Friday, June 30, 2006

that old trope

What am I, some kind of obscurist trendy or something? Yes, of course, and that is why I am back on my 'I want to learn Korean' kick. This follows from an accidental visit to the Korean grocery in Elizabeth st. Here are the pros and cons:

pros:

I am fascinated by Korea, Koreans and the Korean language
Learning is a good thing

cons:

It will be hard
It has no practical purpose, that I can see at this point
It will cost money
It might take me away from other things I can do better

I can't think of anything else but I just took my vitamin pill so I may come back and revise.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Also, last night while concentrating on my Japanese kanji book I looked out the tram window to discover I was in West Preston. Possibly the same thing could happen while learning Korean.

Ampersand Duck said...

It's such a visually attractive language!

I've heard it's a lot easier to learn than other Asian languages, because it's a relatively modern -- and constructed -- language. Invented by King Sejong around the same time that Gutenburg invented moveable type, the Korean alphabet has under thirty basic characters, like our alphabet.

I don't speak or read it, but I became fascinated by it when I visited Seoul a couple of years ago. So go nuts, I reckon. There's worse things to do with your time.

David Nichols said...

It is a beautiful language. I think I will start by reacquainting myself with the alphabet (I learnt a lot of it more or less) and maybe a short course, if such a thing is possible.

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