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The Awesome Difficulty of Korean, Finnish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4649 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 73 of 559 05 June 2012 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
Evita, welcome to the club of Korean Drama addicts :D Glad you enjoyed Coffee Prince this much! Drama watching definitely helped my understanding of Korean a lot over time. It helps with pronunciation, listening comprehension and having a context for how honorifics and titles are used (I think without context I'd never be able to learn who to address in which way - it's still challenging). As you can see, I'm totally rationalising that watching too much TV is a good thing ;) By the way, I think your language choice is so interesting! Korean seems to have the tendency to completely suck people in and make them abandon other language endeavors for a while (as evidenced in some of the Korean logs), so it's encouraging to see that studying both Korean and Finnish works so well for you! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6333 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 74 of 559 06 June 2012 at 9:54am | IP Logged | |||||
I feel like I have this big new world to explore and I want to sample everything at once. I think I spent more than an hour yesterday browsing various drama sites and looking at recommendations people posted here and elsewhere. I really wanted to start watching a new drama already but fortunately I managed to keep myself in check because watching dramas all the time leaves too little time for other things like real language learning.
It's funny you say that because that's exactly what I contemplated doing yesterday. I was all set on doing some of the Finnish exercises from lesson 7 but my mind kept going back to Korean so I abandoned the exercises. I sat there and thought about it for a while and I decided to concentrate on Finnish vocabulary in the meantime instead of studying grammar. All this excitement about Korean dramas will fade away soon and then everything will go back to normal. Learning vocabulary is the hardest and most time-consuming part because both Korean and Finnish are very different from any other languages I know. In fact, I get a little more free vocabulary in Korean because it has quite a few loanwords from English, but then again I have to learn the Korean spelling for those words so it still requires work. So I make it a point of principle to do my Anki reviews every day. I haven't missed a single day since I started this log. Even if it's late and I'm totally tired I would take a little nap and then wake up and do my reviews. It's hard sometimes but that's the main reason I'm able to progress both in Finnish and in Korean. And I also add new words every day (well, almost every day). Even yesterday when I had trouble concentrating on Finnish I still read some sentences from a dialog in my book and I added a couple of words to Anki. Adding new words gives me the sense of satisfaction that I'm learning something new, not just reviewing old material. Since I managed to keep myself away from new dramas yesterday I actually got some studying done in Korean. I repeated a couple of TTMIK lessons, still from the first level, and I browsed a bit through unit 4 on the SNU site. It introduces object marking particles which the TTMIK lessons haven't mentioned yet. I also read a big chunk of chapter 2 of the "My Korean" book. It's about reading and writing Hangeul so it was easy for me since I already knew the letters. I have to say that their explanations, particularly the pronunciation hints, are the best and most complete I've encountered anywhere, and I recommend this book (which is downloadable for free including audio files) to everyone just starting out with Korean. On a different subject, I've been meaning to mention the language situation at my work. I'm getting quite a lot of exposure to Russian since out of the 4 people in my team, I'm the only Latvian. I speak Latvian to them all and they mostly speak back Latvian to me but they talk among themselves in Russian and the team meetings are conducted mostly in Russian (with my permission, of course). My goal isn't to speak Russian with them but I can feel that listening to it is slowly waking up my speaking skills. I'm not actually speaking any Russian, or trying to speak it, I just feel it LOL. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| KillerDucky Newbie United States Joined 4335 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean | Message 75 of 559 07 June 2012 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
Compare the date that lesson 1-25 was posted with when the level 1 dialog was posted. The dialog was posted 1.5 years later. So most people following the site had quite a bit of practice before the test! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6333 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 76 of 559 08 June 2012 at 10:11am | IP Logged | |||||
That's true. I guess I'm not really that much more stupid than others, haha. Anyway, I'm glad that Coffee Prince washed this disappointment away. I didn't study much on Wednesday, I just did the Anki reviews. To be fair, doing the reviews is no trivial thing, it usually takes me about 40 minutes for both decks and more than that if the review count is especially high. But yesterday was a good studying day, I spent most of the evening doing that. So here's what I did. Finnish My Finnish textbook is good but it's just a book. I thought using some other resources might bring my Finnish mojo back and fortunately I remembered I have the old Linguaphone course. Now that I know the main cases in Finnish I feel I can get a lot out of it. This course has many lessons in it, and each lesson contains just a little text. The good thing about these texts is that they feel very natural, in contrast to my textbook whose texts don't include grammar that hasn't been taught yet. I prefer the textbook's approach at first, that's why I started with it, but now I'm ready for LP. The other great thing about the LP course is that all the texts are available on audio. The speakers speak very slowly. Or actually, maybe they speak at an almost normal speed but they make small pauses after almost every word. It's ideal for my brain to catch up and determine whether I know the word or not. Yesterday I listened to the first lesson again and I understood almost everything although I had mostly forgotten the text. I was able to understand it because I had learned the vocabulary with Anki. I also listened to the second text and I understood more than a half of it. Then I read it and studied it. I'm hoping LP will help me get more comfortable with the cases. I plan to listen to each text many times (it's just 2-3 minutes). Korean I finally started level 2 on TTMIK. The reason it took me so long to finish level 1 is that I wanted to enter the vocabulary from the lessons into Anki and that took time. But now it's all done. The first lesson on level 2 was about forming the future tense. I can't say it was very difficult, I had already seen that type of construction when learning how to say "I want to...". I think I'm also getting more used to the word order in Korean sentences. One of the more difficult things for me in Korean is still the system how the pronunciation of the last consonant changes depending on what follows it. I know the rules and I can probably figure it out if you give me 10 or 20 seconds but I can't do it on the fly yet. I guess it's a matter of practice. The only thing I'm more or less comfortable with is the changes in l/r. I've been thinking for several days already that I should set up a third Anki deck with Korean phrases. The main purpose of this deck would be for me to practice typing Korean verbs in various tenses and forms because right now I only get to type them in the infinitive. Perhaps I'll start this deck on the weekend. Listening to the new TTMIK lesson was not the only thing I did yesterday. I also repeated a couple lessons from the first level and I studied chapter 2 of "My Korean" for a while. I did the Anki reviews, of course, and I started a new Korean drama. I know, I know, I said I wouldn't do it but fortunately not all dramas are as addicting as Coffee Prince. I watched about half an hour of "My Girl" and I didn't like it that much and that's good because I only want to watch it to get exposure to Korean. We'll see how well that goes. On a slightly different subject, I came across an article yesterday that said that a Korean spy movie, "In Berlin", is being filmed right now in the very center of Riga. Maybe I'll go there tomorrow and see what's happening, maybe hear some live spoken Korean! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6333 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 77 of 559 09 June 2012 at 8:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been forced to realize that my method of doing the Anki reviews after studying each day is not a good one. Yesterday I spent some time on Korean, listened to the second lesson of level two on TTMIK, reviewed some other things, and later I was so tired I simply couldn't do the Anki reviews. I think I was asking too much from myself wanting to keep up with the same studying pace now that I've got a full time job.
The downside of doing the Anki reviews before studying, as I've mentioned before, is that I would have to enter the new words the day before, and there are likely to be at least 2-3 times per week I don't add any new words. I wasn't willing to take this chance before because it would slow down my vocabulary growth but now I've accepted that I have to. I have 79 Finnish words and 56 Korean words to review today. Brrr. I'm actually looking forward to having less reviews each day due to entering less new words. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nekouma Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 4438 days ago 23 posts - 30 votes Speaks: French*, English, Japanese Studies: Korean, Hindi, German | Message 78 of 559 09 June 2012 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Evita,
For Anki, you may also try to do it by small chunks during the day. 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there. If you have an android mobile device, it's easier to do it that way with Ankidroid. As for Korean dramas, the first I watched was Full House, and even though the story was kind of unbelievable, I got hooked and watched the last 4 episodes in a row (which I had never done before for any Japanese dramas). I think you just need to find dramas you like. You can even find some good things in those "Cinderella" or triangle love stories. I would like to add "The greatest love", "Fugitive : Plan B" and "Shut up flower band". But sure, it depends on your tastes :) And, about what druckfehler said, I have to agree. The Korean language is as addictive as those dramas. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6333 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 79 of 559 10 June 2012 at 11:07am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, that's one reason it's better to do the reviews during the day. I have an Android phone and I've used it occasionally to study my Finnish deck. For Korean it's not an option because I need to type in Korean while doing the reviews and I can't do that on the phone.
Thanks for the recommendations. I think Full House was the one I tried but couldn't keep watching because the main heroine was so stupid. Who knows, maybe my tolerance level for that kind of thing will increase with time and more exposure to Korean dramas. Now, on to my log. Yesterday was a Saturday and I got a lot done. I'm very motivated to learn Korean at the moment so I'm using it to my advantage. Finnish I did my double amount of Anki reviews and worked with the Linguaphone course, texts 2 and 3. The way is work with the texts is - I read them carefully, making sure I know what each word means and paying special attention to the cases of nouns and trying to memorize some phrases. (I didn't finish text 3 yet.) Normally I would listen to the texts as well but yesterday I didn't want to do that so it wouldn't interfere with Korean. Of course, I also add all the new words to Anki. Yesterday, I came across the word 'ovesta' and I didn't recognize it until Wiktionary told me it was a form of 'ovi' which I know quite well. This means I need to practice the cases more. Korean Oh, Korean, I'm very excited to be studying it at the moment. I feel like I'm finally leaving behind the very beginner stage of Korean where the alphabet is intimidating and I can't make sense of anything. I've got the basic language structure down, the word order, the concept of particles, the basic verb tenses, some question words. I think I'm even starting to hear the difference between ㅈ and ㅊ! Yesterday, I repeated the first two lessons of TTMIK level two and also listened to the third lesson. It's fun. I study the pdf's too, of course. I also studied the third unit of "My Korean". I studied the first dialog in detail and then I just browsed through the rest of the unit. It focuses on eating so there's lots of vocabulary to learn. I'm thinking I won't try to learn it all, maybe a half of it (or less) will make it into Anki. There wasn't much grammar in the unit (that would be new to me) but it did teach how to say I like something. I can't believe TTMIK didn't teach that in level one. Anyway, now I can say 한국어 좋아해요. There's a phrase I noticed and heard many times while watching Coffee Prince - "kre" or something similar. This unit identified it as 그래. The reason I noticed it right from the start was because it reminded me of the Spanish "creo (que...)". I wanted to create a new deck for Korean phrases in Anki but I got frustrated with the software. I created the new deck but I couldn't add my Korean card model to it. I googled it extensively and I couldn't find a solution, maybe models aren't supposed to be shared among decks. I don't know. Anyway, in the end I figured out a way to do it - I copied my Korean deck, renamed it and deleted all the cards. I got the Korean model that way but I also got the card history (which I didn't want). I don't know how to get rid of it. Oh well, I suppose the stats aren't very important for phrases. I also wanted to watch a Korean drama. I tried My Girl again but I couldn't finish the second episode. The heroine was not likeable, the actress wasn't very good, it was all way too silly and there was more chasing each other than dialogs. So I switched to You're Beautiful and watched the first episode. I guess it says something about my taste that it's also about a girl pretending to be a boy, LOL. I still prefer Coffee Prince by a large margin, I even rewatched some bits yesterday, but I'm thinking You're Beautiful might be the second drama I finish. I spent way more time writing this post than I intended so I should stop now. Today I'll be watching the French Open final (go Nadal!) but I might mute it and listen to TTMIK instead. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4649 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 80 of 559 10 June 2012 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
that's quite an important word in Korean. the infinitive is 그렇다 and it literally means "to be like that", but can refer to any action. for example, you can often hear the phrase 왜 그랬어요? which can be translated as "why did you say that?" or "why did you do that?". As 그렇지만 it can start a sentence and means "but", as 그런 it stands before a noun and means "such a, that (kind of)". When you use it as 그래(요) is simply means "yes". There are many more possibilities. When you listen out for it I'm sure you'll notice it very often.
Somehow I love those "girl dresses up as boy" dramas, too :) If you want to try a historical one, I recommend Sunkyunkwan Scandal, which is also extremely addictive. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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