안녕하세요, It's Time to Learn Korean

[cromulents]

After a couple years of fumbling to a high intermediate level of Spanish, it's time to switch focus to a language that has fascinated me since I first saw bizarre old historical dramas on UHF channels as a kid. Korean may be one of the toughest languages for foreigners to learn, but I have the advantages of 1. my wife's Korean family (my wife herself is no help though, she only knows curse words and "I'm cold and hungry"), 2. my love of Korean food and drink, and 3. there's plenty of good Korean TV and YouTube to watch.

My strategy is simple: firstly, learn from the mistakes I made learning Spanish and probably do them anyway but try to avoid them. These mistakes include things like strategy hopping, material hopping, and giving up for six months because I had a negative interaction with someone in the target language.

Secondly, I will try maintain a regular schedule of 15 minute learning bursts 5-7 times per day. My main resources for now are: Talk to Me in Korean's level one lessons; the Living Language Korean course I acquired very legally on the internet; and watching Netflix and YouTube with Korean audio but English subs. I will soon also set up an Anki deck based on phrases I would like to remember, mostly related to food and drink. Most of my interaction with Koreans is at the grocery store, my wife's family's parties, or a restaurant.

One other thing I am going to challenge myself to do much earlier than I did in Spanish is produce the language. Even now my spoken Spanish lags because I was on the "input rules!" train. Input is great, but I want to be able to speak at something approaching an adult level in Korean.

I will be using this log to track what works for me, what doesn't, and to keep myself honest.

[Xenops]

Welcome to the forum! We have a few Korean learners here (I might get back to it in the future).

In case you did not know, https://www.languagereactor.com/ allows for dual language subtitles—not every show has them, but helpful when you can find them.

[cromulents]

It's been almost one week since my initial post. Not much to update. I've been very good about listening to 30-60 minutes per day of TTMIK podcast lessons, and I have been watching Korean TV and YouTube although I have not settled on any one show to get into (not a big TV watcher, unfortunately in this case. Hoping to find something that grabs me).

I am struggling with the Living Language course. I know I said I was not going to material hop, but if you don't use material, it's as good as worthless. I may just double my intake of TTMIK instead, as I find the hosts pleasantish.

I have started to sentence mine and make my Anki deck. It consists of sentences I want to know how to say related to food, drink, family, cats, and life. One thing I'm missing with Korean learning that I leaned on heavily for Spanish is Reverso Context. It was my favorite place to mine sentences. I could spend hours on there with my virtual pickaxe. Naver works okay but it's not as full of useful example sentences.

[cromulents]

I'm a teacher back to school as of last week, as well as a student working on another master's degree, so my Korean pursuit has been mostly on hold while my brain power all goes to getting the school year(s) started. Even during lunch today I tried to get some Talk to Me In Korean in and a bunch of my former students came by to hang out.

One cool thing though is that one of my new co-teachers this year speaks Korean and already said she's glad to help. I already chatted with her about the unique number system. But my brain is in English and Spanish (many of our families speak Spanish at home) mode right now.

It's interesting to see how my processing power for Korean rebounds from the early school year. I imagine the next week or two will probably be a lot of shoehorning in 15 minutes of lessons a day before bed.

[rdearman]

I already chatted with her about the unique number system.

Which number system. Pure Korean, or the Sino-Korean ?

[cromulents]

I already chatted with her about the unique number system.

Which number system. Pure Korean, or the Sino-Korean ?

Both. "Systems" I suppose would be more accurate. Although she said she thinks of the pure Korean ones as more like counters, not numbers, and also that she screws up using them.