Korean – Page 5 – The Lunar Treehouse

My First Ever Korean Speech Contest

December 2, 2019December 12, 2020

About a month ago, I signed up for the 2019 Korean Speech Contest in Malaysia. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. – I’m not a fan of public speaking. I’ve always struggled with stage fright, and I hate the sound of my voice.

I’m writing this to document the experience while I still remember it, and to share it with other Korean learners in the community, in hopes that someone out there will find comfort in my story, knowing that they’re not alone.

Emotions, in 3 Languages

November 4, 2019December 20, 2021

I’ve always found it curious how differently languages define emotions. Emotions, generally speaking, are universal – yet so many multilingual speakers would tell you that some are near impossible to translate.

Throughout my years of studying foreign languages, I have come across a lot of words that I find difficult to translate – at least, concisely. They range from abstract concepts to concrete objects, but none fascinates me like those pertaining to human emotions.

How I’m Studying Two Languages at the Same Time

August 5, 2019January 23, 2022

I’m currently learning Korean and French. I started learning Korean in 2016, and French about 6 months ago. I’ve been trying to find a way to study both at the same time, but it wasn’t until very recently that I managed to make it work. I actually tried to pick up French earlier last year, but I had to quit because I couldn’t come up with a sustainable way to keep studying it without losing my progress in Korean.

This time, however, I’ve managed to establish a routine that works. I’ve been using it for 3 months, and it works great so far! Here’s how I came up with it.

Thinking Out Loud in Korean

July 22, 2019July 31, 2022

If you watch a lot of Korean content, you might have noticed that Koreans have the tendency to think out loud.

As I’ve explained in this article, they often express their thoughts or feelings as if they are quoting themselves. Instead of saying, “Watching him practice made me feel like I should work harder”, they might say “I saw him practice, and the thought ‘Ah, I should work harder’ popped into my head.”

8 Ways to Sound More Natural in Korean

July 1, 2019March 21, 2022

This article is a compilation of all the things I wish someone had told me when I first started practicing speaking Korean. None of them are ‘hacks’ – I’m not going to give you a list of 10 Korean slangs that would ‘make you sound like a native’, or cool phrases that’ll help you impress your language exchange partner.

What I’d like to share with you, instead, is a collection of ‘patterns’ that I have picked up over the years, while I was studying Korean. Some of them are grammar structures, while others are quirks I find unique to the Korean language.

How to Practice Your Target Language While Travelling

May 26, 2019December 12, 2020

When I first bought the plane ticket to Seoul, I was extremely excited. Not just about experiencing the food and culture of South Korea, but also at the opportunity to finally practice speaking the language. I had been doing language exchanges for about two years, but nothing face-to-face. And since I was going to be there for 3 weeks, I’d expected to get a lot of practice out of this trip, just by being physically in South Korea.

And it turned out that wasn’t the case. At least, not really. I’d gone into this with minimal preparation (I’d picked up a phrasebook) and a vague notion of improving my Korean skills just by surrounding myself with the language. Simply put, I’d kind of expected that just by putting myself in a purely Korean environment, my brain would somehow absorb all the knowledge by osmosis and magically activate half of my passive vocabulary.