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The Awesome Difficulty of Korean, Finnish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6334 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 521 of 559 22 October 2013 at 10:38am | IP Logged |
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I don't have any grand news to share this time, I'm living in waiting. A lot of my plans (language and otherwise) depend on whether I get the job or not so I'm quite anxious.
I'm doing Anki half-heartedly at the moment learning 1-2 new words a day and never finishing all my reviews. On Sunday I finished speed-rewatching Good Doctor and cutting out the clips for my music video, now I have to put it all together. I want to finish this as soon as possible because there are tons of new dramas I want to watch (Two Weeks, Mirae's Choice, The Heirs, Secret) and I can't start them before I finish the video because otherwise I'll get distracted and may never finish it. I've been reviewing TTMIK level 6 recently during my commute. I find I like it better to put all the lessons together in a playlist and then listen to them randomly instead of reviewing them in the correct order. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6334 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 522 of 559 27 October 2013 at 8:23pm | IP Logged |
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My Anki reviews are not going so well and I've been thinking again about dropping it completely. It's not as vital to my studies as it was in the first year and I've seen many people say on this forum that at the intermediate level it's better to get more exposure to more vocabulary by reading than using Anki to memorize words, and I think I agree. In my case, though, I do most of the reviews during commute or during breaks at work and if I wasn't doing Anki then I wouldn't be able to spend this time on reading anyway so I might as well keep the deck going for now. If I get the new job and if the situation there is different then I might reevaluate my approach to Anki.
I finished my Good Doctor video on Friday. It's nothing special but I'm glad to have it out of my system. Now I can focus on other things. For example, I've decided to try to go through the My Korean 2 book again. I think this will be my third attempt and this time I might actually manage to do it. It's not just wishful thinking. I went through chapter 11 today and it was really easy. It seems that's my favorite way of studying from textbooks - wait until I'm a level or two above them and then breeze through them. Ha. My plan for the next week is to try to catch up with my Anki backlog (in a moderate manner and not stressing about it even if it's not happening) and work with the transcripts of The Heirs. I started watching the drama today and so far I like it quite well. Maybe it's because I read the comments on DB about the first two episodes and adjusted my expectations accordingly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 523 of 559 27 October 2013 at 9:26pm | IP Logged |
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Hey Evita, I have a question: I just completed the first two levels of TTMIK and have the
third on my PC, waiting to be devoured when I have time. However, I feel that it is time to read a bit more or do some LR-esque activities in Korean and I see that TTMIK has the Iyagi podcasts. At what level are they precisely and when did you start doing them? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6334 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 524 of 559 27 October 2013 at 10:40pm | IP Logged |
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When I asked the same question in this thread sometime last year, someone told me that it makes sense to start seriously working with the Iyagi podcasts after completing the first 5 levels of TTMIK. I think it's a pretty good estimation. However, I started listening to them much earlier, maybe around level 2 or 3. I didn't expect to understand anything, it was just to get used to the language and it was a good decision for me. At first I practiced hearing and understanding all the conjunctions - 그리고, 그래서, 근데, 그런데, 그래도 etc. Then I tried discerning verb endings in the middle of the sentence, for example -면. I don't know if you've done the TTMIK test after level 1 but I did it and I failed it completely because they were speaking so fast, I just couldn't understand anything and that's when I decided to put a big emphasis on my listening. I don't know if you have the same approach but I've certainly found listening to the Iyagi lessons very beneficial. All of them have Korean transcripts and I even bought the English translations for the 31-40 pack before I discovered that many translations are available here.
As for reading, I don't recommend the Iyagi lessons for that, at least not until you understand at least 50% of what they are saying. It's natural spoken language so the sentences sometimes contain funny or unfinished constructions not suitable for beginners. If you want to read you should start with a textbook. I believe I already recommended the My Korean books in another thread (since they are free). Well, I've been following your log now and then so I know you have studied many languages and maybe you are better prepared for Korean than I was... But in my experience, one of the most difficult things about Korean is how they think differently and construct their sentences differently. I have this one example in my mind from a recent drama I watched. One guy told one girl in Korean "put your hair in a ponytail and come to work" but what he meant was "put your hair in a ponytail before you come to work". Could the English meaning be inferred from how it was phrased in Korean if you didn't know about it? Maybe, I don't know. All I can say is that there are many such differences in sentence constructions and they still give me a lot of headache. The lack of pronouns also makes reading comprehension more difficult. That's why I'm suggesting starting with textbooks and not any sort of native materials. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 525 of 559 27 October 2013 at 10:48pm | IP Logged |
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I was planning to do it somewhere midway level 4 actually.
I missed a whole lot on the first go round too. I recently actually re-listened to it and it was better but not perfect. I got a lot more out of the 2nd test yourself dialogue. I'm going to continue with these podcasts for a while still, I like it. My Korean books, what are they exactly? I have bought an intermediate reader for later reference, but I would first like to solidify my grammar. Korean sentence structure is definitely quite different from anything I am used to, but I tend to not complain about that. That's part and parcel of the package and I accept it as part of the study of Korean. The lack of pronouns makes a lot of sense to me. I like to think that Korean is more context-driven than many languages, and that many things are said "implicitly" through the way you say something. In other languages that is the verb ending that does the trick, but if I say "Mul isseoyo?" then it's clear I don't need to add "you" to that sentence to make clear that I am asking if you have water for me to drink. That is obvious. However English has redundancy in this case, and even in Russian you might ask "у Вас есть вода?" and not вода есть? even though in effect it has pretty much the same idea behind figuring out whether there is water or not (because you want to drink it). The context makes clear whose water that is, but if you are in a restaurant it is obvious it should be on the menu or something ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6334 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 526 of 559 27 October 2013 at 11:09pm | IP Logged |
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Oh, I'm not complaining about the different sentence structures either, I love Korean and everything that makes it so different. I also agree that the pronouns are often unnecessary if the context is clear, it's just that it's more difficult for us learners if we don't quite get the meaning and function of every word in a sentence. Like you said, there's redundancy in other languages so it's easier to figure everything out.
The My Korean textbooks are here. I believe each of them covers one semester in a university course. Their comics are full of real like language and much of it is in the casual style which could be a useful contrast for you because TTMIK usually focuses on the polite style. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 527 of 559 27 October 2013 at 11:28pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you for the links, they are most useful.
Yes, it is part of Korean's charm, I totally agree. I always feel that people are intimidated by these differences, whereas I see that as unnecessary. I prefer to see it as a good challenge. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6334 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 528 of 559 01 November 2013 at 4:28pm | IP Logged |
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I have good news regarding the job. I had the final interview today and they promised to send me their official offer on Monday. Unless they suddenly change their mind over the weekend (very unlikely), it's pretty much in the bag. I'm so excited! I'm starting to think maybe I'll be able to afford a trip to Korea next year. I'd like to go there very much.
It also means I'll have to work on my German even more since I'll have to communicate with business people from Germany, Austria, and probably also Switzerland. I haven't figured out my new approach to German yet but I should do it within the next week and then follow it for at least a couple of months. As for Korean, it's mixed news. My Anki backlog is still almost 200 cards and doesn't want to go down. I'm not giving up though. On the plus side, I'm more than halfway through chapter 12 of my textbook. I think I'll make finishing the textbook my November challenge for the TAC team. I'm seven episodes into The Heirs. It's a weird feeling. Somehow I don't care about the main couple but I'm interested in many of the side stories and side characters. There are so many of them! And above all, I like the zippy dialogue that reminds me of Secret Garden. I know the scriptwriter is the same for both shows so it's not surprising. But I should clarify. In Heirs, sometimes the characters deliver their lines so quickly that I have to pause to read the English translation, and it's not fun if I'm just watching it. But I'm looking forward to going through these conversations in the transcript and I think it will be very useful. On the other hand, I always have big plans but often I don't get to them. I started reading the transcript for episode 5 but it's going very slowly. Not the reading itself but trying to figure out the meaning and the grammar. I'll try to keep in mind that it should get better the more I read. Oh and tarvos, one comment about when to start analyzing the Iyagi lessons. There's this thing called "reported speech" and it's used much more often in Korean than in any other language I have studied. For example, a simple sentence like "What did you say?" is "뭐라고 했어요?" in Korean and it uses this grammar point (indicated by 라고). TTMIK introduces it starting from level 5. I think the Iyagi lessons contain a lot of this so it may be difficult for you if you haven't learned these constructions yet. But of course you can try it and figure out for yourself how to use these lessons. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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