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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 6561 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 457 of 559 10 June 2013 at 11:55am | IP Logged | ||
These are definitely useful words to know but they should not be in the first 100 or 200 words you learn. The first 4 lessons on EK deal with general language introduction, fixed expressions, alphabet, and pronunciation. The real study of vocabulary and grammar starts in lesson 5 and the words "cigarettes" and "matches" are introduced right in this lesson. The word "lighter" in the next lesson. It's just... I think it's totally wrong and also the spelling in this book is totally wrong but the grammar explanations are good so I'll stick with it for that reason. As for what I did this weekend, well, not much. I was busy with other things. I did manage to finish Prosecutor Princess which turned out to be pretty good. One of its best features was that all the characters were likeable and there were no real villains. Also, I found the heroine's attitude towards life and her integrity really inspiring. I'm not sure why but lately I've been wanting to watch more dramas. It does take away some real study time but it's fun and I've decided to indulge this urge for now. I've heard a lot of good things about I Hear Your Voice so I'll check it out. It's on SBS so there are episode scripts available, it's an added benefit. PP was on SBS too but I haven't checked yet whether its scripts are available or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5544 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 458 of 559 10 June 2013 at 12:42pm | IP Logged | ||
For comparison, Assimil Spanish With Ease introduces these concepts in lesson 3 (out of 109 lessons). Also keep in mind that in the list of 6000 Essential Korean words, 담배 is classified as an "A" word, meaning it is in the top 1200 or so words (I don't remember exactly how many are in A, but I recall the number is well under 2000 words as A had the fewest words, B had more, and C had the most words by a large margin) Whether you agree with idea of smoking or not (I personally have never smoked and never plan to start) does not change the fact that these words are going to be heavily used in many languages and thus need to be studied fairly early on. Keep in mind that even though you don't smoke, if you're learning the language of a culture whose people often do, you will need to be able to express the fact that you do not smoke when asked about it, so those words would still be important relatively early on. On a related note, early on I was quite surprised at some of the terms in Korean that appeared as KEV6000 "A" words whose English equivalents were either rarely used or possibly even unknown to me. Regardless, those words do see heavy use in Korean thus it was worth my while to learn them. I tried to somewhat ignore some of those KEV6000A words early on since I didn't use the English versions so I didn't see the point, then I started to notice how often they showed up in Korean and realized exactly why they were in that list. From my viewpoint (that of my own culture) they seemed pointless, but from the South Korean viewpoint they were essential everyday vocabulary that even elementary school kids would know. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Haksaeng Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6207 days ago 166 posts - 250 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 459 of 559 10 June 2013 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I see what you mean Evita, I wouldn't expect 담배 and its related terms in the first 200 words. That does seem to be jumping the gun a little.
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| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6561 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 460 of 559 12 June 2013 at 9:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I've taken a bit of a break from my Korean studies. I mean, it's not really a break, I still do my Anki reviews and watch dramas and listen to the radio but I haven't studied much grammar or worked on my grammar/sentence deck lately. It's good to shift the focus to other things now and then.
HaruKorean has been upgraded to a new version. The prices have been upgraded too, and I must say I'm a little shocked at how high they are. One month subscription cost 6 dollars before, now it costs three times as much and you get less stuff for it (you don't get the Idiomatic expressions or Video lessons or other special types of lessons, you have to buy them separately). My subscription expires in 50 days and I don't think I'll renew it, I don't write that many sentences anyway. One new thing that I've decided to do is to work on my German. I realized that I could perhaps get a better paying job if I was able to say that I speak fluent German so I need to improve my active skills. My weakest point is vocabulary, I've forgotten a lot of it in the last 10 years. And I never learned the gender of nouns systematically so that's another thing I need to do. I saw there's an Anki deck available with some 6000 words and color-coded genders; I may try it out. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6561 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 461 of 559 16 June 2013 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just took the Deutsche Welle Einstufungstest. Oh boy, that was two hours of intensive German, I hadn't done anything like that in years. They offer the placement test for levels up to B2 so I took the B2 one and got 86%. The result sheet said I'm well on my way to C1 so that's a nice feeling. Of course, that's mostly just my passive skills but still.
I haven't figured out how I'm going to approach German yet. I've got a large German - Latvian dictionary with 75 000 words in it and I want to use it, it's so pretty and new. Okay, it's not that new, I bought it already 8 years ago but I've hardly ever used it so it still looks shiny and new. Originally I wanted to use some Anki decks to improve my vocabulary but now I think it's not the best way because I'm bound to already be familiar with most words in most decks. So reading seems to be the obvious choice but I haven't found any good materials yet. I've been totally neglecting Finnish this week but I got back into my rhythm with Korean yesterday. My vocabulary deck has 2048 cards now but my reviews haven't gone down to 0 all week long even though I try to do them every day. I often think to myself that I should add less new words so I'd have less reviews but then I always remind myself of the importance of vocabulary and how it takes a long time to build it and how I won't be able to achieve my goals in Korean if I slack off. I tell myself that it will become easier with time because when I start reading more I'll have more words with a context so for now I'll just tough it out. Just a few more months, 6 months at the most, then it should get easier. And the payoff for all this will be great, I just know it. Oh yeah, I also watched the first 4 episodes of I Hear Your Voice and I enjoyed them a lot. I can't believe how they dorked up Oska from Secret Garden, I didn't recognize him at all, I just kept thinking his voice sounded familiar and at one point I suddenly recognized the voice as Oska's. Heh. Well, the drama is good but I'm not sure I can enjoy a romance between a 19 year old man and a 27 year old woman so I'm rooting for the other lawyer to get the girl even though it seems quite unlikely at this point. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6561 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 462 of 559 19 June 2013 at 9:39am | IP Logged | ||
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I've discovered that I don't really have any desire to read in German but I don't mind watching German TV. What I need is a regular exposure to German so watching TV might be just as good as reading. I think I have the Pro 7 channel but it's more convenient for me to watch the DW channel on my computer. The best method would be to watch it with my dictionary close by and immediately look up any unknown words I hear but I'm not sure how often I will have the patience and dedication to actually do that.
I'm happy with my Anki once again. I finished all the reviews on Monday and yesterday as well. The key is to do them in small doses during the whole day, then it seems manageable and quite easy and I don't have to dread the big review session at night. I just looked at the stats for the last month and it says I have done 145 reviews in 31 minutes on average. I'm up to lesson 7x25 on TTMIK but I can't say I know all the stuff from levels 6 and 7 very well, I haven't reviewed these lessons much. I listen to new lessons now and then so that it would seem like I'm making some progress but actually I'm still more concerned with filling the holes in my elementary grammar. Working with my grammar book and my sentence deck is slowly taking care of that. I'm also up to lesson 7 on EK and up to lesson 12 on HTSK. On a slightly different subject, I finally found out something I had been curious about for months but too lazy to look it up. I had noticed one phrase being used in many songs but I didn't know what it meant. Well, it turns out it's 내 곁에 and it means "by my side". Ha, no wonder it comes up a lot in song lyrics. I've been reading a little of the episode 4 script of Voice. I found some new words there for my Anki deck, like '법원' (trial) and '출소하다' (to be released from prison). The second word wasn't in my paper dictionary that's supposed to contain the 20,000 most often used Korean words but I added it to Anki anyway because I like cop shows and crime novels and I'm sure the word will come up again sooner or later. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6561 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 463 of 559 20 June 2013 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I spent some more time on HaruKorean yesterday and I have to say there are some changes in the upgrade that I'm really happy about. First, you don't have to write a sentence for a particular lesson in order to be able to see all the sentences and their corrections written by others. Second, you don't have to click on a sentence in order to see its intended meaning and corrections. This is a major usability improvement. And third, they have divided the exercises up into stages so there is sort of a road map you can follow if you want to. I find it quite convenient. I have 44 days left on my subscription so I'll see what I can get out of them.
I'm also happy to note that my sentence construction skills seem to have improved. I wrote "물을 마실 수 있으면 항상 행복해요." and it was correct and it took me less than a minute to write it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6561 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 464 of 559 23 June 2013 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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My ultimate goal in Korean is to reach fluency but my first goal is to be able to watch dramas without subtitles. There's a lot of casual speech in dramas but neither TTMIK nor my grammar book focus on the casual speech style so there were still some basic endings I wasn't familiar with. Yesterday I looked them all up on the internet. Here is a nice table. I already knew 야, 자, 라, and the exclamation endings (TTMIK did teach those) but I wasn't sure about 니 and 냐. While looking up those, I also found 나(요). It's a bit strange that I hadn't encountered it before. Well, now that I know them all I'll be on the lookout for them when I watch TV.
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