Andrew Dunbar wrote:

>
> I was taught hangul in Mexico and Guatemala by a
> Korean
> backpacker. She taught me the alphabet in order.
> First the consonants and then the vowels. Then she
> showed me how to arrange them into a square.

I had a similar experience in Boston on the T.

> She made no mention of syllabaries and showed me no
> syllable charts.

In my case, I do believe that a comparison to kana was made, but that
may have been because I was reading a Japanese book at the time of the
introduction, and she may have perceived it as representing an
intermediate ground in my understanding of Korean writing systems.

I kinda remember that way, but I could be wrong.

> I learned it in 1 or 2 days but never learned much
> vocabulary or spelling.

Same here - I haven't kept up, but I have often thought it would be a
mighty good bar bet to claim that I could teach someone how to read
elementary Korean characters in the space of a long day.

> It's only in the last year
> that I've discovered just how tricky Korean spelling
> is.

How so? Are there exceptions, or do you mean that the usual Romanization
is full of holes?

Best,

Barry