Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Enigma]

I'm heading to Seoul next weekend and I plan to hit a couple of the big bookstores there. I've already got a couple of textbooks, and I'd like to find a decent book that will help me understand the Korean I hear on the street. Any suggestions?

Thanks

[some waygug-in]

I don't know if this is exactly what you are looking for, but here are some things that helped me.

A book called "English 3030" -vol 1. It's for Koreans to learn English, but you can use it in reverse. It has short easy sentences in the familiar forms, but you have to be pretty good at reading hangeul. It comes with tapes to help with pronunciation. There are some short conversations in the end lessons as well, so it's not just sentences.

Another book that's helpful is a phrase book called "Essential Korean - for everyday use. It has short phrases for most situation you will likely need.

Hope this helps.

[mnhnhyouh]

Another is a smaller green book called Making Out In Korean.

h

[out of context]

If your goal is to understand casual spoken Korean (I assume that's what you mean by on the street), the best resource is probably English conversation books written for Koreans with back translations, like the one some waygug-in mentioned. One good example I've used has been "Everyday English for Common Korean Expressions/자주 쓰는 우리말 영어 표현집", which has some pretty faithful examples of colloquial Korean language that corresponds to English without sounding translated.

Korean textbooks for foreigners focus almost entirely on formal language and give scarcely any preparation for more casual settings, where it can seem like an entirely different language is being used.

[jim_we]

Go to a bittorrent website and type in "learn Korean." You'll find lots of audio files (and others) you can load on a computer or MP3.

[some waygug-in]

You can also use youtube to help you, aside from the 3 series of Let's speak Korean, you can use music videos to practice listening and then
if you know the name of the group and song..... go to naver.com and search it there. You should be able to find the lyrics for a lot of things.

A lot of the turtles songs are available (if you like them) or whatever floats your boat.