- Glossika:
After trying many alternatives, this is the one I've been sticking to:
1) I use Glossika Level 1, Track C and listen to a sentence and try to write it from what I hear.
2) I compare what I wrote with the official korean transcription.
3) I write again the sentences, this time copying the official korean transcription.
4) I try to match the english sentence with the different parts of the korean transcription. When in doubt about something, I look for answers on the internet or in some books I have. *
5) Listen again to the C track, pause it and try to repeat the sentence by reading the official transcript.
6) Move on to the next sentence and repeat the same process.
I work like this for a pomodoro (25 uninterrupted minutes) a day. Usually early in the morning after I eat breakfast.
After I've studied two more new sentences this way, I go back to sentence one and repeat the same process again from the beginning (it may take more than one day until I reach again 2 new sentences, but it really helps with retention). My idea is to keep doing this until I reach sentence 50 and then start a new batch of 50 sentences.
* I'm not going deep into grammar right now, so if I see a particle I just signal it as "Particle" and move on. But I really want to grasp how verbs and adjectives work, so I've been consulting these books a lot: "500 Basic Korean Verbs" and "500 Basic Korean Adjectives". What I like about this books is that they are very complete and show not only the mode each ending represents (Declarative, Inquisitive, Propositive, Imperative) and the tense (Present, Past or Future), but also the formality level (Informal-Low, Informal-High, Formal-Low and Formal-High) that each ending indicates. This made me feel really curious about the actual use of the different formality levels, so I looked for more information and found this:
Level 3 Lesson 27 / Politeness Levels / 반말 and 존댓말
How 반말 Works – Casual/Informal Language in Korean
Also, I thought that I needed at least a very basic overview of how korean works, so I've been reading the "Introduction to the Korean Language" part of the book "Korean Grammar in Use: Beginning to Early Intermediate". In twelve pages it covers the following topics:
°Korean Sentence Structure
°Conjugations of Verbs and Adjectives
°Connecting Sentences
°Sentence Types
°Honorific Expressions
- After many experiments, I think I've finally settled on a way to work trough the k-drama "Tomorrow With You" (내일 그대와):
1) At morning, as soon as I wake up: Watch a (no-subbed) 20 minutes new segment.
2) At night, before going to bed: Watch again the 20 minutes from the morning, but this time with english subs. Then, watch the same segment without subs.
To my surprise, it is becoming quite a pleasant routine, so I'm happy about that
- I finally got a live talk on skype with a japanese/korean native speaker I've been texting with for some months now (mainly in spanish with some japanese mixed in). We talked for a long time and I asked him many questions about Korea and the language. One of the doubts I cleared was the actual pronunciation of the word I mentioned here:
AndyMeg wrote:A line of dialogue from the drama "Tomorrow With You" ("I don't know what it is, but I'm not curious to find out") reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from k-drama "Kill Me, Heal Me". The word that triggered the memory sounded like "bunme". Here is the scene from "Kill Me, Heal Me":
"I won't wear it"
"Wear it"
"I won't wear it"
"Wear it"
"I won't wear it, get rid of it"
"I won't get rid of it, wear it"
"I won't wear it, get rid of it"
"I won't get rid of it, wear it"
"I w-w-w-w-won't wear it, g-g-g-g-et rid of it"
This scene is just soooo funny! And the actors ad-libbed the rapping part!
The actual word used in "Kill Me, Heal Me" (킬미, 힐미 ) wasn't "bunme" but 못매. And it is an Informal-Low way (반말) of saying "I won't wear it". Thanks to this I also realized that sometimes I can't differentiate well between the way koreans pronounce ㅁ and ㅂ.
- Thanks to all the above, I'm starting to differenciate between formality levels used in Korean. Now, when I'm watching a k-drama I try to notice the endings of verbs and adjectives to get an idea of the formality level they are using each time. Also, I'm trying to pay special attention to when and with whom they use each formality level, and I've found it is more complex that what it may actually seem. For example, yesterday I started watching a k-drama with english subs: 38 Task Force (38사기동대 ) and there is a team that go around trying to collect taxes from tax evaders. Most of the team members are about the same age, but the leader is much older. When they where on a van, one of the members talked in general to the others (including the leader) using the Informal-Low way (반말), but when he directly talked to the leader he changed to a more formal language (존댓말). In the same episode, the leader got pissed off with one of the tax evaders for talking to him in the Informal-Low way (반말) and asked for his ID (I suppose he wanted to check his age to see who was older).
- On Memrise I'm still studying the conjuctions and ocasionally reviewing the first batch of 30 nouns.