Korean Study Group / 한국어 스터딩

An area with study groups for various languages. Group members help each other, share resources and experience. Study groups are permanent but the members rotate and change.
mochipochi
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Re: Korean Study Group / 한국어 스터딩

Postby mochipochi » Tue Sep 08, 2020 6:35 pm

Why are you interested in Korean?
Well, I recently (4 years ago) got into BTS and I like that Korean has a much more easier alphabet than Japanese.

What is your goal for this language?
I want to be able to converse naturally with native speakers. I am planning to use it in my career.

Do you have a favorite Korean language song? If so, what is it? Embed the video in your post if you like.
I almost like all of BTS's songs so it's hard to just pick one. I'd say there are three contenders (kind of?). One is Spring Day (I love the meaning and story of this song). Second would be 2!3! (I just love the chorus because it spoke to me when I was at a low point in my life). Third, Black Swan for the musicality and the theme about a dying passion.

What is your favorite feature of the Korean language that you've encountered so far in your studies?
I'm seriously a beginner (though I've learned Hangul) so I'd say I like the context-based sentences — just omit and omit and omit lol.

Have anything else you'd like to share about yourself? Go ahead!
I'm very new with using forums and such. So please bear with me if the formatting of this post is wacky. I first liked to learn japanese because of anime but now I switched to Korean because of BTS. I truly plan to use these knowledge someday.

And finally, one my main problems is that I kinda have too much Korean resources that I don't know where to start. When the going gets tough I lose my way. And it's really hard to pick it up again. Any tips?
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eido
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Re: Korean Study Group / 한국어 스터딩

Postby eido » Tue Sep 08, 2020 8:13 pm

mochipochi wrote:And finally, one my main problems is that I kinda have too much Korean resources that I don't know where to start. When the going gets tough I lose my way. And it's really hard to pick it up again. Any tips?

Welcome to our little group and to the forum!
One of the main pieces of advice given on this forum is to build a habit. So just keep going even if you don’t feel like it, basically. I know it took me a few years to build momentum in my Korean studies, but now the habit’s there, so I’m not afraid of losing traction. You have to build an environment conducive to learning. That is, put Korean all around you and let it assault you so you can’t escape it lmao
Nice choice of BTS songs. Does your username come from Jimin’s nickname? How do you expect to use the language in your career, if I may ask?

Also, welcome everyone else! Keep posting and make this group fun :)
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firewheel
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Re: Korean Study Group / 한국어 스터딩

Postby firewheel » Fri Jan 14, 2022 3:12 pm

Hello Friends,

I am a new beginner in Korean language.

I have faced a difficulty in pronouncing the following two vowels:
ㅗ(o) and ㅜ(u)

I am not sure how to differentiate the sounds for these 2 vowels as they sound very similar.

I watched a few videos in Youtube but different people pronounce them differently.

ㅗ(o) seems to be pronounced as oo as in look, good etc.

ㅜ(u) sounds similar but sounds a bit deeper.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But in another video, it seems to be the other way round:

ㅜ(u) seems to be pronounced as oo as in look, good etc.

ㅗ(o) seems to be pronounced as 'or'.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I feel quite confused about these 2 vowels.

I hope the seniors can provide tips on how to pronounce these 2 vowels correctly.

Thank you. :)
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Re: Korean Study Group / 한국어 스터딩

Postby rdearman » Fri Jan 14, 2022 5:26 pm

수 - (su) - Number (sounds like the English name Sue)
소 - (so) - Cow (sounds like the English word So)

Just stick them in Google Translate, and you'll hear the difference.
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lavengro
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Re: Korean Study Group / 한국어 스터딩

Postby lavengro » Fri Jan 14, 2022 6:54 pm

Hi firewheel,

I am a new beginner to Korean as well. I am finding Korean a challenging language from a phonetic perspective. This won`t be welcome news, but assuming your experience may wind up being similar to mine there are lots of instances in Korean where differentiating between the sounds of different letters is far more challening than that posed by ㅗ and ㅜ.

I wonder whether your confusion is arising from studying from a number of different sources. There may be some accent difficulties and particularly where a presenter may be saying a particular Korean letter sounds like X in some English word, there may be differences between American/Canadian v. UK presenters as to how that example English word is pronounced. Don`t even get me started on whatever it is the Australians have done to English pronuniciation (largely out of spite, I have always imagined).

I would suggest finding one really good source for learning hangeul, pronunciation and sound change rules and work that hard until you have it down solid, before moving onto other presentations to avoid the sort of confusing conflict you have described. The one I settled on was the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5aobqyEaMQ

Good luck!
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firewheel
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Re: Korean Study Group / 한국어 스터딩

Postby firewheel » Sat Jan 15, 2022 3:15 pm

rdearman wrote:수 - (su) - Number (sounds like the English name Sue)
소 - (so) - Cow (sounds like the English word So)

Just stick them in Google Translate, and you'll hear the difference.


Thank you for your reply. The examples that you have provided are useful.
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firewheel
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Re: Korean Study Group / 한국어 스터딩

Postby firewheel » Sat Jan 15, 2022 3:16 pm

lavengro wrote:Hi firewheel,

I am a new beginner to Korean as well. I am finding Korean a challenging language from a phonetic perspective. This won`t be welcome news, but assuming your experience may wind up being similar to mine there are lots of instances in Korean where differentiating between the sounds of different letters is far more challening than that posed by ㅗ and ㅜ.

I wonder whether your confusion is arising from studying from a number of different sources. There may be some accent difficulties and particularly where a presenter may be saying a particular Korean letter sounds like X in some English word, there may be differences between American/Canadian v. UK presenters as to how that example English word is pronounced. Don`t even get me started on whatever it is the Australians have done to English pronuniciation (largely out of spite, I have always imagined).

I would suggest finding one really good source for learning hangeul, pronunciation and sound change rules and work that hard until you have it down solid, before moving onto other presentations to avoid the sort of confusing conflict you have described. The one I settled on was the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5aobqyEaMQ

Good luck!


Thank you for your reply. The video link that you have provided is very useful. The person in the video explains the pronunciation really well.
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Re: Korean Study Group / 한국어 스터딩

Postby kraemder » Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:52 pm

firewheel wrote:Hello Friends,

I am a new beginner in Korean language.

I have faced a difficulty in pronouncing the following two vowels:
ㅗ(o) and ㅜ(u)


I feel quite confused about these 2 vowels.

I hope the seniors can provide tips on how to pronounce these 2 vowels correctly.

Thank you. :)


Although I've been studying Korean for several years now (about 4 years I guess.. yikes!) I'm still an upper beginner. I haven't gotten too in depth into the sounds/pronunciation. But I'm pretty sure you'll go with an English approximation of ㅗ o or "oh" or something and ㅜ or u as "you" or something. In general this seems to work. When I'm speaking Korean (which isn't often but once in a while with a tutor on iTalki), they never have a problem understanding me saying these two sounds. However, sometimes when I'm listening, I mix these two sounds up. I have no idea why. I wonder if there's some weird exception sometimes for some words.
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alaart
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Re: Korean Study Group / 한국어 스터딩

Postby alaart » Tue May 10, 2022 3:32 pm

Hi Korean learners, how did you get all those pronunciation rules into your head, especially for consonant shifts, double batchim etc. Does anybody know some practice book or website where one could practice those things. I'm learning Korean 2 years now and while I amassed vocabulary, grammar and I can speak somewhat, my pronunciation is still pretty bad. Even my Korean friends and learning partners tell me I should work on it.

I restudy the rules from time to time, but they won't stick, when I encounter the words I will not remember all the details of what consonant shifts where and gets changed to what. Also I'm not good in differentiating some sounds anyway. I do some things correct by intuition, but only sometimes. Any suggestions?

firewheel wrote:Hello Friends,

I am a new beginner in Korean language.

I have faced a difficulty in pronouncing the following two vowels:
ㅗ(o) and ㅜ(u) [...]


I have the same problem. As far as I observed (but also didn't read anywhere) ㅗ can be sometimes pronounced as u. This pronunciation seems to be some kind of flavor, you can pronounce it as "o" and it will be correct, some speakers will almost always say o to my ear - so it depends on the person, but u is more common for some words. Maybe there are regional or other factors (like age etc.) at play here.

Take the word 공 - zero for example, that often sounds like it is pronounced with an u. On forvo the speaker hmmlala pronounces it more like o, and the other speaker more like u. The word park 공원 also seems to be pronounced with an u-sound most of the time, and I think most ㅗㅇ combinations come to my head, as well as the word 도 as in 저도 - me too, and they sound pretty much like u to me.

I think I often go by feeling and have a hunch that Chinese based words tend to get pronounced u more frequently. If anyone finds a rule, please tell me.
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Re: Korean Study Group / 한국어 스터딩

Postby leosmith » Tue May 10, 2022 6:31 pm

alaart wrote:how did you get all those pronunciation rules into your head
Mostly via reading and listening. Eventually I memorized a ton of correct pronunciations of words, the patterns made sense, and pronouncing new ones just became natural. I've read the rules too, but they didn't really stick well by themselves.

ㅗ is optionally pronounced ㅜ for many words, and it's best to do that when it's necessary to differentiate between ㅗ and ㅓ. For example, I always pronounce 곳 as 굿 because I'm afraid people will hear it as 것. Actually, I don't really pronounce it as ㅜ, but it's somewhere between ㅗ and ㅜ, but you know what I mean?
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