I’ve been learning Korean for about 7-8 years now. I started off as a KPOP fan in the year of 2009 when Girl’s Generation and Wonder Girls were gaining popularity. Following that, I continued to keep up with my interest in Korean pop music by searching for the translation of lyrics of songs I was listening to, just so that I could understand what I was hearing and grasp the main message of the song(s). I started delving deeper into KPOP around 2014/15 when I was going through major life changes after a personal incident led me to re-evaluate how I perceive myself. Since I started off as a KPOP fan pretty early on in my life, I wanted to understand what I was listening to as I believe that what I feed my mind can manifest in my thoughts and actions. Song lyrics were the primary medium of Korean that I was exposed to and they included a mix of both formal and informal Korean.
I also watched Korean dramas, mostly mid-length series, spanning 12 to 20 episodes that air over a duration of roughly two months. In terms of the use of Korean language in K-dramas, it helps that the language is contextualised and applied to real-life situations or an imitation of real-life scenarios. Another form of Korean I was exposed to was tweets. Being a KPOP fan, it was not uncommon to follow my favourite KPOP artists on Twitter where they posted photos with captions in Korean or longer tweets written in Korean. Being on Twitter since 2014, which is about 8 years so roughly the same amount of time that I have been learning Korean, I have been exposed more regularly to Korean script than text in my mother tongue (Malay). As such, some Korean words were often more accessible than Malay words, likely due to the strength of association and frequency of use.
I am proud to say that I now know enough to understand – I can understand more than I speak due to my lack of foundation in the grammar aspect of Korean – as well as translate, which I would consider to be an advanced level of Korean. I am currently doing translations for a fanpage of The Boyz member Hyunjae, which involves translating his messages on a fan-focused application as well as interview responses, promotional content, etc.
In the future, I hope to get proper certification or a placement test to determine my proficiency level in the language. Currently, my Korean proficiency level is ambiguous as I am not sure if I should consider myself to be an advanced speaker because I lack basic training in the language. As language learners, it is important not to become complacent and instead, we should humble ourselves when learning a language as it does not come as easily for some people. Thankfully, learning languages comes quite naturally to me as long as I have the interest.
This post was written by Aqilah, our #SGUnited intern. Aqilah is a 3rd year Psychology student and speaks English, Malay, Korean, Spanish and Arabic.