Is Pimsleur Korean Edition 1 too out of date?

[JimmyJ]

Hi,
My name is Jimmy from England and I am a complete beginner to language learning. I've found your website via google so was hoping for some advice if I may please?

I've decided to study Korean with a view to visit at the end of the year, and my Mother has kindly bought me a CD version of Pimsleur Korean edition one (2004) as a surprise.
This was very good of her, but I've read that this version of Pimsleur Korean teaches people to speak in far too polite and old fashioned a manner?

Edition 2 (2016) apparently addresses those concerns and fully updates the way it teaches the language

I dont want to upset my Mum by asking her to send edition 1 back, so may I ask please that if I use edition 1 to study Korean would it set me back as much as others say on my path to speaking conversational Korean? Or would you advise me to purchase edition 2 instead?

Thanks,
Jimmy
PS I have also ordered Korean from Zero as a textbook so Pimsleur wont be my only Korean learning resource

[rdearman]

Hi Jimmy,

Welcome to the forum. There are some other Korean resources listed here: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 466#p65393
and we have a Korean study group here: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =26&t=9842

I wouldn't worry about the Pimsleur version you're using too much. Can it ever hurt to be too polite? I'm sure as your language learning journey progresses you'll make adjustments later for any minor old-fashioned usage. (Caveat here is I am not learning Korean)

[reineke]

---

[MacGyver]

Its fine. In the scheme of things Pimsleur is not going to take you every far anyway. It will help you pronounce the words better and get a basic understanding of how sentences work. Sure its a bit too formal, but the politeness levels you can learn later, its no big deal. Not worth updating the edition for IMO.

[Sayonaroo]

It seems like there have been a lot of better textbooks with CDs (even youtube vids teaching korean) being made these past 10 years like go billy, TTMIK, etc. I haven't used them myself but they seem popular among Korean learners. I recommend using other stuff in addition to pimsleur or just use whatever is most helpful.

www.hangukdrama.com
this girl has blogged a lot about korean textbooks.

[JimmyJ]

Hi,
Thanks very much for your replies

Based upon them I will give the version of Pimsleur I have a try - nothing to lose by sounding too polite I suppose

Thanks again
Jimmy