Wednesday 27 April 2011

The Day I Get My First Korean Dictionary

I love Naver but I'd also like to have a dictionary which I could actually turn its pages. I keep searching and searching and..



Oh! Is that what I think it is? Oh!




But what is that yellowish creature? So small..




Does it come with the dictionary? 
Can I have it too?
It's cute~



"Stop right there!"
Eh?
"What's the password?"
Password? What pass.. Ha! I think I know!


"Whisper it to me",
it said while removing its helmet.
So I told, I mean, I whispered it to him.


It seems that my password works
because the little yellow creature puts its helmet back on
and start opening the pages of the dictionary.


Now it's calling me to see for myself! Excited!
I get a feeling that we can be a good friend
and start asking it things.


"What's your name?", I said.
"Regoshin", it said.

"Hello, Regoshin, how are you today?"
*tap*
Regoshin points his sword to a word in the dictionary.
"먹고 싶어요.  Regoshin wants to eat."

Ah, me too, Regoshin, me too..
[craving for a midnight snack... ㅠㅠ]



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The dictionary is so small. I was hoping more like the Oxford Learner's Pocket Dictionary in term of size (and consequently number of words) but I decide to just be happy with it. Oh! The English-Korean has sample sentences in a quite number of entries. ^^
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Saturday 23 April 2011

Review: Integrated Korean: Beginning 1, 2nd Edition

[CROSS-POSTING]

Integrated Korean: Beginning 1, 2nd Edition (Klear Textbooks in Korean Language)Integrated Korean: Beginning 1, 2nd Edition by Young-Mee Cho

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my first Korean textbook and I love it! It has 8 units and each unit has 2 conversations, a narration, usage example of the lessons learned in the unit, and a piece on Korean culture snipplet. The audio files are provided in KLEAR website.

The Grammar Points and Vocabulary

I have no complain against the grammar taught in this book. At my beginner level, I'd just welcome any points taught and be happy to be able to create more simple sentences throughout the lessons. Since it's a college textbook, the vocabulary revolves around campus life and it's perfectly ok with me.

I love it that they only use romanization at some parts in the introduction. I'm not a big fan of romanization. It surely helps at certain point, like when the first time learning 한글, or when we communicate with those who are not learning Korean (btw, 한글 is Hangul, the Korean writing system), or when the tools are not capable for writing in 한글.

For Korean learning textbooks and dictionary, I prefer romanization served at minimum or almost zero rate. That's why I prefer Collin's gem dictionary instead of Berlitz. Thanks to Febry, the dictionary is on the way, yay!

The Exercises

The book does not have the answer key and I read that even the workbook of this KLEAR series don't have the answer key provided. The exercises tend to be short in number and some are only applicable in a classroom or with partners (not quite suitable for a self learner like me). Despite all that, I'm grateful to have those exercises.

Other Parts

I love the introduction, the objectives list, and the closing part of the book. My favorite part of the introduction is the pronunciation rules. It's the part where I always keep running to whenever I hear different from the sound I am expecting to catch on my ears. I mark this part with post-it.

The objectives list provide us the summary of each unit, which grammar points at which part, what culture snipplet and what kind of usage. Needless to say, it's one helpful list for reference. As the new grammar rules come, I use this list a lot.

The last few pages in this book consist of appendices, grammar index, and the glossary. More references which if I knew about it sooner, it would make my studying time more efficient. I even left out the glossary until I reached Unit 8, the last unit. Before that, I kept turning the previous pages to find what certain word meant and it happened like thousand times! *sigh*

The glossary is Korean-English, and vice versa. The Korean-English one can be useful to learn the 한글 alphabet order. I'm so gonna use this one for my next books of this series! (Hope the books will arrive safely next week, cross my fingers xD)

이 책을 정말 좋아해요. 여러분, 한국어 재미있지요? ^^





View all my reviews

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Friday 22 April 2011

Let's Sing Along!

Alodia's response to my comment made me searching for the right 노래방 (karaoke) style music video for me to improve my reading speed.

I wasn't into Korean music at first. I tried listening to some of them and I didn't like it right away. After some time, I found 2 AM and I like their ballad songs. Then from watching Family Outing, I knew about Last Concert (I fell in love with this song instantly) and I thought I'd like 박진영 (Park Jin Young) but it turned out to be false alarm, I like listening to his songs but not for my everyday music.


When I was browsing ever4one's Youtube channel (ever4one is 선현우, Hyunwoo Sun, one of TTMIK's teacher), I found the international cover of Beautiful Restriction. At that time, I didn't know that it's originally by SNSD and until now, I haven't listened to the SNSD's version. 









The video has the lyric in 한글, followed by the romanized one below it and the English translation at the right bottom. The fact that I haven't got the meaning of the song makes it easier for me to forget the lyric. It's a good thing  for now because I will always try to read the lyric. I just have to keep my eyes from peeking the romanization. The urge is so strong since I like this song and really want to sing along!




Around 2 weeks ago, I requested Last Concert to be included in CoreanBigSis' Monday Song and she did it last Monday, yay! You might want to check CoreanBigSis website and twitter. She's a very patient and kind Korean teacher. ^ ^

The video doesn't have romanized lyric (and translation) so I won't get tempted. But it uses a pretty font that makes it harder to read. With Beautiful Restriction, I just need to learn to read it faster but for this video, I need to learn recognizing the characters and then reading it! LOL

I'll stick with this video though. Some of Korean variety shows use various kind of fonts and the video is a good practice to read those wonderful fonts. :D

Ah~~ I long for the day that I can read 한글 smoothly..


여러분, 어느 노래방 뮤직 비디오 좋아해요?

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Thursday 7 April 2011

Connect The Corresponding Words

      ㅇ                                                        ㅇ 만나요
친구  ㅇ                                                        ㅇ 해요
선물  ㅇ                                                        ㅇ 들어요
수업  ㅇ                                                        ㅇ 사요

I was learning Unit 5 of my textbook (Integrated Korean Beginning 1) and ran into the exercise above. Here's what I came up with, starting from the first pair.

[one/work] 일  -  만나요 [meet]
시에 한국어 반 친구 만나요
I meet Korean classmate at 1 (o'clock).

The second pair:

[friend] 친구  -  해요 [do]
친구고 같이 한국어 연습해요
I practice Korean with my friend.

And then..

[gift] 선물  -  들어요 [listen/take (a class/a subject)]

응~~ .. Uhm....

I couldn't think any of simple sentences, using the Korean I have learned, to connect the words. Oh well, I thought, it just proves I'm not that creative.

And suddenly it came to me that.. that I misunderstood the instruction. Connect the corresponding words. Who says something about making up sentences? Who? Who?

-_-

I think I'm just too creative that I improvise the instruction. LOL.

Few seconds later:


[one/work] 일 ㅇ                                    ㅇ 만나요 [meet]
[friend] 친구                                      ㅇ 해요 [do]
[gift] 선물      ㅇ                                    ㅇ 들어요 [listen/take (a class/a subject)]
[class] 수업   ㅇ                                    ㅇ 사요 [buy]


Silly me!

여러분도, 오늘 재미 있어요? ^ ^

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