I'm constantly reminded of this while studying Korean in Japan.
Let's me just throw some examples out there…
- Bars and the like in Japan always seem to be playing Gangnam Style and Psy's follow-up, Gentleman.
Every time one of those comes on, I can't help but being distracted and trying to pick out a few more words than I could last time.
- I often go running on the 5K course around the Imperial Palace, which isn't too far from where I live. There are signs there with Korean on them, such as directions to the train stations.
- Major train stations in Japan often have Korean on important signs, including the station I get off at to go to work. The first Korean word I learned from those signs is 출구 chulgu, which which a cognate of 出口 chūkǒu in Chinese, which uses the same characters as 出口 deguchi in Japanese, all three of which mean "exit".
- I live about two blocks away from the Korean embassy. In addition to the Korean-language signage at the embassy itself, there's a little Korean supermarket right across the street and some other Korean stores nearby with Korean writing all over the place.
- My kids go to a Chinese school in an area that is full of Koreans and, accordingly, Korean words. One week, as I was waiting in a cafe for my son to finish up his class, two Korean speakers sat down next to me and started chatting—not that I could understand much, but I did try to pick out words. There are also often Korean speakers to be found on the streets there (and elsewhere in Tokyo) as well.
- "Sofa" in Korean is 소파 sopa; Korean has no F sound, so F becomes P in loanwords. When my youngest daughter mispronounced "sofa" in English as "sopa", the Korean word immediately shot into my head, even though I suppose this isn't really exposure to Korean itself.
The same happens to me pretty often in Paris. There are lot's of Koreans, and if I spend a whole day in Paris, it's extremely rare not to hear Korean.
ReplyDeleteOne question though, why did you choose Japan to learn Korean?
It wasn't really a choice... I just wanted to start learning Korean and I happen to be living in Japan while doing that.
ReplyDeleteI'm really lucky to be learning Spanish in an area where there are not only many people who use Spanish on a daily basis, but there's also Spanish television and tons of Spanish resources at the libraries. Like you, I can't understand everything that I hear, but I can at least get the gist of what's going on. It definitely takes the language out of the realm of 'studying' and into real life!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you're in a great place for learning Spanish!
ReplyDeleteIt is true as long as you look for a cetrain language you find it even in places you didn´t expect. :)
ReplyDeleteReally great tips, it's important to take every opportunity to maximise exposure to the language you're learning. When I lived in England and was taking Spanish courses , there weren't really these opportunities but I watched lots of films and listened to music to make up for it.
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