Hello!
Long time reader of the HTLAL forums, first time poster. I'm hoping through this language log I can keep myself a little more accountable.
I've been studying Korean casually for a bit over 2 years and want to make some real progress this year. I've also spent some time with Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin, but those have all been set aside for a while and will continue to be neglected until I make some more progress in Korean... probably.
Currently I'm not using any textbook to study. I've used several textbooks in the past and generally don't enjoy textbooks very much. For some reason, at least with Korean textbooks, I find the ones aimed at self learners to be the hardest to get through. I do like some of the more academic textbooks, but I'm taking a break from those for now.
I've been meeting with a tutor a couple times a week and that has been going pretty well. We usually just have simple conversations about life, work, and other things. Sometimes the topics get a little too advanced for me and I revert back to English or some broken English-Korean hybrid, but overall I speak in Korean about 80-90% of the time and she speaks Korean about 90-100% of the time.
One of the things I'm currently doing is trying to transcribe parts of the show 나혼자산다. It's still above my level but I like the variety format and hearing how people actually speak instead of a scripted drama. I feel like I can understand what's being said a good amount of the time, but it's still difficult to write down word for word what they're saying. Especially if the person is speaking quickly and isn't from Seoul. Then I end up running through the same 10 second section for 10 minutes and at the end I am still confused at what they're saying... I transcribe several minutes of an episode at a time and then my tutor will correct it and go over it with me. There's usually a lot of red marks on the paper. About 50% of it is minor mistakes and 50% of it is me wondering how I could be so far off.
I also need to focus on building my vocabulary. No matter how I try to rephrase a sentence to get around a word I don't know in Korean, I end up hitting yet another word I don't know in Korean. So that's what I plan to focus on: words. Words, words, words!
Buranmu's log (Korean)
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Elenia
- Black Belt - 1st Dan
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Finnish?! - Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=708
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Re: Buranmu's log (Korean)
Good luck! I'll be dipping my toes in Korean this year, so I'll be following your log with interest
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buranmu
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Re: Buranmu's log (Korean)
Thanks Elenia!
I transcribed some more of a 나혼자산다 episode. It may not be the most efficient use of time, but I do think it is useful. After I had my transcription corrected, I listened a few more times to focus on all of the mistakes I made in the transcription. This went pretty well but there were still a couple of small parts where I just couldn't seem to hear what people were saying correctly.
I've also been paying more attention to the Korean shows I watch just for enjoyment -- writing down any words I don't recognize that stick in my head. Recently I've been watching 불후의 명곡2 and 해피투게더, a couple of variety shows. 불후의 명곡2 is a show where they invite modern groups/singers to do their own arrangement of older songs. There's also a good amount of talking between performances which is usually entertaining. 해피투게더 is a show where they invite celebrities onto the show and talk about various things in a casual setting. The show's format has been changing a lot recently, but I still enjoy it.
I have the Harry Potter series in Korean in text files and I did some quick text analysis on the first book to look at the word frequency. In Korean it's not trivial to separate particles from nouns, so things like 해리는 and 해리가 are counted separately (both of which were in the top 10.) I found the most common ngrams of length 1-4 and the results of the larger ngrams were kind of interesting.
The top 10 4-gram:
아무 말도 하지 않았다 8
걸 볼 수 있었다 7
맛이 나는 강낭콩 모양의 5
그 돌을 지키고 있는 5
돌려 받을 수 있는지 4
그가 작은 소리로 말했다 4
해리는 침을 꿀꺽 삼켰다 4
있는 걸 볼 수 4
책을 돌려 받을 수 4
것 같은 표정을 짓고 4
I will try to use 침을 꿀꺽 삼켰다 next time I tell a story in Korean.
When finding ngrams it's common to provide a list of "stop words" which are words that are filtered out before or after processing. It's tempting to remove all the character's names and some of the more common words like 걸, 것, 수, etc., but I appreciate the full context that all the words provide, even if on their own they're not interesting. Someday I may come back and process it differently.
I got a copy of 짱뚱이의 나의 살던 고향은 1 as a gift a while ago, and I plan to start reading that this weekend. It will be the first manhwa I've read and I'm looking forward to the more casual dialogue style. I'm planning to do an initial read through and jot down any words I don't understand, and then read it a second time for comprehension after.
I transcribed some more of a 나혼자산다 episode. It may not be the most efficient use of time, but I do think it is useful. After I had my transcription corrected, I listened a few more times to focus on all of the mistakes I made in the transcription. This went pretty well but there were still a couple of small parts where I just couldn't seem to hear what people were saying correctly.
I've also been paying more attention to the Korean shows I watch just for enjoyment -- writing down any words I don't recognize that stick in my head. Recently I've been watching 불후의 명곡2 and 해피투게더, a couple of variety shows. 불후의 명곡2 is a show where they invite modern groups/singers to do their own arrangement of older songs. There's also a good amount of talking between performances which is usually entertaining. 해피투게더 is a show where they invite celebrities onto the show and talk about various things in a casual setting. The show's format has been changing a lot recently, but I still enjoy it.
I have the Harry Potter series in Korean in text files and I did some quick text analysis on the first book to look at the word frequency. In Korean it's not trivial to separate particles from nouns, so things like 해리는 and 해리가 are counted separately (both of which were in the top 10.) I found the most common ngrams of length 1-4 and the results of the larger ngrams were kind of interesting.
The top 10 4-gram:
아무 말도 하지 않았다 8
걸 볼 수 있었다 7
맛이 나는 강낭콩 모양의 5
그 돌을 지키고 있는 5
돌려 받을 수 있는지 4
그가 작은 소리로 말했다 4
해리는 침을 꿀꺽 삼켰다 4
있는 걸 볼 수 4
책을 돌려 받을 수 4
것 같은 표정을 짓고 4
I will try to use 침을 꿀꺽 삼켰다 next time I tell a story in Korean.
When finding ngrams it's common to provide a list of "stop words" which are words that are filtered out before or after processing. It's tempting to remove all the character's names and some of the more common words like 걸, 것, 수, etc., but I appreciate the full context that all the words provide, even if on their own they're not interesting. Someday I may come back and process it differently.
I got a copy of 짱뚱이의 나의 살던 고향은 1 as a gift a while ago, and I plan to start reading that this weekend. It will be the first manhwa I've read and I'm looking forward to the more casual dialogue style. I'm planning to do an initial read through and jot down any words I don't understand, and then read it a second time for comprehension after.
1 x