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Thinking of Harry Potter Challenge | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6458 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 1 of 7 14 July 2007 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's been over 2 years since I started studying Korean. For the past several months, I've been reading little children books in Korean to help improve my vocabulary. I would like to be able to move up to something harder and a little more interesting. At this moment, I'm considering doing one of the hardest challenges in language learning.
Last week, I bought the Korean translation of the 1st Harry Potter book. Today, I'm going to start on the 1st chapter and see how far I can get this week. If I'm not too overwhelmed by the vocabulary, I'll go for the challenge. If the 1st chapter proves too difficult, I'll read some more young children's books and put the challenge off for another couple months. I didn't buy the English Harry Potter book. Typing the Korean words into the Internet dictionary will be faster than reading 2 books side by side or using the paper dictionary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6279 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 7 14 July 2007 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Are you sure that using an internet dictionary is faster than using both texts? That would be the opposite of my experience with texts unless the density of unknown words is really quite low. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JasonChoi Diglot Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6199 days ago 274 posts - 298 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Latin | Message 3 of 7 19 July 2007 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm currently thinking of doing this with Harry Potter as well, but at your level, I would not recommend doing this as it can be really overwhelming. While I can understand roughly 80% of everything I hear in Korean, this book has a lot of tough vocabulary in this book. A native speaker also told me to avoid reading it.
Korean tends to use very long and complex sentences that would normally be broken into two or three sentences (they have ridiculously long adjective clauses that can be very confusing). Korean books also tend to use all sorts of difficult Sino-Korean words which are generally never used in every speech. I would recommend first reading the English to get an understanding of what you are reading. By the way, I've recently purchased the first book of Lord of the Rings, to discover that the first paragraph of the Korean text is so complex compared to the English. I'm considering reading Harrius Potter (i.e. Latin version), and quite frankly, the text is much easier, even though Korean is my semi-native language. You may want to stick with Korean TV shows (particularly Korean dramas with English subtitles) as they will be easier to grasp based on the subtitles and the visual context. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6310 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 4 of 7 20 July 2007 at 2:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I think "The Little Prince" is a good starting point for those who want to read an unabridged book in a foreign language. Most of the language is really easy (except the first chapter where he talks about boas and stuff) and the sentences are short and straightforward. I just wouldn't recommend it to students of French because the French original uses the "passé simple" tense, which is awfully literary. But in Chinese for example this book is about 5 times easier than Harry Potter. The complete text in Chinese, French and English can be found online btw, I posted the link before.
The Latin version is probably okay for an upper-beginner language student, too. The grammar level is rather high (passive, occasional subjunctive, participles), but that doesn't change that the vocabulary is quite basic and sentences are not complex at all. Amazon allows you to browse some pages. Unfortunately I can't evaluate the Korean version. Edited by Sprachprofi on 20 July 2007 at 2:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6276 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 7 20 July 2007 at 2:45am | IP Logged | ||
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If you don't want to use an English copy of the book, why not try one of many children's Greek mythology books or comics? Since they are for children, the language is quite simple, and the stories are not too boring. The comics might be easier because the pictures can help you to figure out the stories.
Korean translation of Harry Potter series does use many sophisticated expressions which are used almost exclusively for literary works. But if you find them manageable, go ahead and read them. This way, you'll learn "written Korean" which you can never learn through conversations. In my opinion, it wouldn't be TOO difficult for you since you are even reading Korean bible, one of the books that use most sophisticated and literary expressions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JasonChoi Diglot Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6199 days ago 274 posts - 298 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Latin | Message 6 of 7 20 July 2007 at 2:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Sprachprofi, thanks for the tip. I just stumbled upon this page, which has at least 30 something different translations of the Little Prince.
As for Korean, this page has it available in parallel texts, which is convenient. I may consider reading this, as some of the complex sentences could prove useful for developing my own sentence structures. However, the text uses language that isn't normally used in conversation. Generally, it seems written Korean is quite different from spoken Korean. I haven't seen a single Korean book which has text that sounds the way it is spoken. Note - the downloadable format is 'hwp' which is a Korean document format which will require the apporpriate program. Edited by JasonChoi on 20 July 2007 at 3:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JasonChoi Diglot Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6199 days ago 274 posts - 298 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Latin | Message 7 of 7 20 July 2007 at 3:10am | IP Logged | ||
Speaking of which, an American friend of mine once commented that he used a particular Korean translation of the Bible called 쉬은성경 ('Easy Bible'), which really is quite easy compared to most bible translations. I just stumbled upon the audio book version of it here, but it's quite pricey. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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