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Unlocking the Korean in my head? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| rolf Senior Member United Kingdom improvingmydutch.blo Joined 5818 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch | Message 1 of 16 25 October 2012 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
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I am half-Korean but never learned Korean as a kid as I was brought up in England. My
mother did not speak it exclusively to me (she was concentrating on improving her English at the time, and my father spoke only English anyway) so I did not learn it. btw please do not judge me or my mother - it makes me incredibly angry when I hear people say "why didn't your mother teach you English" - seriously, it's the most stupid and offensive question I hear. However, I feel as if the language is "locked in" somehow. For example, when I spend a lot of time with her and am surrounded by her Korean friends and Korean television, much of it comes back. I have no problem getting the gist of conversation so clearly I have some basic vocabularly, even if I have trouble recalling any of it on demand. It's not just vocab though - something else also gets unlocked, it's hard to describe. Even though I have no idea of grammar, there is something instinctive in me and I do have some kind of "natural understanding". My pronunciation is also very good compared to a total beginner to the language. I figure it likely that I could learn it with a pretty good accent. I did do classroom lessons briefly a few years ago in my late 20s but classrooms bore me and I did not pay much attention. I found it a little interesting but I think I am going to do my own self-study. So my question is, has anyone been in this situation or what do you think of my situation? Could I have fluency somehow and just need to unlock it? OK, that's probably a little optimistic. Nevertheless, could it be that I need only concentrate on area X and area Y etc. and get to an intermediate level quickly? I know I should just try but I'm also a little stumped as to where to start. What I don't want to do is lose this "natural" ability and replace it with an "analytical" rule-based "second-language" type ability. I can't be the only one who has been in this situation. What do you think? PS my apologies if this belongs in another section, I was really not sure where it should go. Perhaps the Advice Centre but I don't want this thread to be just about advice, I think it merits general discussion too :) Edited by rolf on 25 October 2012 at 12:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 16 25 October 2012 at 2:29am | IP Logged | ||
You're not alone! Google "heritage language learner" and you'll find lots of other people wrestling with the same issues. There's probably no one-size-fits-all solution, because different heritage learners have different combinations and levels of skills. One of my friends, for example, has C1+ listening skills and almost no output skills whatsoever. Another friend could once speak Quebec French if she was immersed for two weeks, but had no access to the knowledge when sitting in French class. And tons of folks have "kitchen languages" (or "market languages" in some countries), which work well in one situation, but which lack range and flexibility. Even though I learned French as an adult, I actually had some sort of "kitchen French" thing going for a while, because I had spent a couple of years listening to people speak to toddlers in French. My listening comprehension was probably 95% on parenting topics, and extremely weak everywhere else. I had basically hit a ceiling, and wasn't going to get better without more diverse input and some actual study. So now that you know that I'm completely unqualified to speak about this, I'd like to make a couple of random suggestions. :-) 1) Your passive knowledge seems to activate when you get enough exposure. Maybe you'd benefit from some AJATT immersion techniques, where you fill up your environment with lots of Korean. Cool books, friends, movies, comics—whatever keeps you interested. 2) Exposure by itself probably won't be enough. I couldn't reach upper intermediate French by listening to people speak to toddlers, sadly, but actually had to look stuff up, read with a dictionary, and all that. This doesn't have to be actual "study", but it helps to do something more intensive now and then. 3) Many people need to "activate" their speaking skills. The first two weeks of this can be pretty agonizing, but it gets better quickly. You'll start out feeling like your brain is melting and that you sound like a 3-year-old. This will be replaced soon enough by typical intermediate speaking skills: Some topics will be natural and easy, and other topics will be a minefield of missing vocabulary. Unless you get really lucky, you're probably not going to wake up one day suddenly speaking fluent Korean. :-) It's more likely that you'll still need to work it, but that your efforts will pay off a lot quicker than they would otherwise, because you have a latent familiarity with the language. Anyway, feel free to ignore my advice, because I don't actually know what I'm talking about. But do check out what other successful heritage learners have to say, and see if anything seems promising to you. Good luck! 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rolf Senior Member United Kingdom improvingmydutch.blo Joined 5818 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch | Message 3 of 16 25 October 2012 at 11:52am | IP Logged | ||
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thanks emk, I will try some of those suggestions. I had no idea there was a name for
people like me! :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 16 25 October 2012 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | ||
Glad I was able to point you in helpful direction!
When I re-read your post this morning, this paragraph caught my eye. Some people on HTLAL use extremely "analytical" techniques. Other people rely far more on exposure. It's a matter of taste and learning style. My style is less analytic than many. I'll tell you what I do—not because it will necessarily work for you, but maybe it will give you an idea of the possibilities. First, the "intensive" half of my study program: 1. Find some interesting and slightly challenging French. Ideally, this should include both audio and a transcript. Good sources are Assimil lessons, audio books with the corresponding ebooks, and subtitled movie audio extracted using a program called subs2srs. But anything works—books, comic books, video games, whatever. Cheat shamelessly—if you've read a book a dozen times in English, get a translation and read that. 2. Figure out what the French says. For this, I use translations, dictionaries, the visuals in comic books and movies, or anything else which works. 3. (Optional.) If something really catches my eye, and I can't explain it, then I sometimes use Google to look up some grammar online. If the explanation is interesting, then I try to keep my eyes open for it the future. 4. Once I understand something, try to get lots of repetition over the next few days and weeks. This may mean listening to an Assimil lesson a dozen times, replaying the sound track to a cool movie while I work, or adding sentences to an Anki deck for periodic review. Or sometimes the repetition just means paying closer attention when I read and watch French. 5. (Optional.) Use my French and try to get corrections. Lang-8 and a good tutor are both great for this. The goal is to identify mistakes that I can't see, so I know where to focus my efforts. An excellent starting point for this approach is an Assimil course, or a really old Linguaphone course. It's basically just easy foreign-language texts and audio, with an English translation, and a few scattered grammar notes. That will usually get you far enough that you can learn from native materials. The other half of my study plan is the "extensive" stuff. For that: 1. Read at least 10 pages of French every day. 2. Watch a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in French, funny action movies, and Amélie. 3. Read addictive French websites. The kind where 1 page makes you want stay 3 hours. 4. Speak French with my wife and in-laws as much as possible. Somehow, the combination of intensive and extensive French works much better for me than either does by itself. The end result is that my French is maybe 70% natural and 30% "analytical". That 30% is mostly stuff where I'm trying to learn faster than I would naturally, and over time, most of it will become automatic. Here are some other possible approaches that might inspire you: All Japanese All The Time Antimoon: How to learn English Iversen's Guide to Learning Languages (a more "analytical" approach where I first saw the intensive/extensive distinction) Benny Lewis A big list of techniques on the HTLAL wiki Basically, pick something that feels pleasant and interesting, change it around as much as you want, and just keep doing it every day until it gets stale. The real trick is staying motivated—it's a big project, and the only way to fail is to give up or keep taking huge breaks. For me, the first challenge was actually learning to study consistently and not give up! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| liams Bilingual Triglot Newbie Israel Joined 4254 days ago 11 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English*, Modern Hebrew*, Russian Studies: French | Message 5 of 16 26 October 2012 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
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I have a similar issue.
My father is Romanian, and as a child I heard a lot of Romanian(I still do). When I listen, it sounds natural. It's like I know the language, but I cannot understand anything. I can easily write down things people say in Romanian and tell different parts of sentences apart, but I do not understand a single word. Is this a common situation? And will this make learning Romanian easy? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| GeddyMX Newbie United States Joined 4770 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 16 26 October 2012 at 1:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Like you guys, I'm a heritage learner with 'kitchen knowledge', minimal output ability and a kindergärtner's reading level. What has been a tremendous help is finding a list of the most common 1000 words and creating an ANKI deck for my iPod, then briefly running through the deck whenever I had a spare moment such as waiting for the bus, in a checkout line, on the train, in the bathroom, etc.
Prior to this I'd listen to a news broadcast and only understand a handful of individual words. Now I can follow the gist of most news broadcasts and I can identify whether unfamiliar words are proper nouns, adjectives or verbs when I encounter them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rolf Senior Member United Kingdom improvingmydutch.blo Joined 5818 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch | Message 7 of 16 26 October 2012 at 8:25am | IP Logged | ||
This sounds like a great place to start and Anki has a ton of shared decks for use. I will look into this. Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6429 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 8 of 16 27 October 2012 at 5:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Rolf, if your Korean skills are at the Kitchen level, the best thing to do is to start reading more difficult texts. You
will need some Korean grammar books and some comprehensive Korean dictionaries. Every once in a while, I'll actually open up the 국어사전 or 옥편 to help me understand difficult words that are not in the regular Korean- English dictionary. If the economy was in better shape, I would recommend for you to either try getting a job in Washington D.C or Los Angeles and get in touch with the older Korean immigrants. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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