Sentences and grammar

Khatzumoto's 10,000-sentence method is kind of intimidating, but I have a feeling it'll be the best way to combine vocabulary and grammar learning - especially particle use. The trouble is finding places to get sentences. Song lyrics typically aren't complete sentences, and trying to transcribe from Korean film could be laden with inaccuracies. What I really need is Korean movies/dramas with exact Korean subtitles in hangul, because then I could watch it with English subs and every time a good sentence came up, I could pause, go to the same place in the Korean-sub version, and then look up the words and figure out the grammar. And then enter it into my "sentences" section on Anki, which is currently in the single digits. My sentence section wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for some priceless sample sentences on Luke Park's Korean grammar site. "Jun-young runs." "Jun-young drinks water." Are we excited yet, people?!?!!

Korean grammar is so different than English grammar. What's with all these particles? You know how on Facebook there are bumper stickers that say "Bros before hoes?" I want one that says "Particles before articles."

My library is useless! In the whole library system, all they have are a few learn-Korean audio tapes, one Korean textbook, and one or two Korean-English dictionaries. I managed to get one of the Korean dictionaries, but someone else is using the textbook (plus I hate textbooks and it's really outdated), and I don't have any way of playing audio tapes. I don't think they have any native Korean-language materials at all, though I might try to find some Korean children's books at the main downtown library this afternoon.

Downloading Anki

I just downloaded Anki onto my computer so I don't have to worry about times when my Internet stops working. Though the online version has worked wonderfully for me so far, the downloadable version has sweet features, like allowing yourself to learn more than 20 new cards a day. You can synchronize your online and offline Anki and even hook it up to your phone somehow. I normally still use it in the online format because the on-the-computer user interface kind of annoys me. But I synchronize all the time so that if I lose Internet, I'll still be caught up on flashcards.

I create all my own flashcards, but that's because there weren't really any Korean decks that I trusted or that made sense - I want to learn words that I think are useful, not the selections of some random person who's hung up on words like "airplane" and "menu." ("Useful" meaning "recognizable on food labels and in kpop songs I listen to at work.") Plus it's really fast to just type up Korean words since I'm not doing anything with hanja.

On subtitles

On AJATT, Khatzumoto writes that you should not use English subtitles at all. I have mixed feelings about this. I apply this policy to songs: I never watch or look up any English translations of lyrics, because I'm afraid that then I'll just remember the English translation as I hear the song. I want to listen carefully and gradually piece each song together over the course of many, many repeated listenings.

I feel like dramas and movies are a different story. I know so little Korean that I would literally be unable to follow anything that happened - except really, really basic things, like "What's that?" and "Don't go" - which I've only learned through using subtitles as it is. Or things that I could infer from context, like a guy being jealous. This would be incredibly frustrating for me since I love the storylines and can't stand not knowing what's going on. At the same time, I haven't actually tried watching anything with no subtitles yet...

I feel like at this point, it's still better for me to watch with subtitles but still try to focus on listening, because that way I can look up words. Sometimes, when I'm cooking, I play drama scenes I've already seen in the background, with the subtitles cut off at the bottom so I can't see them. That way I have a vague sense of what's going on (since I've seen it before at least once), but can only listen to the dialogue and can't become distracted by subtitles. If I watch the same scene with English subtitles too many times, I end up memorizing the English meaning of the dialogue, which is useless.

But I know that I can't be dependent on subtitles forever, and that they could cripple me before long. The ideal situation would be watching things with hangul subtitles, since then I could look up words and easily mine sentences. Maybe I could watch a movie or drama with English subtitles the first time through, and then re-watch multiple times with hangul subtitles...

A reluctant hiatus

Starting tomorrow, I'll be working all day and into the evening for four days straight for a special program. I imagine that Korean will fall by the wayside. I've entered about 150 words into Anki at this point, and I know most of them. We'll see how I fare after this little workaholic phase. I won't have time to watch any kdrama, so I suppose I'll just have to keep reviewing what I already have in Anki.

K-music on Last.fm

I've started using Last.fm online radio to listen to Korean music. It seems like an ideal choice because it'll automatically select more music for me on the basis of what I like to listen to (as well as what I don't like). I'm starting off with the "F.T. Island" station (F.T. Island is a Korean band that started instrumental and branched out to vocals), which seems to have a nice mix of slow ballad-y songs and faster dance and hip-hop music. It's great to be able to ban tracks - I'm banning Japanese and English tracks right and left.

It's surprising how much English is in a lot of Korean songs. I'm trying to make myself ban those, but it's difficult. The trouble is, if I don't ban them and start to hear them multiple times, I end up with the English running through my head instead of the Korean. I doubt that it'll improve my Korean speaking ability to have "Feels like insomnia" playing back in my head all day. The English is often part of the chorus - loud, memorable, short, frequently repeated sections. Perfect for permanent etching into your memory.

But every chicken has its bones. Maybe I'll ban WheeSung's "Insomnia" a little later, after I get it out of my system...

Two grammar resources

I have found two truly amazing grammar resources. I'm not focusing too much on grammar right now - I agree with Khatzumoto that grammar rules can't fully communicate the logic of a language - but I do think it's important. So far, I'm not pressuring myself to memorize anything, but I look up grammar to understand verb endings I hear in songs, for instance. It's very helpful to have grammar resources to describe, after the fact, the patterns that I see and hear.

Luke Park's Guide to Korean Grammar is a well-organized site with enough charts and tables to thrill any grammarian (like me). But it also has plenty of example sentences, clear explanations, and even some nice audio clips. I find myself referencing this site constantly, and there's enough material here that I know it will be helpful beyond the beginner level.

Luke Park can be almost too concise sometimes, so to fill in some of the gaps, I've been using a Learn Korean Language website. This site offers a lot more explanation about certain grammatical concepts, particularly verbs and the irregular verbs "to be" and "to have/exist." Between these two sites, I've found that most of my everyday grammar needs are being fulfilled so far.

Korean talk radio

I've started listening to Korean radio at work. It's strange to hear a stream of Korean speech for about 7 hours straight, punctuated by Korean songs. It's frustrating to understand literally nothing, but I suppose I'll keep faith in Khatzumoto's insistence that just hearing it is good for you. I have to admit, it's probably a good way to start becoming familiar with what a normal Korean speech cadence sounds like - plus hearing words go by at normal to fast speed, rather than the slow, exaggerated fashion typical of language learning materials. From what I know of Korean speech levels, it sounds like everyone on the radio speaks pretty formally.

I must confess that I like the songs best, and sometimes station-jump to find more music and less talking... Masan MBC FM 98.9 has been a pretty decent station. Seoul Top Radio has a bad habit of playing lots of American songs, but Masan seems to stick with mostly Korean.

Input = understanding

Antimoon has an extremely important article on why input has to come before output in language learning. Read it - I promise it will revolutionize your perceptions of language learning. It has also served to reinforce my belief that fill-in-the-blank worksheets are a terrible way to learn good French. Pressuring yourself to construct sentences and say phrases in your new language will encourage bad habits if you don't have enough input first. You can't actually learn anything by creating your own sentences, because there is zero new linguistic material entering your brain. You're just rearranging what you already know, and there's a good chance you're rearranging some of it wrong. Thus, it's important to listen to how native speakers talk - a LOT - before you try to say anything yourself. The same goes for writing.

If you listen enough, words and phrases will start to make sense on their own. I first experienced this phenomenon while watching anime. Often when a character said "I understand," "Yes," or "I get it," they would say "wakata" or "wakatimashita," or another phrase along those lines. Though I don't know the verb stem of whatever this word is, when I hear variations of this word I understand its core meaning. The same goes for grammar patterns. In one anime, one character said "Shinjiteiru" ("I will always believe in you"), and another said "Mateiru" ("I'll be waiting"). It wasn't hard to understand intuitively that the Japanese "teiru" ending implies ongoing activity or an ongoing state. It was a lot easier to pick this up from anime than a textbook - and I don't think I'll ever forget it, even if I never glance at Japanese again.

Remember that your brain was deliberately designed to make sense of language. The more you listen, the more patterns you'll pick up, and the more it'll make sense.

Pronunciation and romanization

I've successfully learned basic hangul in one week! I'm learning rules for whole word pronunciation now, thanks to BusyAtom. Words are a lot harder to figure out than individual syllables! Some words are written one way but pronounced differently because Koreans seem to be rather lazy speakers. For instance, ㅅ normally sounds like "s" or "sh" or "z" or "t" depending on the syllable. But in certain words for "this," "that," and "it," it's pronounced as "n."

I'm beginning to realize that Korean romanization is pretty useless because many Korean sounds are between English sounds. For instance, there are three different "p" sounds; the name of one Korean city is romanized as both "Busan" and "Pusan." It's driving me crazy that a lot of the "Learn Korean" websites I've found rely extensively on romanization. It distracts me from the hangul, and then I picture the romanized version of a word or letter combination instead of the correct hangul version. I must find a way to escape all this romanization.

Speech levels in kdrama

I've started watching the Korean drama "Full House" and I am hooked. Absolutely hooked. If you've never watched kdrama before, the best way I can describe it is like a very long, serial movie. It's not like American TV shows, because a kdrama usually only has one season, consisting of 16 hour-long episodes (sometimes more or less). There is a cohesive plotline and story arc, and at the end, it's the end. Some kdramas have second seasons or sequel movies, but most of them don't drag on for years like American shows.

Watching "Full House" is giving me a much better sense of spoken Korean. I'm starting to pick up on patterns of verb use, for instance. The seven politeness levels of Korean threw me for a loop at first, but now I'm seeing that in everyday conversation, only about three are normally used. It's very convenient that verbs are always at the end of the sentence, because it makes it easy to pick out the verb endings.

Perhaps more importantly, watching "Full House" is giving me a sense of who uses which speech levels and when. It's becoming clear that the prepackaged phrases in Korean phrase books are awkwardly formal to use in everyday speech. It really is important to learn all the commonly used speech levels so that you can speak appropriately to superiors, "inferiors," equals, etc. - and understand what they are saying to you. A typical conversation is distinctly asymmetrical, with the older or higher-status person using casual speech while the younger/lower-status person uses more polite speech. Also, it seems that most men use casual speech towards their girlfriends.

Aside from verb endings, the different forms of personal pronouns also play a significant role in politeness level. Though Koreans don't use personal pronouns nearly as frequently as English speakers, they often do appear for purposes of clarification or emphasis.

Typing in Korean and online flashcards

I downloaded the Microsoft Vista Korean Language Support IME. Now if I click a button on my taskbar, all my keys become Korean keys and I can type in hangul, and if I click it again the keys switch back to English. There's also a toggle button I can use to convert hangul to hanja (though I'm not learning hanja at this point).

Now that I can type in hangul, I can set up my SRS system. Dude... SRS is amazing. SRS is the Holy Grail. SRS is beyond my description! You can read all about it on AJATT. It's a spaced repetition system: basically, flashcards on the computer that are only shown to you at intervals depending on how well you know them - so it gradually shows them to you less and less often, so you don't waste time going through tons of words that you already know. You're the one who tells the program whether you totally forgot the answer, whether it was hard for you, whether it was good, or whether it was a piece of cake - and then it crunches the little equations or something. It scientifically determines how often it needs to show them to you to prevent long-term memory decay. It was probably developed by a bunch of Japanese INTJs.

I'm using Anki, which was actually designed for learning Japanese, so it's awesome. I'm starting with just the online version, but there's a free download option too. (The downloadable version has extra features and can synchronize with your online account.) There are other SRS systems too, like SuperMemo, but I like Anki best. Anyway, if you start using an SRS you will have no problems with long-term retention ever again. I promise (yaksokhae!).

Between Korean language support and Anki, I guess it took a couple hours total of computer setup (including some research, hair-pulling-out, and watching Anki's super-useful intro videos). I am not a technically inclined person, but everything works now. So it can't be too difficult.

All Japanese all the time

It really is hard to get my brain to work with a different alphabet. Good thing I have buckets of inspiration available at the amazing blog All Japanese All the Time. This is a blog by a guy who became fluent in Japanese within 18 months. By "fluent" I mean that he got a job at a software company in Japan, and when he talks on the phone to Japanese people, they can't tell that he's a foreigner.

Go to the Table of Contents on AJATT and start reading. Just do it. I think that it's AJATT that really inspired me to start Korean, because without reading what Khatzumoto has to say about language learning, I doubt I would've had the confidence to begin. AJATT has extremely helpful information on how to actually learn a language - rather than the dead, sanitized, stuffed version of language available in textbooks. I'm really excited about Khatzumoto's intense, immersive method of learning language through fun, native materials like books, radio, and news. It sounds far more effective than those awful fill-in-the-blank workbooks that I used in high school French.

My first real word!

Throughout this year I've listened to lots of jpop - specifically, Arashi. But I'm sure that listening to Japanese won't help my Korean. So I found a few Korean songs on YouTube and listen to them now. They all sounded like gibberish at first - a slushy mess! But I just learned "sarang," the word for "love," in one of BusyAtom's videos. This was a turning point. I listen to songs and suddenly I can pick out that word. "Saranghae, saranghae," they sing over and over - and I understand it! In fast songs and slow songs. I feel like this is the first word that I really know.

The beginning

This is the story of how I began to learn Korean. When I first started, I was struck by the lack of Korean learning resources. My library had one Korean textbook and two Korean dictionaries. The local bookstore had two Korean phrase books. Online, there was tons of information about learning Japanese, but only a fraction of the same amount covering Korean. I hope that you will find some of the resources I've gathered to be useful.

My first exposure to Korean media was the movie "100 Days with Mr. Arrogant," which I watched on a whim in spring 2008. At the time I knew little about Asian cultures (except extensive knowledge of feng shui). I felt like the movie was over-the-top and goofy, and I was very unaccustomed to the non-Western film style. Still, I enjoyed it and filed it away in my brain as a fun, foreign romantic comedy.

During the 2008-2009 school year, my Japanaphilic friend and I watched some anime. That spring, I saw "Hana Yori Dango" (a very enjoyable Japanese drama, with two seasons and a movie too). As it turns out, there's also a Korean remake and a Taiwanese remake. Just for fun I watched the first episode of the Korean version after I finished HYD. After becoming so accustomed to Japanese audio, it struck me that the Korean dialogue sounded... messy. It seemed they slurred a lot together, with awwww's and ohhhh's and lots of ch/j/ts sounds mixed in there. I thought that it didn't sound too pretty in comparison to the clean, distinct sounds of Japanese.

For quite a while I toyed with the idea of learning Japanese, but I couldn't get over the 2,000+ kanji (Japan-ified Chinese characters) that I would need to learn. I was unwilling to learn spoken Japanese yet be functionally illiterate. I also couldn't think of a practical reason to spend that much time studying Japanese, since I had no plans to live in Japan.

One day I was searching job postings and found an advertisement for teaching English in Korea. Intrigued, I began to research the prospect more and found that it looked like an excellent opportunity. There are jobs in hagwons (private English conversation schools) as well as public schools and universities. Though research is necessary to prevent getting ripped off by unscrupulous employers, I decided that this was a viable possibility for after graduation.

At the same time, I remembered how one of my Korean friends had told me that Korean has a very scientific alphabet, which a smart person can learn in just a few hours. Koreans also use about 1,300 Chinese characters (hanja), but only in newspapers and some books, and usage is decreasing. So this prospect was far less overwhelming than Japanese. If I could become literate in Korean, surely I could learn the spoken part. And if I did end up teaching English in Korea, it would turn out to be quite useful. This was my train of thought up until the first day.

On this first day, I thought, "Well, it can't be that hard. I'll just learn the alphabet and see how it goes. I'll give myself one week; that should be enough. If I don't like it, I'll quit." So I found this fabulous Introduction to Korean website and began to learn the alphabet.

Hangul looks like this: 그냥 쓸데없는 생각. You group letters into syllables, which are formed by stacking letters on top of and around each other. There are rules about how consonants and vowels can be grouped together, and the sounds of many letters change depending on where they're located in the syllable or what syllables come before and after them. Yet the alphabet is surprisingly intuitive.

On the second or third day, I began to use some videos to learn correct pronunciation - specifically, the videos available on the website of BusyAtom's Learn Korean Project. I figured that he knows what he's talking about, since he's Korean. He is very personable, and his website is extremely well-organized.