SOTTOVUOTO

The Experiment

So I started this thing recently. It’s my little self-experiment.

I joined a small Korean Mastodon server. It was more of a curiosity, nothing really serious about it. But it’s been a week already in this new place and I really like it so far!

Only two languages allowed: English and Korean, so I’m forced to try both. To be honest, everyone just uses Korean so I end up using mostly that language. It’s still a bit awkward to me. I think it must be obvious that I’m not familiar with the language and I’m going a bit too far from what is comfortable to me. But, at the same, is quite an exciting challenge!

As for me: I had a period in my life where I was serious about learning this language. I had this coveted dream to go and live in some East Asian country and I picked South Korea as an interesting destination for me, so that’s when I felt the urge to learn the language. Life then took another turn, years have passed, and I mostly lost the little I’ve learnt during that time. But I won’t forget the fond memories and the excitement that discovering a new culture can bring. And since then, I always wanted to go back to it.

I just needed the right excuse.

So the excuse finally came by joining this server. I get by mostly through the translator (God bless it!), but I was amazed on how I could pick up some sentences, the things I still remember and those I still need to learn. The server is a perfect place to learn, and after a week I gotta say, I’m learning a lot!

What started as a joke is turning out as a very exciting experiment.

There are a few things that make this place work so well:

  1. People just toot random things, and I can look and learn what people tend to say every day, rather than studying from grammar examples

  2. By translating and repeating words and sentences, I’m starting to see some grammatical patterns. Nothing big, but there are some things that start to get familiar (you know when something starts to sound “right” in your mind)

  3. I can answer to someone and there’s a lot less pressure than 1:1 conversations. People answer to me if they want, and then they can go back to their business. There are plenty of other interesting people around, so I don’t need to “perform” in front of someone and keep a conversation going.

  4. You just stumble upon conversations, and you don’t need to “create” new ones

  5. People are chill and quite welcoming!

  6. I’m “forced” to use Korean most of the time. So there’s no shortcut to that.

  7. Finally, there’s A LOT that I still don’t understand and this thing bugs me. And this feeling of needing to know more is the best fuel to start learning again.

And that’s what I did! I took out the old and dusty memory cards and I got back studying them. Other than getting back to learning grammar and probably, in the future, watching some shows to get back to it.

It’s still kinda awkward. I still have to rely heavily on the translator (there’s no way I can hold the same conversation in real life!) and my answers to simple questions are a guessing game most of the time. But I really like how this experiment is going!