Should You Learn Korean?

Should you learn Korean? Should I learn Korean? Should I learn a language? Perhaps you have pondered about this before? Perhaps are thinking of starting to learn a language or just recently started learning a language and are wondering if it's for you? I'm going to presume you clicked this article because you fall into one of these two categories.

It's very normal to have doubts when starting or before starting on a long term goal. Partly doubt of whether you will succeed and partly doubt of whether you think the investment is worth it. I'm sure we all have the same doubts when it comes to spending the valuable resources, time and money.

I want to focus on whether one should learn Korean as a western native language speaker. If you already know or were raised with a Sino-language then the journey will be easier, similarly as it would for a native English speaker to learn, say, a romance language. Because of the huge time commitment required, there are what some would consider good reasons and bad reasons to even start in the first place.

The common misconceptions about a reason are:

• It is your only reason.
• It will be your only reason forever.
• It is less valid because it doesn't consider economic gain.

In actual fact you reason for learning can be anything. The important thing is that your reason allows you to come back every day and work towards your goal. It's extremely common for people to change their goals as they learn more. Kpop or Kdramas may be your entry into the language but 9 times out of 10 the learner will develop a range of reasons to continue to learn the language year in year out.

Every reason is just as valid for learning Korean and having an odd reason is a great talking point among learners. However when it comes to motivation your reason can be put to the test. This is then when the discipline kicks in. Highly disciplined people will be successful regardless of their motivations or goals. If you are not highly disciplined, it may be a good idea to check out how highly disciplined people operate and think.

Why did you choose Korean?

Any reason counts

Personally my opinion on distant languages like Korean for English speakers, is that, it's so very difficult to make progress in them while putting a lot of time in, that it almost becomes not worth it to just be casual learner of the language. Of course as I said, your reason only matters to you. However I do believe certain reasons with provide you with more pure will and motivation to succeed.

If your parents are Korean, your spouse is Korean or you are dead set that you are going to live in Korea for a portion of your life, then it will likely be a no-brainer to learn Korean. However there are many weaker reasons that a person has chose to learn Korean, such as; they want to learn a language but just happened to choose Korean because it appeals to them most or they like the look of Hangeul.

If your goal is centred around something specific to Korean then it is more likely that it you will stick with the language through the lows. If you chose Korean out of a bunch of other languages or for a vague reason like "It's in Asia" then there is a much higher choice that you will get distracted by other languages and other interests. This is why I still think learning for Kpop and Kdramas is a good reason for those that spend a lot of time with them.

As stated in the intro, it is common to pick up another reason after starting your learning journey. You can always spend a few months learning and looking into content that you may enjoy. That way if you do not find anything you like then you can tell early on that Korean is not for you and the time lost will have been minimal.

For those that want to achieve a goal of learning a language, I would say learn a Germanic or Romance language first as it will be much quicker. For extremely disciplined people, I don't believe any words are necessary because these people will have already convinced themselves of their goal and what they will do to achieve it.

Before you decide whether you want to commit to Korean, you must understand that it will take multiple years of 5+ hours a day to achieve understanding of day to day language and longer to achieve conversational fluency. Understanding the time commitment before you even begin learning is a huge factor in whether you will succeed or not.

Some advice for the road

Take some time to think it through

So with all the information laid out and you still find yourself believing that Korean is the language for you. At the beginning or before starting your learning journey I highly recommend watching videos by polyglots to understand their theory and mentality but also checking out the various Korean learners around the Internet to see their progress, so that you will know what kind of level you can expect to be around the time frame of those learners.

I would strongly recommend not spending any money on this endeavour within the first few months to reduce the possible regret you may feel if you quit. There are many free resources that you can use for months including free grammar lessons and free reading material.  It's perfectly viable to learn a language without spending any money. You can follow my Korean Fluency Path to find out which materials are worth using.

You should try to treat the language as you have your native language. Once you have learnt the basic grammar and words you should strive to spend time with things that you enjoy much like you do with your native language. We never become bored of English we simply become bored of the thing we are doing. Treating Korean like this will hopefully inspire you to continue learning for another reason than the one you started with.

Mentally you will need to prepare yourself to spend a lot of time not understanding. Korean has almost minimal cognates with Korean meaning you're needing to learn a whole new set of vocabulary which takes a very long time. On top of that while Korean is relatively easy to write thanks to Hangeul the listening portion of the language is very difficult and condensed. Even after multiple years you will still struggle to understand what is being said.

If you want to plan in advance, I would plan to be fluent in around 4 or 5 years depending on how much time you want to put in. Conversely if your goals are solely to experience another language choose a language that is closer to your native language and you can always come back to Korean at a later date. No matter what you do, you will always wish that you had started learning earlier because the journey is a long one.

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