Sorry for the absence, I’ve been busy and still trying to piece these together faster. I’m thinking I’ll extract the audio from each lesson and implement it into Anki as well. Hopefully I’ll have it setup next time. Enjoy!
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무슨일 하세요? – What do you do?
아버지 – father
어머니 – mother
회사 – company
병원 – hospital
교회 – church
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아버지는 무는일을 하세요?
아버지는 병원에서 일하세요.
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의사 doctor
간호사 nurse
선생님 teacher
학생 student
배우 actor
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군인 soldier
변호사 lawyer
경찰 police man
소방관 fireman
이발사 barber
학교에서 일을 해요 – I work at the school
학교에서 공부해요 – I study at the school
저는 학생입니다 – I’m a student
Full Audio of the Entire Lesson 2:
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Today, I’m going over the first episode of Let’s Speak Korean where we meet the cast and how to greet someone in Korean. This one is pretty light in the content and vocabulary, but it picks up a lot in future episodes.
Main Dialogue:
안녕하세요?
(Hello)
처음 뵙겠습니다
(Pleasure to meet you)
저는 Lisa 입니다
(I am Lisa)
안녕하세요?
저는 Stephen입니다
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만나서 반갑습니다
(Very Glad to Meet You)
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Extra Vocabulary
빨리 빨리
Hurry Up
밥
Rice (also food, meal)
So, it’s been a long time since I have last updated. To be honest, I stopped learning Korean daily as I hoped to do this summer. I spent a few weeks back at home with my parents and traveled up and down the east coast for a while.
Nonetheless, I’m back. I finally have an idea of how to develop a lesson plan. Previously, I was searching the internet for resources and did not want to spend any money on purchasing any programs like Pimsleur. This was proving to be extremely difficult though.
Instead, I’m going to follow the Let’s Speak Korean youtube video series. Each day, I’ll be doing at least 2 videoes, updating my Anki vocabulary program, and writing a short guide/summary of each video about new grammar structures, vocabulary, and so on. There is about 180 of these Let’s Speak Korean videoes so this should occupy me for a few months.
I’m also thinking once the fall begins that I might take a Korean language class at my university. As a graduate student, I’m allowed to take one language course at a discount so it might be interesting to see what resources they use and be able to speak with others.
First update will be on Monday!
Hey guys,
My first year as a graduate student is over, woot woot! I’m back to learning my mother tongue, Korean! That’s why we’re all here right?
I’m not going to lie, the sheer volume of Korean language resources on the internet is overwhelming, and it’s spread all over the place. Over time, I hope to cherry pick the very best from the internet for you dear visitor.
The best way to learn any language is hearing a native speaker actually talk. Korean is such a different language from Western languages so it’s important to hear often to get the pronunciation correctly. So, I’m going to favor finding video and audio sources.
So, I found a wonderful internet video series called “Let’s Speak Korean” that used to air on Korean television. There are over 200 videos of this 10 minute series starting at the very basics. There’s a lot of fluff material at the beginning of these videos though so you might want to just skip to minute 2.
Here’s the very first video that covers the basics of saying Hello, Rice, Introducing yourself, and so on. All things you absolutely need to know!
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plujaKEG5pI]
This Youtube user, xd3qu1n0x, has posted up over 150 of these Speak Korean videos. I would definitely recommend watching them daily and putting them to use. If you skip ahead to the second minute then you only need to watch 8 minutes.
Hey folks,
By this Friday, I will be finished my first year as a graduate student and will have a lot of free time this summer to pursue my Korean language learning studies once again. There’s even a slight chance I might even be going to Korea this summer!
I apologize for the delay and thanks for coming. We will be starting again soon.
See you in a week!
I came across this Korean through English from the Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Overall, it’s an excellent beginning guide to the alphabet and writing of the Korean language.
That is the entire Korean alphabet. Through countless combination of consonants and vowels, you can create any word. Unlike Japanese and Chinese, the Korean language is phonetic. So, I can technically "read" any Korean newspaper out loud, but I won’t understand what I’m saying. Nevertheless, the learning curve is much lower.
The main problem though is that many of the pages do not show up properly for me. Also, these chapters would be better if there were more accompanying sound files. Considering this is a government site, I was expecting a lot more. Oh well.
But, it’s worth the 30 minutes or hour to use the sounds they do offer so you can practice saying them yourself.
I’m still looking for a decent dictionary and something more comprehensive. I might just start forming my own vocabulary groups instead.
I apologize for the lack of updates. My graduate studies and final papers are taking up the majority of my time. I’m still doing Korean vocabulary flashcards through Anki but not much else yet.
Starting May 8th, I’ll be finished my Spring semester and have free time to continue this Korean language learning to mastery.
Crossing is a Korean film inspired by a true story about a North Korean father who goes to China to obtain medicine for his dying wife. He faces many agonizing trials while his young son still in North Korea faces his own tragedies. It’s a very moving film about the plight of North Korean refugees that sadly is not well known by most people. It is also a fascinating tale about the human spirit, what it can endure, and the ultimate strength of family.
I watched the movie with my campus’s Korean Student Association (KSA). Initially, I only went to watch a Korean film and practice my Korean some more. Honestly, I was thinking about not going since it was already late. But, boy, am I grateful that I went.
The film itself was shown by three young students from Liberty In North Korea (LiNK), a group dedicated to raising awareness and assisting North Korean refugees. These three particular young people had driven all the way from California to show this movie across the United States. I was really moved, donated some money, and talked to one of the them for a while. I would highly recommend going to their schedule here to see if they have a viewing near your home OR email them to host a showing.
I can tell you most of the people in the crowd were in tears. I broke down a few times. It is not a violent or graphic movie at all, but the raw emotion and grief on their faces is terrifically highlighted. According to this Times piece, the story was based on a true Korean refugee who refused to watch the final film because it would be too traumatizing.
Lastly, my apologies for not updating yesterday. I will likely switch to only posting regular journal updates twice a week until at least this semester ends. My Korean studies haven’t progressed much beyond vocabulary and watching Korean films lately.
I’m still finding the basic resources online to do my Korean (Hangul) learning. There’s a lot of websites out there but no great or perfect one.
The biggest stumbling block right now is finding a good Korean-English online dictionary. There are several but nearly all of them are horrible. Do you know any good ones?
I’ve also been looking for other frequent word charts for Korean other than the Wiktionary.
Today, I completed two more sections from Langintro.com. Start with their alphabet and follow along. I covered Basic Conversational Phrases and Parts of the Body.
안녕하세요 (that’s Hello)
Also, I’ve been watching Korean movies at mysoju.com. They have a huge selection of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese shows and movies. An excellent way to actually hear common, street Korean conversations.
Along the way, I’m entering any interesting Korean vocabulary or phrases I find into the Anki, the spaced time learning program for future review.
This week, the plan is to finish the langintro.com sections, find a good online Korean-English dictionary, and input at least 500 Korean words into Anki.
So, I’ve got a clear mission: Learn Korean without taking classes and ideally without paying money. How to do it though?
Following Khatzumoto and Tim Ferriss (author of 4-Hour Workweek), I’m going to start by concentrating on building my Korean vocabulary.
Ferriss says that once you learn the first 300 most frequently used words in a foreign language, you can read over half of any writing. So, within 2 weeks, I want to memorize the top 200 most frequent Korean words . I’m not really sure if this Wiki frequency list is correct or not, but I couldn’t find any others. I also plan on helping update this wiki page since it’s missing a lot of English translations and context.
To memorize these 300 words, I’ll be using Anki , a spaced repetition system (SRS), which basically is a computer flash card program that intelligently knows which words to review. It’s by far the best way to memorize anything, especially foreign language vocabulary. I’m suggested it to dozens of ELI students with great success. Wired Magazine run a fascinating article on spaced repetition for memorization.
On the side, I will be completing the rest of the teaching pages I posted about from langintro.com, but it’s not a big priority. Also, I’m going to immerse myself into the Korean language through Korean music, videos, and radio. Luckily, I was raised in a Korean speaking household so I "get" Korean, but this is still an important method to really start thinking and breathing Korean.