For months now, I’ve been putting this off and putting this off. But it’s time. After watching this video, I decided to start learning Hangul, the Korean alphabet.
Hangul is brilliant because, unlike the English alphabet, each letter pretty much sounds the same all the time, more like the Spanish alphabet. On top of that, vowels have a certain look to them, and consonants have another certain look to them, so it’s fairly easy to tell them apart even when you’re just starting to learn them.
This means that with even a basic understanding of Hangul, you can read almost anything Korean. Big bonus, even if you don’t always understand what you’re reading.
So I dove in.
I started here, a free course that teaches Hangul online, complete with audio tracks and everything. I enjoyed it. In about 45 minutes, I finished two steps, knowing virtually nothing about Hangul when I started. Oh, and I made flashcards as I went along, because I’m a big fan of them.
When I got to the bottom of that second lesson, I was able to read some of the words in Korean. Of course, I didn’t know what they meant, except for the definitions written in English, but I pronounced them halfway decently (at least to my ears). That’s a huge high.
You have no idea until you try it.
Anyway, they say a wise person can learn Hangul in a morning, and a fool can learn it by evening. Well, I think I’m going to spread it over a few days. But still, I like the progress so far, even with 45 minutes of effort.
