IWTYAL 099: How to cope with a different alphabet

Isabelle asks: “I'm learning Korean, but I'm slow at reading. How can I improve?”

In this episode:

• An unfamiliar alphabet can be off-putting
• Some alphabets present significant challenges (e.g. Chinese)
• Korean is relatively easy – only 24 characters
• The pronunciation is reflected in the characters (unlike Chinese, for example)
• Learn all the characters and associated sounds at the beginning
• Improving is really just a question of practice
• Keep away from romanisation
• Persist!

Resources mentioned in today's episode:

• About the Korean language – a great summary from the Omniglot blog
• Polyglot Pub Facebook Group – language meetups I run in London
• Polyglot Pub Email List – get email notifications about events

Your Homework!

Help me create an amazing feature for the 100th episode!

I'd like to create a montage of voices of podcast listeners from around the world, all giving one piece of language advice they've learned from the show.

This would be such a great way to commemorate the 100th episode, and provide motivation for all of you out there learning languages on your own.

If you'd like to participate, please click the link below and leave a short message including the following information:

1. Name
2. Where you're from
3. The ONE thing you've learned from the show that's made a big difference to your language learning

Click here to leave the message

Start speaking today

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See you in the next episode of the I Will Teach You A Language podcast!

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.