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PicNick’s TAC2013 Log [한,中|Asian Team 鶴]

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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picnick
Triglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 4108 days ago

22 posts - 33 votes
Speaks: Tagalog, English*, Spanish
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 1 of 16
02 January 2013 at 1:01am | IP Logged 
Hi everyone! 大家好!안녕하세요 여러분! I'm Nick (username PicNick), I'm a grade 12 high
school student in Vancouver, and I'm brand new to these forums. Hoping that the TAC
will motivate me to both post here more often as well as improve my language progress.

Korean

Korean has been my first self-study language, and I'm pleased to say it's going well.
I've been studying Hangeul (the Korean alphabet) since 2008 and I can read it
reasonably well now. I started with basic self study lessons at the time as well on
TalkToMeInKorean, but I never really focused on the lessons and took them seriously
until 2011. I've been studying somewhat 'hardcore' since then so I'd say I've been
learning Korean for roughly a year or two now. TTMIK lessons are an important part of
my learning, but I really learn the most through immersing myself in Korean media. I
listen to a LOT of Korean music and watch Korean TV. There are also a lot of Korean
students at my school, so with all of this it's impossible for me to go a day without
hearing Korean.

My speaking level is basic conversational; I can hold conversations with friends for
any length of time. Sometimes we have to talk slower than normal or they have to
explain hard words to me, but I'm getting to the point where they can explain new
vocabulary in Korean, as opposed to simply giving me the English translation. I
definitely understand more than I speak, but I still have on subtitles when I watch
videos for when they speak too fast or if they use unfamiliar words.
My reading/writing is fine, and I sometimes understand/can say more because of the lack
of time pressure with spoken conversation. However, since I've learned Korean somewhat
informally, I have trouble with formal and proper spelling, punctuation, etc. I tend to
use 'textspeak' or abbreviations in my writing, since the most practice I get in
writing is online/texting friends.

GOALS: (WILL ADD)
"regular" time wise goals
-Read a Korean book every month (I already listen to way too much music for that to be
a goal)
-Do two TTMIK lessons a week.
-Speak in Korean once a week.

"general" year milestone goals
-Pass my Korean exam this January (gives me course credit with the school district for
self-studied languages)
-Take a standardized test (such as TOPIK)
-Watch a drama episode without subtitles and still understand what's going on.

Mandarin
This will be considerably shorter, don't worry.
I just started Mandarin in the fall, by downloading Rosetta Stone. For all the flak it
gets the program isn't that horrible, but I'm definitely looking to focus on the
language using another program/method. Most of my friends are Chinese so I'm looking to
practice with them, as well as start to listen to music and watch some Chinese TV.
There's a lot of different courses out there though, so I'd be interested in hearing
what (free) options you guys have tried and liked!
I'm at a very basic level right now. Simple declarative sentences and questions, that's
it. Very limited vocab.

Goals by the end of the year:
-Do some sort of weekly lesson, depending on what course I choose
-Be able to hold basic conversations
-Be able to read simple a children's book using simple characters

==This is kind of a bad intro post and it's all over the place, I'll fix it up sometime
later. Good luck to everyone and Happy New Year!

Edited by picnick on 02 January 2013 at 6:19am

1 person has voted this message useful



Warp3
Senior Member
United States
forum_posts.asp?TID=
Joined 5294 days ago

1419 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

 
 Message 2 of 16
02 January 2013 at 3:12am | IP Logged 
I'm curious. What is the pronunciation and meaning of 大家好 in Mandarin? I recognize all the characters from my Hanja studies, but they read as 대가호 in Korean which I don't recognize as meaning anything in particular (but would literally translate to something like big-family-good based on the 3 characters).

(I know you can't always just read Chinese or Japanese writing as Korean Hanja and expect a valid meaning, but very often it comes up with the equivalent Sino-Korean word, so it's always worth a shot.)
1 person has voted this message useful



Gerardparks
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4148 days ago

7 posts - 8 votes
Speaks: Cantonese, English*
Studies: Mandarin, French

 
 Message 3 of 16
02 January 2013 at 3:21am | IP Logged 
Warp3 wrote:
I'm curious. What is the pronunciation and meaning of 大家好 in Mandarin? I recognize all the characters from my Hanja studies, but they read as 대가호 in Korean which I don't recognize as meaning anything in particular (but would literally translate to something like big-family-good based on the 3 characters).

(I know you can't always just read Chinese or Japanese writing as Korean Hanja and expect a valid meaning, but very often it comes up with the equivalent Sino-Korean word, so it's always worth a shot.)


大家好 da jia hao means "Hello everybody." It is similar to the greeting 你好 ni hao, which means "Hello."
2 persons have voted this message useful



Warp3
Senior Member
United States
forum_posts.asp?TID=
Joined 5294 days ago

1419 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

 
 Message 4 of 16
02 January 2013 at 4:04am | IP Logged 
Ah, so the 大家 there is kind of the equivalent of 여러분 in Korean in that it is used to address "everyone" when speaking publicly? That makes sense.

I had also never thought to link the "hao" in "ni hao" to the 好(ho) character from my Korean Hanja studies. That bit of info might come in handy. :)

It's always interesting to see how similar the Sino-Korean pronunciations can be to their Chinese roots (da-jia-hao vs. dae-ga-ho and ni-hao vs. ni-ho).
1 person has voted this message useful



druckfehler
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4627 days ago

1181 posts - 1912 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 5 of 16
02 January 2013 at 10:20pm | IP Logged 
Hello picnick,

great to see that you have opened your study log! Which Korean TV shows are your favourites? I'm a total drama addict :) From what I read, if you regularly watch without subtitles I'm sure you'll get to the point where you understand them without subs pretty quickly - the hard part is turning them off in the first place.

You're lucky to have lots of Korean students at your school. There are many exchange students in my city and I usually have a language tandem or two, but it's not quite the same and always sad when they leave after a year...
1 person has voted this message useful



picnick
Triglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 4108 days ago

22 posts - 33 votes
Speaks: Tagalog, English*, Spanish
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 6 of 16
03 January 2013 at 9:08am | IP Logged 
Whenever I come across a new Chinese word, I always think to see if I know the
corresponding Hanja to try and make sense of it! It doesn't always work but sometimes
it does, and it is useful. And you're right about the pronunciations, I think it's
pretty cool that they're quite similar, and the sound changes seem pretty regular to
me. Hopefully learning Mandarin helps with Korean vocab.

druckfehler wrote:
Hello picnick,

great to see that you have opened your study log! Which Korean TV shows are your
favourites? I'm a total drama addict :) From what I read, if you regularly watch
without subtitles I'm sure you'll get to the point where you understand them without
subs pretty quickly - the hard part is turning them off in the first place.

You're lucky to have lots of Korean students at your school. There are many exchange
students in my city and I usually have a language tandem or two, but it's not quite the
same and always sad when they leave after a year...


I don't watch that many, but I most recently finished Reply 1997 which I really loved!
(Although it didn't exactly help with learning standard dialect :P) Either that drama
or City Hunter would probably be my favorite. I don't have the courage to watch without
subs yet haha, but I'll try to work it up soon when a new drama catches my eye.

I'm pretty fortunate to live in what's practically a Koreatown. There's a mall with a
lot of Korean food stalls in the food court, etc. so I have no excuse not to practice
the language! But even in your situation there's still a way to keep in touch with
those exchange students. Facebook, KakaoTalk, where honestly I talk to some of my
Korean friends more than in real life! LOL

Also, thanks for all your work organizing and leading the team, it really seems to be
paying off!
1 person has voted this message useful



js6426
Diglot
Senior Member
Cambodia
Joined 4279 days ago

277 posts - 349 votes 
Speaks: English*, Khmer
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 7 of 16
03 January 2013 at 2:40pm | IP Logged 
picnick wrote:


There's a lot of different courses out there though, so I'd be interested in hearing
what (free) options you guys have tried and liked!



Hey picnick, looking forward to learning Mandarin along side you this year! For a good course I can recommend
Assimil. I am studying it at the moment and I am really enjoying it. The lessons are not too long so you can easily
get one in each day, and the speed of the dialogues gets progressively faster so you don't find yourself
overwhelmed in the first lesson. For learning the tones I would recommend Michel Thomas (the whole course is
actually very decent imo). Both of those courses can be found for free if you know where to look!
1 person has voted this message useful



picnick
Triglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 4108 days ago

22 posts - 33 votes
Speaks: Tagalog, English*, Spanish
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 8 of 16
06 January 2013 at 7:11pm | IP Logged 
As am I! I'll check those out then, I could use a course for tones especially.

I downloaded the Newbie level of ChinesePod so I'm looking forward to seeing how that
goes. I tried the first couple lessons and though I find the audio quite slow, I like
the casual-ness and practicality of the lessons.

Since it's been winter break from school I've been commuting to my job (I'm what you
could call an 'intern', I suppose, at a law office) so on the commute and during work
I've been listening to a LOT of TTMIK audio lessons. They're definitely mixing in more
Korean in the lesson itself and I feel pretty comfortable with the concepts they're
explaining. The passive voice concept is still a bit confusing for me though so I'll
have to look at it again. I had sort've grasped the concept before the lesson just
through my exposure to Korean but now that it's been fully explained I need to look
closer at it.


1 person has voted this message useful



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