About

Hi, I'm Brent. I'm a Korean-American going to college in Boston.

This is a blog about my project to learn Korean. I have three goals by the end of 2018:

1) Improve my reading and listening ability to score a 3/3 on the DLPT,

2) Speak with a native Seoul accent,

3) Talk with my mom in Korean only instead of the Konglish thing we do now.

Why Korean? I was born and raised in Metro Detroit as the child of Korean immigrants. Although I was raised with some aspects of Korean culture (especially food) that shaped who I am, I never learned the language to fluency. As a result, I always felt that I missed out on a lot of cultural understanding, as well as better relationships with my relatives. I figured might as well fix that now while I have the chance.

Why Now? I have nothing going on this summer, and since I'm working full-time instead of going to classes in the fall, I have a lot of free time. Also, I want to pass the DLPT before my senior year of college.

DLPT? This is the Defense Language Proficiency Test that the military offers. I'm an Army cadet, and passing the DLPT in Korean is a qualification that will improve my ranking as a cadet and hopefully open some doors in the future. I need a 2/2 to pass, but I'm aiming for a 3/3 because I'm not starting from scratch and shoot for the moon I guess. Also, I'm hoping that the experience of learning Korean will help me improve my methods and motivation for improving my Levantine Arabic, which is plateauing pretty hard.

Seoul accent? My parents are both from Seoul, and the Korean I know right now is in a Seoul accent. Fortunately, it's almost the same as Standard Korean. Ultimately, I want to sound like someone from an actual place who speaks like a normal person, not a robot who learned textbook Korean. So I want to eventually pick up slang words and common idioms as well.

Kyopo? What's that? Kyopo/Gyopo is a word to describe Koreans outside Korea. There's differing opinions on who exactly is a gyopo. Some people use it only for those born in Korea that emigrated. Some people use it for people like me, who were born outside of Korea but are ethnically Korean. Sometimes it's a derogative term for those disconnected from Korean culture, also like me. A lot of times, it's more neutral. Some embrace the term. Some in Korea embrace gyopos who move to Korea warmly, and some look down on us. But I chose that word because of the alliteration with "Korean". Kyopo Korean, sounds kind of cool, doesn't it? At least I think it does.

Why a Blog? Why not? I think language is fascinating, and this is an outlet to share some things that I find neat along the way. Also, having myself write this blog regularly will hopefully keep me accountable to some level to practice Korean regularly.