Under-cooked Korean

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
qeadz
Green Belt
Posts: 298
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2016 11:37 pm
Languages: English (N), Korean (~A2)
x 400

Re: Under-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Tue Nov 27, 2018 10:31 pm

SGP wrote:Asking as an underground musician who interlinks music and other languages: why does the Copy Cat Principle appeal to a multitude of musicians, singers and writers (both songwriters and novel authors)? Sure, money reasons... but I am asking for what is beyond that, for anything Below the Iceberg's Surface.


Well I'm hardly equipped to converse, debate or even comment on such things! But you know... everyone has an opinion, however misinformed. My musing on this is:

Humans like patterns, structure, and for things be both repeatable and 'expectable' (to make up a word)... but we also do like surprise. I think for spoken language, music, or just about any art form really one needs the right balance.

Too much surprise makes the brain work too hard in an attempt to extract the patterns and structure that it looks for. Its like a complex picture with too much going on and no overarching structure. It's a lot to take in with no guides to help the brain.

Too much pattern and structure can make something seem very formulaic. For me its why some music artists who develop their own 'style' can become boring or dull after their first couple of albums.

And of course when we're not familiar with the patterns and structure, we may recognize the presence of them but still exert much mental energy because we cannot 'expect' or predict what lies ahead. This for me is like when I meet someone who tends to phrase their sentences really differently to what I am used to. They certainly do employ patterns and structure in their communication. But its like I mentally exert more energy to parse what is being said. A bit like reading a book written long ago when the use of English was a little different.

All of this, to my mind, applies very much to language learning. I'm not just getting used to individual grammatical patterns and words, but getting used to how these parts are usually combined into a whole. Theres ways of expressing things which are technically correct, but not natural for a Korean... and then some that are. I need to train my mind to find the latter to be natural. To recognize that structure, those patterns and be able to repeat them and predict/expect them.

EDIT: My naive uninformed 2c :)
0 x

User avatar
SGP
Blue Belt
Posts: 927
Joined: Tue Oct 23, 2018 9:33 pm
Languages: DE (native), EN (C2), ES (B2), FR (B2); some more at various levels
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 30#p120230
x 293

Re: Under-cooked Korean

Postby SGP » Thu Nov 29, 2018 5:58 am

qeadz wrote:Humans like patterns, structure, and for things be both repeatable and 'expectable' (to make up a word)... but we also do like surprise.
Expectable: within the limits of the Standard English Structure anyway :). But it also is an "Existing Official Oxford Certified Word".

qeadz wrote: I think for spoken language, music, or just about any art form really one needs the right balance.
Standard Phrase Book Phrases like "how are you" and "enjoy your meal" are used as they are. Verbatim. People usually wouldn't say "have a nice food consumation". But they also like some Phrase Making Creativity. As opposed to "Einheitsbrei". [*]

[*] That "Official Duden Word" is an example of Phrase Making Creativity itself. It means something like the porridge/pulp of unification. E.g.: "same old story, nothing new".

Too much surprise makes the brain work too hard in an attempt to extract the patterns and structure that it looks for.
You got a point.

Its like a complex picture with too much going on and no overarching structure. It's a lot to take in with no guides to help the brain.
Maybe that's why abstract arts are too ... abstract ... to some/many.

Too much pattern and structure can make something seem very formulaic. For me its why some music artists who develop their own 'style' can become boring or dull after their first couple of albums.
This is called "ausgelutscht" in German. Like lollipop that has been fully, so to say, absorbed. (Why a German phrase? Because of its metaphor).

And of course when we're not familiar with the patterns and structure, we may recognize the presence of them but still exert much mental energy because we cannot 'expect' or predict what lies ahead. This for me is like when I meet someone who tends to phrase their sentences really differently to what I am used to. They certainly do employ patterns and structure in their communication. But its like I mentally exert more energy to parse what is being said. A bit like reading a book written long ago when the use of English was a little different.
That "energy" part does explain quite a lot. And the "old[er] English" one does, too.

All of this, to my mind, applies very much to language learning. I'm not just getting used to individual grammatical patterns and words, but getting used to how these parts are usually combined into a whole.
Doing it the same way. Except: if I wouldn't be understanding the individual words/patterns first, how could I understand the combination?
Last edited by SGP on Thu Nov 29, 2018 4:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
1 x
Previously known as SGP. But my mental username now is langmon.

Log


AndyMeg
Blue Belt
Posts: 633
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 2:44 pm
Languages: Spanish (N), English (B2-C1), Japanese (A2-B1), Korean (Lower Intermediate?)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 02#p201902
x 1302

Re: Under-cooked Korean

Postby AndyMeg » Thu Nov 29, 2018 4:07 pm

qeadz wrote:I just realized that my wife is using a lot more Korean with me these days and, while I still dont reply much in Korean, I understand most of it.

I never had high expectations of being able to have conversations in Korean. I set out to handle the rudimentary interactions and I think I'm there. So it's kind of mission achieved! Somehow feels so underwhelming now that I'm here though :/ Perhaps in the interim I've raised my expectations, or perhaps I would have expected much more given its been like 3 years or something of doing Korean almost every single day!

Congrats!!! This is a great achievement! :D

Sometimes it is really hard to guess when we will achieve our goals. The key factor, I think, is that if you keep moving forward (even slowly), you'll eventually get there. So... 화이팅! ;)
2 x
Beyond The Story 10 Year Record of BTS Korean version: 36 / 522

qeadz
Green Belt
Posts: 298
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2016 11:37 pm
Languages: English (N), Korean (~A2)
x 400

Re: Under-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Wed Jan 16, 2019 8:46 pm

Happy 2019 everyone!

I went on holiday to see my folks. I didn't want it to be a holiday from my Korean study but I knew that traveling with my son but without my wife would mean I'd be hard pressed to find spare time.

So my studies were very spotty - and limited to just doing Anki too. Anki has great motivational power because you KNOW that days missed just accrue cards into this massive backlog hell.

I didn't study every day. But many of them I did *some* cards just to keep that backlog beast at bay. We did a bunch of travel and since I wasn't driving, I'd take the opportunity while my son slept in the car to do Anki.

Anyway I return with a small backlog of only 300-ish cards to clear out. Far better than the thousands I could have had.

I think I'm going to order an intermediate and advanced grammar book from Amazon in preparation for this year's renewed focus and study. I'm going to draw up a study plan of sorts to make this next push work. It's not going to be anything super detailed or amazing. It'll just be a spreadsheet where I can check tasks off.

So I'll break down weekly targets for vocab, grammar, writing, speech, listening, etc - which will include adding new materials for each while also including revision on older materials. Then each day I'll check off whatever i did. I wont be too fussed on exactly how it all breaks down, as long as by the end of each week I've checked off a range of activities.

Hopefully it will stop me from spending too much time on any one activity.

I want to make a special effort to push my output forward again. Writing and speaking are two activities which easily slide into non-existence and then I find myself realizing that much time as passed without any practice on those two.
3 x

qeadz
Green Belt
Posts: 298
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2016 11:37 pm
Languages: English (N), Korean (~A2)
x 400

Re: Under-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:47 pm

Update for update's sake :)

I am still finalizing my study plan. Yeah its taking a while. One of the key problems is how to balance everything given Anki in the mix.

Now specifically the vocab deck is something I want to keep on top of and complete all reviews needed each day. So this is a good chunk of time every day which must be devoted to Anki so it doesn't really make sense to build a study plan where I'll mark it off - its just a constant which is done regardless. So the question is how I spend the remainder of my time.

I do also have two other Anki decks. One is a self-made English -> Korean deck comprising sentences I have selected based on how applicable I reckon they would be to me... and the other is Evita's awesome grammar deck which I should be extending but as of yet haven't added my own items to the end of.

Just as a guess I'd estimate keeping on top of all 3 would settle into 45 minutes a day and if I'm only wanting to budget an hour a day then there is much less time for reading, writing and listening which are all important too!

So right now I'm leaning toward treating the two non-vocab decks as activities like reading/writing/listening in that they may not be done every day. Presumably I'd have to see if I can toy with the settings, assuming Anki does them per deck (I dont even recall) so that reviews don't pile up quite so fast for the decks I don't expect to review every day.

I'll also have to add some allowance for studying grammar - which would have to include time to review grammar points.

An hour a day isn't really sufficient. Theres a lot of review which obviously builds up because I don't want to forget things. There are also a fair range of activities if I want to be able to read it and dialog in it. And like many language learners here know, not being in the environment which has the language means there is a constant fight to make time for it.
1 x

qeadz
Green Belt
Posts: 298
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2016 11:37 pm
Languages: English (N), Korean (~A2)
x 400

Re: Under-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Thu Jan 31, 2019 1:14 am

Well on the plus side my new routine that is forming includes a lot more output than I used to have. By output I mean anything which causes me to make Korean sentences - I'd even consider translating to fall under this category even though many would likely disagree.

As long as I am remembering words and applying grammatical structures, I'm happy to chalk it up to 'output'.

I see TTMIK have an absolute tonne of videos online now. Not really the Iyagi ones (I guess it was a lot of work with little payoff to have the video version with the text alongside the audio). I just watched this random one just out of interest' sake to see what kind of content they're putting online:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMq1oc5EHeA

(QUICK AFTER THE FACT EDIT: THIS VIDEO IS FROM 2012 haha... somehow thought it was more recent than that! anyway, on to rest of my post:)

It was interesting because when they introduced the picture including 최저가, I figured out what it likely meant and how it was formed before they even described it. 최 for 'most', 저 for minimum and 가 for price. It's a nice feeling when that happens. Doesn't happen very often (for me) with Korean :lol:

I think that team should really be applauded for the massive amount of effort they've put into building all of these resources for Korean learners. Also that they have so much stuff thats just available without being paywalled means that they've really made Korean accessible to anyone.

The guy who wrote all the HTSK series also deserves respect.

I've given TTMIK some money before and I'll do it again. Not because they have anything I specifically want to buy but more of a 'thank-you' for their resources. I dont know if they have English translation packs for all of the iyagi's but if they do, maybe I'll buy more of those. I don't reference the ones I have TBH, but if any of their paid offerings had value for me it would be the translation packs.

Now that I am back into more of a routine (as the last few months had devolved into just doing Anki vocab), I'm starting to feel more pumped about getting another year of Korean under my belt. As everyone here knows, motivation is a huge part of the language learning endeavor. I mean its key to a great number of things, but especially so when they payoff is so far away.

When I decided to learn guitar many a moon ago, while it was similar to learning a language in that there is just a huge amount of 'putting in the time' to achieve goals, I felt there were more payoffs earlier on. I recall putting on some Alphaville tracks which had very simple chord structure and strumming along to them fairly early on and having a lot of fun.

I've put way way more time into Korean and I cant say I've had any significant payoffs until fairly recently when my wife started using some Korean with me and I was able to understand it finally.
4 x

qeadz
Green Belt
Posts: 298
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2016 11:37 pm
Languages: English (N), Korean (~A2)
x 400

Re: Under-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Mon Feb 04, 2019 10:26 pm

Starting with a bit of grammar review again. Its been quite a while now since I actually reviewed any of it.

I decided I'm going to spend the next couple months just reviewing some because the new grammar books I would like to buy are imported from Korea anyway (and I think are potentially pricey because of it). Amazon dont have sell them first party - theyre all 3rd party sellers which, when I look up, seem to be a small enterprising importer. My wife is going back to Korea next month for a visit so I'm going to send her to look for the books (or at least her sister could possibly order them online in Korea and get them cheap).

I dont know if it will be cheaper, but theres no hurry so my wife might as well pick them up for me while she is there if they are cheaper. Just gotta be very very sure she gets the right ones. I'll send her pictures of the covers and ensure she checks the author names.

(Also I'm starting to get real tired of the daily Anki... it comes and goes but when I'm not feeling it, its a real slog to get through!)
3 x

qeadz
Green Belt
Posts: 298
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2016 11:37 pm
Languages: English (N), Korean (~A2)
x 400

Re: Under-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Tue Feb 12, 2019 12:24 am

Things are going well for my Korean. I've learned a couple new grammar points, still working through the Anki slog each day, and it feels good to start applying what I know to expressing things in Korean. Hopefully after a year's worth of this, it'll culminate in another step forward.

I started watching Strong Girl Bong Soon on Netflix. I still find Korean made content to be super cheesy but actually I have a fairly wide tolerance. Much like music - theres a very select slice of it that I quite like and a rather large chunk that I don't mind hearing on the radio.

I don't count it toward my Korean studies even though it is exposure to Korean. I'm not really getting the most out of it. I havent, for example, downloaded any script to look at... nor do I rewind or rewatch any portions of it. Basically I leave the English subtitles on but listen intently to the Korean.

Its probably not an ideal way to learn from the series, but it does have this going for it:

1) I can follow the story despite only understanding like 20 or 30% of what is said because I do see the English.

2) The English helps me hear a lot more (I think) than if it were not there.

I cannot explain why easily but lets assume the Korean was "The suspect was arrested". I may not catch that at all unless the context really helped point it out to me. But if the English was even something like "They got him", while the translation isn't exactly what was said in Korean, seeing it helps me realize what was said (being that I get an 'aha' moment in which my brain decodes what was said but it takes me a couple seconds after seeing the English)

Also some long sentences I'd have no hope of catching would remain a mystery but seeing the English at least helps me catch a key phrase or word or two.

I'm sure many folk here may beg to differ and say that no subtitles (or maybe captioning in the TL) would be preferable. But truth is that even after all this time I find Korean programming really hard to understand. Without the English or without the script in Hangeul to study, I'm not really going to be following much of the story and it'd probably not be an enjoyable experience.

But while I don't feel I get enough out of this endeavor to justify letting it be part of my weekly target in terms of hours spent on Korean, its still a worthy activity because eventually it will happen. (In fact its even BETTER than if I included it as Korean Study because if I did then I'd be tempted to give up other activities to be replaced by watching Korean TV content... right now the Korean TV content is purely bonus material atop my existing study activities)

It feels a lot like when I started the TTMIK Iyagi series. I started working on those way earlier than might have been sensible to do, but I just kept at it until I got to this point here. In an ideal world I'd have a large series of stepping stones on this journey with each one being one comfortable step forward... but thats not how it ends up. Along the way there'll be a few uncomfortable jumps that you just gotta keep trying until you can make them.

So's my opinion anyway.
2 x

Sayonaroo
Green Belt
Posts: 256
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:13 am
Languages: English(N), Japanese -fluent?, Korean - advanced?, Spanish (b1?)
Language Log: http://choronghi.wordpress.com
x 319
Contact:

Re: Under-cooked Korean

Postby Sayonaroo » Tue Feb 12, 2019 12:49 am

I would recommend re-listening to the audio to get more out of it (Of course you'd get more out of it learning words from it from a transcript etc). Since it's on netflix the only thing I can think of is recording the AUDIO ON audacity while you watch it if you happen to be watching on your computer. if you want to learn from dramas you should look into a drama on viki since there are korean and english subs available usually and you can download the subtitles as .srt which you can open on notepad.

here's are two dramas on viki with subs.

high kick through the roof ( 지붕 뚫고 하이킥)
https://www.viki.com/videos/1084238v-hi ... ?locale=ko

unstoppable kick (2006)
https://www.viki.com/tv/29540c-unstoppable-high-kick
0 x

qeadz
Green Belt
Posts: 298
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2016 11:37 pm
Languages: English (N), Korean (~A2)
x 400

Re: Under-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Tue Feb 12, 2019 1:57 am

Sayonaroo wrote:I would recommend re-listening to the audio to get more out of it...SNIP


Thank you for the links :) As I mentioned in my post I'm well aware I could put in a lot more effort to get more out of watching Korean dramas.

I think it was AndyMeg who, some time ago, tried working through dialog for each scene and revising vocab before watching the scene through multiple times. I don't think s/he lasted all that long doing that technique before it came to an end. I suspect doing that ended up sucking all the enjoyment out of the dramas.

For me it would most likely either come to an abrupt or I'd end up reducing other Korean study activities to make room for it. Basically at the moment that activity sits more on the enjoyment side than it does Korean learning side.

But there is probably some room for me to get a bit more Korean learning out of the dramas without significantly impacting the enjoyment of watching them. I'll have to give it some thought - perhaps its just that I get the script for each episode and work through it as reading material the day before watching it. I might not remember everything but I'd certainly expect to catch more of what is said.
1 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests