband called h.o.t.

i hope everyone has heard of them before. they were quite the hit back then when i was in secondary school. my friends and i were crazy for them. :lol: kinda funny to think of it.

Keith
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Posts: 314
Joined: August 20th, 2007 3:08 pm

Postby Keith » June 18th, 2008 2:35 am

h.o.t. the ultimate Korean boyband! lol.... When I was in JHS, everyone copied their hairstyle. looking back, that probably wasn't such a good idea. HAHA

Pamela - Great story! I love Old Boy too... That's really interesting that both you and your daughter are into Korean together! Sounds like it'll be really fun to go to Korea together with your daughter.

luckynomadSounds like you'll be in Korea for a while! But if you wanted to learn Japanese and Chinese as well, my friend told me about a really good strategy. Learn Korean first, Japanese second, then Chinese third. With Korean, 한글 is the easiest to learn. But then you move on to Japanese with has similar grammar, and will be much easier to learn with a background in Korean. Then you move onto Chinese because you know the 한자 from learning Japanese, plus the similar pronunciations of the words in Korean. And that sounds like a 15 year plan!

luckynomad
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Posts: 9
Joined: March 17th, 2008 4:47 am

Postby luckynomad » June 18th, 2008 6:11 am

I started studying Japanese first, though my Korean level is way higher because I've never been to Japan. For this reason, Korean wasn't so difficult as it normally would be. I find that you can kinda bounce them off of each other as far as learning goes. From Japanese I was able to easily grasp meanings such as Tai and Dai being 대 in Korean, because of the somewhat similar hanja prounciations. Though now that I look in my Korean-Japanese dictionary, I've found that the thousands of Korean words I've learned have basically expanded my Japanese vocabulary the same way. Mandarin is a couple of years down the road. And I'd also say that when I study Japanese these days it seems really simplistic, with the exception of the kanji frequency.

seolli
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Posts: 8
Joined: May 18th, 2008 11:13 am

Postby seolli » June 24th, 2008 12:21 pm

seolli, yup I have to say TVXQ was a BIG factor in my decision to pursue learning korean haha

Ho yes! i did start to learn korean when i started liking dbsk...Until i went Korea last december and i was like O: i love that place blah blah hahahha.
The thing is, i only spent 4 days there (minus the flights) and it definitely wasn't enough.hahah i hope i can go this year again, but my mom's reluctant hahaha.
h.o.t. the ultimate Korean boyband! lol.... When I was in JHS, everyone copied their hairstyle. looking back, that probably wasn't such a good idea. HAHA

Haha yeah i think lots of people copied thier hairstyle. I remember dongbang's pre-debut days. omg full of h.o.t alike hair. hahahah

rooraa
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Posts: 278
Joined: September 14th, 2007 2:09 am

Postby rooraa » July 5th, 2008 2:56 am

I know what your talking about!! Pretty hilarious times XD
*mouth drops* you got to go to korea?! Lucky!!! Take me with you next time! haha just kidding

nosaj100
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Posts: 4
Joined: January 20th, 2008 1:40 pm

Postby nosaj100 » September 19th, 2008 5:52 pm

안녕하세요?

My name is Jason. I am 32 years old and have been living in Korea for 3 years now. I have a Korean wife and have really only been studying consistently for the last year or so. I really wanted to study at one of the universities here, but just don't have the time. My wife is from Jeju-do and her parents still live there. I know enough Korean to survive in Korea, but would really like to speak more to my in-laws and have more general conversations with Koreans that I meet.. I speak with in-laws regularly, but tend to use my wife to translate. I just joined the site this week, but am really loving everything so far. I am also currently working my way through the Sogang series of books.

Chriss
Established Presence
Posts: 74
Joined: May 30th, 2008 6:56 pm

Postby Chriss » September 19th, 2008 9:21 pm

A bit long, but oh well.

I fell in love with English when I was around 12-13 (after having had it in school for a few years) and I worked really hard on it (meaning the amount of BSB interviews watched is really staggering), but by the time I turned 18 (thank you Harry Potter!), I was more or less fluent. I still love English and I'll never be done learning it, but I need a bigger challenge.

I first took up Italian, and though I'm still learning it, I don't really like the language all that much. I continue because I want to be able to speak 5 languages fluently by the time I'm 30 (I need all the good luck wishes I can get XD). I was/am sort of thinking about German (my best friend being German), but I wanted an Asian language. However, I think Japanese is too harsh, Chinese too soft ( not to mention no alphabet and 8 tonems!), and some Asian languages tend to sound too "high pitched."

Then a friend of mine introduced one Japanese and one Korean exchange student into our group of friends, and they'd talk about Super Junior. I thought Super Junior sounded very uninteresting. But then I looked them up on YouTube and basically their "Full House" is one of the most hilarious shows ever. After actually listening to the language, I found that I quite like it. Keith really did a great job on Survival Phrases, and now I NEED to learn it. So I figured I'd just ride this wave out.

I doubt I'll ever get to Korea, though. I still haven't been to an English speaking country... XD

Phew.

Pamela246
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Posts: 11
Joined: April 8th, 2008 3:06 pm

Postby Pamela246 » September 19th, 2008 9:46 pm

Just an update to my previous post (above)
Having finally been to Korea - I can't wait to go again!
I did use a little of the Korean i learned although i was met with some curious looks at times due to my pronunciation - but i got there in the end!
I have to say I was concerned about the "culture shock" people kept warning me about, however it was completely opposite - i felt like i belonged there, perhaps i have seen too many K dramas and films - but i felt like i was "home!"
As far as DBSK goes - well we actually got to see them live and for free as we just happened to be there at same time as KBS 60th anniversary concert (my Korean friends said we only needed to go a couple of hours before to get a good seat, I think they underestimated DBSK fans as when we arrived there were a couple of thousand fans already there!) they only sang 2 songs but they certainly got the biggest cheer of the evening!
We also went to Junsu's (member of DBSK) dad's pizza place and met his dad - he was a lovely guy and the second time we went he treat us like celebrities and spent a long time chatting to us (well as best we could!) to say his son is so famous he is a humble guy and he gave us some signed photos of his son and a box of chocolates each! (we even got a signed CD from record company too!)
Since my return I have been even more addicted to K dramas and films, i now look at films and recognise the locations so it is even more enjoyable!

I am continuing to study Korean as we are definitely going back next year, my main problem is i really need a study partner but unfortunately no Korean speakers nearby!

rooraa
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Joined: September 14th, 2007 2:09 am

Postby rooraa » September 19th, 2008 9:55 pm

Pamela246 I am so jealous of you!! I can't believe you were able to see DBSK perform live and for free too!!! I am their biggest fan! I really hope i can go to korean soon so I can see them >.<

But anyways, I'm glad you had a good time in korea =]

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