For a moment, I felt alienated from this language I’ve known my whole life. My task was to match the letter with its romanization, but the Roman letters didn’t match with my recollection of the pronunciation of the language I’d been spoken to since I was born. The first lessons are intended to teach users the basic Hangul letters, to match the sounds with the letters and then begin putting them together. In Duolingo, you must start from the beginning. With such a convenient tool at my disposal, why wouldn’t I replace my doomscrolling with a little language learning?

Language learning apps like Duolingo promise to turn our previously wasted social media scrolling time into productive bursts of self-improvement. I recently downloaded Duolingo in an attempt to regain some of my fluency. I have a solid grasp of Hangul, the Korean alphabet, however, and a smattering of basic survival words, most of which I learned at home when my mother urged me to “bballi bballi mogo” - eat faster, faster. Over time, though, English took over as my primary language. HOWEVER Duolingo is good for if you want to review what you have learned from other lessons.I was born in the United States, but raised by my Korean mother, who exposed me to her language early and consistently. I didn't notice it at the time, but now I look back at the website and notice it. As a beginner who didn't know ANYTHING about Korean, the audios all sounded the same to me. It uses phrases that are NOT used in everyday sentences, such as 'the bus climbed up the chair' as a way to catch the readers attention but in reality it just holds you back because you don't learn ways to use it in real life. This can affect the way you speak in the future. This is bad because once the reader actually learns 한글, they still depend too much on the romanization. It relies WAY too much on romanization to teach 한글 (Hangul) from the beginning. I would much rather you learn from Korean Unnie or TTMIK on YouTube. Take it from someone whose been studying for over half a year now that while Duolingo may be great for reviewing it, not as a beginning source.

Hangul duolingo