Photo Journal 4

This is a picture of the sign for the National Folk Museum of Korea, as you can most likely make out for yourself, attached to the Gyeongbokgyong Palace in Seoul.  It is a standard sign, but I took note of it for the three languages written on it.  I love this picture for the font of the Korean text, but to a Korean friend of mine, "it's boring."  In some sense, I'm still a foreign outsider in this country, wide-eyed at the novelty and mystery of the language and customs here, but I do also feel some familiarity with Korean now.

I started learning Hangul about a month before I flew to Korea, so the language started out as something of my own rather than something purely academic that I would be graded on.  I think that set the stage for my fondness for the language, but really it was Korean itself that has gotten me so interested in it.  Walking through Seoul, I can recognize the cadence of Korean and I can read emotion and inflection in people's voices, even if I can't understand exactly what they're saying.  I feel like I have some grasp at the pronunciation of Korean letters; when I say something simple to someone, like "hello, how much does this cost?" in a shop, they don't hesitate to say a stream of Korean to me.  So it must sound like I know what I'm doing.  And I've mastered the essentials, like "hello," "thank you," "goodbye," and some question words.  It's a powerful feeling, to be able to have an entire (simple) conversation in the language- to have some taste of fluency.

Beyond that, I've never felt that Korean was particularly difficult.  And maybe that thinking is the reason that it never has been.  Of course, the elegance of the alphabet makes a huge difference.  I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to be able to read the language, even if I don't know what the words mean.  Of course there is always a thrill when the Korean word is the same as the English word.  I've had such a great time making the language my own, even if ends up being a small taste of actual classroom learning, including the vocabulary and grammar structures that I haven't been able to pick up in real world interactions.