Pronunciation... 참 잘했어요! (Very good job!)

"Your pronunciation... it's like a native," my Korean friend told me the other day, as we sat in a small cafe in a local square. Before you become overly impressed, let me give you the context. He was giving me nouns and verbs and I was forming them into Korean sentences that he would then read aloud word-by-word with me trying to parrot him.

(Note: Purple stamp to the left is a famous "VERY GOOD JOB!" stamp in Korea that teachers often put on student papers.)

"Subject is Kristy..." he would say, pointing to a section of my notebook in which his beautiful handwritten Korean said '침대 (bed), 자다.'

"Okay." And I would painstakingly write,

크리스티는 침대에서 잤어요
(Kristy-subject bed-in slept.)

Then, what happened next sounded roughly like this... (my friend's speech in bold italics and mine in regular italics)

Jaah-saaaaaw-yo.
Jaah-saaaaaw-yo.
Jah-saaw-yo.
Jah-saaw-yo.
Jahsawyo.
Jahsawyo.
Chim-daay-eeh-saw jaah-saaw-yo.
Chim-daay-eeh-saw jaah-saaw-yo.
Chim-day-eh-saw jah-saw-yo.
Chim-day-eh-saw jah-saw-yo.
Chimdayehsaw jahsawyo.
Chimdayehsaw jahsawyo.
Keu-ri-seu-ti-neun chim-day-eh-saw jah-saw-yo.
(Pause)
Can you say that again?
Keu-ri-seu-ti-neun chim-day-eh-saw jah-saw-yo.
Keu-ri-seu-ti-neun... chim... day... Wait, again?
Keu-ri-seu-ti-neun chim-day-eh-saw jah-saw-yo.
Keu-ri-seu-ti-neun jim-day... eh-saw jah... saw-yo.
Chim-day. Chim. CH-im. Chim. (Pointing motion to lips .)
CHim-day.
Yes.
Okay. (Sigh.) One more time?
Keu-ri-seu-ti-neun CHim-day-eh-saw jah-saw-yo.
Keu-ri-seu-ti-neun CHim-day-eh-saw jah-saw-yo. (Sigh.) Holy crap, that was hard to say.
Cham chal-haess-eo-yo! Very good! Your pronunciation... it's like a native.

And so it goes. Strangely enough, even when the sentences are ones that leave my own pen, they still have very little meaning to me as they leave my mouth. My brain still processes them as combinations of meaningless sounds that grow increasingly familiar with repetition.

Nonetheless, it was a nice moment. I do have a gift for mimicry. So much so, that I have a hard time finding my own singing voice, as I tend to copy the voice quality of anyone's song I am singing. This skill also comes in handy when singing karaoke.

Apart from the mindless repetition of practice sentences, the only words I can say with any real confidence and conviction are the ones I've heard countless times uttered by Korean drama actors and actresses. Questions like, "Oh my god, are you okay?!" or desperate pleadings like "Please don't go! I love you." I brought up the idea with my friend of recording his voice saying the sentences he's taught me. After all, it's only an audio recorder. There is nothing attaching his face to the words. Alas, he is shy. Perhaps I can bat my eyelashes at him next time and make my voice all whiny like a Korean actress. It's too bad he's younger than me, or I could drag out an appropriate, O-ppaaaaah! (+ pouty face)

I'm about THISCLOSE to buying a $10 monthly subscription to KoreanClass101 dot com because they have audio, time-spaced flashcards. It would be like having my own handy-dandy native Korean speaker to parrot anytime I wanted. For ten bucks. Good deal.

Some more interesting stuff (non-Korean).

Qué Onda Spanish. Practice your verb tenses and conjugations here! I'm going to have to do this with some of the trickier ones.

Boy am I glad I didn't decide to learn Chinese.

"This is so exciting, you can totally do it."

My sister has a friend who learned (as I recall hearing) Japanese by simply watching Japanese TV. I have been wanting to pry a bit into her process, as she eventually went to Japan and wound up being successful in her language-learning venture. Until I get anything close to a real interview, here is the majority of the conversation we had on g-chat today. It made me happy and hopeful:

Words in italics are words I have added to clarify things.

Me: question for you...

or... in fact... many questions

you learned japanese mainly through watching anime?

how did that process go?

just curious
Friend: I would say that the J-Dramas (Japanese dramas) help a lot more than anime because you can see the people forming the sounds.

Me: just wondering about how you did it. subtitles?

sometimes?
Friend: Yes, I watched subtitled shows and I listened to A LOT of J-Pop (Japanese pop music).

Sometimes my roommate and I would make subtitles for music videos as well.

Are you going to start studying Japanese?

Me: nope. i'm sort of addicted to the idea of korean

because i love the alphabet system

Friend: It goes in circles!

I mean each character is read in a circle, right?

Me: not a circle per se

as a block

each block is a syllable

and very phonetic

really clever, actually

and very easy to read

Friend: Yes, I love that exact thing about Japanese.

Me: is it phonetic too?

Friend: Yup.

Me: oh, how come i didn't remember that?!

cool

Friend: Well, they have three writing systems and two of them are phonetic.

Me: yeah, three--sheesh

well, technically, koreans have to learn a certain base number of chinese characters as well... just like the japanese

Friend: This is so exciting, you can totally do it.

Me: how proficient did you get?

just by listening all the time?

were you conversational before going to japan?

Friend: I got to the point where I could watch a drama without subtitles and understand almost all of it.

Me: nice!!!!!

how many years did that take? a whole year?

Friend: Yeah, about that.

But my speaking skills were only so-so until I went to Japan and started talking to actual Japanese people.

Friend: I'm told that the grammar of Japanese and Korean are very similar.

Maybe we can study it together sometime!

Me: nice

Friend: We shall reconvene on this topic.

Me: YES

While searching online for videos to show her of some K-pop (Korean pop music), I came across a video of one of my favorite Korean actors speaking Japanese. He looks a little out of his element, but I have no idea what he's saying. I wish I knew whether he is actually cracking jokes, or if his Japanese is so bad that everyone's cracking up. It sounds like he says "piano" around 3:22 and "fried chicken" a few seconds later.

It made me wonder if it is just as common for Asians living in Asia to know neighboring Asian languages as it is for Europeans to know neighboring European languages... or for Americans to know European languages, for that matter. I suppose I always thought that there would be more of a barrier in Asia, since the writing systems are all very distinct and not shared across languages. At least with European languages, they not only share writing systems, but they share much of the vocabulary (in the form of cognates) as well. Cognates (English/Spanish/French)= Enchanted (to meet you)! ¡Encantada! Enchantée!

Quite on the opposite end of the spectrum, I stumbled upon the blog of a man named Benny whose language approach is the opposite of the TV Method I am trying with Korean. He starts speaking right away! He's very dedicated and makes a lot of sense. I invite you to check out his blog, Fluent in 3 months, and watch his videos. He's learning Mandarin.

Typing with pinyin characters... testing, 1, 2...

Let's see if this works. I found a site online that claims that I can write the accent marks for the tones with a Mac. I had to enable the "U.S. Extended" keyboard.

• Alt+a for the first tone - ā
• Alt+e for the second tone - á
• Alt+v for the third tone - ǎ
• Alt+` for the forth tone - à
• To type ü, type Alt+u then u

Zǎo shàng hǎo. Good morning.
Hěn gāoxing rènshi nǐ. Nice to meet you.

Crap... I had to type it first in Word and then cut and paste it in. That's certainly not the fastest way to write. Let's see if the actual Chinese characters that I copied from the phrase page will copy into blogger... 很高兴认识你。

And here is how (supposedly) I would write in Chinese characters if I were to ever need to do that... not that I even know how to write or recognize one word at this point.