A lazy apprach to Korean + Update

Despite my super positive approach to studying sometimes I do , too, feel super lazy. Recently it seems like I just cannot fall asleep before 4 a.m. , therefore my energies during the day are all over the place.
In addition to that, I recently finished the KGIU Beginner to Lower Intermediate book and it seems like I feel in pit of desperation. This pit is called ”I am not a beginner anymore but not yet intermediate” and is making me crazy just a little bit. This transition from beginner to intermediate happened incredibly natural when I first took up Japanese, I didn’t really feel the difficulty gap at all. On the other end though, the experience with Korean is significantly different. Not that it is a bad thing… I am just struggling a little. I am proud of the quick improvement with my Korean but I need just a little bit to consolidate my beginner skills to do the jump and immerse myself into 중급!

Given that, I decided that my ”break” would’ve been a massive dose of dramas and 예능 쇼.

So it has been for the past week. I am currently going on and off between Hello Counselor and Marriage, Not Dating. Even if I am currently on a break I cannot switch K-learner mode off, I must be always ready to capture new words, new grammar points and bits that I can understand. I still feel uncomfortable without subs but I try to switch them off every now and then and it is not that difficult compared what I thought, I still struggle though. I am considering to try the Korean sub option on Viki but there aren’t many dramas that I am interested to and have this option, unfortunately. Anyways,  I am trying to be as active as possible and it is working.

These are my notes for the past week, 9 pages, I am quite proud!
I haven’t memorized all of the words, rather I try to remember the context in which they were used and only after writing them down properly on my notebook. A little bit risky for a beginner but I see that words stick better this way rather than vocab lists or flash cards.

It’s mostly stuff I see written, little bits I am able to write down and random words I can pick up while watching.
Also, I love this little post it pack I used as a little notebook, I often bring it whenever I go to revise a little.

Another thing I’ve been doing because I am lazy and a fangirl is writing down drama quotes from hangeulquotes and see how much I can understand. Surprisingly, I could understand more than I expected, I am getting used to Korean syntax which can be quite tricky from time to time.

So this is how I keep Korean rolling while I am technically on a ”break”. Well, break is a weird word to use let’s say ”not textbook studying”. It’s me bidding farewell to beginners’ club and starting to adventure into 중급. I think I’ll be consolidating what I learnt in beginner level for a little bit longer, I assume few more weeks before fully start intermediate.

These days 자우림 and 椎名林檎 have been keeping me company all day long.

Total Jam!!

I’ll be leaving here, thank you for reading and see you soon!

요즘 바쁘지만 행복해요

I seriously like this blog. I came to like it a lot after a long time of negligence. I have like 3~4ish drafts saved but it still feels weird to write, to be honest. In front of the keyboard words just fail me and I feel like whatever I may write it will sound boring and not interesting.  Anyways, things in my life that are related to language learning are happening so why not blog about it..

These last few weeks I ”finally” got busy again. Having lot of free time is nice but laying in bed in pain all day with Korean studying in between isn’t really my style and it is boring. I started my volunteering work with AFS(exchange students programme), I did activities with international students last week and this week I am doing some orientations with the italian kids who will go on their exchange this summer. It isn’t a particular difficult task but I arrive at the end of the day very tired. Weirdly enough this tiredness didn’t slow me down with my studies at all, actually, I’ve seen a HUGE improvement in a short span of time.

My brain is starting to think in Korean. It is weird, I am not that advanced but most of the sentences elaborated in my head are coming out in Korean without me even realizing. I don’t want to sound too obsessed or anything, I hope no one gets offended by it but for me it is a big result. It means that, little by little, it is becoming more natural to my brain to process Korean and after basically a month of intense full immersion, it is no surprise to me! It reminds me of the good old days when I used to complain on Twitter about language headache. You know, that headache that occurs when you’re thinking in multiple languages all at once. I used to go crazy about it especially during my first years of high school when I was learning way too many languages at the same time.

Talking about this new skill that to me feels a bit like a victory, yesterday it got me in a quite embarrassing situation. Long story short I am taking a literacy course for my mother tongue, Sardinian. As you may or may not know, I live in Sardinia, the big island in the very centre of the Mediterranean, between Spain and Italy. Formally, we’re italians but because of culture and language we are different. The language of Sardinia is spoken by older generations because the youngers weren’t allowed to talk it or learn it in school, so often these courses are held in order to literate the population. I decided to take it, it was cheap and I really need it. Yesterday it was the first  day of lesson but I swear I couldn’t concentrate  a single bit. I was just thinking in Korean all the time and what the teacher was saying was sounding so off to me that when it was my time to speak up I was really close to say 응…좀 뭐 할까요, 제가…? 자기소개가? … and could barely manage to say ‘ I am …’ in Sardinian. That’s it. It was embarassing but kind of good for my self-esteem. I really should be more diligent when learning my mother tongue, sounds weird but… 이 기분이에요…
지금도 저는 한국어를 잘 못하는데 머리 안에서 한국어로 생각해서 영어로 쓰기를 어려워요 좀… 사실은 아까까지 공부 하고 있었어요, 너무 피곤해요. 자야 되지만 이 블로구 포스트 진짜 쓰고 싶은데 잠 안 왔어요.그런데 지금은 정말 가야 돼요. 여러분, 여기까지 읽어줘서 감사합니다, 다음 포스트 봐요!

I am really tired so I should go now, I really just wanted to write something here to be honest. I really would love to write more,  but I lack of original ideas if by chance someone here is reading and interested in something in particular, please ask, I’ll be glad to answer!
Thank you for reading and see you soon!

There and Back Again + Let It Go

Hello!

HISASHIBURI DANE~~

It’s been a while! I wonder if you guys have wondered where I’ve been all this time, probably not but ,anyway, I am here again! I am not the type that suddently leaves without a reason and my reason this time was SCHOOL >w< I don’t know how it works in your contry but here January-February along with May-June are the worst months for every student. 3 or 2 tests tests everyday for weeks, time for yourself? None… Aside that I am ill again and I haven’t had any interesting thing to say to you. I believe that this kind of blog(you know, like mine…) should be first of all informative and helpful for those who read it. Not that I have something against personal blogs, I also write pretty personal posts too, but I prefer focusing on languages and stuff. And, come on, who says we can’t write personal things without putting languages in between??

*The title “There and Back Again” is not mine(of course!), nor it has a particular meaning in this occasion, I just wanted to use it 😀 

 

Since I said that along with personal things we should also add something informative to this blog, I decided to share with you a song I’ve really been into in these last few months~ 

First of all guys, have you seen Frozen? You know, the new Disney animated film 🙂 Well, I did and I fell in love ♥ I know I seem pretty childish, indeed I think I am, but this film was really really great that I went 3 times at the cinema to watch it (I am hopeless!!). Like many of you already know, the soundtrack won several prizes and the main song “Let It Go” is nominated as Best Original Song for this year’s Academy Awards. Given that I love this movie with my whole heart today I wanted to talk about the song. I decided to translate the various version of the song into English and Italian, I already did Korean, Japanese and Chinese and since my blog is mainly about those languages I decided to post a little vocabs list for every version of the song I’ve translated , so you can learn some new vocabulary too~

 

ありのまま= the truth, fact, as it is

姿=すがた= figure, shape, appearance

囁く=ささやく= to whisper, to murmur

打ち明ける=うちあける= to be frank, to speak one’s mind, to open one’s heart 

戸惑い=とまどい= confusion, wanderment

悩む=なやむ= to be worried, to be troubled 

少しも=すこしも= anything, (with negative sentence) not one bit

冷える=ひえる= to grow cold, to get chilly, to cool down 

ほっと= feeling relieved 

Those are the new words I learnt translating this song, did you know them already? 

 

little ps. before leaving: Yesterday I turned 17 ~ I hope this year to be good 😀

SO~~ Bye bye guys~ 再见～~!!!

ちょっと日本語で書きたくて・・＾＾‘

皆さん、こんばんは～

今回はちょっと日本語で書きたくなったからこのブログで書くよｗｗ

先ずは、皆さんはもう冬休みあるの？あれば、休みはどう？クリスマス楽しみにしてるん?

あたし、まだ休みがないけどストだから学校に行ってない。。最近、本当に忙しくて、悲しかったさ・・　ちょっと家族の中問題あって、気分あんまり楽しくない。。でもね、冬休みが来てるから元気に出してみるね！

お祖母ちゃんが病気になって、昨日は手伝って行った。土曜日の朝は、いとこの子残念な事に猫死んだし。。だから今年も静穏なクリスマス過ごす事出来ないかも。

ってか・・・最近、やる気ないからあたしの日本語めっちゃ下手になった-.-　今、日本語で書いてるんけど。。。どうして今日日本語が出来ないの？　これは本当のベイシックな日本語。。なんて最悪なーぁ

まあ、実は勉強あんまりしなかった今週はね＾＾‘　そろそろ怠け者になってるんね・・　でも、あたしはね、大変な女の子だと思うu_u　6語の外国語が勉強するからたまに頭めちゃくちゃになったりするね！

そして、昨晩雪女の物語インターネットで読んではじめてw子供のため物語なのに。。。ｗｗ　難しいだった。。漢字勉強しなくちゃ、ほんまに>.<　皆、漢字の練習のおススメ本ある？知ったら、コメントでぜひ書いてね＾＾

じゃ～　ここで終わると思う！

読んでくれてありがとうございます～　皆さん、いい一日を！

じゃまたね～！

☃

Some useful resources for Chinese

Wow…. me… actually writing a “useful” post…. so rare…

Hello everyone!

 大家好~!

Today I want to talk about Chinese, which I’ve never talked about before…Not that I have too much to say, I decided to do HSK 1or 2 and I am super anxious about it >w< Chinese is a wonderful language and I enjoy studying it a lot but an exam (even at a low level) needs dedication and time, which I don’t have. In the very first two HSK the biggest effort is memorizing the given vocabulary and knowing very basic grammar. I’ve memorized almost all the first 150 vocabs for the first exam and I know basic grammar, the exam is in June so I could also learn the level 2 one too, maybe…

Anyway if you are studying Chinese I have a list of sites that could help you with your learnig~~!! I hope you’ll like it!

 

Chinese Keyboard Traditional/Simplified Imput Here it is, my best friend! I don’t know you guys, but my PC is pretty old and doesn’t support all the east asian languages so for Chinese I have to use an online keyboard. You can find various good ones online, but I like this one for having both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Personally I use Simplified Chinese more, but since I have friends from Taiwan and friends who learn Traditional Chinese it’s a very useful tool for me. 

Yes Chinese Pretty simple website for beginners! I mostly use it for vocabulary, I like it because it teaches you words not only with the translation but with sample sentence, putting the words in a context ^^

As for grammar I am using all Italian resources (If you are interested though click here, I am using this book right now and I think it’s pretty cool!) but  I have a grammar in English ⇒ Basic Chinese I haven’t read it all yet but for what I could see it is pretty far from basic^^ I suggest it, and also there are exercises if you want to practice!

Taiwanese Tv most of the times I can’t understand a single word of what they are saying but it’s a good exercise to practice listening and to enjoy foreign tv shows or dramas. Also in this site there is the Japanese and Korean tv ★

And here some of my favourite Chinese related Youtube channels:

Happy Chinese Series A funny sit-com of a foreign girl in China. It is mostly for advanced learners but thanks to the English sub you can try following the scenes. At the end of every episode there’s a short explenation of one Chinese expression, 你好 or 您好 for example!

Fiona Tian I learnt tones from her basicly ^^ I like how she explains!

learnchinesenow I love this channel. Interesting videos about china and Chinese: from basic vocabulary to poems and idioms *^*

Off the Great Wall Parodies about Chinese(Asian) culture, I think they are really funny. Also in their channer you can find useful information about Chinese language^^

 

I guess that’s all for today~~!! 

再见～ 

Do you have any good Chinese website or books to suggest?

 

 

 

What 2 weeks(pretty much) of full immersion in Korean have done to me

Hello~ 

I kind of woke up(again) from my lethargic status, I was ill(again..)

Anyway, let’s talk about other (funnier) things!

2 weeks ago I posted a picture of Super Junior my mobile pone, telling you I was going to full immerse into Korean for some time. Now about 2 weeks are passed and I can see some positive results! ^^

Having studied for about 2 years Japanese actually made me a little bit too used to Kanji and Kana that, graphically speaking, can make reading comprehension a lot easy, because you can work out the meanings more fast. To be honest, even if I studied and learned hangeul quite some time ago, I could read it well but the immediate comprehension was a little bit hard for me, still a beginner.. Putting everything I learned in a context helped me a lot from that point of view. Sometimes we study too much grammar and vocabulary without seeing the actual “usage” of it in the spoken language.

I give you a quick example: I use a lot this application for smartphones called LINE(It’s a chatting app), when a new message arrives a green box appears in your screen and you have to options: close or view, in Korean —>  닫기 and 보기. Now I know the two verbs 딛다 and 보다 and I also came across the -기 form that makes the verb into a noun. I got how to use it and the meaning but seeing how it’s used in “real life” makes things easier for me… 

Another thing I did during these 2 weeks was watching and listening to a lot of Korean medias(Dramas, TV shows, Music… ). When I was listening to a song or watching a drama, everytime I heard some familiar grammar patterns or vocabulary, the little light bulm inside my head switched on: “Hey, I can recognise that word!”, “Wow, I understood what he’s saying”, “So this is how it is used..” you know things like that. Of course it’s not like I can understand everything or that with two weeks of this I became a pro in Korean, I am a mere beginner, I still have to learn A LOT! 

To conclude, this full immersion thing ain’t new and I’ve tried it already with Japanese but this time I was able to get into the language more quickly. I think that the actual point of all of this is that when learning a language things should become obvious to you. When I listen to a song I watch a drama I always keep my brain working, ready to get some new words or grammar from the context, always trying to understand the situation. It’s like being a baby when learning how to speak, catching informations and make them his/hers. I don’t know if you get what I mean though^^` I think I am starting to get complicated here…

Now I can only say that I think you should also try to put books aside and get more active in a language!

So.. this is everything for today, if you read untill here, thank you for your patience ^0^

See you next time~`

Ps. there are some “CONs” in all of this, you’ll start swearing around like the sassiest protagonist of a romance drama… 아이씨~~~

My translations~

Hello everyone!

I’ve just opened a new blog to post all my translations. I translate from every language I know into English or Italian. Translating songs is a good exercise to learn new vocabulary and to fix grammar stuctures. So, if you have a request you can ask me there. 

Here it is:

http://killingquietness.tumblr.com/

Thank you for reading 😀

 

Yesterday a friend of mine sent me this song

I guess it is Tpop (?) 

eheheh anyway what do you think about Thailandese language? 

I like the sound its sound but it also seems really really complicate >w<

See you soon~~

Love for shoes in Korean and Japanese..

Hello everyone! 

I just recovered from a very very bad flue, I passed 10 days at home and the very first thing I did today in school was a test T^T Anyway, I am fine today and I fel like writing a blog post^^ 

Last time I did a mini-lesson about common phrases when you are ill(I guess I can call it a lesson!), I surprisingly learn a lot from my situations, for example as soon as the doctor told me what I had I immediatly googled the Japanese for it, it was 風邪+副鼻腔炎(sinusitis)+咽頭炎(pharyngitis) all together, a total hell basicly!

But, to be honest, I am looking foward a full recovery so let’s just talk about something else, shall we??

아이두 아이두~~~~

 I litterally fell in love with this drama! I think it’s pretty different from the other dramas I’ve seen, maybe it’s because I am still a teenager and I mostly watch school dramas or romantic dramas and stuff and stuff so this was more “adult” to me, the topics and the dialogues were pretty mature to me… But it was so beautiful, the plot and the ACTORS… just amazing!! Go watch it now!!

Another thing that made me go crazy for this drama was the linking thread of everything: SHOES! 

I love shoes, I don’t really care about clothes or bags, I could live dressed like a witch but with high heels on^^` Anyway I thought it could be nice to talk about the vocabulary for our feet ^^

First of all, SHOES

Japanese　靴　くつ

Korean　구두 or 신발, the difference between them? 구두 are shoes with high heels, 신발 are usually footwears like training shoes or flat shoes^^

If you are also studing Chinese 鞋子xiézi

Socks 

Japanese 靴下 くつした This word is really nice becaus the two kanji are the kanji for shoe and under so under the shoe= socks^^

Korean 양말

Chinese 袜子 wàzi

In Japanese when you want to say you wear something in the lower half of your body(shoes and socks included) you would use 履く　はく  and in Korean 신다, they are both Transitive Verbs so they need the object marking particle.

靴を履く(usually only written with Hiragana only): to wear shoes

구두를 신다 / 신발을 신다: to wear shoes

and when you want to say you take off or remove your shoes you would use the verb 脱ぐ ぬぐ in Japanese and the verb 벗다 in Korean, both Transitive verbs so the object marking particle is needed.

靴を脱ぐ: to take off one’s shoes

구두를 신다 / 신발을 벗다: to take off one’s shoes

Just a note to conclude, of course I am no professionist, to me learning languages is just pure fun and I love to share here and there some tips and this kind of “”””””””lessons””””””””” but I am not mistake-proof, I ‘ll be more than glad if you tell me if something is wrong, I mean, I am also here to learn from you..

I am sorry for all the boys who will read this post, I guess it was too much girly(?) anyway I hope you will find it interesting!

For girls: do you like shoes? what type? 😀

 

I leave you with these shoes from the drama I do, I do *-* so beutiful~~

 

 

To be sick in..

Fever, sore throat.. Hey it’s the cold I just got! I am all day at home and fever makes me loose energy to do anything, literally. Anyway it won’t be just an autumn cold that brings me down!

Indeed, I decided  to learn some new words in Korean..

병이 났어요   病気になりました  I am ill

병= ilness, sickness

이=subject marker

났어요=past, polite form of 나다= to come out, to spring up, to occour

빨리 나으세요  早く良くになってください　Get well soon

빨리= quickly, fast, rapidly

나으세요= polite, imperative form of 낫다=(as for ilness) to recover, to get well, to be cured

감기 조심하세요 風邪に気をつけてください Be careful not to catch a cold, Be careful of the cold

감기= cold, flu, influenza

조심= care, carefulness, precaution, caution

조심하세= polite, imperative form of 조심하다=take care, be careful, beware

I’ve found these words on the internet, then I used a dictionary to write down the meanings. I hope it can be useful~

I am off for a cup of hot tea, I hope I will feel better!

여러분,감기 조심해!

선생님이 됐어??

Nothing big.. Just a friend of mine asked me to teach him Korean and even if I am a beginner myself I thought “why not? Challenge Accepted!” and I started it!

Actually, through “teaching” I realised that I know more things that I thought… Usually, when you are already used to some expressions and meanings, making people understand them can be quite a challenge. For example the difference between 은/는 and 이/가, to me it is pretty clear but to explain it it’s another cup of tea.. And actually you have to adapt to the person that is in front of you, not everyone get things as you do, so it also requires a lot a bit of patience^^`

If you have or will have the possibility to do something like this, I highly suggest you to give this “teaching” thing a try! It really can help you reviewing and fixing topics. Also I guess you can call it “experience”, I don’t know how it works in your country but here it’s pretty common to give lesson to juniors when you are in high school, to get some pocket money. I want to try it out because I really need to get some money for the year abroad, if I pass the tests…

Have you ever tried teaching? How did it go? ~

I am off now, I have to finish French homework(助けてええええ！！) 

Bye bye~~`