Chapter 12. [Korea, Japan, and America]

How did you suddenly learn to understand Korean?

I’ve never studied Korean.

But, the only time I’ve had anything to do with Korean was when an exchange student came to Japan, my mother was addicted to Korean dramas in her previous life, hanging recordings in the living room, and when watching VTuber streams from the Korean-speaking world in my previous life.

…… Huh? That’s more than I thought.

>I thought this was a lost project.

>I guess you mean you were pretending you didn’t know what you were talking about?

>This is a surprise, isn’t it?

“No, I didn’t understand at first. But as I listened, I somehow understood.”

“Somehow?

>You can learn to speak Korean somehow?

>I don’t think so.

>This is indeed a lie.

“Oh, wait, can you explain exactly how you learned it? I’m really curious!　Honestly, I’d like to use it as a reference!”

“Let’s see.”

Surprisingly, the words came out naturally.

“First, I was listening to their conversation and thought many words were pronounced very similar to Japanese. From there, I realized that the grammar was almost the same as in Japanese. If I knew that much, I could roughly analogize the meaning of the sentences, so I matched the particles from the content.”

>????

>Yeah, I don’t understand.

>”Japanese is fine.

“To add, I understood the sentence earlier because the nouns were pronounced the same as in Japanese, or were verbs that I already knew. ……That’s how I got into it, I guess. Then my understanding progressed. And I can speak it now.”

>Now you can speak←? ??

>I don’t understand what you mean by I can speak it now.

>In short, I think it means that she remembers all the words she heard once.

“Wow, it’s true. If you ask me, once I understand the meaning of a word, I may already be familiar with that word.”

>Hey, you did that unconsciously!

>Gifted people actually make up 2% of the total, so it’s not impossible.

>But it is a major gift for gifted people to be able to remember a word once they hear it.

>Ah, I think I’m starting to get it. Growth is not a slope but a staircase. Do you know how you suddenly could read long English sentences easily after a certain point? I think what just happened was a great version of that.

>Someone, please summarize in 10 words.

>Iroha, warp evolution!

“…… Ha~”

The organizer of this project livers, exhaled in admiration.

“Indeed, there are theories about Korean and Japanese like “Weren’t originally the same language?” “And the only difference between the two languages was their ‘dialects’.”.

>Is that so? (US Eng)

>※▲▲※↑↑

>I’ve heard that Japanese is a branch of Korean.

Hmm? I tilted my head at those theories.

My feeling is that the essence of Japanese and Korean are different.

How can I know all that?

I can’t show the evidence yet, so I’ll have to close my mouth.

“Well, whatever the theory, it’s at least true that both contain nouns based on the same kanji word.”

>So you’re saying you’re serious?

>I’ve been saying it as a joke, but I think she’s a gifted one.

>It’s impossible. It’s too much.

“I was convinced when I heard Iroha’s explanation. And there is one more thing I found out. It’s not something you can use as a reference!”

>Of course you can’t

>I can’t do it either.

>No one can’t do it either.

“Wait a minute. If Iroha-chan can speak Korean, then my position is gone!”

>LOL

>This is terrible!

>This is a good time to cry LOL

“Gusun gusun. I’ll leave it to Iroha-chan to deal with the viewers. If you have any questions for Iroha-chan, throw them to her while you’re at it. We are the losers. ……”

** + $*?

**+$*●?

>#*+$**●?

Various questions flew in, mainly from Korean viewers.

I called out, “Um~.”

“I don’t read Korean.”

“Eh!”

>What?

>I didn’t expect that.

>I see. In Japan, people learn foreign languages by writing first, but babies and people overseas learn by listening, speaking, reading, and writing in that order.

“Dangerous~! I almost became an unwanted child!”

>LOL

>□★●＃＃

>＃＃＃

The game resumed, despite the irregularities that occurred.

Then I realized that there are many things I can’t do besides not being able to read Hangul. For example.

<Excuse me. I’m still only able to talk with broken ones>

It is difficult to speak smoothly, or my pronunciation is not correct.

Korean, like Japanese, seems to have multiple first-person pronouns. So I couldn’t use them properly, so I called myself [Watakushi] (overly polite “I”).

<How do you say this in Korean?>

Sometimes when I try to speak in Korean, I cannot translate the words.

Sometimes there is no corresponding word in Korean, to begin with, or I don’t know it yet.

Of course, I can’t speak a word I don’t know.

If I can’t draw an analogy from what was said, I have to tell them the nuance and ask them to tell me.

This cheat-like ability to understand a foreign language also seems to have various limitations.

It seems that not everything can be translated perfectly.

A similar problem occurred with English.

I kept repeating, asking in English what I didn’t understand and asking in Korean, and before I knew it, everyone had become like my teachers.

I asked questions about things I didn’t understand without hesitation.

The other livers were also children, so they answered my questions.

And since I have an uncanny ability to memorize foreign languages and absorb 100% of what I’m taught, they gradually began to enjoy teaching me.

Oh, boy.

Isn’t this the strongest buff in learning?

As I listened to the explanations together, the other livers began to understand each other’s words better.

According to one of them, “He explained it in a way that even an elementary school student could understand”, and “I thought that if an elementary school student could do it, I could do it, too.”. They thought”.

In the end, the cooperative game went unexpectedly smoothly.

The project ended with a bang, as the participants succeeded in capturing more than they had anticipated.

People made a large number of clippings for this stream.

In particular, the “My position is gone!”, and “Now we can talk.” scenes grew, and the organizer invited me to collaborate with them again. That was probably the best reward for me.

In the meantime, I successfully passed the channel monetization screening.

In this way, my title changed from “elementary school student” to “elementary school VTuber,” both in name and in reality.