Language Bubble

The last two days have been a bit of an anomaly when you look at my time back in Australia. I do have a fair amount of chance to practice Korean in Perth, but due to being busy with research and having a family life, this isn’t all that realistic. However, the last two days have been pretty interesting and given me some confidence since it’s nice to know that my Korean isn’t vanishing into thin air while I’m here… even though I’m not the most diligent Korean student in the world.

Let’s be honest… I do study, it’s just that I don’t study Korean seriously. I read stories, write diaries, watch drama and chat on MSN… that’s about it when it comes to my Korean study these days. I do do other things, just not consistently enough to call them a part of my Korean schedule.

In any case, I’m still capable in the language. Yesterday I met my 누나… someone I have known since about 2006 I guess. I had lunch with her, her husband, her mum and two younger sisters. Her mum and sisters were visiting from Korea and wanted to speak with an Australian… so, it was me. Altogether I think we spoke for about 2.5 hours; about 50/50 Korean and English overall. I tried to speak a lot of Korean, and her sister wanted to try speaking in English as she is considering coming to Perth to study, so it was kind of constant code-switching and code-mixing.

Today I met a virtual language exchange I have had for a little while. We have been correcting each other’s writing over at Lang-8 for about a month and she arrived in Perth on a working holiday last week. And since she doesn’t know anyone here we decided to meet… IRL… OMG!  Anyway, we had a good chat for a few hours in about two-thirds Korean… covering a lot of ground across a heap of topics. Bonus for me is that from yesterday experience and going at again today, I felt a lot of automacity in my speech. Something which I believed had been fading - even on well-known topics – since being in Perth.

So yeah, this week alone… circa 5 hours of conversation. Keep up the feeling of these two conversations and TOPIK 5 next year doesn’t look such a steep hill to climb.