만세!

I think my favorite thing about learning a language is learning a new word, phrase, or grammatical concept, and then hearing it used repeatedly in real life shortly afterward. Sidenote: 'afterword' and 'afterward' have different meanings. Just realized that.

The picture is taken from a children's book that I studied this week. It's about a little boy playing with his toy soldiers, and it takes a look at how the boy sees things in his imagination. You're probably thinking this book is made for 1st graders; well, in fact, it is made for first graders. But, that's just where I'm at, as far as my reading material is concerned.

Regardless, the cool thing is that one of the words I learned was '만세' (pronounced 'mahnsay'). It means "hooray." I learned it on Sunday night, and by Monday night, I'd heard it in at least 5 different natural situations, either through my students or on TV.

It's a really cool experience for me. Imagine that language is like a beautiful piece of scenery, but there's a huge wall in the way. Each word or concept you learn knocks out a very small chunk from the wall, allowing you to see a little bit more of what's on the other side. Knocking out a chunk from your side is like learning a new word. Seeing something beautiful on the other side is like hearing that word being used randomly, perhaps as you walk by someone talking on a phone. It's especially cool during the first couple encounters you have with it.

I'll be the first to admit though, if the holes aren't re-poked periodically, they close back up. I heard the word for 'business trip' today (출장), and as I hadn't really heard or used the word much since learning it a month ago, I could only remember that it sounded familiar and eventually had to look it up cause it was bugging me too much.

So, all this talk of language begs the question: how far along am I? I started with Korean almost two years ago. Hmmm. Well, I can have basic conversations. Any sentence over 4 or 5 words frustrates me. When I watch the news, I understand less than 1%. Watching a cartoon is easier, and I can usually grasp about 5-10%. With subtitles, about 20%.
I can usually talk to my kids, especially the younger ones. I can answer most of their questions, especially since they always ask the same ones over and over again ("Where are you from?" "What are you doing?" "Can I have some candy?"). sometimes they laugh at my accent, and sometimes they have absolutely know clue what I'm saying. I can't talk to the other teachers at my school though, because they talk to me like I'm a 29 year-old Korean and have little to no patience for my haphazardly halting style of speech.
If I somehow meet a random person, I can hold a simple conversation with them for about 10-30 minutes, tops, depending on the situation. Doctor's office: no chance. Random bum on the street: higher chance, depending on how many teeth he has. Having a couple drinks definitely raises those stats.
My girlfriend dumbs down her speech when she's talking to me, so we can have a conversation for maybe an hour, depending on the subject.
I think word counts are an ineffective way of keeping track of one's progress, especially given the fact that the most common words have the most meanings. Consider the word 'run.' If you're an intermediate English learner, and you say that you know the word 'run' in English, you're probably only referring to 3-8 usages of the word, as opposed to the 70+ usages it actually has. Also, saying that you know a word is highly ambiguous. Would you recognize it if a child used it in a short sentence? What if a newscaster used it in a 20-word-long sentence? If you need to use that word, how long will it take you to remember it? Milliseconds? Seconds?
That being said, I think that I know about 1500 words, give or take 400. (Yes, I'm sure you've heard that knowing the 1000 most useful words in Italian will grant you 90% fluency. This seems unreasonable to me, considering the above paragraph).

Basically, I'm still not fluent. My prediction is that, pending continued study, I'll be fluent in another 2 or 3 years.

Spanish is sounding more dreamy than ever.