Korean Job Discussion Forums

[nourozi]

What is the best way to learn korean?

Im more interested in learning important phrases.

Does anyone know any good websites or books?

Thanks in advance.

[Zantetsuken]

Find a reasonably intelligent Korean thats physically smaller than you. Follow him into a dark secluded place and beat him half to death. Now, drag his body to your house and get him prepped. You are going to need a straw (pick one up at GS-25 or Family Mart) and a heavy duty electric drill. Open up the 우리나라사람's head with the drill and some elbow grease. Once the brain is exposed, use the straw to suck his brain juice (Like in Starship Troopers when that Smartbug sucks the brains out of that guy). Should have the fluency of a native almost immediately.

Or....you can do what some other waygooks do and blow all your money on those SNU, Yonsei, Sogang etc. Korean language programs.

[chest rockwell]

www.koreanclass101.com

Excellent online resource with downloadable resources and podcasts. Highly recommended.

[phoneboothface]

korean gf.

오 오빠.. 아퍼

[oni]

I fing the Let's Speak Korean show on Arirang teaches 3 useful phrases everytime!
you can look on their website for the weeks phrases

http://www.arirang.co.kr/Tv2/LSK_WhatsOn.asp?PROG_CODE=TVCR0430&sys_lang=Eng

[thomas pars]

study everyday.

[TpaK]

For those interested, my buddy is running a Korean wiki. http://www.koreanwikiproject.com/wiki/

Also the best way is to learn new phrases and practice them right away with your friends, then it sticks. Best of luck.

[Drew345]

I found the Pimsleur language series to be great for listening to while on bus or subway.
I tried koreanclass101 but I found it to be way to much inane teenager chit chat IN ENGLISH while the Korean seemed to be brushed right over. I had to skip over long sections of English chit chat and then replay the few Korean sentences over and over to try and catch it.
Anyway, Pimsleur was more to my liking. Just hit play and they really pronounce the Korean words clearly and they repeat the Korean phrases enough times that you don't have to keep hitting replay on the player.

[Chambertin]

http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/CU/CU_EN_8_6_1_1_1.jsp

One warning is that the consonants play the name not the sound. Dumb I know.
Tourism websites are always a great and free way to start.

I also bought a book (9USD): Barrons Korean At A Glance
Everyone I talked to about that book said it was a life saver. There are so many useful phrases for so many situations.

Start by learning the writing system and the basics, then you can put it to practice when you read the translated phrases.
Dont pay for a class or learning system until you run out of free resources. Money cant make you learn.

I followed the same process with Japanese and after 3 years I am close to fluent.

[Big B]

As another supplemental idea, you can use the learn English inserts in the English dailies. It'll give you an article or some phrases in Korean and English. The downside is that my Korean for giving people advice for their various family problems that I learned in the Dear Abby columns is better than the rest.

[BabaNaja]

I saw someone posting that they were selling Rosetta Stone. I haven't tried it, but I've heard that it's one of the best programs out there if you're willing to buy something.

[blackjack]

This is good for picking up the sounds Pimsleur - Korean

http://www.mininova.org/tor/572879

[skeeterses]

For starting out on Korean, I'd recommend the green Survival Korean book by Stephen Revere. Then if you want to try getting more fluent, you could then get some Korean dictionaries and work your way through the Ganada grammar books, which have listening CDs included.

I'd stay away from the Rosetta Stone since that's overpriced(around $400 to $500) and they have lawyers monitoring Amazon and Ebay to make sure nobody can resell the CDs. I've heard that its mostly a computerized flashcard program that's been translated for different languages. There are cheaper programs on the market that do the same thing for Korean. If you want to perfect your pronunciation, you'll have to practice speaking with real Koreans and ask them to help you out on that.

[Johnnysak]

I would recommend the Sogang University series textbooks and their online class. I found the website very useful and you can even submit your work for review.

[Silk]

Ver.3 of Korean Rosetta stone is out, it's much better than ver. 2 I worked through Stephen Revere's book as well, now I'm doing a combination of Rosetta stone, Korean made easy workbook, and practicing useful phrases. I found Rosetta to be great for review and for speaking practice,listening, pronouncation practice, which study books lack.

As far as learning phrases from other people, I've found that wanting to know how to say a certain thing, and then learning it makes it much easier to remember, than just trying to learn any old survival phrase.

On a completely unrelated note, utorrent and sites like mininova are your friend.