There comes a time when studying a language when one has to start making stupid short sentences that are, hopefully, gramatically-correct. So here goes nothings:

제 이름은 데보라예요. 프랑스 사람이에요, 그렇지만 영국에서 살아요. 한국어 공부해요. 재미있어요!
어제 쇼핑을 했어요. 오늘 집에서 공부해요. 금요일에, 일해요. 주말에 영화를 보고 싶어요.

No one will ever check this. I put it in Babelfish and their English translation is probably worse than my baby Korean, but I still got the gist of it.

Korean past and present tenses

I really enjoy the book I am studying from. It is called Korean Through English (Hollym Editions). I bought it in Seoul on a whim and I'm really glad I did. Each chapter is short enough and focuses on a couple of grammatical points and about twenty new words. It creates a nice pace to study.

At the same time, I can't believe it's already introducing the past tense and I'm not even halfway through the chapters. I think it's great as it helps to differentiate past and present, but I don't feel comfortable with present verb endings yet, especially the ones that end with a consonant or anㅣlike 오다 that turns into 와요  or 마시다 that turns into 마셔요. If I am writing slowly and I have time to think, then I might get it right, but if I start to speak then I lose my nerves (even when all this talking is just me alone in my room!) and I just add 어요.

I think I will create a spreadsheet with the verbs I know so far and what their ending is for the present tense and the past tense. Hopefully this will help make more sense of verb conjugation soon.

I have only recently started learning Korean, but I can tell that it won't be easy. I am learning on my own with a book mostly. Pronunciation is a bitch. Am I supposed to hear the difference between 사다 (to buy) and 싸다 (to be cheap)? Because I sure don't. I tell myself that it's all to do with context but 'to buy' and 'to be cheap' have pretty related meanings for instance. 어떻게?