Evita's Korean and Other Languages

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Evita
Orange Belt
Posts: 182
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:02 pm
Location: Latvia
Languages: I speak: Latvian, English, Russian, German
I study: Korean
I'm slowly forgetting: Spanish, Finnish, French
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1141
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Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Sat Aug 22, 2015 9:04 pm

I had three logs on HTLAL so this will be my fourth one. The first one was mostly about Finnish, the second and third ones were mostly about Korean, and this one will focus on Korean as well (for now). I don't feel the need to document my progress on a very detailed level like I did in the beginning of my Korean studies, but it will be nice to post some thoughts and findings and accomplishments here.

I started studying Korean in March 2012 so it's been three and a half years already. I've learned a lot of Korean in this time but my progress has been pretty slow. I don't have any classes or deadlines, I'm studying on my own and at my own pace. My goal is to someday be fluent in Korean, but the first goal is to be able to watch Korean dramas without subtitles so I am prioritizing listening comprehension over active skills.

Many people ask me why I am studying Korean, and it's not an easy question to answer. My first exposure to the language was through the TV show Lost, and I found the sound of the language curious - as if people were whining or complaining all the time. Then in 2012 I was unemployed for a while and looking for an exotic language to learn (all my previous languages had been European ones) and I settled on Korean. At first I wasn't sure how long I would keep it up, I just wanted to do a couple of TTMIK levels and figure out how the language works, but somehow Korean grabbed me very quickly and I've been exploring it ever since.

There are two reasons why my progress has been pretty slow. The first reason (applies to the first year of my studies) is that I was self-studying and relying on TTMIK too much. Don't get me wrong, the TTMIK grammar lessons are very useful but they are not enough, they don't provide a full overview of Korean grammar. Also, I didn't have the best textbooks, and I was reluctant to use the ones I had because reading the Korean script was really difficult, I much preferred audio materials. I think I could have grasped the basics of Korean much quicker if I had had appropriate materials.

The second reason is that I am making Anki decks to be used by other students of Korean as I go along, and that takes a lot of time that could have otherwise been used differently, but I don't plan to change my approach. My decks are the best and most popular Korean decks on Ankiweb, and I want to keep improving them.
7 x
: 6480 / 8000 Korean Vocabulary

My Korean Anki decks: Grammar Sentences | General Korean Sentences | Vocabulary | Hanja

The Real CZ
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby The Real CZ » Sun Aug 23, 2015 1:19 pm

Hey Evita, nice to see you move your log here. I still need to get mine started here. Hopefully Renate, Warp, and the other Korean learners migrate over here as well.
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kelbelle
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Languages: English (Native), Japanese (Upper Intermediate(N3-N2)), Korean (Upper Beginner), German (Beginner)
Language Log: http://how-to-learn-any-language.org/vi ... =15&t=1161
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby kelbelle » Sun Aug 23, 2015 8:54 pm

Hi Evita~!
Like The Real CZ said. Nice to see you back here! I'll still be reading your blog and probably starting mine over here as well. :)

Also thanks again with your help with 유인나's podcasts. It's gotten easier listening to her and I'm starting to understand more and more of whats going on. I appreciate it.
1 x
If you want something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done.
~
Korean novel: 4 / 100
Der Blonde Vampir 01: 52 / 100
Korean Grammar in Use: 7 / 100

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Evita
Orange Belt
Posts: 182
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:02 pm
Location: Latvia
Languages: I speak: Latvian, English, Russian, German
I study: Korean
I'm slowly forgetting: Spanish, Finnish, French
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1141
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Wed Aug 26, 2015 7:39 pm

Hey you both! Good to see you here as well.

I want to write this log so that even those who have never visited HTLAL can follow it, so I have lots of things to explain about my materials and my methods. No doubt it will take several posts. But let me start with a bit of good news - my Anki hanja deck just received its first rating (5 stars)! 8-) I didn't know if people would find it useful because it doesn't have many cards yet, but apparently they do. Now, the problem is that I have added only 5 new cards since publishing the deck so I need to get back into it. Adding a card is not easy though, it takes me about 15-20 minutes because I have to check several resources and decide on the best example words.

Here's something unrelated: a few days ago, I had a dream in which I wanted to learn Japanese. I was on a train and the person sitting in front of me had some Japanese materials and I was asking where they got them and maybe I could borrow some :lol: But then the next night I dreamed I was a hockey player :?

Back to Korean. A couple of months ago I decided to go through my whole Anki vocabulary deck and add hanja to the words that have Chinese origins. Since the deck has more than 4700 notes, it's a lot of work. I quickly got bored doing it at home and continued to do it during free moments at work. I think I'm somewhere between 3500 and 4000 now and I want to finish it quickly. There are things I've done to this deck that are mainly for the benefit of others (like reordering the cards and adding audio), but hanja is mainly for my benefit. I love reviewing words and seeing where they come from.

I already mentioned that listening comprehension is very high on my goal list, and I've been working towards it almost from the very beginning. I used to listen to the TTMIK Iyagi lessons even when I understood less than 5% of what they were saying. I also tried reading the transcripts now and then but I rarely finished them because it was too difficult. Then I tried to listen to some Korean radio stations but they were not what I was looking for. Finally I found Yoo Inna's show 유인나의 볼륨을 높여요 (Turn up the volume) as a podcast and I've been listening to it for a year and a half now. I use Podbbang when I'm at the computer and "Player FM" on the phone. It's a daily show so I never run out of new stuff to listen to. I can't claim that I understand most of it but sometimes I do understand most of a particular story. For example, recently a listener had sent in a story about how she went to Jeju Island for a vacation 3 years ago and met a guy in the guest house she was staying at. They spent a lot of time together there and when she had to go back home the guy gave her his phone number and asked her to call him. She never did though, she figured it was just a vacation thing and wouldn't work in the real life. So 3 years later she went to the same guest house again for another vacation and it turned out that the guy had left a note or something with the owner that said he was still waiting. So she decided to contact him after all. /The End. And the responses to this story were mostly "oooooh, it's just like a movie" and "I need to go to Jeju Island too". :) The fact that I could understand all this in Korean is pretty great.
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: 6480 / 8000 Korean Vocabulary

My Korean Anki decks: Grammar Sentences | General Korean Sentences | Vocabulary | Hanja

gsbod
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=1152
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby gsbod » Wed Aug 26, 2015 9:02 pm

Well if you decide to go for Japanese rather than hockey it might be interesting to learn Japanese using materials for Korean speakers, given the similarities in the grammar. I am rather tempted to give it a go the other way around (Korean through Japanese) although I fear I may only manage it if the day were somehow extended to 25 hours.
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iguanamon
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Studies: Catalan
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=797
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby iguanamon » Wed Aug 26, 2015 10:18 pm

Welcome to language-learners.org, Evita. I am happy to see you here :)
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kraemder
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Korean (studying for about a year semi seriously)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1204
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby kraemder » Fri Aug 28, 2015 12:11 am

I may start a log here too. Japanese is a greta language to study XD.
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User avatar
Evita
Orange Belt
Posts: 182
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:02 pm
Location: Latvia
Languages: I speak: Latvian, English, Russian, German
I study: Korean
I'm slowly forgetting: Spanish, Finnish, French
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1141
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Sat Aug 29, 2015 10:27 am

gsbod wrote:Well if you decide to go for Japanese rather than hockey it might be interesting to learn Japanese using materials for Korean speakers, given the similarities in the grammar. I am rather tempted to give it a go the other way around (Korean through Japanese) although I fear I may only manage it if the day were somehow extended to 25 hours.


Japanese is certainly more likely than hockey :lol: But it's not in my near-future plans. I can imagine giving it a go in a couple of years when my Korean is better and I have a solid foundation in Chinese characters. Maybe I'll start learning the alphabets sooner though, I don't want reading to be a pain (like it was in Korean).

Anyway, I wanted to write about the textbooks I've tried in this post.

  • Korean From Zero - This is the best book to start with for a self-learner, in my opinion. It's available for free as a PDF, and you can also buy the paper book or even just browse the lessons on their site. It wasn't published yet back when I started studying Korean, but I read through it less than a year ago. It doesn't go very far grammar-wise, but it teaches and explains the basics very well. It's an excellent book to get a solid grammar foundation from.
  • My Korean 1 & 2 - I think "My Korean 1" was my first textbook, and I had a hard time with it. I chose it because it was available for free and it did have excellent Hangul pronunciation explanations at the beginning, but it moved quicker than I was comfortable with and it took me a long time to finish the book. Eventually I did finish both books in this series and I can recommend them if you can't get or don't want to pay for paper books.
  • Korean Grammar in Use - This is a series of three books (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) focusing on explaining the Korean grammar. Each of them has approximately 80-90 grammar points included, and they are excellent books. I recommend them very highly. I got the first two books a year into my studies when a colleague of mine went on a trip to Korea, and going through the first book in detail was what gave me my grammar foundation in Korean.

I've also looked at and worked with many books that I found on torrents. Here are some of them:

  • Elementary Korean - I used it off and on at the same time as My Korean. I worked through more than half of it but eventually decided to abandon it. The problem was that the explanations were very high-handed and on the whole the book was not reader-friendly.
  • Won Gwang (in Russian) - There's a Korean institute in Moscow that offers Korean classes. It created this series of 3 textbooks to help them with the classes. The books move pretty fast and the third one is quite advanced. I'm currently studying the middle book. I picked this series because it's nice to have some variety and learn Korean through some other language, not English. (I wish there were books teaching Korean in Latvian... Maybe I'll write one someday.) Another reason I picked this series was that they have nice example sentences with audio for each grammar point they introduce, and I can put them into Anki.
  • Seoul National University textbooks - This series has four books to be studied in four years (I assume). In contrast to the Russian textbooks, these books move slower and are longer and include more details like common expressions and usage patterns and which particles should be used with a specific verb. They remind me of Korean From Zero in this regard. What they sorely lack, though, are grammar explanations. They have lots of examples and exercises but little explanation. I started reading the first book this year mainly to improve my reading speed and also because I wanted to use the next books in the series and I thought I might as well start from the beginning. I'm almost done with the first book now.

If you don't mind using scanned books, you can check out this link (in Russian). Also this. And here (in English). I'm a book hoarder so I love getting new resources even though I end up not using most of them.

I also have the Ewha Korean books 2-1 and 2-2 (in paper format). I bought them because I thought it would be a good idea to use textbooks from a big university since they go up to an advanced level. However, I've only managed to finish the first lesson so I don't know yet whether I will stick with them or not.

And finally, there's a new Korean grammar reference book that looks good that I want to buy: Essential Korean Grammar by Laura Kingdon. It's quite possibly an overkill since I already have the Korean Grammar in Use books, but I can't help but want it... It's bound to have something different.
3 x
: 6480 / 8000 Korean Vocabulary

My Korean Anki decks: Grammar Sentences | General Korean Sentences | Vocabulary | Hanja

User avatar
Evita
Orange Belt
Posts: 182
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:02 pm
Location: Latvia
Languages: I speak: Latvian, English, Russian, German
I study: Korean
I'm slowly forgetting: Spanish, Finnish, French
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1141
x 289

Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Tue Sep 01, 2015 7:26 pm

For a couple of weeks I had a problem with my phone. I have a LG G2 and I like it a lot, but I started to think that maybe I'd have to buy a new one. The problem was that sometimes it would get very hot while charging and it would gradually stop charging and just keep getting hotter and hotter. The fix was simple - disconnect the charger, wait 10-20 minutes and try again - but it wasn't something I could keep doing long-time so I tried to find out what could be causing it. The internet was no help, I couldn't find anyone else having had such a problem. Then I thought maybe one of the apps I was using regularly did this. After some experimenting it turned out that I was right - my podcast app Player FM was causing it. Now I've switched to Podcast Addict and the problem has disappeared. I'm very relieved. I don't want to get a new phone for a year at least.

In other news, I added two new Chinese characters to Anki - 考 (to examine) and 犯 (to violate). I also went through three grammar points from Ewha chapter 2. One of them, 에 비해서, is pretty tricky. At first glance it seems straightforward - "compared to", but then you encounter a sentence like this:

나이에 비해서 키가 커요.

Does it mean "He is tall compared to his age"? No, it means "He is tall for his age". It's a good thing I found a similar sentence in the Naver dictionary and could see how it was translated because the Ewha book has very very few translations. And by the way, the grammar explanations in this book are not the best. For example, here is what they wrote about "에 비해서":

"It is used when the previous noun represents the result of the following context of the compared subject."

That's pretty useless as an explanation, isn't it? But the value in this book is in its texts and dialogues, they are just the right amount of challenging for me.
3 x
: 6480 / 8000 Korean Vocabulary

My Korean Anki decks: Grammar Sentences | General Korean Sentences | Vocabulary | Hanja

User avatar
Evita
Orange Belt
Posts: 182
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:02 pm
Location: Latvia
Languages: I speak: Latvian, English, Russian, German
I study: Korean
I'm slowly forgetting: Spanish, Finnish, French
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1141
x 289

Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:33 am

I created a signature for my posts here. I probably won't update the progress bars every day, maybe once or twice a week. The goals I chose - 8000 words and 1500 Chinese characters - don't really mean anything, they're just some numbers I picked because they're achievable but still pretty far away. Obviously the hanja goal would be easier to achieve, but it's not a priority for me and on some days I don't even do the Anki reviews for this deck. Hanja is something I do "on the side", so to speak.

As for studying, I'm not doing much these days. My trip to Korea is coming closer and I need to prepare for it, gather information. I also want to finish adding hanja to my vocabulary deck before my trip but there's a problem with it. I copied more than 100 characters into the deck on Monday and my arm started hurting; two days later my wrist also started hurting so I've been taking it easy since then. Today my arm feels well again so I'll try to add some more.

I decided to stop with the "Quick Korean" videos for now. The audio quality and sentence content is so good that I want to add some of them to Anki but I don't have time to do that now, so I'm leaving it for later. However, I still watch some "Let's Speak Korean" videos now and then. I'm up to episode 104 now.
2 x
: 6480 / 8000 Korean Vocabulary

My Korean Anki decks: Grammar Sentences | General Korean Sentences | Vocabulary | Hanja


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