A Zen approach to language learning (Asian languages, but mainly Korean)

[AndyMeg]

2024

I'm back!!!

Happy New Year!

Last year was a huge roller coaster for me, with many big ups and downs. So much, that I had thought that I had been away from this forum for a whole year at least, but now I realize it's been just about six months!

Sadly, I couldn't continue teaching basic Korean to my two students because of a conflicting schedule. But, as I really enjoyed teaching, I thought I could look for new students, but then I changed jobs and most of my focus and energy went towards adapting to my new work environment and responsabilities.

Now that I'm more used and better adapted to my new job, I decided to come back to this forum.

I tried to access the forum a few days ago, but it was impossible. As I tried many times during a whole day, I was getting increasingly worried about what had happened to the forum. Would it ever be back? But then, I remembered the old HTLAL forum and went there looking for any information I could find about the current situation. Thanks to the updates from iguanamon there I could finally calm down knowing that rdearman and Emk were working hard to bring it back online (if any of you read this, thanks a lot for your efforts!).

I'm happy and grateful that the forum is available again, and so I'm finally making an update.

For this year, besides my new job, I'll be mainly focusing on my creative writing. But, as language learning is an important part of my life and something I love, I decided to establish a goal for this year.

Keeping in line with my Zen approach of trying to keep things simple and stress-free, this is the goal I chose for my language learning during 2024: Read the Korean version of the book "Beyond The Story: A 10-Year Record of BTS" using the Mirinae app as my main help.

Last year I felt tempted to buy either the Spanish or the English version as they were way cheaper than the Korean version (and I even found the Spanish version on sale!). But, with how much I wanted to read the book in whatever language I could, I knew this was a great opportunnity to improve my Korean language if I was to read the original version of the book. So I made use of my willpower and waited until I could afford the Korean version and then I bought it.

The Korean version is a hardback made of great quality paper and it even came with photocards! I'm so happy with my purchase!

The book is over 500 pages long with the some pages being photos, but most of it is full of Korean text. I feel a bit scared but also very excited about reading it, as my current Korean level is not good enough for a smooth read and I know I'll be making a pretty heavy use of Mirinae.

So far I've read all the text from the back and front covers, and I feel excited about actually start reading what's inside of the book.

Each day I can usually dedicate betweeen 5 to 30 minutes to reading the book.

As Mirinae comes with the option of going deeper into the explanations of most grammar points and vocabulary from any given sentence (and sometimes I also use the listening fuction to train my ears and also for pronunciation practice), it may take me quite some time to move from a sentence to another. For example, this sentence/part took me around 10 to 15 minutes before moving on to the next one:

스스로의 이야기를 담은 음악과 열정적인 퍼포먼스, 팬들과의 진솔한 소통을 통해 국가와 인종, 언어, 성별, 세대 등 모든 경계를 초월하여 수많은 사람들의 사랑을 받고 있다.

So I'm currently moving at a VERY SLOW pace. But hopefully it'll improve with time and consistency

Besides reading the book, I may do other language related activities, but this one will be my main focus for this year.

[AndyMeg]

This week my progress with the Korean book seems bulkier than it actually is:

Beyond The Story 10 Year Record of BTS Korean version: 32 / 522

The first pages of the book were full of photos, so it was really quick to move on from one page to the next. Hehehehe...

In the book, I'm currently reading a small section called: "일러두기" which contains general indications and guidelines about the book.

In that section, one sentence got a funny translation from Mirinae.

인물의 연령은 만 나이로 서술했다. This was translated as: "the age of the character was described as 10,000 years old"

But Mirinae's analyzer made a better job with the parts of the sentence and translated 만 as "full" instead of as 10,000.

And I remembered that, some years ago while reading the book "Essential Korean Vocabulary" by Kyubyong Park, I learned that Koreans use 만 when talking about the "Western/International Age", which is how most countries usually count age. (Although starting from last year I think they officially started to use "International Age" instead of the traditional "Korean Age").

So, the sentence in cuestion is talking about how they used "International Age" to count/describe how many years old a person was.

The reason I didn't spend much time with the book this week, was because I got sidetracked:

1) I read a recent thread about the L-R method and decided to try it with an Iyagi conversation from Talk To Me In Korean. Here a summary of the result:

- I felt surprised at how easy it was for me to follow the Korean text while listening to the audio. I remember that the last time I tried to do the same I was struggling and got a bit lost from time to time.

- Having read the full text in English first, made it really easy to connect the Korean with its meaning in the following steps (Listen to the audio and simultaneously read the text in L2. Listen to the audio while reading the text in L1.)

- Thanks to previously listening to the audio, it was easy for me to find the right cadence when I tried to read the text out loud. It flowed way more effortlessly than when I try to read out loud a Korean text of which I have no audio reference at all.

- I feel tempted to go through more Iyagi conversations using the L-R method. Time will tell, though.

2) I tried "LINGUATHOR'S new app" thanks to a link shared by Kraut in another thread of this forum.

It is basically the same L-R method in the form of an app. Here a video:



I tried it with the same Iyagi conversation, but I could only upload up to 1,000 characters of the text at a time (it seems premium users will be able to upload up to 5,000 characters, but that option doesn't seem to be available in the current beta test).

Here some conclusions:

- I prefer the "text-to-speech" feature from Mirinae, but the one from Lianguathor does a decent job.

- I like that Linguathor's app automatically divides the text in smaller parts (usually in sentences, but sometimes in paragraphs), each one with its corresponding audio (via the text-to-speech" feature). I prefer when it divides the text in sentences, as the text-to-speech seems to work better that way.

- The "Dual Read" section is probably my favorite one as it shows two types of translations for each sentence: one is a more literary translation, while the other is a more word-for-word type of translation (which gives a better idea of the way the target language is actually structured).

- As it is divided in smaller parts and it has the word-for-word translation included, with Linguathor's app I paid attention to more nuances than when I just read the full text and full English translation in Activity 1.
I could go deeper in my understanding of the nuts and bolts of each sentence if I were using Mirinae, but it's nice that Linguathor's app does everything automatically for the whole text (and not just for a sentence or two) at once.

- I would like to experiment more with Linguathor's app before deciding if I would like to add it to my language learning toolbox.

[AndyMeg]

KOREAN

This week I only read the book once. Fortunately, that was enough for me to finish with the "일러두기" section and start reading the Table of Contents.

Beyond The Story 10 Year Record of BTS Korean version: 36 / 522

One expression that stood out for me was a neologism, 칼군무, which means "dancing perfectly in sync". It is formed by the combination of 칼 (knife) and 군무 (group dance).

I also learned how to say "trainee" in Korean: 연습생. I already knew that 연습 means "practice", but i didn't know that if you added 생 at the end, it would become "trainee".

Recently, IU released a new song called "Love wins all". A member of BTS, V, was the co-protagonist in the MV. I loved the MV so much! IU vocals are one of the best I've ever heard, and I enjoyed the acting of both IU and V. The whole MV felt like a very emotional movie condensed in just a few minutes. Here it is:



I also enjoyed watching the Behind the Scenes uploaded by both IU and V:






It was especially impressive to watch IU recording the song while dealing with a cold:




Last Sunday I went to visit my sister at her apartment. She has the Spanish version of the book I’m reading in Korean ("Beyond The Story: A 10-Year Record of BTS"). She offered to lend it to me in case I wanted to read that version, but I decided against it because I know that if I were to read the book in Spanish that would significantly reduce my motivation to read it in the original Korean.

With that said, though, I did try to read the Spanish version of what I had already read in the Korean version: the info from the dust jacket plus part of the "일러두기" section, so that I could contrast what I understood from the Korean version with how that had been translated in the Spanish version. But, to my surprise, the Spanish version doesn’t have those.

When I think that the Spanish version is a paperback instead of a hardback, then it makes sense that it doesn’t have a dust jacket; but it also kind of surprised me to not find the equivalent of the "일러두기" section in the Spanish version.

So, instead of reading the Spanish version of that book, I ended up reading a bit of another book my sister has and of which I would also like to own a copy in the future:

편안하고 사랑스럽고 그래

My sister and I got to know about the book thanks to a K-drama we watched: W - Two Worlds

The book comes with beautiful illustrations and it has dual English and Korean text. I first read the Introduction in English and then the Korean version of it. And I also read the text of some pages, first in Korean and then it’s English translation.

The text in each two-page section is rather short. Only about two to three Korean sentences on one page (and its translation in English) and a full illustration in the other page.

As we had other activities planned with my family, I could only read a few pages from the book. But I’d like to read more of it when I visit my sister again.


JAPANESE

I watched a video about the negative いいえ:



And then I watched a follow-up video with a witty rebuttal to Japanese people who prefer that foreigners don't learn "impolite"/casual language:




ENGLISH

At the beginning of the week my cousin asked me if I could teach him English, as he is planning to move to the United States this year in order to work with a friend who seems to be running a small business there.

I want to help him, but I don't have enough time to help him reach a good level (ideally a B1, but at least an A2) in a short period of time (he is planning to go to the United States around July this year). So I've been thinking about guiding him into independent learning and just be there to answer his doubts or questions once a week or so.

But I'm still not sure what to recommend to him. I've been thinking about Assimil, but looking at the samples of the most recent version, I feel like older versions were better.

"English For Everyone" by DK is another option I've been thinking about. It's designed as a "self-study programme" and it comes with lots of pictures that help to clarify the explanations and concepts. It comes with downloable audio in a mixture of American and British English (some of the audios are in American English, while others are in British English). And I really like the type of exercises from the complementary workbooks. If my cousin covers the content from the first two books (with their corresponding workbooks), he would have covered material up to the A2 level. Another plus is that "English For Everyone" is cheaper than the Assimil pack.

Do you have any other ideas or suggestions? I would appreciate any feedback you could give me on this.

[DaveAgain]

ENGLISH

At the beginning of the week my cousin asked me if I could teach him English, as he is planning to move to the United States this year in order to work with a friend who seems to be running a small business there.

I want to help him, but I don't have enough time to help him reach a good level (ideally a B1, but at least an A2) in a short period of time (he is planning to go to the United States around July this year). So I've been thinking about guiding him into independent learning and just be there to answer his doubts or questions once a week or so.

But I'm still not sure what to recommend to him. I've been thinking about Assimil, but looking at the samples of the most recent version, I feel like older versions were better.

"English For Everyone" by DK is another option I've been thinking about. It's designed as a "self-study programme" and it comes with lots of pictures that help to clarify the explanations and concepts. It comes with downloable audio in a mixture of American and British English (some of the audios are in American English, while others are in British English). And I really like the type of exercises from the complementary workbooks. If my cousin covers the content from the first two books (with their corresponding workbooks), he would have covered material up to the A2 level. Another plus is that "English For Everyone" is cheaper than the Assimil pack.

Do you have any other ideas or suggestions? I would appreciate any feedback you could give me on this.

There's Teach Yourself Complete English (ISBN: 9781473601581).
Berlitz Ingles en 30 dias (ISBN: 9789812467379).
Berlitz sin maestro Ingles (ISBN: 9780399514654) (no audio with this, and out of print).
Ingles para dummies (ISBN: 9781394168347 / 9788432903021)

And don't forget your/your cousin's local library. They'll likely have something too.

EDIT
Voice of America
BBC.co.uk
ABC.net.au

All have some English learning resources.