Languages and you...

[Chewster]

I can speak, read and write English (duh), speak and read a bit of French from my days as an Anglo student in Ontario and I can read and speak a bit of Korean. Listening is tough though my writing is on point, I've been told. The characters are actually stupid easy to learn how to read and write but the grammar is a mindfuck.

I've heard a lot of lexical conventions are also really weird, like how people say 'our' instead of 'my' in most cases, levels of formality etc. Hangul is a marvelous writing system IMO, kinda makes me wish they'd replace hanzi with zhuyin in much the same way... :/

There's that and people also don't commonly use personal pronouns (though they do exist and are confusing) so you sort of have to suss out meaning at times. You would more commonly say "Went to the convenience store," instead of "I went to the convenience store." Conversely, in Korean, there are topic, subject and object marking particles you're expected to amend to words (unless they are being modified by something else like 'at' or 'to' or whatever). They drive me insane and I forget them all the fucking time. And, of course they typically go subject-object-verb which is another difference you must wrap your head around.

And yeah, the levels can be frustrating. They have two levels of speaking: ban-mal (informal language you can use with friends) and jon-daet-mal (honerific language), and each then have polite and impolite ways to say the same thing as well. So right away, there are like four ways to say the same thing. Added on that, some of the most common verbs (to eat, to drink, to have etc.) have ultra honerific ways you can say them and they're completely different from their normal, common versions. Thankfully, you only use them when speaking to the elderly or like, the President or whatever. I'm told Japanese is similar.

I actually had a falling out between myself and an older friend because I kept forgetting to use the proper title of "big sister" even though it's odd, at least to me as a native English speaker, to refer to people in the third person directly to them. Most people are forgiving of these kinds of goofs though. And then Jeju-mal is a whole other mess. Korean friends tell me that the oldschool Jeju dialect is like a whole new language and virtually incomprehensible to anyone on the mainland.

And I'm hardly an expert, this is just beginner stuff. I like the sound of the language though, at least when Korean gong-ju-byeong (high maintenance woman, literally translates to 'princess disease') aren't doing that horrible whiny voice guys here seem to find sexy. And yeah, Hangeul really is a marvel. Astounding how easy it is to learn how to read and write, despite the other obstacles to learning Korean.