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Korean - basic questions | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| crafedog Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5819 days ago 166 posts - 337 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean, Tok Pisin, French | Message 41 of 49 01 November 2010 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Just to update what I mentioned earlier, I've since bought Speaking Korean 2 and 3.
I changed my method for the Speaking Korean book as I decided that it was too much time and effort and I was in danger of burning myself out (something many of us on this forum seem to do unfortunately). What I've done since (and still do) is I went through the chapters I hadn't done and looked at the grammar points in all of them. Anything I thought was interesting, useful or I'd seen it before in a drama or something, I decided to highlight it and learn it in priority. So one day I learnt grammar point 42.2 (and the corresponding drills etc), then the following day 37.1 and the day after that 32.4 etc. It's a lot easier/funner and feels more productive for me. It limits my vocabulary but I'm not too concerned about that at the moment, I just want to get the grammar down for now. Speaking Korean 2 is identical in style to Speaking Korean 1. The only difference is there's no pronunciation guide in the beginning (I still really like the Speaking Korean 1 guide) but that's it. Two things: 1. My Korean friend checked the book's grammar and said that it's all relevant/good/used. The main difference seems to be that quite a lot of the book is based on a more written/reading style grammar forms as opposed to a more Spoken one (half by my guess). So obviously still relevant but hearing and using it might be more difficult if you're focusing on Spoken fluency. My friend went through book 2 and highlighted what he thought were the most important/used forms (if anyone wants to know the chapter numbers, pm me) 2. There is a shocking amount of repetition in the book (i.e. they'll introduce a grammar point and then 20 chapters later they'll introduce a similar grammar point and refer back to the earlier one saying how they're interchangeable (there are so many ways of saying 'even though' in Korean for example). Sometimes they'll refer back to a grammar point in book 1 as well (normally in the latter half). Some advice I would give is to go through Book 2 backwards and note which chapters have the same (not similar, same) grammar purposes ('even though' etc) and learn them together. I recently learnt ~ 든지, ~나 and 이라도 (book 1, 2, 1) in the same day because they were interchangeable and that was really useful for me. The Speaking Korean book part 3 is the Hanja one. It is pretty tough with the amount of Hanja you will learn but it still seems pretty interesting. If you can already read Kanji/Hanzi/Heisig's books then it should be pretty easy, but if you can't then it will be a bit tricky. If you have problems finding the books I think you can get them from the publishers (Hollym). ----------------------- For beginners: I can't remember if I mentioned this before but do try to start with an audio heavy course. Getting the pronunciation right was a nightmare at first (shadowing helped) but it's a necessity. Also vowels are basically more important than consonants in Korean so don't be lazy with the vowels. Intermediate +: I found out the other day that the FSI Korean course 2 doesn't have any Romanization in it and it's pretty good so give that a try if you're at an intermediate+ stage. http://parents.jr.naver.com/ donghwa/ (delete space between / and dongwha). This is a video flash animation of some stories for kids (Snow white etc) in Korean and with Korean subtitles. I haven't had much of a look at yet but some people might appreciate it (stolen from parksguide, a pretty cool site). About the Sounds of Korean and Using Korean books, I'll give some info about them in the Language programs, books and tapes subforum because I don't want to steal any more of this topic. One other thing: The 'order' in which you learn Korean can be a bit confusing. For example in Spanish, Present, Past, Future, Conditional etc. Korean is less clear so some books can be quite erratic in the order in which they want you to learn Korean. A well-known and very good website/uni for Korean is 서강/Sogang but their book/grammar order is very erratic (I'd seen that complaint before). For example I know some grammar forms in the very advanced class (which I think are quite basic) but I don't know some stuff in the low intermediate class. It's very random. That's why I think learning what catches your eye is pretty useful. Final thing: Stay away from the Spoken Language series 'Spoken Korean'. Book 2 has NO Korean in it and is 100% very strange romanization so avoid like the plague. Edited by crafedog on 01 November 2010 at 11:16am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5524 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 42 of 49 01 November 2010 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for the great explanations, crafedog. However, how do you use the drills in the book? Do you just say them out loud?
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| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 43 of 49 02 November 2010 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
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1. What are the most difficult parts of learning Korean?
Grammar - a lot of endings, plus ver rich vocab (from my experience). 2. What is the easy part of learning Korean? Writing, grammar has a lot of endings, but there are not many exceptions. 3. Is Korean more difficult than Japanese? I think not, 4. Is Korean more difficult than Chinese? I think not. 5. How hard is it to pronunciate Korean correctly? A little hard, but there are no tones so, and not many sounds as well. 6. How far can you get with the Korean alphabet? You can learn only hangul, and you will be OK. 7. Will a knowledge of Chinese characters help you with Korean? yes, for sure. Since I know Chinese and Japanese, when learning new kanji Japanese word, I automaticly know Korean one! 8. Are Koreans forgiving of the mistakes you can make in their language? From my exerience they are very nice to foreigners who study Korean. 9. Are there any quality Korean language self-study program with many tapes? Yes, there is a lot. Not actual tapes, but there is podcast, and online lessons, if you go to the bookstore, finding book with CD with pronountiation should not be a problem, the resources are vast. Unfortunately it's not true for advanced study... 10. Is Korean a tonal language? No, but one dialect of it is tonal. 11. Are there common words between Korean and Japanese or Chinese? a lot from Chinese borrowings to German word Arbeit (it means part time job), and Portuguese for bread (pan/bbang). 12. How difficult is Korean Grammar? A lot of endings. Sometimes very hard to understand some concepts. 13. How quick can you begin to read a Korean newspaper? You need to know a lot of vocabulary. You need to study a lot. 14. How difficult is it to follow a Korean movie? Maybe not so hard, you just need to know slang, etc. As for dramas, they speak clearly so it's even easier (not that I can do it, I need still more practice). 15. If you can buy only 3 books to learn Korean, what should they be? (books that supplement a program with tapes) Sogang Korean program - free online course, it's free but it's really good! Biaozhun hanguoyu (Chinese one) tree books. it's quite good one. and.. maybe colloquial Korean? Books from this series are quite OK. But I have not checked this one book. They have animations, exercises, sound recordings everything. 16. How useful is it to speak Korean when travelling or doing business in Korea? Can you get along with English? Most people know English, but they will always appraciate the effort of learning Korean. Edited by clumsy on 02 November 2010 at 11:25am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| crafedog Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5819 days ago 166 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean, Tok Pisin, French | Message 44 of 49 03 November 2010 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Hiya, thanks for the nice words. Typically I'll read them out loud when I'm first reading the chapter/grammar point/drills and I'll highlight any sentences that I think are particularly good/noteworthy. I then write them into my notebook in black pen, without any translations. If I think I don't have enough good examples of the grammar I'll check out Grammar in Use (Darakwon), FSI 2 or the internet for more example sentences and write them in my notebook as well. In the back I'll write a grammar logbook; the date, chapter number, grammar, English version, brief grammar guide and a personal, example sentence based on the drills so I can do a quick review of the grammar whenever I want. Either later that day or the following day, I'll go through my notes, this time highlighting keypoints in a blue pen and writing the drills translation. The following day seems like a good way of letting the grammar settle in and seeing how much you can recall. I might start the next chapter/grammar point after I've done all of that in the manner I mentioned above. Recently I've started doing two things, both inspired by Assimil: 1. I've been going through my notebook randomly, looking at a day's grammar point and then translating the English in my notebook back into the original Korean examples. 2. I've also been putting the personal English translations into Anki and doing a kind of reverse 10K sentence thing to make the language a bit more active (there are so many different endings in Korean I'm worried that if I don't have enough practice with them, I'll start to forget them). Oh yeah and one final thing. Whenever I read the grammar, review, go on this website/any website, I try to have some Korean on in the background (wwitv for example) just to get some passive listening in. It felt a bit silly studying a language in silence so I'm trying to train myself to dislike silence when I do something. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5524 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 45 of 49 03 November 2010 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's very detailed! Thanks again. I'm planning to start out using Book 1 and Book 3 of the series in conjunction, since I have worked through almost all of Remembering the Kanji. I'll probably get the other two in the series soon, these look very good.
Also, I will try the Sogang course, which looks like a good source also, thanks for that suggestion. Edited by GREGORG4000 on 03 November 2010 at 10:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ericg1977 Newbie United States Joined 5604 days ago 15 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* | Message 46 of 49 18 August 2012 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I found an excellent on-line intermediate Korean course. Using the FSI text book and other inetnet resources, I'm able to figure out a lot of the dialogues, but I need a little help. Is someone willing to give me a word-by-word translation along with a brief grammatical explanation?
http://www.language.berkeley.edu/korean/10/index.htm 서울로 가는 비행기 안은 크고 넓었다． 현배는 자기 좌석에 편히 앉았다． 비행기는 곧 출발해서 하늘을 날기 시작했다. 창 밖에 보이는 푸른 하늘과 흰 구름이 아름다웠다. 현배는 처음으로 한국에 가는 길이다． 여름방학이라 1 비행기 안에는 빈 자리가 거의 없었다． 현배 오른쪽에는 젊은 부인과 아기가 앉아 있었고 왼쪽에는 중년 남자가 잡지를 읽고 있었다． 현배는 잠을 자려고 했다. 2 그때 아기가 울기 시작했다. The website translates some vocabulary words in each sentence, but the grammatical explanations are missing. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Eric 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6619 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 47 of 49 19 August 2012 at 5:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Here's a rough translation.
The inside of the plane going to Seoul is big and spacious. HyeonBe sat comfortably in the seat. The plane immediately began to take off for the sky. The blue sky and white clouds he saw outside the windows were beautiful. The road HyeonBe is going is the first time to Korea. Being summer vacation, there was barely an empty seat in the plane. To the right of HyeonBe was a young woman and the child and to the left was a middle aged man reading a magazine. HyeonBe planned to get some sleep. At that time, the baby began to cry. BTW, the berkeley website put grammar explanations below the dialogue. Some of the later dialogues don't have grammar notes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4869 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 48 of 49 19 August 2012 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Also BTW, a good resource for looking up grammar patterns is this Korean grammar database.
3 persons have voted this message useful |
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