The FIRST Thing to Learn When Studying Korean | Korean Interviews

What was the first thing you did when you started learning Korean?

For me, it was learning the alphabet. Okay, actually the first thing I learned were some swear words and some useless phrases (someone else taught them to me), but the first actual thing I did when I was trying to study the language was learning the alphabet. It just made the most sense to start from there, because I didn’t trust romanization early on.

As a language student it made sense to me, but I wanted to know what Koreans thought was the first step when learning a second language. Would they recommend learning the alphabet, or something else? I asked Koreans in Seoul what they would learn first, if they had to learn Korean. Here’s how they responded: