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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 6560 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 337 of 559 11 January 2013 at 9:26am | IP Logged |
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Again I've been busy so I haven't had as much time for Korean as usual. I did keep up with Anki and I also worked a bit with Iyagi. Since I have the English translations for episodes 31-40, I figured I'd just start with no.31 which is about cafés. Nice and easy. The only problem is that I found it rather boring, or maybe I just get bored too easily. The fact that I can't seem to finish any book/course I start seems to support this theory. Anyway, I changed my mind and decided to go with Iyagi no.37 which is about subways. They've always fascinated me a bit since there are none in Latvia. There was talk about building a subway system in Riga in the 1980's but it turned out that the ground (or underground) below Riga is not well suited for that.
This morning on my way to work, I listened to Iyagi 8 three times. It was about traveling. I could understand a lot of the vocabulary but I couldn't make sense of most of the sentences. I feel like I am so close to starting to really understand spoken Korean (at least of the TTMIK Iyagi kind) but I need to read some of the podcast transcripts and analyze them before that can happen. That's why I made it my January challenge. In fact, I could probably manage to read even two or three podcasts during January. I just need to really work on it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Haksaeng Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6206 days ago 166 posts - 250 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 338 of 559 11 January 2013 at 11:41am | IP Logged |
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It's good that you found #31 nice and easy, since that's the one where they announce they're going to start talking a little more naturally. From #31 they get noticeably more difficult. Incidentally, #1 is actually about the subway too; it's about the handicapped seating on the subway and bus.
I'm amazed at how far you've come in a year. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6560 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 339 of 559 11 January 2013 at 12:24pm | IP Logged |
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Well, don't get me wrong, of course #31 wasn't easy to understand, I'm not that far yet. I meant it more like it has a lot of vocabulary I know like drinking coffee, reading books, meeting up with friends. I suppose #37 will be almost as nice and easy since they do try to stick to easier vocabulary. The thing you mentioned about them trying to talk more naturally, I saw it when I read the English translation for #31 and it didn't surprise me because I had noticed myself that the first 10 podcasts seemed to be slower than some of the others I've listened to. The good news is that this doesn't bother me, I'm used to Korean spoken at normal speed. This was one of my biggest difficulties when I first started studying Korean so I made an effort to listen to lots of it even if I didn't understand it (dramas, radios, podcasts, whatever) to get used to it, and it has paid off. The biggest problem was the verbs and how they could be pronounced so differently depending on what endings you attached to them (like 없다 - 없는) and I'm happy to say this is mostly not a problem anymore, at least for the verbs I know. The word order was also a big problem but the TTMIK lessons have mostly taken care of that.
I feel like I started making quicker progress once I switched to Anki 2 and started using the learning mode and started learning more words per day. Having a bigger vocabulary is obviously very important in order to understand anything, either written or spoken. I'm currently adding 8-9 new words a day and I feel like I'm learning a lot. I love this sense of progress. My current Korean note count is 1098. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6560 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 340 of 559 12 January 2013 at 10:30am | IP Logged |
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I listened to some other Iyagi podcasts on my way home last night and I was itching to work on all of them. There are more than 140 episodes in total, so many to choose from! I guess it's a good thing I only have 10 translations. I worked a bit on the newest Iyagi about winter sports and there was a lot of stuff I didn't understand even after using a dictionary and Google translate. So I better stick to #31-40.
I started working on #37 "Subways" a couple days ago. My plan after reading the whole English translation was as follows: 1) Listen to the podcast while reading the English transcript 2) Listen to the podcast while reading the Korean transcript 3) Study the text and repeat points 1&2 as much as necessary I tried the first item and it went well for a while, I could easily follow everything. But I quickly realized that the podcast is too long for such intensive listening so for now I'm going to be working on the text without listening at all. I'm not sure how much of the Korean grammar I have learned so far. Maybe 20%? I know there's still a lot left but I was so happy when I could understand this sentence: 조용히 말해야 되지 않을까요? It combines three different grammar points but I know them all and I can understand how they are linked together. That's only after reading it, of course, I'm not able to understand such sentences just from listening. When listening, it falls into the category I mentioned before, the "it seems like I know all or most of the words but I can't quite make sense of it" category. A quick question. Sentence "저희 지금 어디에 와 있죠?" was translated as "Where are we now?" I'm confused about the 와 here. I guess it's from 오다 but why is it necessary? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4973 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 341 of 559 12 January 2013 at 11:22am | IP Logged |
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It literally means you were somewhere else, you came here, and you're here now. Anyway, it doesn't sound like a very good Korean sentence to me. So I cannot really say if 와 is necessary, but I guess removing it would mean almost the same thing.
A better Korean sentence would be "여기가 어디죠?" for "Where are we now?". An example for "와 있다" is "여기에 와 있어." = "Come and stay here (and don't go anywhere else.)" 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6560 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 342 of 559 13 January 2013 at 9:58am | IP Logged |
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Thanks, Ojorolla, that's a good explanation.
Yesterday I was watching Nice Guy and working on Subways. The transcript is 4 pages long and I finished the first one. Good. I've tried watching some more American TV shows with Korean subtitles but usually there's no point to the subtitles because I'm too interested in the story to pause and read them. I think it's best if I wait until I can read these subtitles without pausing, then this study method should be very useful. And that brings me to my next goal: I really want to learn to read quickly in Korean. I've done a very limited amount of reading up until now and I should change that. My current plan is to read the Subways transcript many times over after I've studied it. When I get sick of it I'll move on to another transcript. I'm going to spend at least 5 minutes every day reading. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6560 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 343 of 559 14 January 2013 at 10:39am | IP Logged |
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I finished watching Nice Guy. What a ride that was! Definitely a very good drama but I don't know if I'll rewatch it anytime soon, it's rather dark and it messed with my sleep again. Still, I like marathoning good dramas, the enjoyment is more intense that way. The overall ending was better than I had expected, it had many redemption storylines. The only thing I didn't like was that we were left wondering whether Maru and Eungi were together during those 7 years. If not, that would be very sad, a lot of wasted time.
The Subways transcript was very confusing. See for yourself: 서울에서 자라지 않은 저로서는 어렸을 때 지하철은 텔레비전에서만 보는 것? 그리고 서울에 가면 탈 수 있는 것. 이렇게 생각을 했었고 또 서울에 와서 처음으로 지하철을 탔을 때 느낌 은 굉장히 시끄러웠어요. (어 그래요?) 광주에서는 지하철이 없으니까 그냥 버스를 타면 사람 들이 버스 안에서 뭔가 이야기를 많이 하면서 가는 것 보다는 제가 특히 고등학교 때 버스를 탈 때는 아침에 학교 갈 때,(아) 그리고 밤에 야간 자율학습이 끝나고 12시쯤? (피곤해서) 피 곤해서 집에 갈 때 그런 상황이기 때문에 사람들이 그냥 자요. 그런데 서울에 와서 지하철을 탔는데 다들 이야기를 하고 있고 물건을 파는 사람도 있고. The problem is the long sentence in the middle. The translation goes something like this: "Since there’s no subway in Gwangju, if [you] just get on the bus, instead of people going while talking about something in the bus, especially when I was in high school and rode the bus to go to school in the morning (Ah), and at night, when nighttime free study period was over – around 12 o’ clock?" This doesn't make any sense in English, right? I can infer from the context and the other sentences that he means to say it was quiet in the buses when he went to school but this is not a good text for reading. I guess the Iyagi series is full of cases like this. On the other hand, this is often what happens in natural speech, you start off with one thought, don't finish it properly and start explaining it in more detail so I want to learn to understand these kinds of sentences too. But I also want to learn proper sentences so I would be able to produce them. Argh. I guess I will just have to keep this in mind and look for proper sentences elsewhere. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4876 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 344 of 559 15 January 2013 at 12:04am | IP Logged |
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Try Korean Language Adventure. The audio is crappy and there are no translations, but the texts are very good intermediate study material. They tell you that you have to register but it's not true. You can access them fine without registering.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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