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The Awesome Difficulty of Korean, Finnish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 113 of 559 05 July 2012 at 10:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I've had less motivation to study the last few days. Maybe it's because studying every day was becoming too much for me, maybe it's because I finished the Korean drama and I don't have any other Korean input at the moment. Maybe starting a new drama would fix that. Or maybe I just need to enjoy the summer for a bit and not pressure myself to study so much. I have a vacation next week, and I'll be staying at my sister's for most of that time, and she has small children so I don't imagine I'll get many opportunities to study. That's okay, I'll see how it goes, the only thing I will definitely keep doing is reviewing vocabulary in Anki. I prefer to do it on a computer but in the worst case I can do it on my phone.
So that's my plan for the next 10 days. I'll go back to my regular routine on July 16. Although I said I've had less motivation, that doesn't mean I didn't study at all. On Tuesday I listened to TTMIK lesson 19, the first new lesson in a while. It was awesome. They introduced the -는 것 construction, and I love all these constructions, the concept of which is totally new to me. I also realized (again) that I need to review the grammar from level 2 a lot more. Lesson 10 introduced the present progressive and I had totally forgotten about it by yesterday. Yesterday I worked on a couple of exercises from unit 5 of my Korean textbook. It was mostly translating simple phrases like "listening to music", "cleaning the house" or "meeting a friend". It was good reading practice and also a confidence booster because I was able to understand all the expressions right away. It's no surprise, really, because I had added the words to Anki previously, but it still gave me a good feeling. Regarding Finnish, I'm still stuck in lesson 8, it's taking me forever to finish it. One day I should just go at it and do the grammar exercises but I keep postponing it. My Anki reviews are going well. I haven't added as many new words in the last week as I would have liked (my goal is 7 a day for Finnish and 6 a day for Korean) but I still make progress every day and that's the main thing I care about. My Korean reading and typing speed is improving bit by bit so it takes me less and less time to get through my Korean reviews. It's not noticeable from day to day but the overall progress is good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 114 of 559 06 July 2012 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday was a good Korean day, I made nice progress with my textbook. But before I go into that, let me talk about adjectives in Korean. What's up with adjectives being verbs? Very weird. I learned about it quite soon after starting studying Korean and I still haven't gotten used to it. But the worst part is the paper dictionary that I'm using. If I want to look up the word "easy" in Korean, the dictionary doesn't show a corresponding adjective (I assume because it doesn't exist) but neither does it list the verb "to be easy". How am I supposed to find this word then? It's very annoying. Thank God for online dictionaries.
So my textbook talked about this class of verbs (still in unit 5) but it called them "adjectives". I think they were trying to make it less confusing but it was actually more confusing to me because I know they are verbs, not adjectives. Anyway, they also mentioned the irregularity of the ㅂ verbs and that's good. They also gave a list of 20 or so verbs-adjectives with their various present tense forms, and I'm going to study this table a lot to make sure I know the polite present tense of these verbs, and I'll also add them to Anki (the ones that aren't there yet). I also listened to the next TTMIK lesson, and it was interesting and useful but it's not enough. I've said that I want to add the grammar points of the TTMIK lessons to a spreadsheet so I don't forget them but I've realized it would be better to add them to Anki instead. Not to my vocabulary deck but the one called "Korean Phrases". I figure two short phrases per grammar point should be enough. One final note about Wiktionary. I've been using it for Finnish and yesterday I had the amazing idea to check if maybe it accepts Korean words too. To my surprise, it did! It even showed conjugations and stuff. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5527 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 115 of 559 07 July 2012 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Most of the time I prefer to call them "descriptive verbs" since I feel that more accurately describes what they are, but adjectives is more common since it has a direct English equivalent. It's easy to think of them as verbs (since they often behave like verbs) but, remember that they don't *always* conjugate the same as real verbs (i.e. action verbs) so there still needs to be a distinction.
For example, to turn an adjective into a noun modifier (i.e. to turn "to be pretty" into "pretty girl") you add (으)ㄴ to the end of the stem. To do the same with actual verb, though, you have to pick the tense (since it is an action not a state) first and add the appropriate ending of (으)ㄴ, 는, or (으)ㄹ. Examples: 예쁘다 (to be pretty) > 예쁜 소녀 (pretty girl) 잠자다 (to sleep) > 잠잔 소녀 (girl that was sleeping), 잠자는 소녀 (girl that is sleeping), 잠잘 소녀 (girl that will be sleeping) Another time they differ is in the 한다 speech level (commonly used in print media or sometimes with interjections). Verbs in present tense in that speech level take either ㄴ다 or 는다 endings in that form but adjectives merely take their dictionary forms (e.g. 예쁘다). Then again... Now that I think about it, both of those examples involve the two types of "verbs" matching up again whenever the action verbs are in past tense, so maybe descriptive verbs are simply treated as past tense verbs (since they describe an existing state, so the action that caused it obviously must be in the past). I'll have to keep that in mind and see if that holds true for all unique adjective behaviors. On the topic of adjectives, I'm having to now get used to the fact that adjectives in Japanese *aren't* descriptive verbs (instead they seem to behave more like English adjectives wherein they attach to "to be" when the describing itself is the point of the sentence). I guess I had assumed that since Japanese and Korean had such similar grammar they would share that aspect, too, but apparently they don't. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 116 of 559 07 July 2012 at 10:39am | IP Logged | ||
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"Descriptive verbs" is a good term, I think I might have seen it in a grammar book a while ago. They might be slightly different from action verbs but they are still verbs, I can't look at them as adjectives, except maybe for this form: 예쁜. Adjectives are supposed to modify nouns, not act as verbs.
By the way, I hadn't learned the grammar points you mentioned yet but it seems easy enough. The main challenge for me in the coming weeks (or months) as I learn more and more verb endings will be to remember them all and not to mix them up. That's why I need to start entering them into Anki ASAP. The TTMIK lessons use descriptive verbs quite a lot in their examples but they didn't introduce them at all, they just started using them like it was no big deal. That's one of TTMIK's biggest problems - they didn't plan the lessons as well as they should have, presumably because they don't have a lot of teaching experience. What lessons they do have are fun and useful but their approach is not structured enough so you still need a textbook to fill in all the missing things. That's my approach at the moment and I think it's working fine. Yesterday I repeated lessons 1 and 2 from level 2. I think it's useful not just because it solidifies the grammar but also because the new vocabulary from these lessons has been in my Anki for a couple weeks already so I've learned it (more or less) and so it is easier for me to understand the examples and concentrate on the grammar. I also studied the table of the descriptive verbs from my textbook, I spent maybe 10 minutes on it. Reading the verbs was part of studying, I still need to concentrate and make myself read Korean letters, it's not easy. I wonder how many months need to pass before I can look at a 6-7 word sentence and read it in less than a second. Probably a lot. I spend a lot of time deciding what words (and what translations) to enter into Anki since I got my paper dictionaries. I like dictionaries, I've used the English and German ones extensively. My Korean dictionaries are in both directions so I would often look up a Korean word and also its translations, sometimes also in online dictionaries. I realize this is not the most productive way to spend time but it's just something I enjoy doing. I had also pretty much figured out the "add 은 to turn a descriptive verb into an adjective" rule just from looking through the dictionary. I finally decided on a new drama to watch, it's "My name is Kim Sam-Soon". It's quite random, but, whatever. I prefer watching some older dramas first and then catching up on the new stuff later. One thing though - I watched half of the first episode and I can already tell the subtitles are not of the same quality as for my first two dramas. That's too bad but it also gives me motivation to work harder to not need subtitles to understand what's going on. Finnish fell victim to my bad studying habits yesterday, I was too tired to review my Anki cards. So for today I have 85 Finnish cards (two days) and 74 Korean cards (one day). 74 cards for Korean is an absolute record, I almost never have over 60 reviews. I hope it goes back down tomorrow. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5527 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 117 of 559 07 July 2012 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | ||
I was actually a good ways into learning Korean before I picked up those forms for converting verbs into noun modifiers, but they are used a lot, so I'm surprised more language materials don't introduce them a bit earlier. In particular, the on-screen text on Korean TV tends to use the "adjectival phrase + noun" form far more often than they do actual sentences. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 118 of 559 08 July 2012 at 11:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I managed to get through all my Anki reviews yesterday and even do a couple of exercises from my Finnish textbook (about Partitive). I'm going to do some more of them today, I really want to finally finish this lesson.
I did finish unit 5 of my Korean textbook. I reread the last dialogue and the section about "adjectives", and I'm sure rereading it 5 times more would benefit me too but I want to move on. A problem I had yesterday (and a couple other times) was that I had no new vocabulary to enter into Anki. It's not really a problem per se but I don't want to let a day go by without adding new cards because I have a daily limit for new cards and I can't just add twice as many the next day. So I looked at Beginner's Korean, found some random vocabulary lists and just added some words. The recollection for these words is terrible (because I have no context for them) but I've done the same for Finnish so I'm fighting through it. Acquiring a decent-sized vocabulary is the hardest thing to do if you don't already know a related language so I'm putting a lot of effort into Anki right from the start. I decided yesterday that I'd like to set some goals for myself. Not for the end of the year but for March 15th of 2013 because that will be approximately a year after I picked up Finnish again and started Korean. So my goals are: Finnish: - finish the textbook (currently on lesson 8 out of 20) Korean: - finish both My Korean books (currently on unit 6 out of 20) - finish TTMIK level 5 (currently on 2.21) As you see, these goals are basically about grammar. I don't need goals about vocabulary because I'm already working on it as hard as I can. Vocabulary acquisition is a long-term process so the most important thing is to work on it every day, which in my case means - don't neglect Anki. I don't like cramming words. My most ambitious goal is the Finnish one. This textbook contains a lot more stuff than the Korean textbooks (which for most intents and purposes really are one book split in half) and I've been too slow working through it. This might give me the motivation not to procrastinate so much. The goal to finish level 5 on TTMIK in Korean seems an easy one, I've got plenty of time for that. But what I actually mean is to learn all the grammar in these levels, to know it and to be able to use it. It's doable but it will require more work on my part than I've been doing until now. Speaking of TTMIK, yesterday I listened to their lesson about how to say sentences like "Korean is more difficult than English". The word order is so crazy I just want to laugh about it: "Korean English than more is difficult." Oh, the joys of Korean. I almost forgot to say - my Korean Anki deck has 300 words now. Nice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 119 of 559 11 July 2012 at 9:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Like I anticipated, it's been hard to find studying time this week. I've (barely) kept up with my Anki reviews. By the way, I reached 700 words in my Finnish deck yesterday.
I'm trying to study from my textbooks too but so far it's been just 10-15 minutes a day each so I can't get done much in that time. Oh well, it should be at least enough to maintain my level. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 120 of 559 12 July 2012 at 9:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday I had more time to study so I took my time with the Anki reviews - if I came across a word I didn't remember I tried to read it out loud (or just in my mind) several times before clicking for the next word. I'd like to do this every time I review in Anki but if I'm tired or don't have much time I just try to go through the reviews as quickly as possible. The key, again, is to do the reviews during the day and not as the last thing before going to sleep. I know that but I have trouble organizing my time according to this rule.
Anyway, it took me 55 minutes to review 155 cards, and that's not counting the time I spent entering the new words. I didn't do all the grammar exercises in lesson 8 of my Finnish textbook but I consider myself done with them. I'm also halfway through the final reading section of the lesson (about how a woman is buying ingredients and then preparing food). I do try to look up every unknown word but the thing that takes me the most time is figuring out which cases the words are in and why. Sometimes I'm not able to figure it out, then I leave it at that. Unit 6 of my Korean textbook deals with numbers and how to tell time, among other things. I think I've finally memorized the native Korean numbers (up to 10). That was really overdue if I'm being honest. Anyway, I already know most of this stuff from the TTMIK lessons so I'm concentrating on the examples. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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