Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ghost]

Hi folks,

When ghost spent 8 months in Taiwan in 2005-2006 it learned Mandarin at one of the local Universities, but quickly came to realize that learning Chinese Mandarin characters would take years of actual study to get to any decent/meaningful level. And ghost found the prospect of learning 3000 characters in isolation rather daunting.....it meant spending 2-3 hours per night just writing down Chinese characters ad infinitum.....or close......some people can and are able and willing to learn like that....not ghost!

For that reason, ghost decided to opt out of learning characters and just concentrated on Pinyin Chinese (romanized script) and conversation (using Pinyin as a reading guide, even though 'bopa mofa' is more common in Taiwan). In the class in which ghost was studying, it quickly acquired much more ability to speak in Mandarin in class and out, compared with the students who tenaciously opted for the 'slow track' memorization of characters method.

Everyone says Hangul is easy to master, but how true is that, and what have your experiences been learning Hangul, and how much has it helped you in your daily life in Korea? And is learning Hangul as easy as is claimed? And, last of all, has anyone actually just learned Korean conversation with romanized script and forgot about learning Hangul?

Thanks for any feedback you may have.

Ghost, certified ESL/FSL teacher, French Montreal school board

[jazblanc77]

Jazblanc77 learned hangul and was okay at it after a couple of days for the purposes of reading menus, traffic signs, and shop names. According to jazblanc77, it is very useful and will improve your quality of life, even if it just means being able to tell what TV show is playing at any given time, reading labels at the supermarket, or being able to make better landmarks while you are around town.

Jazblanc77 was just thinking that it might be considered annoying when people like jazblanc77 and ghost speak in the third person? Perhaps that is the point though.

[Hyeon Een]

Hangul can be learned in an afternoon. One of my friends learned it on his flight over to Korea. It is easy.

I will qualify that statement though because most people dont'. It will take you a considerable amount of time to learn to read it well rather than just have an ability to recognise the "symbols" and put them together. To read at a decent pace will take a few weeks of practice.

Learning Hangul is way way way easier than learning Chinese characters. It's an 'alphabet' rather than a system of symbols. Just learning to read is not a big obstacle. You will meet a few weird foreigners who've been here a few years who've never managed to learn how to read, but they are a minority. They're probably dumb ignorant fools who complain about Korea every 2 seconds as well, ignore them.

As with regards to learning spoken Korean.... it is difficult. I've never studied spoken Chinese but I've met more than a few people who've said it's easier than spoken Korean. Personally I could not imagine learning spoken Korean without the written language.. once you have the 'alphabet' down it makes so many things so much clearer.

Learning spoken Korean is MUCH easier if you understand the written language (approximately a billion times easier). It is hard to get the pronounciation right as a beginner (or an intermediate, or..) and having something written down will make things so much clearer very often. Even native speakers of Korean "write" in the air with their fingers to clarify a name.

In conclusion (1) LEARN HANGUL, it won't take long to get the basics down, 'speed reading' might take a while though (2) Then consider the spoken language. I firmly believe that if you can't read the written language you will have BIG problems with the spoken language. It REALLY REALLY helps the speaking if you can read first.

[ghost]

Learning to speak has always come easier to ghost compared with learning to read....and this is the way children learn....yes...we are not children, but we can learn a lot from them (their uninhibited way of learning to speak including asking silly "questions" and repeating the same things ad nauseum).

Your point is well taken....that learning Hangul will help in learning to speak.

One is interested in knowing why you feel Korean is a more difficult language to master compared with Chinese/Mandarin, which ghost has learned to a passable conversational level (in Taiwan), using just Pinyin (romanized characters) and conversation?

Ghost, certified ESL/FSL teacher, French Montreal school board

[Hyeon Een]

[ghost]

[Hyeon Een]

[gang ah jee]

[ghost]

[gang ah jee]

[NAVFC]

[SirFink]

Hangeul is easy. I figured out about half of it in my first few days here. A day of actual study and you'll have it down. It's helpful in that there's so much Konglish here. Have a headache? Look for that box of "Ah-Suh-Pee-Leen."

[SPINOZA]

His Majesty SPIN, Commander of man and beast, advocates the following:

1. Buy these books: 'Survival Korean' and 'Korean Made Easy. The latter is good for phrases, the former is good for verb conjugations. Both teach Hanguel.

2. Type "Korean verbs" into a search engine. You'll quickly learn lots of verbs and will be able to conjugate them in a variety of ways.

3. Instead of asking about Hanguel, give it a try yourself. It ought to be obvious that it's extremely useful if Ghost sees himself as having something of a long-term future here. The better you are at Korean, the better you are as a person. If you suck at Korean, YOU suck, so better get studying!

4. Use dictionaries such as this: http://endic.naver.com/ and type stuff in that interests you and try to memorize it.

5. Definitely, definitely learn Hanguel. Romanization of Korean sucks more than everything else that sucks combined multiplied by 50. For example, the letter ㅓ is romanized as "eo" or "u" despite sounding nothing whatsoever like either.

6. Koreans suck at English. A recent study found that they are genetically incapable of seeing any distinction between 'fun' and 'funny', 'bored' and 'boring' and also cannot produce sounds as simple as 'th', 'f', 'z', 'r'....despite years of study in many cases! My point is....if you want Korean friends, girlfriends and so forth, some ability in Korean is essential.

[NAVFC]

[quote="SPINOZA"]His Majesty SPIN, Commander of man and beast, advocates the following:

1. Buy these books: 'Survival Korean' and 'Korean Made Easy. The latter is good for phrases, the former is good for verb conjugations. Both teach Hanguel.

2. Type "Korean verbs" into a search engine. You'll quickly learn lots of verbs and will be able to conjugate them in a variety of ways.

3. Instead of asking about Hanguel, give it a try yourself. It ought to be obvious that it's extremely useful if Ghost sees himself as having something of a long-term future here. The better you are at Korean, the better you are as a person. If you suck at Korean, YOU suck, so better get studying!

4. Use dictionaries such as this: http://endic.naver.com/ and type stuff in that interests you and try to memorize it.

5. Definitely, definitely learn Hanguel. Romanization of Korean sucks more than everything else that sucks combined multiplied by 50. For example, the letter ㅓ is romanized as "eo" or "u" despite sounding nothing whatsoever like either.

6. Koreans suck at English. A recent study found that they are genetically incapable of seeing any distinction between 'fun' and 'funny', 'bored' and 'boring' and also cannot produce sounds as simple as 'th', 'f', 'z', 'r'....despite years of study in many cases! My point is....if you want Korean friends, girlfriends and so forth, some ability in Korean is essential.[/quotI am throwing out the BS flag on #6. Ive known quite a few who can pronounce those syllables fairly accurately.

[jinju]

can you memorize 24 or so characters?