Korean Learning - Advice from @LindieBotes

Lindie Botes took time out of her day to talk about learning Korean. As I embark on a new language journey for 2021, I was keen to get the benefit of her experience.

In the interview she mentions her website with resources for learning Korean:

We also mentioned:

Go Billy Korean videos on YouTube:

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[o_felipe_reis]

Two giants of the language learning community

[polyronin]

This was such a lovely chat, thanks to both of you! 🙏👍 I'll be checking the links as well. I am just reacquainting myself with the Hangul and some basic sentence patterns, using the LingoDeer app/website, which has audio too. Little steps over a longer time period. 😌 I look forward to your Korean learning journey, Richard.

[JDH]

저도 언어 공부하는거 좋아해서 동영상 봤어요!! 정말 재미있어요 감사합니다^^

[dogdyedblack]

What Lindie says about the grammatical/syntactical similarity between Korean and Japanese is definitely worth keeping in mind. One thing that really helped me in learning Japanese, which I only began in earnest after my Korean was at a high level, was using a Korean rather than English textbook for it, as everything made much more immediate intuitive sense, and progress became above all a matter of vocabulary acquisition/substitution. I'd be curious what the experience of starting Korean from a Turkish textbook would be like, although that may be a just a bit too far; S. Asian languages do help a lot though as well, for the mapping of the SOV structures at a broad level. Also, with both Mandarin and Japanese under your belt, it becomes much quicker to triangulate in on what the expected Korean reflex of a Sino-Korean word will be, and you do pick up quickly on some regular patterns, although they're by no means as regular as, say, the sound changes between the Romance languages. For me, one of the things has always made me Korean harder than both is listening comprehension: there is the 어/오 distinction, but even now, I'll screw up at times with hearing ㅈ/ㅊ/ㅉ and ㅂ/ㅍ/ㅃ. I've decided ㅅ/ㅆ is a lost cause for me, but I think even many native speakers now struggle with it. And re politeness levels, maybe hardest of all, is simply figuring out the best term of address for people you meet (or even the best way to refer to your spouse when you speak to someone new), but that's definitely something native speakers are always dancing around as well--I've learned to be grateful for the pronoun "you" -- suitable for use with a dog, a colleague or the prime minister. Good luck to you with your Korean journey--it's a challenging one! As an academic/literary translator who is always striving to add more/improve my various languages, I'm a great admirer of yours.

[paulwalther]

I'm an upper beginner in Korean so I have some tips and I'll be subscribing and watching your updates. I know you're an experienced learner but in this modern age it's easy to overlook the power of just writing stuff down. I'm rediscovering it recently and feel obligated to remind everyone because my Korean notebook I'm writing in every day is helping everything stick so much better than I ever expected. Hanja is great but I wouldn't get a hanja vocabulary book. I got one and it didn't help me much but just noticing hanja in the dictionary when I look stuff up and knowing that words borrowed from Chinese are made up of Chinese characters just helps my brain tackle the word and parse it in my mind. I've recently started reading Webtoons or online comic books in Korean. I wish I started with this ages ago. I skipped it because I sort have this idea in my head that if you really want to learn a language you should read a book. And with these comic books, because it's an image file and not computer text, I have to type in and manually look up the word in the dictionary instead of clicking on it or copy pasting. But it's worth looking it up and this actually helps with your typing practice. Naver is basically the only good dictionary for learners. It's very extensive with lots of example sentences but most importantly it can deconjugate a lot of words and no other dictionary currently will do this. This makes Naver the one and only go to dictionary for all learners. You don't need to make an account on the Naver website. The website has some English but it's a pain to navigate until you get the hang of it but it's the only dictionary worth using so stick with it. So that's my tips. Write stuff down in a notebook, use Webtoons, and Naver dictionary.

[Adrianrams]

For you and your little one, “Jolly” is such a funny YouTube channel for learning Korean. it’s a family friendly channel and they provide Korean/English subtitles. It’s essentially an english man who knows pretty good amount of korean teaching his fellow Englishman Korean and its really humorous and interesting to watch!

[jameshuang]

Learning related languages is fun. I can relate to just about all things language learners talk about except for one thing. Several people talk about mixing up words between similar languages and I have never even once had this experience. Are people overexaggerating this? It makes me wonder if I am taking something for granted or if it's to do with some hidden flaw in their approach.

[lookdontsee]

Merci Richard et Lindie d'avoir partagé votre conversation ! Je veux envie étudier le coréen mais maintenant j'étudie le japonais et le finnois. C'est définitivement en haut de ma liste de langues que j'aimerais étudier. J'ai gardé les noms des matériaux pour le futur ! Est-ce que tu vas continuer à parler français avec ta fille ?

[Subhashreeify]

Very interesting discussion. I've just started learning Korean and I already find so much similarity between Tamil and Korean. The sentence structure is almost the same. At least to the extent of my very limited A0 level knowledge. And the sounds are so similar too. Good luck with your learning!

[paulwalther]

As a beginner I think you can totally add YO to anything and be polite and safe. And if you want to be casual just drop the YO. Most of your textbook material has YO attached to it. So much so that speaking without YO will feel grammatically wrong but oh well.

[muttlanguages]

Richard actually sounded a bit like the teacher on the Michel Thomas Japanese lessons for a second there. Took me back.

[prostalounia]

Hii !!!
I loved the content of video ...
I'm learning a couple of languages among them Korean, I've started learning fir two weeks, I've learn hangul, how to introduce my self, and now, I focus on grammar structures ...
Thanks for the video, I've got some troubles to choose the materials for learning and really that's help me a lot. ... Any hidden polyglots ...

[oldschoolwaverider]

I used to teach EFL.

Substitution drills are amazingly useful. For example 'I would like to eat fish, chips, bananas etcetera

Then if you learn connectives and conjunctions, but/however/although and you can make even more sentences and create deeper meaning.

EXAMPLE - 'I like chips BUT I don't like fish'. or I went to the shops HOWEVER it was closed when I arrived.

I spent 5 years working in Korea and could not find anyone willing and able to teach grammar, therefore I simply spoke like a baby most of the time, creating sentences with learnt words. However I could communicate with people for hours like this. Unfortunately the average person is hesitant to try and teach Korean to foreigners because not only do they themselves actually find it difficult to maintain the honorific terms in society, (or so my Korean colleagues would tell me), but obviously the average person is not a language teacher who could explain in English. In this regard it's no different from any other society, whereby people tend to suffer somewhat to maintain social etiquette. Then there is a culture of maintaining responsibility for the learner once it has been taken, I found amongst the circles I knew. Koreans are very responsible and friendly people.

It was great to hear how 'because', is structured into the end of the sentence.
Not only does Korean have many ways to say some of the English equivalents, but also, it is a high context language which means that one word may have many different meanings, which can take a long time to understand.

I used to enjoy reading and writing in Korean. I would text friends a lot and often, and became quite fast at reading, and replying in online chats. I found this incredibly satisfying and I would sometimes read it back out aloud some of the vocab to myself at a later time. The hardest part I found about learning Korean, was the cultural aspects and how reserved society is there. People tend to be fairly dignified and wouldn't like to lay witness anyone lose face by making mistakes, which is almost a requirement in language learning.

The best conversations I have had were with elderly people about the war, how things have changed, or one on one with someone walking and talking doing a task, ordering food etcetera. Also teaching young learners and giving explaining directions or translations in the classroom in Korean helps, because kids have zero filter until a certain age, and you are forced to learn Korean to discipline and guide kids through the education system when teaching alone as a Native English Teacher. Kids give you direct feedback on your Korean! My only regret about my time in Korea is not finding a job near to a place I could attend a Korean class in my free time. I did however attend a class in a local church amongst many other foreign workers, but there were many students, and the textbooks were full of completely outdated, and useless phrases. I learnt more from speaking with people on the street, and in daily life

I am looking forward to seeing how Richard progresses. 화이팅!!

[dgmario]

Bonjour Richard, ce qui suit n'est pas une critique, mais je me demande comment faîtes vous pour aller étudier dans des universités étrangères pour six mois, où trouvez vous l'argent pour vivre, moi je duis pauvre et je voudrais savoir, ceci me retirerait une épine du pied, vous avez le droit d'avoir les moyens financiers, mais nous, comment faisons nous. Merci vieu.

[ycwen]

Maybe...You can watch peppa pig in Korean with your daughter.

[jancovanderwesthuizen]

South Africans speaking with American accents are weird to me for some reason

[hamidparck]

Je passe un message pour la femme que je dois donner un bon message pas communiquer avec vous que je vois donner un moment pour vous et pour l'homme je va dormir vraiment Paul la communication de Ivan Kira parler de femme cornet d'amour Steven Austin home tu m'as dit si tu y crois ça que je vois ton lit en espèces le temps homme pour les loulous Lolo qui parlait à la femme homme qui divorce pour une nounou affou Klein qui va fait pour un pique-nique pour la bise et à sens confirmer et que je repars les alarmes un grand ma femme

[hamidparck]

Je passe un message pour lui dire que je vois parler au directeur avec vous que je vois dans les aimants je vois dormi et moi pour vous c'est la femme qui va rester avec vous que je vas dormir et moi Amazon avec justification que je vois parler ça pour écrire je veux parler de ça qui va toucher la femme que je veux voir ça que j'ai mal dormi parler à la femme mais à condition que je rentre témoin de la femme Cetim

[hamidparck]

Je passe un message pour Monsieur le Directeur que je veux parler avec vous quand tu vas parler de faut que tu pas parlé pour 6 crimes je veux pas parler de vous pour le respect de vous c'est par tellement pauvre tu es symbole le symbole parce que vous avez pas à toi je veux parler de sa faute Raiponce moi