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Still really struggling to grasp Korean. | ||
Tags: Korean | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Po-ru Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5289 days ago 173 posts - 235 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Spanish, Norwegian, Mandarin, French | Message 1 of 30 22 June 2010 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been studying Korean for about 3 months now and I have really yet to find good
materials to help me study. I have been trying to use a combination of books but so far they have all in my opinion really sucked. I do NOT like the TYS book, I bought another book which was written in the 1950's which seems good but has no Hangul, and other than that I have just been using Pimsleur and the Let's Speak Korean TV series. I am wondering if anyone can help boost me the right way because compared to other languages I have studied, I feel there is a real lack of solid material that I can find for this complex language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Enki Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5642 days ago 54 posts - 133 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written), English*, French, Korean Studies: Japanese | Message 2 of 30 22 June 2010 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Your profile says you're studying Japanese as well. How good is your Japanese? You're right, Korean textbooks are pretty scarce...in English. There are many more options in Japanese.
If your reading abilities are at a decent level I can't recommend 외국인을 위한 한국어문법 enough. It's basically a grammar dictionary that explains all the major grammatical forms of Korean, with a whole lot of example sentences to learn from (an entry is roughly 3 sentences explanation, 10 sentences of examples). It's all in Korean, though. Since Korean textbooks are so...well...bad, to be perfectly honest, I think immersion is the best way to go. Naver.com should be your primary source of learning. Read some daily comics (comic.naver.com) and watch some Korean news with transcripts (news.naver.com) while looking up words (Korean-English, English-Korean, and Korean-Korean, with lots of example sentences!) on naver dictionary @ http://dic.naver.com/ 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5149 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 3 of 30 22 June 2010 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Perhaps you could get those books that are targeted at Japanese learners to learn Korean, if you can already read Japanese.
I personally am using the following textbook: http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%96%B0%E8%A3%85%E7%89%88-%E3%81%A 7%E3%81%8D%E3%82%8B%E9%9F%93%E5%9B%BD%E8%AA%9E-%E5%88%9D%E7% B4%9A1/dp/4872177231/ref=pd_sim_b_2 in conjunction with a Korean textbook that's targeted at Italians. Because content-wise, both books are really fantastic, whereas for CDs, the Italian version is way better. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5136 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 4 of 30 22 June 2010 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's an FSI Korean available.
And 3 months with a language as exotic (and plain weird) as Korean is for an English speaker isn't enough time to become really proficient with it. I hope you can find something that works for you. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6577 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 30 23 June 2010 at 3:48am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm using a Japanese textbook for Korean — like Enki and Noriyuki say, there is just so much more out there, and
practically all language books for Japanese speakers come with audio material as well. Personally, I need some kind of tutor to help me through the early stages so I can attune my mouth and ears properly to the language. Since I decided to learn some Korean a few weeks ago, I've been taking weekly lessons from a bilingual Japanese-Korean tutor. Korean is hard, but at least the materials intended for Japanese speakers start out by focussing on shared vocabulary and grammatical similarities. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Po-ru Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5289 days ago 173 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Spanish, Norwegian, Mandarin, French | Message 6 of 30 23 June 2010 at 4:47am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the feedback. My Japanese is probably not good enough to read a textbook to learn another language though. I am just wondering if those naver links are English-speaker friendly. I am also familiar with rikaichan(or something) for Japanese which translates websites for you from JAP -> ENG. All you do is scroll your mouse over a Japanese word and you have the English translation right in front of you. Is there anything like that for Korean? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| qklilx Moderator United States Joined 5995 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 30 23 June 2010 at 7:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Go search for the Sogang series of books and the KLEAR series. Those are easily the best two books I've used and/or looked through, and I've examined over 10 different series published in Korea and America. Survival Korean is also not bad but it's hefty because it has 3-4 books per level to be used in conjunction with each other.
You can get Sogang and KLEAR audio lessons on their respective websites for free. The grammar manual mentioned above is published by Yonsei, I believe, and has an English version with a large workbook full of example sentence exercises to go with it. I don't recommend the book. When you're good enough at Korean that a grammar manual is useful you'll be able to scan through the Korean ones and find the one best for you. The Yonsei one leaves out some essential grammar too... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| str0be Senior Member Korea, South Joined 5413 days ago 103 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, Korean | Message 8 of 30 23 June 2010 at 7:41am | IP Logged | ||
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Seogang is a little difficult for self-study, due to the lack of any English text in the books.
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