Evita's Korean and Other Languages

[AndyMeg]

I'm not as advanced as you with korean (I'm pretty much a beginner in many aspects), but after reading a little bit about the ~니까 I'll try to make a guess.

According to Google Translator, 학교 휴학하니까 좋아요? means "Is it okay to take a school leave?"

From my perspective, maybe it could be more accurate to translate it as: "Then, is it okay to take a school leave?" or "So, is it okay to take a school leave?"(but I'm not really sure about this, and I actually may be completely wrong, so let's wait for someone with more knowledge to tell us )

I'm pretty sure that is wrong. My guess is "Are you glad/happy that you're taking time off from school?" but this is the first time I've seen such a -니까 좋아요 construction and I don't quite understand how it works.

Yeah, you may be right indeed!

Then it could be more like:

"Are you happy/glad because you are taking time off from school?"

What do you think?

I just thought about this possibility after reading this: Italki question

[Evita]

My Korean studies are going well. I had a vacation so I had more free time than normally. I'm now up to lesson 11 of Sejong 4. Each lesson has five listening tasks and I mostly focus on those. Most of them are easy for me to understand, but sometimes I'm missing key vocabulary so I'm lost. 적응하다 (to adapt) was one of those words. 수목원 was another one. I'm also lost when people talk about dates or prices or anything with numbers. I know the numbers, of course, but I need to think about them before I can recognize them.

In unrelated news, today I decided to go through the lyrics of 그 여자 once again to see if there was still some grammar I didn't understand. Phrases like "한번 나를 안아주고 가면 안 돼요" and "알면서도 이러는 건 아니죠" gave me lots of trouble a few years ago but now I've gotten the hang of them. Particularly the second one is something you can only learn from your friends or dramas, not from textbooks IMO. But I found two things in the lyrics that still gave me trouble.

1) 바라만

I thought this was related to the particle 만, but it is attached to nouns and 바라다 is a verb so I was stumped. I looked through the KGIU Intermediate book and didn't find anything that would fit. Finally I found the explanation on Italki. Turns out the verb is 바라보다, not 바라다. And it's an exception. 만 can be attached to 하다 verbs like this: 이야기만 하다. So in this case the same is done to 바라보다 to get 바라만 보다 even though 바라 is not a noun. It's just... I have no words. I thought the days of Korean boggling my mind were behind me but apparently not.

2) 있데요

This is a sentence ending on which I found only one explanation on the internet. But then I also found it in my KGIU Advanced book so now I can be sure it's a legitimate ending It means approximately the same thing as -더라고요.

I also found a drama to watch - Suspicious Partner. It's about lawyers with a big dose of romance and murder. It's not ideal but it's better than high school antics. The reason I wanted to watch something other than Running Man is that I only have 159 episodes and I'm already up to 92. I'll run out of them in no time if I don't slow down.

[Evita]

I have finished Ewha 2, so to speak. What I skipped over is the original Korean literature pieces that were at the end of each lesson. I guess the authors put them there because they wanted the learners to have a glimpse into the Korean poems and folk tales and what not, but you can imagine what the vocabulary was like. Many words outside the top 6000 list. I'll come back and read those pieces in a couple of years maybe.

I've also finished Sejong 4 and started the first lesson of Sejong 5. The level of difficulty is noticeably higher. Not so much grammar as vocabulary. I added the following words to my Anki deck: 해석하다, 우편물, 정비사, 출국하다, 취업, 창업, and 자영업. See what I mean? But I'm happy about it because learning such words is easier from a textbook than from native materials.

So I was sitting at work today and I suddenly decided that I will take the TOPIK exam the next time I go to Korea, which might be in May 2019. I think I should aim for level 5 but it doesn't really matter since the exam for levels 3-6 is one and the same.

I'm also thinking about ordering the Hangul Master book from TTMIK. It sounds funny when I say I want to master the alphabet after studying the language for many years, but I need to learn how to write in Korean on a paper. I don't have a Korean notebook or anything like that, and I've also never attended a Korean class so there's been no need (also no opportunity) to learn how to write. On the other hand, I'm sure I could also learn how to write without the book. I just need to practice. But I'm more likely to practice with the book so...

[Sayonaroo]

I've also finished Sejong 4 and started the first lesson of Sejong 5. The level of difficulty is noticeably higher. Not so much grammar as vocabulary. I added the following words to my Anki deck: 해석하다, 우편물, 정비사, 출국하다, 취업, 창업, and 자영업. See what I mean? But I'm happy about it because learning such words is easier from a textbook than from native materials.

I disagree. I find that 99% of the time that seeing words used in native material is more memorable than a textbook especially when some kind of emotion or humor is involved ie talk variety shows ( AND of course you should be picky with your native content and fast-forward as desired) . by the way do you think it makes sense to add words to anki that you've come across for the first time in a textbook?? Maybe it's not a big deal if you're lax with anki but if you're drilling yourself with anki and being strict and end up marking a lot of fails or hard and forcing yourself to memorize stuff via anki rather than extending memory of the word. Currently I learn by mining words from watching show me the money 6 and adding them to anki (it can involve me adding screenshots of the text on the screen or just text in the deck) which usually means I get a lot of context (who's saying it, why they're saying it, who they're saying it to, etc etc etc) unless it's part of rap lyrics. Also the format of my anki card is more lax than the traditional front/back format.

an example card is
FRONT
screen shot of the sentence which is 이걸 보고 어떻게 상각하고 어떤 귀감을 얻고
___감 [龜鑑]
亀鑑;かがみ;手本;模範。
【예】아내의 ___감 【訳】妻のかがみ
【예】교육자의 ___감으로 칭송되다. 【訳】 教育者の亀鑑とされる。
【예】모든 인류의 ___감이다. 【訳】 すべての人類の亀鑑である。

back is the stuff i blanked out.

[Evita]

Sayonaroo, have you even read my log? I've said many times that I make my Anki decks so that they'd be useful for other people. If I have 5200 words already added and then I encounter a bunch of unknown words in a lower intermediate textbook, obviously I need to add them because I should have added them a couple of thousand words ago. That's also why I need to reorder the words periodically. Yes, I also study this deck myself and it's been difficult forcing myself to memorize these words. I'm not strict with the buttons, I usually press Good even if I didn't remember the word. My thinking is that I will eventually encounter this word in some other materials and then it will stick better.

As for sentences, I prefer to have audio on those cards. TV is not a good source for that because people are always talking over each other or there's some background music or things like that.

When I said it's easier to learn words from a textbook, I meant as opposed to a news story. If an intermediate level textbook has a text about types of employment, it will use fewer new words than a native text.

[Evita]

I think that writing about Hangeul Master last time helped me convince myself that I do want the book. Then I saw that TTMIK is having a sale and so I went ahead and ordered it. I also ordered a book in Korean for elementary school students. TTMIK has a few of such books in their store (even though TTMIK are not the authors) and I trust their recommendation that it would be a good reading. I intend for it to be the first Korean book that I read. It's pretty short so I expect it will take me 2-4 weeks to read it.

I hadn't gone outside the log section of this forum in forever so I only just found out about rdearman's study group experiment. It sounds quite interesting but I wouldn't have taken part in the study anyway. I've never recorded how much time I spend on an activity and I doubt I ever will. I just really hate doing it because if I have numbers I can't help but compare them and trying to best them. They would just give me stress. But maybe more importantly, it would take effort to track everything I do related to Korean and I don't want to make that effort. I want to keep it fun and spontaneous.

[The Real CZ]

Hey Evita, glad to see you're still around. It seems like most of the Korean learning gang from HTLAL is gone. I know druck posts here from time to time, but I've lost contact with Warp. I started posting again because I'll be going to Korea next year with my mom and my Korean has become awful through neglect haha.

[Evita]

Hey Evita, glad to see you're still around. It seems like most of the Korean learning gang from HTLAL is gone. I know druck posts here from time to time, but I've lost contact with Warp. I started posting again because I'll be going to Korea next year with my mom and my Korean has become awful through neglect haha.

Good to hear from you. I'm sure you can revive your Korean pretty easily if you put your mind to it. As for my Korean, my passive skills are slowly improving but my active skills are probably pretty bad because I don't use them at all.

In unrelated news, I'll be spending a week in Berlin starting from next Thursday and I'm excited to see how good or bad my German is. I listen to German radios now and then to keep some kind of contact with the language but I think over the years it's deteriorated from C1 to B2. For example, I had completely forgotten what 'vergeblich' means. Also 'ermaesigen'. I also mixed up Sumpf and Suende And my speaking is veeeery rusty.

Auf meinem alten Computer hatte ich mein eigenes Keyboard Layout erarbeitet. Da waren alle lettische, deutsche und finnische Buchstaben zusammen. Aber jetzt nutze ich Linux und kann das Layout fuer Windows nicht verwenden. Wie Schade.

Ich fahre nach Deutschland, um meine Schwester zu besuchen. Sie studiert an einer Universitaet in Berlin, aber sie spricht kein Deutsch. Ich hoffe, dass ich ihr etwas lehren kann, waehrend wir die Stadt anschauen.

[Evita]

I'm almost done with lesson 3 of Sejong 5. The topics of the lessons so far have been professional path, weather, and pop music. The last one made me realize that I don't have 아이돌 in my Anki deck so I promptly added it. Then I had to think about how to translate it. Since "idol" is not a correct translation, I chose to write "K-pop band member (young, good-looking, famous)"

Since I've been thinking about TOPIK recently, I decided to try an old TOPIK Intermediate test to see where I'm at. I got 23 out of 30 correct in the grammar and vocab section so that's nice but this section doesn't exist in the new TOPIK anymore so it's pretty much meaningless. There were also some multi-choice questions in the writing section and I got 4 out of 10 correct. 3 of the 10 I didn't even attempt because it would have been pure guessing. It's a bit disappointing because I thought my vocabulary was better than that. As for listening, maybe I'll do that section once I come back from Germany. But maybe I won't because I'm afraid it'll just depress me more.

Anyway, TOPIK doesn't really matter to me. I looked at the dates and there are no exams in May, the closest is middle of April. I doubt I'll be going to Korea so early in the spring so it looks like I'll have to find another place to take the test if/when I'm ready.

[tarvos]

I am definitely in awe of your Korean skills. My Korean has lagged so hard since I joined that HTLAL team years ago and right now I am trying to make up for lost time, but the Korean vocab and syntax completely do my head in. It's taking me much longer than I expected, so now I can really see I am in it for the long haul.

My Korean is still very basic...