Starting to get Korean... thanks to Azerbaijani!
I'm revising the sentence list for Korean and trying to figure out if there's a way to make it display on a computer not specially set up for East Asian languages. So that project's going to languish from an online point of view.
However, illustrating the value of not having too much focus, I have started to understand Korean, thanks to Azerbaijani. This weekend, at Barnes and Noble, I stumbled upon Elementary Azerbaijani, by the same author who wrote Colloquial Uzbek. Elementary Armenian looks like a much better book. Anyway, in reading the Azerbaijani dialogues, I couldn't help but smile. Had these dialogues been in either Uzbek or Turkish, I would have fussed to get full understanding, of which I'm not yet capable. But here, I just enjoyed how much it seemed like someone trying to speak both languages at once and took what meaning I could. I was especially struck by seeing Turkish endings on Uzbek words (i.e. modified Arabic stems) and vice-versa. And all of a sudden, it didn't make much difference what endings were being stuck on what stems, just that by taking all the pieces and putting them together, you could build up solid meaning from fragments of meaning joined.
When I got home and started glancing through the Mastering Korean book, I could see endings of sentence-final verbs. It didn't matter how the endings were formed, whether they were irregular, etc. It just mattered that I could see how the words went together, and where they would come apart. From there, I turned to my previously tedious copy of Teach Yourself Korean, and the explanations ceased to be information for memorization and became guides for picking through the dialogues to figure out what was going on grammar-wise.
I'm feeling much better about Korean now. Not that I'll be fluent tomorrow, or even at the end of the six-week challenge, but Korean is now a Turkic language with a funny alphabet (and no vowel harmony!), and that gives me someplace to start. So, the latest update on Korean is mixed. I've set no records for speed in language learning, but I've learned more about language and languages for my participation in this exercise, and that's something. And when I go by a Korean restaurant, I can pronounce the sign aloud instead of wondering how anybody could read that.
However, illustrating the value of not having too much focus, I have started to understand Korean, thanks to Azerbaijani. This weekend, at Barnes and Noble, I stumbled upon Elementary Azerbaijani, by the same author who wrote Colloquial Uzbek. Elementary Armenian looks like a much better book. Anyway, in reading the Azerbaijani dialogues, I couldn't help but smile. Had these dialogues been in either Uzbek or Turkish, I would have fussed to get full understanding, of which I'm not yet capable. But here, I just enjoyed how much it seemed like someone trying to speak both languages at once and took what meaning I could. I was especially struck by seeing Turkish endings on Uzbek words (i.e. modified Arabic stems) and vice-versa. And all of a sudden, it didn't make much difference what endings were being stuck on what stems, just that by taking all the pieces and putting them together, you could build up solid meaning from fragments of meaning joined.
When I got home and started glancing through the Mastering Korean book, I could see endings of sentence-final verbs. It didn't matter how the endings were formed, whether they were irregular, etc. It just mattered that I could see how the words went together, and where they would come apart. From there, I turned to my previously tedious copy of Teach Yourself Korean, and the explanations ceased to be information for memorization and became guides for picking through the dialogues to figure out what was going on grammar-wise.
I'm feeling much better about Korean now. Not that I'll be fluent tomorrow, or even at the end of the six-week challenge, but Korean is now a Turkic language with a funny alphabet (and no vowel harmony!), and that gives me someplace to start. So, the latest update on Korean is mixed. I've set no records for speed in language learning, but I've learned more about language and languages for my participation in this exercise, and that's something. And when I go by a Korean restaurant, I can pronounce the sign aloud instead of wondering how anybody could read that.
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