More Korean than Japanese in 2022 - 2023

[kraemder]

Another week and I'm still doing the Korean. I am sort of getting a little wander lust in that I don't want just focus on Korean and ignore my other languages. Well, I've ignored Spanish, French, and German for a number of years. Over a decade now. I'm planning on working on them consistently but only a little from now on. I see that a lot of other polyglots do not just focus on one language exclusively they are working on a lot of projects simultaneously. I am not trying to -speak- Korean anytime soon so that takes pressure off and so mixing languages up in my head etc., isn't such a big deal if I'm just working all on comprehension. I'm going to be studying Japanese, Spanish, German, Mandarin, and Korean all at the same time I think. Obviously I speak Japanese but other than that I don't plan on speaking any of the other languages just working on my comprehension. Korean will get the most love (err SRS reviews..), then Japanese (less SRS reviews but I might speak it and watch Japanese without subs to relax), and then the other languages I'm going to try to get 5-15 min of SRS reviews per day each. I could try actually reading something too. I have some e-books in Spanish and German and frankly they're not too hard to read as long as I don't worry about skipping difficult parts.

I've switched up my Korean SRS to be just passive reading cards. I found the production cards to be less beneficial than I was hoping because I well.. I was just forgetting the words if I studied them up to the 3 day interval and stopped. I’m using mostly sentences from https://www.howtostudykorean.com/ but a few vocabulary words are mixed in particularly from that site they give some compound words that go with the base vocabulary but no sentences for them so whatever. I'm not going to go crazy hunting down sentences particularly because when I do that I often end up with sentences that are more than a little above my level. I'm up to lesson 15 on that website and have entered in all the vocabulary example sentences. I've got 1,694 cards total right now. After I add all the pending new cards to this deck I plan to add several song lyrics. I know the song lyrics are not really a good for well learning to speak but KPOP is most of my listening practice. I've only studied one song so far, and imperfectly at that, but whenever I hear that song I get really happy and challenge myself to listen and understand. As a beginner it's pretty cool to actually listen to Korean and understand it. I found that if you copy and paste sentences into the Naver Dict app it parses the words and lists them similar to Midori for Japanese. Selecting and copying text on an iPhone is a little annoying but it's not too bad. The thing about lyrics is that even if I had the English translations I was having trouble figuring out which word meant what (for all I knew the translation was actually for a different line of text since word order is so different) but now this makes that a lot easier.

I'm wanting to step up my Korean to do at least 1 hour of SRS a day. I know SRS is a little tiring/boring but I find it better than trying to read with my current level of Korean.

[kraemder]

Well I got my two hours of Korean SRS sentences in tonight. It involved plowing through a couple of k-pop songs and it was challenging and fun. I think I was a little worried that flashcards can’t get you immersed in the language the way reading a book can but I think that’s wrong. If you can motivate yourself and get focused then it’s quite good. Afterwards I looked at HelloTalk and the Korean posts I usually don’t read but my eyes were so used to the Hangul after studying for over two hours (per my app, if you include breaks and switching to Naver it was more like three hours), I was reading it automatically. Not necessarily understanding but still. If I could do 2+ hours of sentence SRS per night I think I might be very happy at my progress.

[AnneL]

I posted another Korean vLog on YouTube. I wonder if I am the least popular YouTube vlogger ever. My last video only got 1 view and I wonder if that was me... I kind of like making the videos so I'll keep doing it but literally nobody is watching them. Almost anyway.

Some people who do interesting stuff only have 200 300 views, and unless you have viral/popular content, YouTube will not give you momentum... Youtube is flooded with creators nowadays so it's just hard anyway.

Anyway, you can get a few books in Korean on Google Play/Books. I'm going to buy the Vegetarian and Born in 82 later on once I feel more comfortable with reading, they're both on there.

Re some other posts, I'm not sure a tutor is that useful at our stage, but I'm also a proponent of not producing/talking until I've reached advanced level in reading. I really don't think it makes any sense to speak, even though we've been brainwashed into thinking it's normal. I just agree with S Krashen on this (his story about the japanese kid next door). I think, again, it's all about simplifying the process, and learning "passively" by input means we don't get into the habit of translating. As this is my first language I'm learning that way I might be proven wrong, and just end up delaying that stage while people who don't have fluent talks with locals, and learn much more quickly, maybe. I'll start by writing anyway, for which language community apps might be sufficient (HelloTalk), and will need a tutor when I start pronuncing. Right now I still can't hear all the sounds properly, so as Matt from MIA says, shadowing would be pointless. But only when I have to speak after having listened to the language a lot, I'll want someone to correct me, and only then.
I'm saying this because you are prob used to learning on your own, and tutors will all have their way of doing things, which might not fit with your needs?

How have you been doing in the past month?

[kraemder]

I called out sick today so I have the day off. I was sick yesterday but today I'm just sleep deprived I think.

The New Year is always motivating and fun for language learners and people exercising/weight loss stuff I think. I joined the 366 day challenge thing. I thought the rules were simple.. if you study for 30+ minutes in a day then you get one point. So the goal was to get 366 points I thought. There are a ton of rules however so maybe I'll go look them over again as I don't want to make anyone angry but I like the simplicity of the 1 point per day thing. I am also applying it to exercising (45+ minutes per day and I get a point).

I was looking at my last post.. 2+ hours of SRS in Korean. I didn't keep up with that. I haven't kept a log but it's more like 40 minutes to an hour per day. I was revisiting study material on YouTube and they have these 'videos' of native sentences with English translations. Some apparently meant for while you're sleeping. I am positive that studying in my sleep is completely ineffective but otherwise the videos seem pretty good to listen to while I'm doing other stuff. I find all of the beginner level sentences to be useful even if I could maybe produce some on my own without the video. Most I couldn't and many include new vocabulary.

I'm at it again with Anki making new kind of flash cards. This time I'm using Korean Grammar in Use for Beginners. You can get a PDF off Google (probably from a Russian site) but I purchased and then scanned my copy so it's higher quality. (that wasn't the goal when I did it.. I bought the paper copy thinking I would use it but then realized I am no good with paper textbooks and sent it to be scanned). I guess I could do what Lyndie Botes does and take notes I guess but I would be bad at reviewing those notes I'm sure. At least I would get through the content -once- if I made the notes. However, I used the Image Q/A addon for Anki using images from the PDF. It's pretty easy to do. Making the flash cards did make me read through stuff quickly at least. I ended making a combination of production and recognition cards. I know from experience that production cards turn into leeches super fast so I'm not sure how it'll go. The production cards are mostly from the conjugation tables and conjugation isn't all that hard in Korean so maybe it won't be too bad. The sentences are all recognition cards.

I'm also making a deck using that add on and a book for vocabulary based on Hanja. Essential Korean Root Vocabulary. It's the only book that is remotely organized like kanji books for Japanese. Other books are weird. They seem to focus on the makeup of the kanji and its sounds. They don't really go into vocabulary. At least that I saw. This book is pretty good but the example words don't include the hanja for those words. You just get the hanja for the group of words associated with it that you're studying. The example words are all written in hangul and then the English definitions include the meaning of the other hanja in the words in brackets.. well keyword meanings almost like Heisig. A little weird but useful. I would have liked the hanja.

I changed my approach to using vocabulary/sentences from HowtostudyKorean.com. I am basically trying to duplicate what I did with the Core deck with Japanese. Side one has the target word in a big font and below is one example sentence with the target word in bold. There is native audio for the word and a couple sentences but most of the sentences are unfortunately computer voiced. I couldn't help thinking that all those sentences I had created too many cards to study. On the site he gives many sentences for most words only a couple words get one sentence.

I think if I can make more progress with the grammar I will actually be able to start talking. The grammar deck is kind of boring though .

[kraemder]

I posted another Korean vLog on YouTube. I wonder if I am the least popular YouTube vlogger ever. My last video only got 1 view and I wonder if that was me... I kind of like making the videos so I'll keep doing it but literally nobody is watching them. Almost anyway.

Some people who do interesting stuff only have 200 300 views, and unless you have viral/popular content, YouTube will not give you momentum... Youtube is flooded with creators nowadays so it's just hard anyway.

Anyway, you can get a few books in Korean on Google Play/Books. I'm going to buy the Vegetarian and Born in 82 later on once I feel more comfortable with reading, they're both on there.

Re some other posts, I'm not sure a tutor is that useful at our stage, but I'm also a proponent of not producing/talking until I've reached advanced level in reading. I really don't think it makes any sense to speak, even though we've been brainwashed into thinking it's normal. I just agree with S Krashen on this (his story about the japanese kid next door). I think, again, it's all about simplifying the process, and learning "passively" by input means we don't get into the habit of translating. As this is my first language I'm learning that way I might be proven wrong, and just end up delaying that stage while people who don't have fluent talks with locals, and learn much more quickly, maybe. I'll start by writing anyway, for which language community apps might be sufficient (HelloTalk), and will need a tutor when I start pronuncing. Right now I still can't hear all the sounds properly, so as Matt from MIA says, shadowing would be pointless. But only when I have to speak after having listened to the language a lot, I'll want someone to correct me, and only then.
I'm saying this because you are prob used to learning on your own, and tutors will all have their way of doing things, which might not fit with your needs?

How have you been doing in the past month?

Yeah I tell myself I'm not all -that- terrible at making YouTube videos.. really.. haha. It's their algorithm... yeah...

I've purchased a couple book off the Google Play store too. They're way over my head though so I haven't made much progress with them. I think I need to get through Korean Grammar in Use Beginner before I tackle native material. I'm guessing the intermediate Korean Grammar in Use would be helpful too.. but maybe I can at least get started after the beginner one. I would say that my current grammar knowledge takes me to about halfway through the beginner book but I'm doing a full review of all the material anyway. I like doing lots of passive studying before trying to output because I think you're bound to be very frustrated with your output otherwise and not be able to understand what they say back to you anyway. And my biggest goal with Korean is passive understanding anyway. I'm not living in Korea. That said, I don't know how much I agree with Krashnen in respect to 'distant' languages like Korean and Japanese. Korean has an actual alphabet and spaces between words so the writing system is far superior to Japanese and I don't know how much I can compare my experience with Japanese to Korean. But I learned Japanese basically through rote memorization and speaking it for the first 5-6 years. That's a long time. It took that long for me to able to read books fast enough to feel like reading was actually helping my Japanese and it took that long for me to -start- understanding Japanese TV/anime without subtitles. This was also when I moved to Japan. And it's not like I didn't try reading or watching anime until then. I was trying to do it constantly. But it took 2-3 years for me to read my first book in Japanese (Harry Potter 1). When reading languages that use the roman alphabet it's a completely different experience or is for me.

As for the tutor.. I like her and it's not very expensive. I don't know how much knowledge I retain from our lessons since I am actually not even using that material to study. I probably should buy the books she's using. But I after I take a lesson with her, I feel more motivated to study Korean and that feeling lasts up to a week.

I sincerely hope that Korean will be less difficult than Japanese.

[Sayonaroo]

no idea if korean will be harder than japanaese for you but knowing japanese makes it much easier. for example, take advantage of the overlapping kanji vocab

check these out

http://korean.nomaki.jp/site_j/kanji.html

http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa ... 1458852069

http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa ... 1270266737

there's also the hanjaro site that inserts in hanja into text but you can ONLY access it if you live in korea or use a vpn
https://choronghi.wordpress.com/2019/01 ... mendation/

[AnneL]

When reading languages that use the roman alphabet it's a completely different experience or is for me.

As for the tutor.. I like her and it's not very expensive. I don't know how much knowledge I retain from our lessons since I am actually not even using that material to study. I probably should buy the books she's using. But I after I take a lesson with her, I feel more motivated to study Korean and that feeling lasts up to a week.

For the first question I ended up replying on my own log here https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=12224&p=157305#p157305 because it was just getting too long and I had this idea for reproducing some mental gym natives go through with their litteracy, that I didn't want to forget! (listening to teacher while writing other things down)
Basically though, we're all the same on this, any new alphabet will be a struggle for some time, there is nothing special to it (in spite of me writing a whole book about it in my answer).

Re: the tutor, seeing IIRC she was using the TTMIK, you could just listen to the TTMIK grammar podcasts and reinforce what is mentioned in the Korean Grammar in Use (KGU), because they both roughly progress the same way. When you get used to the language (it did take me a year of binge watching personally) you can listen to them without really needing to see what they are talking about on paper, when walking or driving somewhere. I really find them much less effort and if something isn't clear or boring I leave it and maybe come back to it months later, or even just come back later and wonder what was so hard... there are so many unknown ways our brain picks up stuff. For example I've avoided all the stuff with numbers and reading time in KGU, but I'm still picking it up slowly elsewhere. I definitely would not pass a test on it, but it's slowly infusing. Same for the V+는/은 거 thing that's used everywhere. Although I couldn't use it myself in a conscious manner, I sometimes blurt it out correctly when translating small sentences. Relistening to TTMIK grammar podcasts has been really useful to understand things that went over my head the first time round.

Anyway if the tutor keeps you motivated I think it's amazing and definitely worth going on, whichever way you prepare.

[AnneL]

Ok, just my thoughts/experience, in case it helps you.

I called out sick today so I have the day off. I was sick yesterday but today I'm just sleep deprived I think.

I joined the 366 day challenge thing. I thought the rules were simple..There are a ton of rules however

If you don't miss a day and do 30 mins you don't need to know the other rules. This said, are we doing the challenge for the challenge, or for the fact that it will help us focus our priorities everyday (language over friends ). If like me you feel you could be in serious danger, maybe have things you can readily listen to as repetitive listening, on your phone. Or the Clozemaster app. Anything you can do half asleep or distracted, waiting in line... And maybe a reminder for after work to remind you to do things.

I was looking at my last post.. 2+ hours of SRS in Korean.

It gets heavy pretty fast doesn't it. That's why I started the 366, I want to start thinking of other ways to acquire the language, we just can't keep everything in Anki then feel guilty about not finishing the reps, it's not good for motivation! Like you, I feel I'd be happier if I only had the need for a 40 min session.

The production cards are mostly from the conjugation tables and conjugation isn't all that hard in Korean so maybe it won't be too bad. The sentences are all recognition cards.

Prod cards are stressful, I made a lot and lately I just removed all the production faces of all my notes, it halved the time on anki as well. I know you mention here you do them for conjugation, but my experience is that once you have learnt the rules for conjugations, there is no really need to know them precisely, as they won't increase comprehension, and then eventually you start remembering the specifics through exposure. So for me it was a waste of energy, I even got the TTMIK books on conjugations, but I regret it.

I'm also making a deck using that add on and a book for vocabulary based on Hanja.

There's a free shared anki deck (I named it hanja voc builder, not sure it's the name on the site) with about 3000 words, you could order them by hanja and study all words that start with the same hanja (make Hanja the sorting field). I have the book https://www.bookdepository.com/Handbook-of-Korean-Vocabulary-Miho-Choo/9780824818159 which I think is great and sometimes I just look through a few pages just for fun. All grouped by same hanja, so you get all the words linked to that hanja.

[kraemder]

I'm back at the sentence deck I had made before and thought I was done with since the reviews take a while. I'm constantly changing up how I study Korean and I was thinking of focusing on grammar and Anki to get stuff down and I am now thinking that drilling with Anki might work it will definitely be slow to plod through and I'm not sure I have the motivation to do grammar decks in Anki. Instead I'm going to try to just read some of Korean Grammar in Use a couple times a week. Focusing on moving forward more than review for now. I do think that the sentence deck will get a lot of the grammar reviewed as a bonus. I'm not sure how to go about doing hanja. Maybe I'll just read through some lists of hanja and their vocab the same way I'm intending on reading Grammar. If I do it at least once a week I think it should stick enough but not feel like I'm forcing it. I hate leeches when I'm doing flashcards and I'm tweaking the settings on Flash Cards Deluxe which has my sentence deck. Anki lets you do this too. I set it so that if I get a card wrong it won't reset the interval. But there's a separate setting for repeating missed cards and I set that to 8 hours. So if I miss a card with an interval of a week... well I have to re-learn it well enough to know it the next day but then its interval is right back to a week. Or a month or whatever. So that's not so demoralizing. Trying to keep as good a relationship as possible with SRS. It's tough sometimes.

*edit*

Ok in order to make myself hate SRS much less (well sometimes, when my vocabulary is better than other people I love SRS to death) I am going forth with an idea that's been playing around in my head over the weekend. I am not going to mark anything wrong on my SRS reviews. Steve Kaufmann says he reviews flashcards and even has everything on one side including English in order to make reviewing flash cards less painful and to get it done quickly. In my experiments over the weekend putting English on the front made it so that I really wasn't learning new vocab at all but maybe was refreshing words that I already knew. It was obvious to me. But switching it so that I was testing myself.. but marking myself right anyway did make it stick better. I didn't jump on this right away because I then drew the conclusion that marking it wrong so that it reviewed sooner etc and more often meant I'd learn words even faster. And that might be the case but I think it also slows me down so that I'm not adding new words to the deck so much and am falling behind on my reviews etc. And probably discourages me some too when I get stuff wrong. Discouragement is bad. I want all the positive thoughts and none of the negativity as much as possible even if it's not quite as realistic.

But it makes sense that I probably don't want to push things out quite as aggressively as otherwise since I'm just going to mark it right anyway. Probably. At least for now. So I set the starting ease at 130% in Anki and the interval factor to 1.3 in Flash Cards Deluxe.

[Christi]

If I had access to other ebooks in Korean translated from English then I'd probably go with them.

A bit late, but there are a bunch of books on Google Books but also Ridi Books. If you know of a book that's been translated then they might carry it. I know Google Books has Harry Potter and also a few Korean books that have a English translation. Might be worth checking out.