Let's Learn Korean

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Total words: 36

王音癡

오늘 읽기 수업은 우리 새댁 요코짱의 한국살이의 발췌문을 읽었어요. 그 발췌문 서강 한국어 3B page 83. 그책은 친구한테 빌렸는데 지금은 첵중에서 몇쪽이 알줄 몰랐어요.

여러분 아직 안읽었으면 사러 문고 가세요. 이책은 쉽고 재미 있고 읽어 볼만해요.

Posted by 王音癡 on Tuesday Feb 6, 2007 at 01:57 PM in In the classroom | Reading | Books |
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Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Total words: 274

롸이언

Authors: Iksop Lee & S. Robert Ramsey

I just finished reading this book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is a serious learner of the language. It goes into considerable detail about many aspects of the language from the history to the grammar to the modern dialects. I liked that it dug deeper than the familiar, “King Sejong invented Hangeul in 1444(6)…” that is at the beginning of all of our textbooks. The authors discuss previous writing systems, the development of Hangeul, and orthography. While this is by no means a textbook for learning Korean, about half of the book covers grammar and the sociolinguistics of Korean honorifics and speech styles. This helped answer a lot of my questions about when to use which style.

As with many books on Korean, this book suffers from an overuse of Romanization. While it does give the primary examples in both Yale Romanization and Hangeul, many of the examples and terms in the text are either Romanized or translated into English. It would have been nice to know some of the grammatical/linguistic terms used in this book in Korean. This book also uses a fair bit of Hanja in its explanations, but, does not give their Hangeul or English equivalents. I find this very strange that a book would assume someone would know Hanja but not Hangeul.

Except for the small problem of the Romanization, I highly recommend this book as it will illuminate so many interesting things about the language that you did not even know existed. It really gets “under the hood” of Korean and lets you see how it all works.

Posted by 롸이언 on Wednesday Jan 11, 2006 at 08:19 PM in Books |
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Sunday, October 30, 2005

Total words: 118

롸이언

This is not well adapt as a textbook, but it is excellent as a quick reference guide to Korean grammar. It does an especially good job at highlighting a large number of particles, verb endings, conjunctions, and as well as other intricacies of Korean grammar such honorifics, post-modifiers, etc. All of the entries are accompanied by thorough and diverse examples all in Hangeul (thankfully no Romanization) with very good English translations.

Friday, June 17, 2005

Total words: 16

王音癡

사린미소 has posted a review of what appears to be a Korean-Korean dictionary. Check it out.

Posted by 王音癡 on Friday Jun 17, 2005 at 10:14 AM in Books |
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Thursday, June 16, 2005

Total words: 78

王音癡

David is coming to Korea and would like some advice on what books to purchase before arriving to help him learn Korean. The details to his question can be found in a comment on my EFL Geek blog: this entry. You can leave advice for him there or here, though he has told me he won’t be joining this blog until he feels a little stronger in his, currently non-existant, Korean skills.

Thanks for your helping him out.

Posted by 王音癡 on Thursday Jun 16, 2005 at 08:57 AM in META | Resources | Books |
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Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Total words: 136

王音癡

I just found out that Making out in Korean has been released again but this time instead of having only really crappy romanization it now has 한글 as well. I picked up this book my first year in Korea (1997) and found it interesting, though difficult to read because of the romanization.

Why do so many publishers insist on romanization for learning resources? Especially with Korean, it is so easy to learn how to read/write that it is unnecessary. And anyone who is going to want to or be able to use a book like this will be able to read Korean anyhow.

I wouldn’t recommend this as a serious resource for learning Korean, but it is definately something fun and you will learn some new vocabulary - some of it definately not usable in public.

Posted by 王音癡 on Wednesday Apr 27, 2005 at 09:23 PM in Books |
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Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Total words: 253

ㄴㅇㄷㅇ ㅠㅇㅜㅌ

Reading a post on The Miseducation of Si-jo a while back, I came across a book with a title that caught my eye: Learn Hanja the Fun Way.

I picked up the book about a month ago at 교보 in 강남, and it’s now taken first place as the most useable Korean/Hanja book I’ve ever had. I love the fact that it doesn’t treat me like an absolute idiot that couldn’t spend the hour it took to learn 한글, so there’s not a bit of romanization (thank GOD~!!). The biggest thing that drives me crazy about Korean study books is the mind-numbing romanziations I have to sift through (how do you say pet-peeve in Korean?). Anyway, this book requires a decent level of Korean language ability to complete the exercises , basically paragraphs written in both 한글 and 한자. I’ve found that there are only about 5 or 6 words or constructions in each paragraph that I don’t already know well, so I just mark those and figure them out easily through the translation (that I cover while I’m reading the 한글/한자 version). It makes for a really good review of the 한글 I know, and the feeling of satisfaction I get from understanding a paragraph written in two different countries’ characters (which a year and a half ago, I didn’t know a bit of) is amazing.

Learn Hanja the Fun Way: 12,600원
Pink highlighter to mark the words I don’t understand: 300원
Understanding a paragraph written in mixed 한글 and 한자: priceless

Posted by ㄴㅇㄷㅇ ㅠㅇㅜㅌ on Tuesday Apr 5, 2005 at 01:19 PM in Books | Hanja 한자 |
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