Learning Hangul
안녕하세요!
That may look like a bunch of random chicken scratch, but those are characters and it says hello. When I first arrived in Korea I looked around and said to myself, "Ain't no way I'm finna learn that. Not even about to play myself." And guess what? I didn't... at first.
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For the first couple weeks I didn't even try to learn Hangul, the Korean alphabet. It wasn't until a friend that used to live in Korea told me how easy it was to learn. To tell you the truth I thought he was bullshitting. There was no way I was going to understand all those lines. Long story short, I was wrong.
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The Korean alphabet is one of the easiest to learn. Fun fact: Hangul has fewer letters than the English alphabet 💁🏾♀️ I spent a week watching YouTube videos to learn the different characters and a few rules for pronunciation. A WEEK. After that my new home was a new world. I could read menus, understand city names on maps and sound out signs. The world was once again my oyster.
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Think I'm lying? Korean has a bunch of words borrowed from English, but written using Hangul. Here's a crash course:
ㅊ = ch
ㅣ = i
ㅋ = k
ㄴ = n
Can you guess what 치킨 means? Let's try another one.
ㅍ = p
ㅔ = e
ㄴ = n
Can you figure out what 펜 means? Okay, let's kick it up a notch.
ㅋ = k
ㅔ = e
ㅇ = silent or ng
ㅣ = i
ㅡ = eu (uh sound)
Now, can you sound this out: 케이크?
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So many words are the same with slight pronunciation differences from chicken to pen to cake (answer to the quiz above 😉). If you can read Hangul there's a chance you'll be able to recognize the word and it happens more than you think.
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Learning a new language can be intimidating especially when there's an entire different alphabet, but don't be like me. Don't count it out and sleep on your damn self. Don't settle for janky ass translating apps cause half the time they're not even accurate. Hop on YouTube, buy a book, download an app. Whatever you need to do as long as you get it done 💪🏾