Korean Language Learners

I thought I'd create a thread for everyone who's currently learning Korean. We don't have a member who's a native speaker but maybe we can help each other learn. :) Learning is more fun when it's done with other people. We can also share resources or even just encourage each other to learn something new everyday.

To start, let's get to know each other better. :)

Me as a learner: I'm at A1- Beginner. I can read and write in Hangul. I know about 30 words. A gist of how grammar and sentence construction works.

Me as a source of learning: I'm a Learning Consultant so I have tons of resource materials on just about anything. That and I love helping people learn.

Note: I created this thread because it's hard to catch people on chat. This way, we can post practice sheets, video links, tips, and whatnot and they're all in one place. :)

I'm B2 in Korean, but a bit rusty. I plan on picking it back up again right after reaching a strong B2 in Tagalog, which I predict will be in 2 or 3 more months.

Charlyn wrote:

Hi Rai! Korean and Japanese languages are both interesting to learn. :slightly_smiling_face: What specifically learning guides you mean, for Korean and Japanese?

Hi Charlyn. Watching K-dramas piqued my interest. So then, I started learning the Korean alphabet. I also tried to read Korean texts to practice the vowels. Now, I don't know where do I go next. :) Enlighten me, please.

Rai.S. wrote:

Watching K-dramas piqued my interest. So then, I started learning the Korean alphabet. I also tried to read Korean texts to practice the vowels. Now, I don't know where do I go next. :) Enlighten me, please.

How is your pronunciation? I'd recommend getting a good handle on that before doing anything other than listening (or watching). You should be able to pronounce phonemes, words and sentences properly. Here is a nice tool for double consonants, which is the toughest part of Korean pronunciations for me. 

Hi again Rai! Yes, i do understand. It's quite difficult to enhance our learning another language but I believe you can do it really soon. :) The admin, LeoSmith just give you the best tip. :) Goodluck! :)

leosmith wrote:

Rai.S. wrote:

Watching K-dramas piqued my interest. So then, I started learning the Korean alphabet. I also tried to read Korean texts to practice the vowels. Now, I don't know where do I go next. :) Enlighten me, please.

How is your pronunciation? I'd recommend getting a good handle on that before doing anything other than listening (or watching). You should be able to pronounce phonemes, words and sentences properly. Here is a nice tool for double consonants, which is the toughest part of Korean pronunciations for me.

I think I've got no problem with the consonants. As for the vowels, I'm having a bit of a hard time mastering them. Sometimes, I read Korean names familiarize myself with the vowels. I also noticed that some consonants will have different pronunciations in certain cases. Thank you for the tip leosmith. I will definitely try this one out. Hope I'd make some progress soon. 

Rai.S. wrote:

leosmith wrote:

Rai.S. wrote:

Watching K-dramas piqued my interest. So then, I started learning the Korean alphabet. I also tried to read Korean texts to practice the vowels. Now, I don't know where do I go next. :) Enlighten me, please.

How is your pronunciation? I'd recommend getting a good handle on that before doing anything other than listening (or watching). You should be able to pronounce phonemes, words and sentences properly. Here is a nice tool for double consonants, which is the toughest part of Korean pronunciations for me.

I think I've got no problem with the consonants. As for the vowels, I'm having a bit of a hard time mastering them. Sometimes, I read Korean names familiarize myself with the vowels. I also noticed that some consonants will have different pronunciations in certain cases. Thank you for the tip leosmith. I will definitely try this one out. Hope I'd make some progress soon.

After learning the alphabet, I started building my vocab and started on basic grammar. Pronunciation will come with practice so just continue reading out loud so your mouth muscles can get used to producing the sounds.

Pro tip: Stay away from 'romanji" or Romanized Korean. That's gonna mess up your pronunciation.

ikaymoreno wrote:

Pronunciation will come with practice so just continue reading out loud so your mouth muscles can get used to producing the sounds. Pro tip: Stay away from 'romanji" or Romanized Korean. That's gonna mess up your pronunciation.

I completely agree that nobody masters pronunciation without doing a lot of practicing, and reading out loud is a great way to practice. But before you start reading out loud, you should have a good grasp on basic pronunciation. For example, you should be at least comprehensible to a native speaker. The consonant and vowel sounds you make should be distinguishable from one another, etc. Otherwise, when you start reading, even if it's silent, you will be repeating and practicing incorrect pronunciation, and these errors will fossilize and be hard to fix with time.

I also completely agree that one should avoid romanized Korean. Romanized Korean is called romaja. Romanized Japanese is called romaji. There is no romanji, although I admit that I used to think it was called that too.

ikaymoreno wrote:

Rai.S. wrote:

leosmith wrote:

Rai.S. wrote:

Watching K-dramas piqued my interest. So then, I started learning the Korean alphabet. I also tried to read Korean texts to practice the vowels. Now, I don't know where do I go next. :) Enlighten me, please.

How is your pronunciation? I'd recommend getting a good handle on that before doing anything other than listening (or watching). You should be able to pronounce phonemes, words and sentences properly. Here is a nice tool for double consonants, which is the toughest part of Korean pronunciations for me.

I think I've got no problem with the consonants. As for the vowels, I'm having a bit of a hard time mastering them. Sometimes, I read Korean names familiarize myself with the vowels. I also noticed that some consonants will have different pronunciations in certain cases. Thank you for the tip leosmith. I will definitely try this one out. Hope I'd make some progress soon.

After learning the alphabet, I started building my vocab and started on basic grammar. Pronunciation will come with practice so just continue reading out loud so your mouth muscles can get used to producing the sounds.
Pro tip: Stay away from 'romanji" or Romanized Korean. That's gonna mess up your pronunciation.

Hello ikaymoreno. Thank you for the tip. Do you have any links on Korean grammar? I often see Romanized Korean in K-pop song translations, but I have no idea how to distinguish between this and the "correct" grammar. Any insights? Thank you so much.

leosmith wrote:

ikaymoreno wrote:

Pronunciation will come with practice so just continue reading out loud so your mouth muscles can get used to producing the sounds. Pro tip: Stay away from 'romanji" or Romanized Korean. That's gonna mess up your pronunciation.

I completely agree that nobody masters pronunciation without doing a lot of practicing, and reading out loud is a great way to practice. But before you start reading out loud, you should have a good grasp on basic pronunciation. For example, you should be at least comprehensible to a native speaker. The consonant and vowel sounds you make should be distinguishable from one another, etc. Otherwise, when you start reading, even if it's silent, you will be repeating and practicing incorrect pronunciation, and these errors will fossilize and be hard to fix with time.
I also completely agree that one should avoid romanized Korean. Romanized Korean is called romaja. Romanized Japanese is called romaji. There is no romanji, although I admit that I used to think it was called that too.

Thank you leosmith. I have opened the link, which you just posted here. It's really great!

Leo said: "Otherwise, when you start reading, even if it's silent, you will be repeating and practicing incorrect pronunciation, and these errors will fossilize and be hard to fix with time."

I agree with this so much! I have experienced fossilizing of wrong pronunciation and it is so hard to eradicate after. We all have I assume. So I totally adhere to the practice of taking and learning it slowly but correctly, than moving swiftly but rather incorrectly. 

I would learn Indonesian next. 

Rai.S. wrote:

Do you have any links on Korean grammar?

I'm sure ikaymoreno will answer too, but I just wanted to share these:

Korean from Zero - A free online textbook that's a great way to start with grammar.

Talk to me in Korean (TTMIK) - The best all-around resource for studying Korean also has excellent free grammar lessons, audio and PDFs, that go far beyond Korean from Zero.

How to Study Korean is another great free site with free grammar lessons (text only). I've only used lesson 11, because it fills in a big hole the the 2 previous resources covered incompletely (Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Months, Years)

Click Korean gets many positive reviews. I checked it out a bit, and like it, but I didn't use it because my other resources were sufficient.

I learned the alphabet by asking one of my Korean students to teach me. I used Duolingo as refresher when I went back to learning Korean. I also created a practice sheet. I've attached it here.  

As for grammar, "Talk to me in Korean" is an excellent resource. I checked out some ebooks but given the limited amount of time I have to learn everyday anyway (30 mins - 1 hour every day), I found that mobile apps and TTMIK was more than enough.

ikaymoreno wrote:

I also created a practice sheet. I've attached it here.

I recommend against using transliteration, as I mentioned before, especially at this early level. There are so many free tables with audio online, there is no need to learn hangul with romaja. An example would be the Korean From Zero resource I listed above.

Let me illustrate the problem. Let's say you want to learn to 어. The correct way to do this is to listen to the audio a few times and write it out a few times while trying to pronounce it yourself. It's ok to read descriptions like "it's sounds something like the "aw" in saw, but is often pronounced more like "oh"" if you get stuck. After you do enough reviewing and trying to recall it, it will stick.

The wrong way to do it is to use the romaja "eo". eo in English sounds nothing like 어, so it's a really bad idea to map pronunciation to it. Once you've mapped something incorrect like this, it's hard to swap it out to fix it. And things get much worse if you start reading and reinforcing the error. 

Maybe you didn't do this, so sorry if that's the case. I just wanted to give people a warning about using that spreadsheet.

leosmith wrote:

Let me illustrate the problem. Let's say you want to learn to 어. The correct way to do this is to listen to the audio a few times and write it out a few times while trying to pronounce it yourself. It's ok to read descriptions like "it's sounds something like the "aw" in saw, but is often pronounced more like "oh"" if you get stuck. After you do enough reviewing and trying to recall it, it will stick.
Maybe you didn't do this, so sorry if that's the case. I just wanted to give people a warning about using that spreadsheet.

Wow, this tip really sounded useful. Got the point right away, leosmith. So, I've used romaja from the very start. This is probably the reason why I'm having a hard time with vowels. Now, I've realized through your tip that the best way to do it is by relating it to an English word that sounds the same. Thank you.

ikaymoreno wrote:

I learned the alphabet by asking one of my Korean students to teach me. I used Duolingo as refresher when I went back to learning Korean. I also created a practice sheet. I've attached it here.
As for grammar, "Talk to me in Korean" is an excellent resource. I checked out some ebooks but given the limited amount of time I have to learn everyday anyway (30 mins - 1 hour every day), I found that mobile apps and TTMIK was more than enough.

Thank you, ikay. One of my friends use Dualingo to learn Spanish and I'm like, "I would also want to try that one out." I'm going to check out TTMIK soon.

Rai.S. wrote:

the best way to do it is by relating it to an English word that sounds the same

I meant that you should only use that as a back-up. It's best to just listen to the sound and try to map it directly to the hangul. If that fails then you can use the english sound-alike trick.

Rai.S. wrote:

Now, I've realized through your tip that the best way to do it is by relating it to an English word that sounds the same. Thank you.

A lot of Korean vowels actually sound closer to Filipino vowels than English.

아 = a

에 = e

이 = i

우 = u

leosmith wrote:

I meant that you should only use that as a back-up. It's best to just listen to the sound and try to map it directly to the hangul. If that fails then you can use the english sound-alike trick.

Thanks a lot leosmith. I'll get to that best option then.

Rai.S. wrote:

ikaymoreno wrote:

A lot of Korean vowels actually sound closer to Filipino vowels than English.
아 = a
에 = e
이 = i
우 = u

Exactly, ikay. I couldn't resist to associate these with the Filipino language sometimes. :)

I find the "o" and "eo" sounds hard because there's no equivalent sound for it in English or Tagalog and I find it easier to "anchor" new sounds to ones I already know. 

Hi ikay, would you also also give me some tips on how to familiarize myself with the combined vowels? "wa" is the easiest for me.

leosmith wrote:

Rai.S. wrote:

Do you have any links on Korean grammar?

I'm sure ikaymoreno will answer too, but I just wanted to share these:
Korean from Zero - A free online textbook that's a great way to start with grammar.
Talk to me in Korean (TTMIK) - The best all-around resource for studying Korean also has excellent free grammar lessons, audio and PDFs, that go far beyond Korean from Zero.
How to Study Korean is another great free site with free grammar lessons (text only). I've only used lesson 11, because it fills in a big hole the the 2 previous resources covered incompletely (Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Months, Years)
Click Korean gets many positive reviews. I checked it out a bit, and like it, but I didn't use it because my other resources were sufficient.

Thanks for these!!! I'm visiting Korea in 4 months, gotta study hard!  

Rai.S. wrote:

Hi ikay, would you also also give me some tips on how to familiarize myself with the combined vowels? "wa" is the easiest for me.

If you're familiar with how diphthongs work in English, you can "anchor" or relate it to that. You can also visualize each element of the Hangul as a separate vowel then combine them when you pronounce it.

와 = I see the "o" then, "a" so in my head, I combine them and say "wah"

웨 = I see the "u" then "e" so "weh"

ikaymoreno wrote:

I find the "o" and "eo" sounds hard because there's no equivalent sound for it in English or Tagalog and I find it easier to "anchor" new sounds to ones I already know.

Actually 오 is present in both languages but 어 is only present in English. But it's not a one-to-one mapping for English. Regardless, sorry to repeat myself but you shouldn't map these sounds to anything but the hangul unless you're really really stuck.

Hi! I've just joined this site after Leo Smith recommended it to me. I'm planning on using this site for reading if I can figure out how it works. I just checked, but there don't seem to be any Korean reading materials on this site. Is this because everything has been marked as private?

I actually go here for the essays and helping other learners. I haven't tried the reading tools yet. Are you learning on your own or are you enrolled in a class?

ikaymoreno wrote:

I actually go here for the essays and helping other learners. I haven't tried the reading tools yet. Are you learning on your own or are you enrolled in a class?

I'm self-taught :) I signed up for an intermediate class but haven't been attending much since it's not teaching me anything new. I want to focus on reading and listening the next few months so have been looking for site that makes reading a bit more easier.

Christi wrote:

I just checked, but there don't seem to be any Korean reading materials on this site. Is this because everything has been marked as private?

Hi Christi, welcome! We have a very small library here; LT hasn't created it's own material like some other sites. Personally, I'm reading TTMIK Iyagis in private (My Passages). Eventually I hope to create content, but for the time being I'm using all my resources to try to make the site pay for itself.

leosmith wrote:

Christi wrote:

I just checked, but there don't seem to be any Korean reading materials on this site. Is this because everything has been marked as private?

Hi Christi, welcome! We have a very small library here; LT hasn't created it's own material like some other sites. Personally, I'm reading TTMIK Iyagis in private (My Passages). Eventually I hope to create content, but for the time being I'm using all my resources to try to make the site pay for itself.

That's alright. I just wondered if other people were sharing articles that they'd found online. I've started uploading some things I found on sites like Huffington Post etc. Since we're not using the articles to earn money that should be fine right?

Christi wrote:

I've started uploading some things I found on sites like Huffington Post etc. Since we're not using the articles to earn money that should be fine right?

To be honest, I don't know. If you aren't sure you have the rights to publish, please just keep it in "my passages" (you can toggle existing passages if this is the case) for now. Alternatively, you could ask the owners of those sites if they mind, or they may have something in their term that addresses it.

leosmith wrote:

Christi wrote:

I've started uploading some things I found on sites like Huffington Post etc. Since we're not using the articles to earn money that should be fine right?

To be honest, I don't know. If you aren't sure you have the rights to publish, please just keep it in "my passages" (you can toggle existing passages if this is the case) for now. Alternatively, you could ask the owners of those sites if they mind, or they may have something in their term that addresses it.

Alright, will take down the ones I'm unsure of. I do have few which explicitly mentioned being creative commons so will leave those public for other learners.

Christi wrote:

Alright, will take down the ones I'm unsure of. I do have few which explicitly mentioned being creative commons so will leave those public for other learners.

sounds good - thanks!