بالامتنان أيام

This is going to sound totally cliché, but I can’t believe another year already passed! It has now officially 2 years since I started to self-study Korean. Actually, I really don’t know when I started to “self-study” Korean… but I do know I got interested in Korean culture/media in the May of 2010 – wow it already seems long ago…

This time around, I felt that my Korean didn’t progress as much as this year since I was so (partly due to school, college etc) and simply becuase I wasn’t able to learn as much as I wanted. Despite that, I did set up a goal of learning 10 words a day – which I am still doing up to date I also finished my 연세 일기, and reconnected with one of my Korean friends – until last year, I didn’t have anybody to practice Korean with! I even moved my blog from “Mango Prince” to “Gamcho”. I now use the 두별시 keyboard, and run my own blog in Korean.

Here are my new goals for this time around:

• Use sentences with more than 15 words
• Learn more sentence structures/expressions
• Meet more Korean speakers
• Move away from basic/textbook speech
• Write a paper in Korean
• Start translating articles/lyrics completely
• Find more resources (textbooks etc)

Anyways, let’s all study hard from now on, and get ready for round 2! I hope all of you will support me in my language journey.

During this spring semester, I took Chinese Year 1 Level 2 at my local university on the internet.

Of course, just like the last class, I did learn a lot of  new Chinese material. Unfortunately, since my first Chinese class was during the summer 2012, I spent much of this semester focusing on reviewing past grammar structures and characters so it was a bit regressive. I was also busy with my other college courses so I couldn’t really focus on studying Chinese and rushed with studying new characters.

Since my class finished recently, I decided to make it a summer goal to study Chinese everyday like Korean. I’d hate to forget everything I learned like last time, so I figured this would be the best.

I checked out one of my favorite books from the library called Chinese An Essential Grammar by Yip Po-Ching and Don Rimminton. If you haven’t checked out this book by now, you really should. The book is organized almost like the TTMIK lessons, so it is really effective for self-learners of Chinese.

Since my translating skills are extremely poor, I decided to create a notebook focused primarily on translating.

There are two types of content that my notebook contains:

• Pre-translated material for me to reference/practice
• Content I translated/translating

I think it’s a little hard for me to translate since I’m still a beginner with Korean. I can translate Dari –which is also an SOV language – with ease, so I figured I’ll be able to do the same with Korean once I become more proficient.

I found that translating the whole sentence at one glance a little difficult, so now I translate the literal meaning, then try to make it sound more natural in the language I’m translating into.

As the title says, I’ll be graduating high school tomorrow, so I am pretty excited as you can imagine

High school… is not something I’d like to return to. I felt like it held me back, which is why I took so many college courses. I am extremely excited to advance myself and experience the “real world” after tomorrow.

Being so, I have options for things like YISS this summer, along with loads of more time to finally study Korean. Expect lots of new and interesting posts on here.

Anyways, I hope I can receive lots of good prayers for my new journey in life!

EDIT: Just found out this was my 100th post on here!

I’m sure most of you already know that I am very much a visual learner, which means I learn more effectively with visual aids (pictures, text, etc). Because of this, I wanted to improve my hearing skills in Korean. But before I begin, I’d like to point out I can understand way more Korean in “real life”, than with pre-recorded material. Anyways, becuase I wanted to improve my listening skills, I decided to listen more podcasts  rather than repetitive music.

Here are list of podcasts that I listen to:

• TTMIK 이야기 Series
• 김형준의 뮤직하이
• 김창렬의 올드스쿨
• 정오의 희망곡 스윗소로우입니다
• FM음악도시 성시경입니다
• 장기하의 대단한 라디오

As you can tell, most of my podcast are male-based speakers. Because most of my Korean friends are girls, I wanted to balance it out – that way, I can get used to different sounds, word usage, etc.

I reccomend you subscribe to these podcast via iTunes, so you can listen to them in a portable fashion – even without a computer/internet.

If you have an Android phone, like I do, download this app called BeyondPod. You can utilize RSS urls to download the files for the podcast. It’s really easy and effective.

What podcasts do you listen to? Comment below and share

I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I’m physically and mentally more active in a certain part of the day. My time is usually between 10:30-12:30PM. And yes, I realize it is a little late, but I always feel literally hungry to learn during that time since I’m so wide awake – despite being previously tired

I did a little test and found I was able to remember Chinese characters more faster and easier during my “active time”. The next day, I was able to reproduce the characters without any form of hesitation. Cool, huh?

Try it! Pick a time your “brain is active”, and try to study vocabulary or learn characters.

I just wanted to do a quick language comparison between Chinese Korean. Shockingly, my journey with Chinese has bless stressful than with Korean. Being so, I want to go over a few reasons why Chinese is easier than Korean. Don’t get me wrong, Chinese is not easy. In fact, learning any language is difficult.

1. Hanzi and Hangul

This is one of the main reasons I think Chinese is easier than Korean. In Chinese, you are able you learn the language while learning the writing system. After you learn a character, you’ll be able to know the meaning and how to say it – thus, expanding your vocabulary and writing/reading skills at the same time. Korean, on the other hand, you have to make the effort to learn external vocabulary because the writing system is phonetic and requires the basic reading skills rather than continuos effort to learn it. Being so, most beginner/intermediate learners are able to read Korean, but not understand the actual meaning.

2. Easier to translate

Don’t get me wrong, Chinese can be difficult in terms of translating as well – but it’s definitely easier than Korean. I speak Dari, which is an SOV language, so Korean isn’t entirely new in terms of sentence structure. Although, I find that the combination of an existence of a SUBJECT with the SVO sentence structure makes it easier to translate to English.

3. No conjugating

Unlike Korean, verbs in Chinese do not have to conjugated. In Korean you have some conjugation rules such as 아/어/여 etc. In Chinese, verbs are left untouched.

4. Simpler sentence structures

I don’t know if it’s me, but I view Korean as sort of a tetris puzzle. You have set-in-stone words, with flexible options set between rules such “저는 한국말을 좀 어려운(ㄴ) 것 같아요“.  In this case there is a particle and a certain sentence structure. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the rule that 것 같아요 has to be placed after a ㄴ or ㄹ.  See what I mean? Being so, Korean has certain spelling/pronunciation rules that have to be followed in order to preserve the grammar. In Chinese, there maybe certain grammar/sentence structures that have to be left unchanged (such as 虽然。。。但是) – but that’s just like almost every other language.

5. Pronunciation

In my experience, I have learned that Chinese speakers usually pronounce words more clearly than Korean speakers. I think it is a language difference, but really does affect me. I do not immerse myself in Chinese audio/media like I do with Korean, but for some strange reason, my Chinese listening skills definitely surpass my Korean. Because Chinese has tones, pronunciation and clarity is really important. Korean, on the other hand, is more open to “slurring”, so it makes it a little difficult.

What are your experiences in studying Chinese/Korean?

As most of you know, Talk to Me in Korean is an awesome site for studying Korean for all level of learners. They even provide an 이야기 series for intermediate learners.

Here’s the process I go through when listening to their 이야기 lessons.

1. Listen to the 이야기 without reading the PDF (try to grasp the meaning + sentence structures + vocabulary)
2. Read the PDF and take note of unfamiliar words, sentence structures etc.
3. Listen to 이야기 again and pay attention carefully
4. Repeat number 3 until the 아야기 is completely understood

Once again, this is my method, so feel free to adapt my steps to your learning style. For example, my listening skills aren’t up to par, so I like to focus on the listening aspect. If you need help with reading, try practicing reading while listening, etc.

TIP: You might want to use my Evernote approach when reading an 이여기to make studying a little more easier…

Visit TTMIK’s 이야기 series here.

This is part of the my “Evernote Series” on my blog that will encompass all the ways I use Evernote to study Korean. First off, Evernote is an awesome site that allows you to take create online notebooks and fill them with notes, with any format in mind. The best part is, you can use Evernote in anyway you want.

This post will be covering how I utilize Evernote to read Korean articles in order to learn more vocabulary.

Before starting I find a Korean article – I usually use Nate and Naver. I then clip the article onto a note.

3. And finally, I use Naver Dictionary to look up these words and write then in my vocabulary notebook. If you don’t have a vocabulary notebook, I recommend you write the definitions of the words directly on the note for easy access. I don’t bother doing this because I keep track of my vocabulary on my excel sheet.

That’s all there is to it! I think it’s important to adapt my method to your learning style. Just because it works for me, doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. And if this seems… simple… that’s because it is! I try to keep my learning methods simple so it doesn’t take up too much time, or cause a hassle on my end.

Just a quick announcement!

I finally got a Tistory account so visit my Korean blog here. I moved all my blog posts, so most of the old content should be there.

I don’t think I’ll be moving it anytime soon haha because it took  me forever to get an account since you have to go through an invitation process in order to get an account – but fortunately, I got an invite on Twitter. I even made my own custom layout (which took hours), so check it out!

Once again, the entries I post are already corrected on Lang-8 (which is an awesome website), so you can use them for extra reading practice if you’d like.