My Korean textbook

The entrance to Seoul Academy

The reception at Seoul Academy

Our classroom

I had two different teachers on the different days, and because I was the only one in class I got to practice my Korean a lot.! I think that it is advisable to already have a certain level of Japanese before taking the class though, because that is the language you use when your Korean is insufficient. But it is possible that Seoul Academy also has teachers that are fluent in English.

Introduction of the teachers at Seoul Academy

Map to the school

Although the course is over I'm considering taking classes there again once I come back to Japan in the end of March. I'm worried that I'll be too busy since I start working in April, but if not I'll definitely take their courses and try to improve my Korean further.

It's been a year since I promised I would make an updated PDF about how to translate Japanese kanji into Korean based on some simple pronunciation rules. Sorry for the delay! My last year as a student has been pretty busy, but now that I'm on my last school holiday I've finally been able to finish this list!  If you already know Japanese and want to learn Korean (or vice versa) this will come in handy for learning the vocabulary faster. Good luck, and please let me know if you have any comments or if you find mistakes in the document (hopefully there aren't any, but you never know).!

Kanji to Hanja - 300 words

Thanks again to Jostein for the great logo!

In Korea May 15th represent the day of the teacher (스승의 날), and here at school we have also been introduced to this tradition through our Korean classmates who have been preparing for the event. But since we don't have classes with all our teachers on the 15th we are celebrating the event on different days this week. So today we surprised our professor with a cake and a song. Quite cute! I think it is the first time ever that I have participated in surprising my teacher like that. We often tend to take our teachers for granted in Western countries... Considering all the time and effort teachers put into the development of their students I think that teachers deserve more respect than they often get. This tradition would have been nice to have in my own country as well(^_^)..! Happy teacher's day!

Before I started studying Korean I had heard that the two languages supposedly were quite similar. However, even though I was fluent in Japanese I couldn't really understand anything when I listened to conversations in Korean. After I started studying Korean I noticed that even without using kanji/hanja the Korean language is still based on the same fundamental Chinese characters, which made it interesting for me to search for Japanese and Korean words that had some sort of connection to each other.
I have been working on this list for a little while now, so I really hope you enjoy it. Please let me know what you think ^^

UPDATE: A new extended list with 300 words!


Thanks again to Jostein for the nice logo:D

This week I started following Yonsei University's three week intensive winter course in Korean, and all I can say is that I has been really busy! On the first day of school, which I wrote about in my previous blog post, we had a placement test to determine our Korean level, which I felt went quite alright.. But I didn't really have any expectation in terms of what level I would end up in, as I haven't had the chance to practice that much korean before.
I took a beginner course in Korean at Ritsumeikan University my last semester there, but the progress was really slow.. And even though I have been living in Korea for half a year it is quite limited what you can learn when you study at KyungHee's GIP campus; they do not offer any courses in Korean, it takes 1 1/2 hour to get to Seoul, the campus is in the middle of the forest and even though there are many Korean students there too they all speak perfect English so they aren't too eager to speak Korean to you.. So to put it this way: the interview I did for my placement exam is the longest conversation I have ever had in Korean..
There are eight levels of classes you can get into in Yonsei's winter course, starting from level 1 at the bottom going up to 8 at the top. As you can imagine I had though they would put me in level 2, or maybe level 3 because of my lack of experience with the language. So at Tuesday when I arrived in the lobby with one of my friends from the hostel you can probably also understand how surprised I was when I figured out which level I was in.
I was looking through the list trying to find my own name, starting from level 1and working my way down to level 3 but I couldn't see my name anywhere. As I had been so certain that they'd put me into either one of those levels I automatically thought that there had been an error in the process somewhere, and that they had forgotten to assign me a class. I was just about to storm off to the office when my friend called out for me; she had found my name in group number 5...
The thing is, since I'm fluent in Japanese it makes it very easy for me to learn the Korean words that are based on Chinese characters, which are considered very academic in both Japan and Korea. So I guess it might sound like my Korean is a lot more advanced than it actually is..
Since the other students already have learned a variety of other things about Korean that I haven't have the chance to learn yet I'm kind of lagging behind them a little bit. But at the same time I do feel that my Korean is improving, so I'll just have to do my best and continue to spend my afternoons and evenings memorizing all the stuff! 화이팅!!