Today I just thought of writing down all the reasons why I am learning Korean 🙂 what triggered it and why I still keep up with it no matter what!
Let me tell you my reasons 🙂
First of all my little Korean “love affair” started a long time ago way before I started to learn the language we’ve essentially been together a long time and I actually believe that we will be together forever If I have my way 😀
- First time I was exposed to anything Korean was in 2007 when I watched a Korean drama called “Sad Sonata” with Kwon Sang Woo and Kim Hee Sun and I fell in love with it but back then it was the only K-drama I knew and the only one I even watched to watch so put simply I was completely obsessed with “Sad Sonata” and for the next 3 years I obsessed over the same drama because the next drama I watched was “Coffee Prince” and honestly I didn’t enjoy it very much I will try it again this year when I have time but then I hated it ^^ sorry to the fans out there..!!! but it’s ironic because now I LOVE Yoon Eun-hye and would watch anything with her in it (including Coffee Prince)
- My trigger : I think my trigger to learn Korean was when I watched “Boy’s Over Flowers” with
Lee Min-ho(I’m not as biased to Lee Min-ho as I am to Kim Hyun Joong) and Kim Hyun-joong (who has till this day remained the only Korean idol I truly love when it comes to his music and personality and just everything….I won’t get all fangirly but truly he is amazing) which is why this time it wasn’t just the drama that I loved it was “everything” I loved, and instantly I wanted to watch more drama’s!!! and learn the beautiful culture and ...more about Kim Hyun Joong
- After I started to watch more drama’s I decided I wanted to understand them and be able to watch the drama with my eyes shut and not need silly subtitles for everything and I wanted to understand even the jokes that are sometimes totally missed when you read the ‘strange’ English translations.
Then after all that now I wanted to learn Korean and so I did start to learn in 2010 but after a few little mishaps I kinda stopped for a bit in 2011 🙂 but by mid 2011 I was back on my feet again and ready to give it my all, since then I have gone a little bit ‘slow’ in my studies which is a reason for the blog 😀 and now I make sure I study every single day and I can see the benefits I understand more and I just LOVE it ^^
I have so many more reasons but I will tell on another post 🙂
What made you study Korean?
Leave your opinions I would love to hear more stories 🙂
Love hearing stories about “why somebody started learning some language” and love your story too 🙂
I didn’t watch Sad Sonata, nor do I watch Coffee prince, but now I want to see them.
Although I always found 한글 alphabet beautiful, I started learning Korean last summer, at the same time I was watching “boys before flowers” too 🙂 I think Korean sounds so beautiful and cute, so I wanted to learn to speak at least some basic sentences. Also, I noticed that some words were similar to Chinese (like sinokorean numbers), and so I began learning 한글, and then discover TTMIK and I was like… WOW this is so seriously well done and explained, and then discover a lot of people blogging about korean language, and so I wanted to learn it.
Even though, the main language I’m learning is Chinese, I try to self-study Korean when I can 🙂
Its wonderful 🙂 and thank you very much!
Sad Sonata is actually a lovely drama you should check it out 🙂 Coffee Prince I myself have only watched two episodes but I will continue to watch it soon ^^
Actually that is also another one of my reasons 한글 does have this unique beauty to it which just draws you in and you want to know more about it …once you realize how easy to learn 한글 is you never want to stop 🙂 for me I have no background in Chinese and I find it extremely difficult to learn T^T, and I only wish I would have discovered TTMIK when I started learning I probably never would have stopped for the few months I did but sadly I used KoreanClass101 when I first started out and still I admit that I love KoreanClass101 more than TTMIK sometimes, all depends on the situation 😀
Good luck to us both in learning Korean <3
I love your story too 🙂 and thank you for sharing it with me <3
Chinese and Korean by my point of view are like “opposite language difficulties”.
For example, in Korean writing and pronunciation are easier than Chinese, because of the use of alphabet vs learning to write a bunch of characteres, and tones vs “not having tones!”.
And then, Chinese is easier in grammar aspects and Korean has a lot of grammar patterns just to say the same thing.
Although I love both Korean Grammar and Chinese characters, so I love both languages ^^
In Korean I use TTMIK, Assimil method and some textboosk like “Active Korean” and “My Korean” from Monash University.
Yes, good luck to us studying both Korean & Chinese! 화이팅! 加油!
That’s true they are ‘opposite language difficulties’ but for I haven’t gotten into what Chinese grammar is like so I can’t really comment on that but I know that its a lot harder to learn those Chinese characters than it is to learn 한글 I know a teensy bit of Hanja and still those characters confuse me and I thought it would be better to learn the Pinyin….but I was wrong about that ^^ so now I am back figuring it out from the beginning in my spare time 🙂
ㅋㅋ~
I didn’t watch Sad Sonata. But I started watching this drama today 😀 The same with you, I started become interested in Korea while watching KDrama back then ^^ I just love the sound of the Korean language. For me the most beautiful language xD I’m german native speaker , so there aren’t many similarities in Korean and german.
Studying with TTMIK is one of the best 😀 I also learned 한글 from TTMIK. I’ve always studied with TTMIK. ^^ Thanks for sharing your story 😀 I love reading storys from other bloggers. I just wrote a post about why i decided to study korean ^^ Feel free to read it if you’re interested. HAPPY STUDIES 😀
Its an amazing drama you will enjoy it ^^ its an all-time favourite for me even now 6 years later after I first watched it 🙂 for me I think it was the atmosphere as well that the drama created …it was different you know how English shows are very different from K-drama’s and still I like that ‘difference’ that they create 😀 You are right that it is beautiful some languages are just boring but Korean is never boring even when its really difficult to understand, right? Never get tired of it at all 😀
Thank you for reading mine 🙂 and sharing yours and of course I’m interested 😀 I’ll be sure to read it 🙂
Happy Studies 😀 화이팅!!!!!
Thank you ^^ I really enjoyed Sad Sonata so far 😀 Yes! I agree, I usually don’t watch English drama’s. I don’t know but I enjoy K-drama’s way more than english versions. Koreans do a really great job 😀 I’m always kind of happy when I discover that sometimes the english subs are wrong or not 100% correctly ^^
Right! Learning Korean never gets boring! 😀
kkkk Thank you ^^ 앞으로도 계속 열심히 공부하자! 홧팅~~!!! 😀
Haha my story is quite similar! I got into the dramas and it made me more interested in the culture.My very first drama was Coffee Prince and I became obsessed after that. I can’t stop watching dramas so why not learn the language? Haha 🙂 I also do art and I am madly in love with traditional Korean art. I would LOVE to learn how to do calligraphy and incorporate it into some of my art. Besides all of that I think it’s cool to learn another language~
Loved your post 🙂
On a random note ; don’t you hate it when you’re watching dramas and the English subtitles are different from the actual Korean that is being said? It annoys me so much!
Haha! I think its the culture we all fell in love with its different from ours and we wanted to know more ^^ just my thinking 🙂 Wow, your first drama was the first drama I despised 😀 how ironic is that?! But I will be giving ‘Coffee Prince’ another shot this year ㅋㅋ~ because now I am an Eun-hye fan!! I wish I could draw but I can just draw an ‘eye’ otherwise I think your idea of mixing art into Korean is extremely beautiful to me 🙂 and actually you know what makes me wanna learn calligraphy? when I watch historical drama’s and you see them writing on a cloth (or what-ever it is, lol) with a brush then I feel like “Wow! I wanna do that” but I really have no skill in that department 🙁 sadly!!!
It is cool to learn another language ~ like learning another part of you when you discover new things 😀
p.s : that pisses me off so freaking much ~ which is another reason to learn 😀 when I’m infuriated at the lack of emphasis with those English subtitles ^^
Thank you for reading and thank you for sharing your story <3 I enjoyed reading it 🙂
You should continue to watch Coffee Prince! It’s probably not as bad as you think. Yeah it’s a little silly but its so funny and cute. I hope you end up liking it! I love her too she’s such a great actress. I love seeing calligraphy in historical dramas! I love seeing the different types that they use and I want to try to use some of those in my drawings :).
Actually, I think I’ve learned more about Korea by studying the language than actually researching it myself!
ㅋI actually am a little proud of myself when I recognize something the translator left out or interpreted incorrectly.