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The Awesome Difficulty of Korean, Finnish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6387 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 129 of 559 18 July 2012 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6342 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 130 of 559 19 July 2012 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
To be fair, the end of level 2 is not that early. And they explain all the concepts very well, the problem with this one was that it was just an example, it was not the topic of the lesson so they didn't explain it properly. They just threw it out there - hey, in case you were wondering, 주세요 doesn't always have to be 주세요, it can take different forms as well. I've mentioned some of the shortcomings of TTMIK but I'm a big fan of them overall, they explain things really well. The biggest thing that bugged me during level 1 was that they would say things in Korean (just short phrases, nothing important) and it would make me feel stupid that I didn't understand them. I get that they did it to make the lessons more interesting for those who already knew some Korean but it still made me feel stupid. But now, after most of level 2, I have gotten used to it and I also understand some of it, maybe even 50% of their Korean banter. So I can appreciate it now. Their biggest shortcoming now as I see it is the lack of exercises. I'm pretty sure I won't make the Sunday deadline I set for myself to add grammar to Anki so I'm extending it to the next Sunday. It's no big deal, the deadline gave me the push I needed to start working on this, it's just going slower than I anticipated. Speaking of Anki, I didn't do my Korean reviews yesterday (none of the 82 cards). I had planned to, time just got away from me somehow so I have a lot to catch up to today. I'll try to do some of the reviews during the day to make it easier. I studied a bit from my Korean textbook yesterday and learned the ㄹ까요 (Shall we?) expression. I added it to Anki as well so I don't forget it. My textbook is an e-book so that makes reviewing more difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6342 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 131 of 559 20 July 2012 at 9:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I caught up with Anki yesterday, I had to spend more than an hour on the Korean vocabulary deck alone. Good thing I did it in 4 or 5 sessions throughout the day.
It's my own fault, really, I want to learn both Korean and Finnish as quickly as possible so I add a lot of new words every week. It's inevitable that my reviewing sessions get long. I'm afraid there might come a point when it gets too much for me but for now I'm set to keep doing it - because it gives results. It's also why I haven't joined any challenges that are floating around this forum. I don't need to give myself extra motivation, I don't think I can study much harder than I am at the moment. Getting back to yesterday, I did the TTMIK lesson about the 로 particle. I guess this is where the particle fun really starts. The previous particles I learned were single-purpose-particles, so to speak (topic, object, location etc.) but this one is multi-purpose. I'm guessing I'm going to need a lot of input before I can produce it correctly. Regarding Finnish, I didn't have much energy left for it after Korean so I added only 4 new words yesterday (and failed them twice). I'm not going to do the grammar exercises of the book because, like I said, grammar is not my focus right now and also because I don't have anyone to verify my answers. I often think that having access to a Finnish teacher would be very beneficial for me, I'd be very willing to do oral grammar drills because I think that would be very effective for me. But sadly that's not an option. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6342 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 132 of 559 21 July 2012 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't done much studying today yet, haven't even done my Anki reviews yet. It's funny, sometimes when it's Saturday or Sunday I think "I have the whole day, no need to hurry with the reviews" and then I procrastinate until the very evening. That's what happened today.
I hadn't updated my Finnish verb table in a while (since lesson 5, to be precise) so today I added the verbs from lesson 6. I don't plan on actively studying them, it's just for my reference. I also added some postpositions from lessons 5 and 6 because I don't add them to Anki. Do you think Pirjo is a guy name or a girl name? That Finnish text I mentioned was about someone named Pirjo and I thought it was a guy but today I read more of it and it turns out it's a girl. Huh. That's something Korean and Finnish have in common - you have no way of knowing whether a name is for girls or guys when you first hear it. Speaking of names, there are two Korean names I know best. I could recite them in my sleep. You know which ones I'm talking about, right? It's the names of the TTMIK lesson hosts. I would recognize them anywhere anytime because they always introduce themselves in each lesson at least twice. Today I found a mistake in my Korean Anki deck. I had entered 백화점 (department store) as 백화전. I think it was probably my mistake, not a mistake in the book. I'm aware that having such mistakes will cause me to learn words incorrectly so I try my best to avoid them but... Yeah. I'll try even more in the future. I'll finish this post and then do the Anki reviews, first Finnish, then Korean. I have only 58 words to review in Korean - good times. 57 in Finnish. Speaking of Anki, I'm following the progress of version 2.0. The developer says it should be ready this month but you never know. I'm most interested in how it will handle related cards but I haven't tried out the beta versions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6946 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 133 of 559 22 July 2012 at 10:39am | IP Logged | ||
I've never had quite the same problem with Finnish names, but across the gulf, I did experience quite a few times what you're going through with Finnish and Korean but with certain Estonian names. Here are some that still stick in my mind: Alo, Elo, Enn, Janne, Kaido, Maarjo, Reet, Terje, Tiit, Ülle, Ülo. For a laugh, can you tell which ones are masculine and which aren't (don't look them up! :-P). Now that I think of it, I wonder what ESL students think when reading about people or characters for the first time going by names such as Aiden, Alex, Casey, Cory, Hayden, Jamie, Kelly, Mason, Quinn or Terry. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6342 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 134 of 559 22 July 2012 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, just for fun, here are my guesses on the Estonian names:
Alo - female Elo - male Enn - female Janne - male Kaido - male Maarjo - female Reet - male Terje - female Tiit - male Ülle - female Ülo - male I have no basis for these guesses, except Janne which I think is a male Finnish name. Maybe it's female in Estonian and that's why it's on this list, hehe. Anyway, this is probably going to be a long post (about Korean). I'm sure you're used to that by now if you read my log. I spent a lot of time on Korean today and even more if you count watching dramas. I'm on episode 10 of Kim Sam Soon and the hero is happy with his girlfriend (which is not the main heroine) so I don't know where they're going with this. I decided to stop watching after episode 9 because I just wasn't interested anymore but then I changed my mind. Anyway, I think the main problem this drama has is that the main characters are not very likeable. And also, what's with all the beating? Sam Soon's mother seems rightly abusive, and I don't want to keep watching it... But I realized that I do want to know how the series ends so I'll keep watching. I was thinking about how useful drama watching is for my Korean in general. This weekend I noticed that some Korean expressions had stuck in my head and I would think of them in random moments - not just think of them but hear them said in my head. This makes me happy because it shows that my subconscious is absorbing Korean but that's not enough usefulness on its own. Just out of curiosity, I tried watching a bit of Coffee Prince without subtitles. I noticed that it's true, I really do pay more attention to the audio when there are no subtitles but it's not a very useful studying technique because I still don't understand almost anything, just a few more words here or there. So watching shows without subtitles is not an option for me right now, but I have the feeling that watching them with subtitles is getting less and less useful because I'm already used to the sounds and the flow of the language. Using dramas as a vocabulary source would (and will) be great but I can't do that yet while I still don't understand almost anything. So that's the current situation. I will probably keep watching the dramas but it will be more for entertainment than for studying purposes. I think maybe now would be a good time to try watching a show in English with Korean subtitles. My Korean grammar is still very limited but that would be more useful than the other way around. Now I just need to pick an appropriate show with general vocabulary, which means - no comedies, no crime shows, no doctor shows. Hmm. I think I'll try Revenge, it's a good show and I've seen it once already so I'll be able to focus on the subtitles. I remember I saw lots of subtitles a while ago on the GOM player site so hopefully these will be there as well. Changing the subject a bit, I'm happy to tell you that I finished unit 6 of my Korean textbook. I did the listening exercises, they were not too difficult. However, the thing I was the most happy about was that I understood everything in the third dialogue (reading it) and it took me just a little over a minute to read it. Two months ago, it would have taken me 10 minutes and a headache. Unsurprisingly, my listening comprehension is not as good as my reading comprehension, I could only understand half of the dialogue when listening to it even though I had read it before. I think that was mostly because the guys were speaking super fast (or so it seemed to me). I really should review these dialogues more. I've begun not to type some Korean words into Anki sometimes, I mean when reviewing them. At times it's because I'm being lazy, at times I think typing everything would be overkill. This one (from the Korean Phrases deck) I do type out every time it comes up: 일요일이었어요 (it was Sunday). It seemed very difficult to me at first. Speaking of Anki, I had to review 96 cards in my Korean deck (which grew to 134 cards with all the repetitions and new words I had to do) today and that's too close to 100 so I'm setting my new limit to 11 new cards a day. I also decided to allow myself to review new cards separately from existing cards. I didn't do it until now because I thought it was too easy but this rule makes me mostly do reviews at night and it's just not good. With the new rule, I'll be able to do most of the reviews during the day and only review the new words at night after studying. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6946 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 135 of 559 22 July 2012 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Your intuition was onto something. :-) "Janne" is indeed a masculine name in Finland but feminine in Estonia. Estonian "Maarjo" may also be confusing since it's understandable to conflate it with the Finnish feminine name "Marjo". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6342 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 136 of 559 23 July 2012 at 9:38am | IP Logged | ||
Seems like all the names ending in -o are masculine. That's a nice correlation with Spanish.
I knew English names from American movies and TV shows (and musicians and actors and history lessons in school) long before I started studying English. I imagine that's the case for many people. I forgot to mention that I did lesson 29 on TTMIK yesterday. It was about 더 and 다. It was easy for me because I knew both of these words already but the examples were useful, especially for 다. I've also been reviewing the PDF files from level 1 looking for expressions to enter into Anki. I'm up to lesson 19 and so far I haven't found many. It gives me a good feeling reading those lesson notes and realizing I know everything already. Level 2 won't be so kind to me, I'm sure. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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