Chinese vs Korean

Yesterday I had a call with my Korean friend Tiffany to practice Korean. It went quite well, however, I noticed something interesting – I wanted to use Chinese grammar to say “I have a friend” – In chinese it is “I – there is – one – piece – friend” with a counter word, but in Korean the word order is totally different, the verb goes at the end and there is not counter word – it is just “I – friend – there is”. I got so confused for a moment, but luckily I remembered the correct way quickly.

It got me thinking that now my Chinese is starting to overpower Korean and that probably I should practice Korean more or maybe even come back to Korean books and start learning again, because right now I’m just keeping it in maintenance mode. I also thought how I’m still not satisfied with my Korean. I can talk in Korean non-stop for one hour, but it’s not fluent, I have to think what I’m going to say, sometimes I get stuck. In other words, it’s far from perfect.

So last night I was again dreaming of going to Korea to learn the language properly. I even started checking out different visa options etc. We’re in the middle of the pandemic so of course it’s not gonna happen any time soon, but we all have dreams and aspirations, and this is one of mine. However, as soon as I start to think about it the second voice chimes in: “and what about Mandarin? You have to take it to fluency as well!” and I just get overwhelmed 🙂

But I think that luckily I’m still young and with the right planning and cooperation from my hubby we might just be able to pull it off 😉

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