Welcome!

Warning: This blog is not going to teach you Korean. It isn’t even going to try to teach you Korean.

Then why the heck am I here and what am I doing? Yeah, I’m not a qualified Korean teacher, but what I am is a native English speaker who has been seriously studying Korean for a little less than 2 years and who loves grammar, etymology, word play, dad jokes, rhyming, alliteration, and finding ways to make learning fun for myself and (I hope) for other people, too.

So if you’re looking for someone to teach you Korean, I have to tell you … this blog ain’t the place. However, if you’re already studying Korean and are looking for someplace to read about a fellow student’s thoughts, realizations, and attempts to explain random stuff … welcome!

When I first started learning Korean, I struggled a lot and got SO much help from other students! I found that sometimes someone who knew only a little more than me could help me more than someone who knew a LOT more, because someone who’s fluent often didn’t understand why something was confusing to a beginner. Sometimes when I asked really advanced students or native speakers for help, they gave me answers that I really couldn’t understand and I ended up feeling a bit discouraged, but sometimes other less-advanced students could explain things to me in baby words and the lightbulb would go off over my head and I’d finally understand something that had been kicking my butt.

So that’s where I come in with this blog … I’m not a very advanced student, so that means I should be able to help more than a native speaker, right? LOL

No, definitely not, but I might be able to help in different ways, because I’ve experienced the struggle, too!

For the past 8 months or so, I’ve been helping with giving feedback on other students’ writing in one of the self-study clubs at the online Korean school I attend. I found that a lot of people had common questions about particles, markers, conjugation, word order, word spacing, and other stuff. I kept writing explanations to try to clarify things for them as best I could … and the idea for this blog began to grow.

I’ve also had long and extremely nerdy conversations in DMs with friends about Korean grammar, Hanja, and all kinds of other obsessive stuff I thought no one else would be interested in, but then when I started mentioning some of it on Twitter, people were curious, so I thought … huh … and the idea for this blog began to grow even more.

Let me give a massive DISCLAIMER about my level of Korean knowledge: I AM NOT FLUENT. I will probably write things here that are wrong, but I’ll try to always make it clear when I’m speculating or trying to figure something out, as opposed to stating facts. I’ll probably still mess up sometimes, but I’ll do my best!

I’m also planning to give links here to resources I find useful, like specific YouTube videos or HTSK lessons that explain something I’m working on. Like I have a favorite YouTube video for explaining how to understand large numbers in Korean … that sort of stuff. I’ll try to point you to places where people who know a lot more than me explain things way better than I could.

This isn’t going to be some kind of organized system of lessons or anything … just my random thoughts inspired by conversations I’m having or things I’m encountering in my studies and when helping other students with their homework. But I hope it will be interesting, useful, and … above all … fun!

And … hey … what’s that name all about? Moonbop Bebop? What the heck? Well … Moonbop comes from 문법, the Korean word for “grammar.” And Bebop? 비법 in Korean refers to a sort of secret way of doing things. So in this blog, I’ll do my best to share whatever grammar secrets I’m able to figure out … along with whatever other random Korean or general language learning stuff that strikes my fancy. I hope some of it is interesting to other people as well as me!