I wish I knew these before learning Korean

This video will be a bit different in that, as you know, I'm a Korean teacher. My main priority and what I love to do is teach Korean. But with that said, there are a lot of viewers, maybe some of you watching, who have subscribed to my channel but who haven't actually yet started learning Korean. Maybe you've only learned some of the alphabet or you've just subscribed so that you can start learning later in the future. So if you're still very new to learning Korean, this video is for you. I started learning Korean back in 2005, but I remember a lot of stuff took me by surprise in the beginning. And there are some things that I wish I knew before I started. So I want to share with you 8 things that I wish I knew in the beginning before I started studying Korean. But first, if you like the topic of this video and if you want to improve your Korean, please give this video a like and subscribe to my channel. So the first thing that I wish I knew before I started learning Korean is... Learn the Korean alphabet, 한글, first before anything else. Now I did learn the alphabet as a beginner, but not in the very beginning. I remember trying to write things using romanization in some of my earliest notes. And doing that, combined with having a very poorly written textbook at the time, actually almost caused me to quit learning Korean right when I started. Because it was just so difficult to make sense of anything without knowing the alphabet. Now as a teacher, I know how essential it is to learn 한글 before doing anything else. But in the beginning, I really didn't understand the full importance of it. And I didn't realize just how important it was until after I actually learned it. If you're using romanization for any part of your Korean learning, take it from me, you're actually hurting your progress. Now I've heard some people say that they've used romanization for learning other languages. Such as, I know that it's not too bad for learning basic Japanese or even some Chinese. But Korean doesn't work the same way as those languages. Just trust me as a teacher. Because I've never encountered a single person who's conversational at Korean who doesn't know the full alphabet. And that's just because of the way that the Korean language works. For example, you could learn that the word 읽다 means to read. So then you want to say, I want to read a book. And let's say you've learned that you can attach the sound 없어요 onto the verb stem to make it into the past tense. Now the verb stem is just the part of the verb that comes up before the 다 at the end. So if you had the verb 하다, well then the verb stem would just be 하. So you get the verb stem of 읽다, and that's just 읽, and you attach 없어요 like you've been taught, and you get 익었어요. That's a completely different verb now that means something is fully cooked or even that something is ripe. So if you were to then say, just using romanization, 책을 익었어요, it would be like you cooked a book instead of read a book. And you would never know what you did wrong until you actually looked at the verb. And then you would see that it's actually spelled differently than it's pronounced. Now this was just one small example, but not knowing the alphabet will affect every aspect of your learning. Fortunately, it only takes a couple of hours to learn the basics. Not to master the alphabet, that takes longer. But once you've learned the basics, you'll be able to start learning the rest of the language much more quickly. And then the more that you learn the language itself, the faster you'll be able to read. So again, learn the alphabet first, and don't be too hard on yourself if it takes you a long time to get fast. The second thing I wish I knew before I started learning Korean, because when you learn the alphabet, not everything is read the same way that it's written, as we just saw with that example for to read. And as a beginner, I didn't really know about this. And I thought that those were simply, there are just a lot of exceptions. And it made me so confused until I started learning more about sound change rules and what they are. Sound change rules are a set of rules which help you, or I should say even allow you, to read the alphabet more naturally. And it's not only Korean that has these sorts of things. In English, we might say the expression nice to meet you as nice to meet you. And in Korean, it's a similar concept. But there are several rules that you can learn for Korean, which help make this concept easy to grasp. So right after you finish learning the alphabet, just skim through the sound change rules. Just be aware that they exist. You don't really need to master them in the beginning. You'll learn them regardless through studying the language. But being aware of sound change rules as a beginner would have helped me to get over a lot of hurdles. Next, the third thing I wish I knew before I started learning Korean was to avoid using pronouns for other people such as he, she, and you, especially the word for you. As a beginner, I remember learning about the word 당신. And I also remember someone telling me to avoid using it. But surprise, I still used it because I didn't really understand what it meant. So to a younger me, just avoid the word you and don't use 당신. Instead, here are some better words that you can use. If they are close friends and a little bit older than you, you can use the words 오빠, 언니, 형, and 누나, respectively. Or if you know each other but you're not really that close, then I recommend using their first name followed by 시. Or for other important people such as your boss, you can use titles like 사장님 for boss or 선생님 for teacher. And I have videos about how to use all of those titles and more on my channel. And you can learn those after this video. And then on top of that, most of the time, if you use what are known as politeness levels, if you use those correctly, most of the time you actually won't need to use any pronouns. And actually politeness levels are the fourth thing that I wish that I knew before I started learning Korean. At least I wish I knew of their existence. Because in Korean, you'll actually speak a little bit differently depending on who you're talking to as well as who you're talking about. When I was a beginner, I knew of that concept, but I didn't know how to use it. For example, with close friends, you can use the word 나 to say I or me when you're talking about yourself. And with everyone else, you would want to use the word 저 to say the same thing, I or me. In formal situations, you want to use what's known as the 니다 form. For example, 입니다, 합니다. And in everyday situations, you can use what's called the 요 form, such as 해요 or 있어요. And I know that there's a lot to learn about politeness levels. Fortunately, native Korean speakers are very understanding of beginners who are trying to learn their language. But I really didn't understand how politeness levels worked as a beginner. For example, I thought that if I simply used the 요 form all the time that I would never be rude. But actually, if you're talking about someone else, for example, a stranger, then you actually need to use on top of that 요 form something known as honorific speech to avoid sounding too casual when you're talking about that person. For example, if you wanted to ask a stranger if they knew something and you were to just say, 알아요? Do you know that? Well, that would be a tad rude, actually, because it's too casual. And instead, you'd want to say something like 아세요? Do you know this? Using honorific speech. Now, politeness levels are not difficult to learn the basics, but they can take a long time to master because it's more than just a set of grammar rules that you need to learn. It's actually more like just a feeling. OK, the fifth thing I wish that I knew before I started learning Korean is... In fact, nothing will translate to or from Korean literally. And that's because natural Korean doesn't just come from memorizing grammar rules or vocabulary words. For example, you can learn the grammar form 가요, which is used to say like, shall I or shall we do something? And you might hear a Korean ask someone 갈까요? So literally, shall we go? Now, I don't know about you, but I rarely, if ever, use the expression shall we in English. But in Korean, this form can actually have more of the feeling sometimes of wanna, like you want to go. But because I kept translating this form in my head literally at the time as shall we, I ended up then, when I wanted to say wanna in that situation, using a different form 고 싶다. So 가고 싶어요? Literally do you want to go? However, in a situation where you're just suggesting to someone, hey, you want to go? As a suggestion, it's actually more common for Koreans to say, shall we? And because of that, that form 고 싶다 ends up actually sounding very literal. Do you want to go? So if I could go back to myself in 2005, I would tell myself that. Just try to focus less on the translation. And instead, focus more on the feeling that a grammar form or a vocabulary word has. Because at the end of the day, keep in mind, if native speakers say something a certain way, then it doesn't really matter if it makes sense in English literally or not. It only matters if you can understand that and then if you can use it. And this leads me to the sixth thing that I wish I knew when I was a beginner. When I was a beginner, I really thought that if I just had more grammar and vocabulary that I would speak better. And because of that, my notebooks have so much random, useless vocabulary in them. In fact, some of the words that they have, I've still never even seen to date. And because I never ended up being able to use most of those words as a beginner, all of that studying ended up being a lot of wasted time. So I wish I focus just a little bit less on vocabulary and instead just focus on spending more time practicing those things that I was learning. Nearly everything that you study, but don't practice, you're going to forget. So instead of just staying in my room and studying for hours and hours, I wish I would have just gone out and practiced even a little bit more than I did because I did live in Korea at the time. But just living in Korea doesn't mean that you'll learn the language. So you have to sometimes step out of your comfort zone to practice the Korean that you're studying. Now, I have a bit of anxiety and I had a lot more as a beginner. So I wish I could also just go back and tell myself that just pretend that you're confident. And then during those times where you can't pretend if you're confident to find other ways to practice the language. For example, having more pen pals, practicing texting in Korean, things that I didn't really do very much, or even just calling people when I feel too tired to go outside. Because remember, the whole point of learning to speak Korean is to speak Korean. No matter how much I studied, if I hadn't eventually gone out and practiced Korean, I never would have learned Korean to the level that I did. I wouldn't just step out of my room after years of studying and magically be able to speak Korean. Okay, so here's the seventh thing that I wish I knew before I started learning Korean. Now, I did have friends when I lived in Korea. I had people I could practice with, but not all of the time. And a lot of times I had to go out of my way to find someone to practice with. For example, when I lived in Busan, I only knew a few people at first. So instead, I would spend a few hours a week at a local park chatting with some old men who enjoyed playing Korean chess. Just because I needed someone to practice with, I needed real experience with the language, and they were very friendly. Nowadays, it's much easier to find friends for practicing Korean. In fact, it's super easy, barely an inconvenience. Because these days, there are so many native Korean speakers looking for English speakers to practice their English. And if you message enough of them, you will find some people who you have things in common with. And you'll be able to find plenty of people who not only want to be your friend, but also native Korean speakers who can help you practice and improve your Korean. For that, I recommend the apps Tandem and HelloTalk for finding chatting partners. Or the websites Interpals and Conversation Exchange for finding email pen pals. Or if you have the extra money, you could even hire a native Korean speaker as a tutor just to practice with. But it doesn't really matter so much how you find your friends or what app or website you use. Just having multiple native Korean speakers that you can practice with on a regular basis is all that's important. Now, if you're a guy, then I recommend having more guy friends for practicing than girls and vice versa. Because the eighth thing that I wish I knew when I started studying Korean is actually that boys and girls speak Korean a little bit differently. And it's not only intonation that's different. Girls might have more of a rising intonation than guys, for example. But it's sometimes having different pronunciation of words or even using different words or grammar forms entirely. One quick example is the grammar form 구 for connecting sentences. You might hear girls more often than guys pronounce this grammar form as 구 instead of 고. And this is because when it's pronounced as 구 instead, it sounds a little bit more friendly. Another example is you might hear girls using the verb ending 니 more often. And this is similar to the verb ending 냐, which guys would use more often. Now, I could spend a whole day or at least a whole video just talking about these sorts of differences. But the point is just to be aware that they exist. Now, when I was a beginner, the majority of my Korean friends were guys. But when I was an intermediate speaker, I knew someone else who was studying Korean and most of his friends were girls. And you could tell. And he had no idea that he spoke that way. Now, I am not saying that if you're a guy, you shouldn't hang out with girls or vice versa. No, it's completely your choice. Of course not. I'm only saying that as a beginner, I wish I knew that there was a difference because as a beginner, I really couldn't tell. And I thought that everyone just spoke the same way. Now, I know it's too late for me to go back and tell my younger self some of these tips, but I hope that some of these tips can be helpful to you. So what do you think? And I also want to know if you're past the beginning stage. Is there something that you wish you knew as a beginner? If there is, let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching. And if you'd like to see more videos like this, please like this video and subscribe. Хром. До свидания.