Article by Gerrit Du Plessis
Do you want to learn Korean online? Well, you should give it a try!
Learning Korean online is a great substitute to attending an inconvenient class to study material presented at an inconvenient pace. And many local schools and colleges don’t even have a class in Korean! Choosing your own Korean language program on the internet allows you the flexibility to match the way you learn with the kind of program you want.
But before you commit to a method of learning Korean online, you’ll need to keep a few things in mind. First, Korean is not just one language, but many, each representing a different level of politeness. For example, if we want to greet someone in English we say hello, regardless of whether that person is the postman or the Pope. In Korea, it’s completely different. In Korean, the way you would greet a person is dependent on his social position, age, or his relationship to you. English speakers acknowledge the qualitative distinction between “Goodbye” and “See ya,” but we don’t take the substitution of one phrase for another very seriously. Koreans do. Clearly, when learning Korean online you should look for a course that explains the fine points of Korean culture; in this case, you can see that just learning to pronounce the words is not enough!
There’s another obvious between Korean and any other language you may have studied. Korean is written in a special alphabet called Hangul or Hanguel. Visual learners, who are dependent on reading to lock in new information, often have great difficulty learning a language they can’t read. Thankfully, it’s possible to write Korean using a Romanized alphabet by phonetically representing the individual sounds, and visual learners should make sure this Romanized alphabet is part of the program they choose for learning Korean online.
We hope that by now you’re ready to plunge into learning Korean online, and you’ve chosen a program that works for you – but is there anything you can do to accelerate the process? Why not find some Korean-speaking friends? Some online language programs have student forums you can join, where people learning Korean can share problems and successes. Many of these forums are moderated by native Korean speakers who can help you with any problems you may be having. But the mere ability to interact with other students sharing the same experience is the most priceless part of belonging to a forum.
Hopefully this article has made you more confident about learning Korean online. Are you up to the challenge?
About the Author
Do you need help learning Korean? Gerrit’s learn Korean online site will take you by the hand and introduce you to different language course that really work. Click this link and discover why Rocket Korean is our #1 recommended course…