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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Korean project, thinking in a foreign language

En français
I reached a new step in my learning of Korean recently and that makes me feel so great, now I can think in Korean.
I probably could have done it a bit earlier but I was lacking of confidence about complex sentences especially, so that probably why I can do it just now.

When you know several languages you can choose the one you want to think in.
For some people even if they already know more than one language that seems to be a crazy idea.
I heard people tell me : "It's impossible to choose that when you're thinking you're just thinking".
But that's a pretty illogical argument if it is an argument at all.
The fact is, I have been in an English speaking country for a while now.
I wanted to know English so much that I tried to avoided contact why to many French people.
Now the only person I'm speak French with, is my fiancé, and I got a lot of trouble to speak French with someone else, I always tent to start in English even in the first few days when I go back to France. But when I'm thinking (without choosing a language) I'm just mixing everything, using the words that reach my mind faster.

So when I decide : "OK, this morning I'm going to think in Korean all the way to the lab".
I just start thinking of something I know well, like the last Korean movie I've seen for example or what I could say to a Korean friend, and tell the sentence in my head in Korean.
Of course, I don't always have all the vocabulary I need but if I can find one word I just have to look for it in the dictionary later and the thinking process continues.
That's the only way to practice when you don't have native speaker friends around.
Try it, it's really a valuable way of learning.

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