Hi everyone. I’ve been working on a project mapping out the Korean language curriculum, and I stumbled upon a cultural and linguistic overlap between Korea and Indonesia that I found fascinating.
We all know that expats from English or Spanish-speaking backgrounds struggle massively with the Korean social hierarchy embedded in the language (Jondaetmal vs Banmal). The concept of entirely changing your vocabulary based on the age or status of the person you are talking to feels alien to a Western brain.
However, for Indonesians, this cultural hurdle is practically non-existent.
Indonesian society has a very similar linguistic structure: bahasa halus (formal/polite) vs bahasa gaul/kasar (casual/street). An Indonesian speaker instinctively knows that switching from ‘saya’ (formal ‘I’) to ‘aku’ or ‘gue’ (casual ‘I’) immediately shifts the power dynamic or closeness of the relationship, which maps flawlessly to the Korean 저 / 나.
Because most standard Korean textbooks are written from a Western perspective, they spend chapters trying to explain a cultural concept that Southeast Asians already inherently understand.
I realized this was a huge missed opportunity, so I actually rebuilt the standard TOPIK 1 curriculum specifically engineered for the Indonesian brain, leveraging this exact cultural overlap to bypass the usual learning curve.
I just finished the first 3 interactive lessons of this method. I’m leaving the link here in case there are any Indonesians living in Korea (or language/culture nerds) who want to test it out and see if this localized approach makes sense:
I’m curious to hear from expats or Koreans here: do you notice that Southeast Asian learners adapt to the social nuances of the Korean language faster than Westerners?
submitted by /u/thenextmillionar
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