The Great Korean Spiral Arm: A Hitchhiker's Excursion

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Evita
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Re: The Great Korean Spiral Arm: A Hitchhiker's Excursion

Postby Evita » Wed Jan 04, 2017 6:24 am

But this reminded me that I want a good Korean grammar source so that I can go and read a specific grammar point. I would much prefer a book that is arranged by "category", that is to say, if for example we all did not know about the difference between these two just yet, we could go to this book and under a category "because, cause and effect, premise and conclusion", etc, we could see all the major grammar constructions the language uses for this purpose, so we can compare them side by side. Is there such a book? I am buying it first thing back in the USA!

Integrated Korean is a textbook series, that's not what you want. Korean: A Comprehensive Grammar might be what you want, but the grammar points there are arranged by how they are formed, not by their meaning. For example, 아/어 보다 and 아/어 주다 are in the same chapter.

Korean Grammar in Use is arranged exactly how you described, but keep in mind that there are three books (beginner, intermediate and advanced). 서 and 니까 are both in the first book and there is a section describing how they are different. There are also exercises and audio, which the comprehensive book doesn't have.
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Re: The Great Korean Spiral Arm: A Hitchhiker's Excursion

Postby outcast » Thu Jan 05, 2017 11:46 pm

Thank you both! I will decide on one first when I go back, but I suspect I may end up getting both, since I have no Korean books at all yet. I would not mind spending for both since they are resources for me to look at and could save me much time trying to figure things out.

I've noticed something strange: my Korean listening has made a significant jump, now can follow sentences from the get-go and sometimes get the jist, so long they are from things I am learning. Before it would be just incomprehensible mumbling. The difference more specifically is now on the first listen I can kinda figure out what words are in a phrase without inevitably resorting to reading the transcript. This is only when sentences are isolated and I am not talking about full-speed uninterrupted dialogue yet. I am listening more to audio input now.

Why strange? Because practically at the same time this improvement in Korean listening has taken place, I feel my Chinese listening has clearly deteriorated. It is not to the point where I am having true difficulties, but I don't "get" everything immediately, actually I feel the language suddenly is being spoken faster. I spoke to two people yesterday, one of whom I had spoken before, and I felt their speech was 25% faster! So i did have to myself "tag" question to confirm what they had said.

I do not recall this in prior learning processes, but this is the first time I am learning actively a new language while I am still learning the other language and where I am living in the environment of the much stronger language. Not sure if this feeling of a bit of attrition is common or not.
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Re: The Great Korean Spiral Arm: A Hitchhiker's Excursion

Postby qeadz » Fri Jan 06, 2017 12:54 am

Huge congrats on the Korean milestone! I remember my elation when I first understood sentences being spoken. Not just figuring them out slowly after the fact, but actually hearing and understanding. Great moment!

Hope you are enjoying that success similarly!
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Re: The Great Korean Spiral Arm: A Hitchhiker's Excursion

Postby outcast » Fri Jan 06, 2017 1:03 am

Thanks. It is important, I just know that tomorrow or the next day I will have a bad day and regress to incomprehension lol.

But those of us who have been on this road once before, or twice, or thrice, or quattrice... (invented word), don't panic. I am happy about the milestones but also do not think I am on the eve of discussing Socrates in Korean! You just learn to appreciate the progress while keeping your feet on the ground and understanding the long road ahead. And when you have those bad days or feelings of regression, you don't panic, you don't quit. You just know next week it will be much better.
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Re: The Great Korean Spiral Arm: A Hitchhiker's Excursion

Postby outcast » Fri Jan 13, 2017 11:02 am

I could not even the the Korean equative 예요, 이에요 yesterday as I was attempting to attempt to write Korean texts to one of my friends. I had a total breakdown yesterday and basically could not output any Korean. I blame it on German, it is buzzing in my mind the last three days with so many phrases jumping in my head, in fact I have been thinking more in German it feels than in English. More on this in the German log.

Today is a bit better and I'm sure eventually I will reach a new equilibrium with the new routine. Just got to keep chipping away, this Korean project is all about indefatigable persistence.

I have completed my "rote/semi SRS" of the TOPIK word list's first 1000. This means I have gone over the words at least twice and in some cases a few more times than that. I probably can recognize at best 400 of those, and then when you add the words from Korean From Zero and Click Korean, I am probably at 500+ in Korean vocab now, so if I had some more fluency orally I would be at certain A1, I do feel with some more practice I can get there rather quickly. In this few weeks with "nothing" to do, I hope I can put the pedal a bit on Korean.

I am doing a review of pronunciation so that any bad habits are discouraged. After this I will start reading more and I will start listening to whatever free podcasts I can find with learners and do intensive listening with them. I will still use native media for extensive "ear training".
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Re: The Great Korean Spiral Arm: A Hitchhiker's Excursion

Postby outcast » Wed Jan 18, 2017 1:44 pm

I must say I am quite displeased with Click Korean and Korean from Zero in that they completely neglected what to me is always an essential pattern for beginners of any language: to like + verb (to like to do something: sleep, drink, eat, play, etc).

Neither book one, nor what I have seen of book 2, and Click Korean in all lessons cover this. I just realized it when I wanted to say "I really do like to drink wine", that I had no clue at ALL how to express this idea. I improvised with a quick search and came up with 저는 와인을 마시는 갓이 좋아요, which I think got my point across though I believe 갓이 좋아요 is not totally correct, and maybe the part with 마시는 is wrong too? I don't know.

I think that is a quite unacceptable omission quite frankly, and thus my mini Rant here. I hope other courses did better on this point. :P

Anyway I am accumulating words and practicing grammar patterns, I am reading a bit more and trying to do some more listening. I am very afraid of texting mainly because I take so long to type. The problem is actually I don't know how to spell half the words. What an odd thing: when learning Chinese, typing Chinese on a phone was no problem as most people use pinyin and thus the character displays automatically. But reading was (is) a nightmare. But with Korean, I can already read anything probably (I mean read out the sounds of any text), but it is darn near impossible to type. I have to remember how the word is spelled, and to look it up takes a long time. The words don't auto fill when I type, I don't know if that is just the way it is for Korean, or if it's my phone setting or just the phone is no capable of filling Korean. In any event, is this insecurity about spelling the words that is really holding me back from texting more in Korean.
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Re: The Great Korean Spiral Arm: A Hitchhiker's Excursion

Postby qeadz » Wed Jan 18, 2017 6:23 pm

You know where I am at in my studies, so take this with a pinch of salt because while I believe it to be true, I am still a beginner:

좋다 : good (amongst other meanings)
좋아하다 : to like something (amongst other translations)

I'm sure you already know this. Also that the first doesn't take an object - its descriptive. However the second requires an object (and a subject who will be 'doing' the 'liking').

Now what you may or may not know is that Koreans often use the first to mean the second. However the sentence construction would not ordinarily allow for a subject and object because the verb is descriptive. So they do something similar to this:

저는 이것이 좋아요. (I *think* this is what they would say).

Basically its: I+topic marker this thing+subject marker good.

I don't know for sure what the nuance is, but I believe it more literally translates as "I think this thing is good" which kind of means "I like this thing". However it can be done with other descriptive verbs too using a similar sentence construction.

Someone who knows more Korean than I, please correct me if I am wrong!

EDIT: So what I am saying is that one part of your sentence construction may not actually be wrong per se, but acceptable. However it is possible that a Korean may not use that construction anyway because the whole thing may be rephrased.
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Re: The Great Korean Spiral Arm: A Hitchhiker's Excursion

Postby leosmith » Wed Jan 18, 2017 6:28 pm

outcast wrote:I must say I am quite displeased with Click Korean and Korean from Zero in that they completely neglected what to me is always an essential pattern for beginners of any language: to like + verb (to like to do something: sleep, drink, eat, play, etc).

Neither book one, nor what I have seen of book 2, and Click Korean in all lessons cover this. I just realized it when I wanted to say "I really do like to drink wine", that I had no clue at ALL how to express this idea. I improvised with a quick search and came up with 저는 와인을 마시는 갓이 좋아요, which I think got my point across though I believe 갓이 좋아요 is not totally correct, and maybe the part with 마시는 is wrong too? I don't know.

I've found this curriculum list of TTMIK to be very helpful for hunting and picking grammar points. I think level 2 lesson 19 applies in your case.
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Re: The Great Korean Spiral Arm: A Hitchhiker's Excursion

Postby Evita » Wed Jan 18, 2017 6:36 pm

Your sentence is correct, except 갓이 should be 것이. 것이, in turn, often gets contracted to 게.

You can say "to like" both with 좋다 (with the subject marker) and 좋아하다 (with the object marker). I don't think there are strict rules for when to use which. The first one is an adjective that also means "to be good" so it's more passive. The second one is more active and more used when talking about people you like or something you feel strongly about. At least I think so.

I'm not surprised the resources didn't mention how to say this because it's just a verb (or two), it's not a grammar point. Another similar example that came to my mind now is how to say "I know that..." and "I don't know whether/where/when...". You'll find the second one (-는지 몰라요) in almost any upper beginner grammar book, but you won't find the first one (-는 거 알아요) anywhere because it's just the 는 것 construction, not a separate grammar point.

As for learning how to type, I used Anki for that. For the first 5 or 6 months, I studied my vocabulary deck in both directions, and I required typing in the production direction. It helped a lot.
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Re: The Great Korean Spiral Arm: A Hitchhiker's Excursion

Postby outcast » Thu Feb 02, 2017 2:46 pm

A belated thank you to all of you for the kind replies. Even though I did heart you haha, I still feel I should explicitly thank you.

So, I have been pretty quiet of late. At the time of my last entries, I was a in a bit of an enthusiasm climax: I really was so stoked about having reached a level in Chinese were I could operate in a Chinese society without major hassles (outside very technical matters or heavily accented language, and fast speech), I felt I was starting to make progress in Korean, I was going back to German and was glad the core of the language seemingly had held!

Then I got suddenly hit by the opposite feeling: heavy bout of weariness. Weariness about the fact my Chinese still was ways to go to the real ultimate level I want, and that I probably need two more years to reach it (and I still have the WRITING problem). Korean was advancing but then thought I am a lowly A1, and I know how much effort it will take to reach a B1 level where I start to feel "useful" and "somewhat intelligent" in the target language... so much work ahead. Then my German and the fact I need to get it to C1. Plus all the preparations to return home, then getting home and immediately having to deal with stuff PLUS needing to get to work some serious hours in order to fund my upcoming language plans... So I kind off withdrew both in real life and online, and have been solitary for about 3 weeks or so.

The good news is, it didn't really affect my studying. I have not studied Chinese for 3 weeks, this is the first time I have made such a long pause, and I don't mind (more on this in the Chinese log). I spent a week with German heavily each day and was texting my German friend, so a lot of reactivation did take place.

But my focus has really been Korean. I decided I wanted to make a big push in this language, despite my insistence that it is a "side-project". I just figured that I have NOTHING to do in these last few weeks in China, I may as well try to really get this language to finally implant in my head, and really make a dent in the vocab and practice the most useful patterns. I have to return to Chinese soon to prepare for the HSK 6, and back in the USA I will have some opportunities to use German, so I decided to give a good boost to my Korean while I have the time.

So I have been studying quite a bit and obviously have made progress I can taste and feel, as it usually is the case at a low A1 going towards A2. Texting longer sentences in Korean is definitely a little bit easier now. More importantly, something I really like has happened: I am no longer staring at a totally BLANK mind when I want to write a text in Korean, and I do not know what pattern or structure to use at all. At least "something" usable is coming up. It may be wrong in usage but something usually is coming up. So my focus on really learning patterns is starting to pay off. Vocabulary still of course is insufficient to not be a big strain, but that is totally fine.

A small downside of knowing more patterns while still being such a rookie is that I get very easily confused about what to use or what is being said to me. To sort this out will take time and just plenty of reading practice. I am doing some listening and just repeating the recording noting the words and patterns and doing "mental translation", I hear the Korean and think of the English word, in the order it appears in the Korean. I don't usually recommend this long term, but as a short term beginner-intermediate strategy I have found it useful because it helps my brain imprint the word order of the language, and see patterns, and then I can use this knowledge to make my own spoken sentences. The repetition also doesn't hurt to din the stuff in my head.

I tend to want to finish the material that I start with so I have finished Click Korean, and review it every so often, the entire thing. Korean from Zero I am doing a reading on book 3 which I can see why some of you do not recommend too much. The reason I am still reading it is I feel it is good to read the entire program one uses because you can then see grammar what was omitted earlier, which is usually put at the end. I am close to being done with book 3, which I am not going to really try mastering, like I am doing Book1, and to some extent Book 2. Then I will switch to TTMIK and How to Study Korean, both seem to have quite a bit of material.

Finally, since I am going back to the US in a couple of weeks time, I will get the Tuttle Korean series, Beginner, Continuing, and Advanced. I generally like Tuttle books on Asian languages, and I still feel the need to have a "real textbook" for a language on the shelves. I am sure the Beginner series will be a fairly breezy affair, hopefully as has been the case before it introduces the language in a way that makes me discover things or see things in new ways, deepening my language feeling. Continuing Korean I assume will be much more challenging. Advanced Korean will have to wait probably till the summer I would assume.

In short, I am chipping away at the language.
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