The books synopsis is completely accurate:

This is a guide to Korean language usage for students who have already acquired the basics of the language. Unlike a conventional grammar, it highlights those areas of vocabulary and grammar which cause the most difficulty to English speakers. Clear, readable and easy to consult, it is essential for all those who wish to take their Korean beyond the beginner’s level.

The contents also suggest the wealth of knowledge inside.

Style and usage: 1. Sentence endings; 2. Honorifics; 3. Address terms and pronouns; 4. Language for daily situations; 5. Conversational bridges; 6. Softening strategies; 7. Local dialects; 8. Written versus spoken language; Vocabulary: 9. Native and borrowed words; 10. Word formation; 11. Some vocabulary contrasts; 12. Proverbs and idioms; 13. Sound symbolism; 14. Numbers; Grammar: 15. Verb types; 16. Tense and aspect; 17. Modality; 18. Negation; 19. Particles; 20. Comparison; 21. Conjunctives; 22. Complex sentences.

It also has a conjuctions index in the back that deal with all those past the basic level (i.e ~지도 모르다) pointing you to the relative chapter with at least several examples.

So far the most valuable sections for me have been those on conversational bridges, softening strategies, word formation, proverbs and idioms, and sound symbolism.

This is the book that will make things click and also a works great as a reference grammar.

Get it here with free world wide delivery. http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0521667887

It’s only approximate due to a couple of uncertainties regarding words and nuances but I’d still hope it was at least 95% accurate. Corrections and suggestions for improvement are more than welcome.

Also if it sounds a little strange in English then that’s because I was trying to stay closer to the literal translation of the text as I think this helps with learning Korean given the vastly different grammar.

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안녕하세요.
이제 와서 보니 너무 오랫동안 여기에 와서 활동을 하지 못했네요.
여러분들께, 특히 peer-editing project에 관심을 갖고 활동했던 분들께 너무 죄송하네요.
굳이 변명을 하자면, 둘째 아이를 임신해서 몇 달 동안 입덧에 시달리고, 둘째 딸을 낳고, 두 아이를 키우고 정신없이 지내다 보니 벌써 일년 정도의 시간이 지나가 버렸네요.

Hello,
It’s been a long time since I’ve been here so I couldn’t be active. I’m very sorry to the people who were interested or active in the peer-editing project. If I’m to make an excuse, I was pregnant with my second daughter so I was suffering from morning sickness for a few months, then my daughter was born and I was raising my two daughters so I had no energy and so about a year’s time has already gone by.

관심있으신 분들이 있다면 다시 시작하고 싶어요.
우선 오랜만에 시작했으니까 가벼운 주제로 시작하고 싶어요.

If there are people who are interested I would like to start again. First, since it’s been a long time since we started I’d like to start by doing an easy subject.

아침에 눈을 뜬 후에 가장 먼저 하는 일이 뭔지 이야기 해보기로 할까요?
물론, 그 뒤에 일어나는 일들에 대해서 이야기해도 좋지요.

Shall I tell you what the very first thing I do in the morning after I open my eyes is? Of course even if I tell you what I do after I get up that’d be good too.

저는 작은 아이(이제 6개월 정도 되었어요)와 함께 자는데, 눈을 뜨자마자 그 아이를 쳐다봐요.
배는 가려졌는지, 땀흘리는지, 기저귀는 안 젖었는지, 코는 안 막혔는지 그런 것들을 본 다음에 다시 좀 더 눈을 붙여요.
주로 애가 깨면 저도 자리에서 일어나 데리고 마루로 나와요.
그리고, 큰 아이를 어린이집에 보낼 준비를 하지요.
지금은 휴직중이어서 그나마 이런 아침이 가능하지만, 만약 다시 일하러 가게 되면 정신없이 바쁜 아침이 될 것 같아요.

When I sleep together with my small daughter (who’s been around for about 6 months) as soon as she opens her eyes she looks up. After I’ve seen whether her tummy is covered, if she’s sweating, that her nappy isn’t wet and her nose isn’t blocked, I close my eyes again. Usually if the baby is awake I get up from my chair and accompany her by the floor. And I get my big daughter ready to be sent to nursery. At the moment I’m in the middle of taking leave from work. Even though it would be possible to have these kind of mornings, if I opened up the shop to work again it seems like they would become mindless and busy.

솔직히 다시 일하러 가고 싶은 마음도 있지만, 또 이렇게 아이들과 함께 많은 시간을 같이 보낼 수 있다는 것도 큰 행복이라고 생각해요.
지금 이 순간을 즐겨야겠죠?
여러분들의 아침은 어떤지 듣고 싶어요.

To be honest, I would like to go to work again but also, if we spend a lot of time together like this I think we will be very happy. You have to happy in this moment don’t you? I would like to hear about everyone’s mornings.

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Phew, there we go. When I set out I intended to make that much more like a direct translation before realising how unnatural and difficult that would be. The truth is that Korean just does not translate at all well word for word, even after you remove a lot of the grammatical differences there are the words too!

I suggest that people use Naver’s 영어 사전 to translate word for word and use mine as a guide to the meaning.

I hope people are still interested in the project and my efforts here haven’t been in vain!

Well, Good luck to all. I’ll be writing my reply sometime in the near future - after some well earned sleep.

관심있으신 분들이 있다면 다시 시작하고 싶어요.
우선 오랜만에 시작했으니까 가벼운 주제로 시작하고 싶어요.

아침에 눈을 뜬 후에 가장 먼저 하는 일이 뭔지 이야기 해보기로 할까요?
물론, 그 뒤에 일어나는 일들에 대해서 이야기해도 좋지요.

저는 작은 아이(이제 6개월 정도 되었어요)와 함께 자는데, 눈을 뜨자마자 그 아이를 쳐다봐요.
배는 가려졌는지, 땀흘리는지, 기저귀는 안 젖었는지, 코는 안 막혔는지 그런 것들을 본 다음에 다시 좀 더 눈을 붙여요.
주로 애가 깨면 저도 자리에서 일어나 데리고 마루로 나와요.
그리고, 큰 아이를 어린이집에 보낼 준비를 하지요.
지금은 휴직중이어서 그나마 이런 아침이 가능하지만, 만약 다시 일하러 가게 되면 정신없이 바쁜 아침이 될 것 같아요.

솔직히 다시 일하러 가고 싶은 마음도 있지만, 또 이렇게 아이들과 함께 많은 시간을 같이 보낼 수 있다는 것도 큰 행복이라고 생각해요.
지금 이 순간을 즐겨야겠죠?
여러분들의 아침은 어떤지 듣고 싶어요.

Hey, it’s been a really long time since I was here last time.
What I’ve been up to?
about a year ago, I got pregnant with my second child and the morning sickness had bugged me for several months and then, I gave a birth to my second daughter and have been busy taking care of 2 little girls.

if any of you are still interested in pep, i’d like to start it again
let’s talk about easy things first

What’s your morning like?
What is the first thing you do when you wake up?
busy or relaxed?

I received the two books I mentioned in my last post, Professor Alexander Arguelles’s ‘A Historical, Literary and Cultural Approach to the Korean Language’, Minho Choo’s ‘Using Korean’. I also got hold of Minhoo Choo and William O’Grady’s ‘Handbook of Korean Vocabulary: A Resource for Word Recognition and Comprehension’, which has had considerable discussion on this site already.

First of all I would thoroughly recommend all three of these books for anyone above the level of a beginner, especially those like myself who find themselves straddling the line between being a beginner and intermediate learner and feeling disillusioned because of an apparent lack of appropriate studying resources. Quite simply I can be sure the money I’ve spent on these books has been an excellent investment for my learning already. All three of them are quite unique and different to anything else I’ve come across on the market.

Today I’ll give you my initial reactions to ‘Approach to the Korean Language’. Polyglot Professor Alexander Arguelles dedicates his life to studying foreign languages, as explained on his website here. He spent 9 years living in Korea, during which time he studied languages, especially Korean, for as many as 8 hours a day. In his own words the book is ‘an attempt to fill the need for a scholarly method for learning to speak, to understand and-above all-to read Korean. 

This is a book in the same vein as Richard Harris’s ‘Roadmap to Korean’ of a book written by a foreign expert in the language, written with the perspective of an English speaker in mind. However I prefer this book to Harris’s so far due to the depth it goes into. In particular the guide to pronunciation changes in 한글 is the best I’ve ever come across explaining them in the kind of depth that would benefit more advanced learners too with names that actually helps you make sense of them and therefore remember them. An example is that of ‘nasalisation (코소리 되기)’ for example where ㅂ before ㅁ or ㄴ becomes [ㅁ] and in a similar fashion when ㄷ before ㅁ or ㄴ becomes [ㄴ].

Another point I really like is that he considers the Korean language as a whole including the North Korean form, which most books would almost have you believe doesn’t exist by their exclusive focus on the South Korean form.

He is very confident of his method for learning Korean and makes no excuses about the very high difficulty of Korean recommending that ‘constant repetition is the key to mastery and progress’. He also writes brilliantly on the practice of romanisation of 한글, often in books written by Koreans, that it ‘is ostensibly offered as an aid to the foreigner learner, but it is so obviously an impediment to the learning of the Korean script that it almost seems designed to prevent outsiders from learning to read Korean’.  I couldn’t agree more!

After this kind of introduction to the language, reading 한글 and grammar the books goes into 20 lessons each beginning with a text, which gets increasingly long as the book goes on, introducing things of Korean cultural value such as traditional songs, rhymes, stories (such as the ungrateful tiger) and information about things like Korean food. Included in each lesson are pronunciation notes for difficult words in each text, cultural notes, grammar notes and the learning of Chinese characters - 한자 (one of my favourite bits of the book). Everything so far seems very thorough.

While I am no novice to Korean and would say I easily know at least 1000 words, I still encountered words in every lesson that I didn’t know, probably mainly due to the fact it focuses on written Korean. The cultural notes are invaluable too, for example one which describes the meaning of the 도깨비, which are imaginary creatures in old Korean folktales which are analogous to those of brownies, elves, imps and poltergeists in European folklore.

There are listening tapes which can be bought separately which would be a must for beginners still unsure about the sounds of 한글 and lots of exercises to test you after each chapter. Personally I am fine without the tapes and choose not to do the exercises, instead looking up new words I find in the ‘Handbook of Korean Vocabulary’ to learn the 한자 associated with them which helps me to remember them and link them to words I already know. So far I’ve managed to do 3 lessons in about 2 hours with this method studying alone.

All in all, an excellent book with a fresh perspective on Korean that definitely fills a much needed gap in the market. Best for beginners who are comfortable with the basics in my opinion, though it could be worked through as a complete beginner with the accompanying audio tapes.

The price is a drawback however - £27 = just over 50 US Dollars if you buy it from The Book Depository though worldwide delivery is free including to Korea. At this price it’s definitely for those that are sure they are going to make a commitment to Korean by working through it.

Another possible drawback for keen learners is that while at the time of publishing (2000) the book promised future more advanced volumes, 8 years down the line they have not yet been forthcoming. This could be because the Professor has been busy writing advanced Korean newspaper readers up until this point however, so hopefully he’ll get round to it soon.

Has anyone else got hold of it or books with similar approaches to Korean?

I’ve signed up to be an author on this blog with the view of getting things going again around here. An unkempt blog becomes off putting to new users and regulars alike and so by posting about the currently and newly available books and resources for learning Korean I hope to stimulate discussion to help us all in our goal of learning this at times mystifying but ultimately rewarding language.

A little about me. I’ve been living in Korea for one year so far in the city of 대전 (Daejeon) and studying Korean for the same length of time. I briefly wrote a column in the Korea Herald on my experiences as a learner of Korean but found the article specification too limiting and the word count too low to discuss anything in much depth.

In the coming days and weeks I’ll be reviewing and sharing some of the new and as of yet un-discussed books and online resources I’ve recently found. Particularly I will be featuring reviews of two books that have not had a proper write up yet, the polyglot Dr Alexander Arguelles’s ‘A Historical, Literary and Cultural Approach to the Korean Language’ and Miho Choo’s ‘Using Korean: A Guide to Contemporary Usage’.

여러분 다시 한국어에 대해서 대화 합시다!

제임스

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