Monday, October 20, 2008

이상한 한국어

Recently, we had a dinner with our ex-Korean language teacher. During the dinner, I sprung a question at her.

"싱가포르에서 살다가 영어 실력이 많이 올라갔어요?", I asked.
(Living in Singapore, has your English proficiency improved by a lot?)

"아니요. 이상한 영어만 말할 수 있어요.", She replied.
(No. I can only speak "strange" English.)

While I thought her answer was kinda "cute", I felt the same way when I have to speak in Korean. I couldn't help muttering to myself, "나도 마찬가지예요. 3년 동안 공부하는데도 이상한 한국어만 말할 수 있어요." (It's the same for me. Even though I have been studying for 3 years, I can only speak "strange" Korean.)

It seems like environment and interest alone are still not enough to master a foreign language. I guess to master a language, it needs to be an integral part of my life. That's my realization from the simple conversation.

5 comments:

  1. yups..perfectly correct... to learn the language.. be part of that country is one of the best way ^ ^

    as long as we're not get twisted when we speak with our own language ㅋㅋㅋ
    cos i starts to feel that...since the korean structure is different with english and my language... sometime I got twisted ㅜㅜ

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  2. i can agree that english structure is different from korean but i thought bahasa indonesia is kinda similar to korean, isn't it? in both cases, the verb is placed at the end of the sentence. okay, perhaps that is the only similarity. for me, my tongue gets twisted into knots easily when i speak, regardless of the language ㅠㅠ

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  3. Here's a Korean language site that might give you some more practice in the language: 한국어 wiki browser

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  4. thanks for the recommendation.

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  5. integral part of your life. it is true.

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