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Korean is hardest!

  Tags: Korean | Difficulty
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29 messages over 4 pages: 13 4  Next >>
qklilx
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United States
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Studies: Korean
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 Message 9 of 29
26 June 2009 at 12:02am | IP Logged 
After 17 months of active study, with around half of that being classroom-only study, my Korean is at a conversational level, meaning I can converse mostly comfortably on a variety of topics and even throw in some stories about stuff that's happened to me. I am told by numerous teachers and professors that my accent is better than most people and my grammatical accuracy in both speech and writing is far above my classroom level (I just finished a class equivalent to TOPIK 4).

Professor Arguelles's 10-year estimation, if I recall, means that you know a good number of hanja, enough vocabulary and grammar to pass TOPIK 1 with ease, and a grammatically correct conversation ability that gets you through most any situation, including those that only come up seldomly. At least that's what I got out of it. I believe him, especially on the part that you should spend most of those years in Korea itself; pop culture references are more than aplenty in everyday life and falling behind means not understanding everything being said. And don't forget that you also have to learn HOW to talk to a Korean, not just how to speak the language.
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Rmss
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 Message 10 of 29
26 June 2009 at 1:16am | IP Logged 
I think that if you go AKATT you can easily reach fluency within 3 years.Keep in mind that Dr. Arguelles is STUDYING languages, not necessarily acquiring them. Also, he concentrates on many languages, never fully immersing himself in one. So his claims are a bit shady.
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xd3qu1n0x
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Studies: Korean, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 11 of 29
26 June 2009 at 6:15am | IP Logged 
I'm glad i never heard anything about Korean being a difficult language to learn when i started unless i would never have even gotten to the point i am at today.

Korean was my first language, and I've been studying it fairly lightly for about 2.5 years now (with some long breaks taken in between due to a few difficult college semesters). In spite of this I'm currently studying actively for TOPIK and from the practices i've taken so far it seems i should be able to just barely pass the 고급5 level.
Unfortunately, since i didn't know much about language study methods back then, speaking practice was for the most part ignored and now there is a glaring difference between my reading/listening/written and spoken Korean.

Anyway, I think all this about Korean being so hard isn't worth the worry. If you create the right environment and put time into diligent study, you can get get to a very high level in well under 10yrs.   

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ChristopherB
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 Message 12 of 29
26 June 2009 at 12:55pm | IP Logged 
I don't recall ProfArguelles ever saying it would take 10 years to learn Korean per se, rather that one should not be too discouraged if, after this amount of time, one still cannot effortlessly read serious literature or feel truly at home in the country as a Westerner.
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Rmss
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 Message 13 of 29
26 June 2009 at 11:13pm | IP Logged 
@ChristopherB
If you REALLY learned a language, you can read serious literature and/or feel at home in the country of your target language. Like I said, it's possible to learn ANY language within 3 years to a high level, but it all comes down to dedication and the time you put in (so just a few hours per day won't get you there, and will indeed cause you to need around 10 years to feel comfortable using the language).
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cordelia0507
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 Message 14 of 29
26 June 2009 at 11:48pm | IP Logged 
Rmss wrote:
@ChristopherB
If you REALLY learned a language, you can read serious literature and/or feel at home in the country of your target language. Like I said, it's possible to learn ANY language within 3 years to a high level, but it all comes down to dedication and the time you put in (so just a few hours per day won't get you there, and will indeed cause you to need around 10 years to feel comfortable using the language).



RMSS, how many hours per day (or minutes or whatever) do you believe are needed to achieve this?

Another thing is, I am not sure everybody else can be measured by the same standards as Dutch-speakers who are frankly spooky in their ability so learn a whole bunch of languages and think nothing of it.... I know so many examples and although it's admirable it can be depressing for normal mortals.

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Rmss
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 Message 15 of 29
27 June 2009 at 1:28am | IP Logged 
cordelia0507 wrote:
Rmss wrote:
@ChristopherB
If you REALLY learned a language, you can read serious literature and/or feel at home in the country of your target language. Like I said, it's possible to learn ANY language within 3 years to a high level, but it all comes down to dedication and the time you put in (so just a few hours per day won't get you there, and will indeed cause you to need around 10 years to feel comfortable using the language).



RMSS, how many hours per day (or minutes or whatever) do you believe are needed to achieve this?

Another thing is, I am not sure everybody else can be measured by the same standards as Dutch-speakers who are frankly spooky in their ability so learn a whole bunch of languages and think nothing of it.... I know so many examples and although it's admirable it can be depressing for normal mortals.


Haha, I take that "spooky" thing as a compliment I guess ;-). But still, we're all humans and even though some of us get raised with more languages or get encouraged to learn foreign languages, we pretty much have the same opportunities nowadays.

I do have to be honest and say that for anything that looks like fluency (again, in any language) you need to put in MANY hours per day. For Spanish I put in 10 hours per day (easily), with some days doing nothing else than Spanish. That doesn't mean I was studying it, but rather that I did my daily tasks in Spanish.

Now, for some this may be difficult, but even now I'm learning Turkish (I'm a Spanish major) I can still cram in many hours for Turkish. How? By replacing things I'd normally do in English/Dutch/Spanish by Turkish (listening to music, reading, watching television, etc.).

Now, Turkish is regarded a pretty difficult language (although not as difficult as Korean, although this is pretty subjective), but I'm feeling pretty good learning it and making good progress. I still have to see how long it takes to reach basic fluency, but I'm convinced I can do it within 3 years. Like I said; it all comes down to serious dedication and spending many hours with the language.
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LittleKey
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 Message 16 of 29
27 June 2009 at 9:24am | IP Logged 
The amount of dedication and time people put into their TL is amazing. I find it difficult to focus on Spanish (partly because I can't seem to find interesting things to do in the language), and that's not anywhere near the level of difficult Korean is at!

Edited by LittleKey on 27 June 2009 at 9:25am



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