How is learning Korean going?

It's very, very difficult. At least for me it is. Things that are difficult about Korean (so far):

1. Politeness levels. There are five different levels of politeness in Korean, from informal to honorific. All the verbs and pronouns change quite significantly between them too, so even if you can work out how you should address them, by the time you have you've probably forgotten how you should be conjugating the verb.

2. Number of words. For example, when dealing with family, there are entirely separate words for brother and sister, depending on whether you are a boy or a girl, and whether they are older or younger than you. None of them seem to have much of a link between them either.

3. Not having an alphabet to remember words in. I (if you believe in classroom intelligences) am a visual learner. I remember words by picturing the letters in my head. This worked OK for Spanish, as the alphabet was the same. In Korean however, I don't have that inbuilt alphabet to visualise the words (I can read and write, but very slowly). This means that I'm stuck with remembering sounds, which disappear out of my head almost as quickly as they arrive.

4. A complete new grammar. Korean uses a system of particles. Syllables added to words to denote subject, object, contrast, possession and suchlike. Word order is not so important as in English (though the verb always comes last in a sentence). Adjectives also get conjugated, though this kind of makes sense. It seems to be only for things like "the dog is big", where the "to be" part just becomes a part of the adjective. Finally, and this really blew my mind, verbs are also conjugated according to the conjunction that would follow. This means that the concept of and, but, then etc. is also contained in the verb. I am, eventually, going to really enjoy dealing with Korean grammar, but it's a long steep road ahead.

5. My pronunciation is terrible. It's terrible in Spanish too. I'm really past the age where I can train my mouth to form new sounds easily. Still, I try, but asking for stuff in shops still usually meets with a blank stare. I do wonder whether it's slightly that people assume that I don't speak Korean, but I suspect it's more because I'm mangling the words, not least because speaking it makes me really nervous.

Still, there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. I am beginning to pick out the odd word in what people say to me, and my student' minds are blown that I can say some things in Korean. I also have a posse of teachers (I'm at a loss as to what the correct collective noun is here), ranging from the Chinese teacher at my school to my fifth grade students at elementary school. With them, Rosetta Stone and the internet I might just get there. I also bought a new learning tool on Sunday. Here is a picture:

Disturbingly, this is not the first book I've seen here that has misspelled English on the front cover. I could fill another entire blog (and people have) with examples of dreadful translation I see here, but you would think that getting the subject of the book spelt correctly on the cover might not be too difficult. Anyway, I theorise that while the English may be awful, the Korean is probably OK, so I'm going to learn a few phrases from here, and so are you:

일자리가 있습니까

Iljarika iseumnida?

Do you have any openings?

I sincerely hope it's talking about jobs.

Good night.

A