I used integrated Korean when I was starting out. It was like pulling teeth just to get through it. However I just went through the example dialogues and looked at the vocabulary. Sadly, it's one of the best textbooks out there. But textbooks are mostly useless.
I have been on LingQ for a little while, and I plan on making new content for beginners. A lot of the beginner content is still kinda crummy. But the system is AWESOME for reading interesting stuff.
Integrated Korean is a pretty damn good book series, but I may be biased since it is what my university uses, but nonetheless I am having good success with it. I supplement it too with stuff like talktomeinkorean and a grammer reference book from Yonsei and of course the much needed dictionary.
@rfwelsh We started Korean at the request of our learners who promised us lots of contents. We have been a little disapointed. If you have Korean content to offer, please let us know. Or you can import content that you like for your own personal use. We are about to add more languages and they will all be in the same position, dependent on member generated content. Only copyright free material can be shared at LingQ but members can import whatever they want for their own use.
DUde Steve! don't even BOTHER with books! Just do what I do and talk with natives! OR watch movies/ videos! One great tool is "Let's speak Korean" by stephen Revere and Lisa Kelley. You can find they're videos on Youtube!
@rfwelsh Yes, It means absolutely everybody in the entire world should and that any other way should be banned and punishable by torture. Geez I was SUGGESTING it. Not making it a universal decree.
@rfwelsh Okay, first of all, I didn't "Pick up a little Korean" I speak it. Second, If I was being condescending I would've degraded Steve's tactics by calling them "Foolish" or something, I can suggest whatever I want to whomever as long as I have some grounds to back myself up on in terms of experience. Whatever, I didn't start this argument you're the one who replied to my comment and is getting all annoying.
Now if you speak Japanese that's a different matter, we have almost exactly the same grammar order and very similar words. You'll learn Korean in no time.
Just my two three cents. Simply knowing grammar of a language will not make you a master, but judging from my experience grammar is essential if you're not a native speaker. I see this happening everyday. We Koreans are so obsessed and full of ambivalence with English not as a language but as an academic. That is bad, however I've not seen a single indigenous Korean who speaks English well enough not know the basics of English grammar. It's inevitable, every order of words here is the opposite.
Yes it's unfair you have to learn more than we have to. For example most people don't even care about what a suffixed morpheme marker or a postposition is. Yet without them you can't express anything, I mean anything in a Korean sentence. However knowing these will eventually lead you to wield the language even better than Koreans themselves, such as where to space between words (Korean spaces are goddamn hard compared to English, because of those suffixes) and probably more I don't realize.
You unlike myself were not born in Korea and therefore have to learn this language indirectly, and being the age you are, people (problably not excluding yourself) expect you to learn quickly and accurately. You want to express more things than a Korean baby might want to do. Grammar comes here in handy, as long as you don't get tangled in it and as long as you know there's more to the language.
If only pronunciation was the problem. I learned English the way I learned Korean, intuitively, communicating, and in youth. I hated learning English grammar because to me it was so unnecessary. Who cares if the two exclamations in English are "How + adj. + it is" or "What + a/an + adj. + noun + (it is)" But that was because I grew up with it. Besides, English grammar did help me eventually: subject-verb agreement, past participles, and so on. You can't just denounce them as unnecessary.
We need this vocabulary to explain the difference. Even g and ㄱare somewhat different, whereas many will think it's the same. Of course we can just say ㅈ=j and ㄹ=r/l, which is a much simpler explanation but is also a cruel approximation, and basically this will not help you with your pronunciation in the long run. Is that too much if we simply wanted be accurate?
You can't just back away from materials that have hard vocabulary or immense explanations. They're there to help you. For example the only affricative that exists in English is J. We don't have J in Korea, instead we have ㅈ. They're similar but different. There are two fluids in English, L and R. In Korea we have neither, only ㄹ, and this is more like the Spanish R, a flap.
Hi, I'm a native Korean and I admit I'm glad someone is trying to learn Korean for its own sake. I too am what you would call a linguist being able to speak Korean, English, and Japanese though not quite as well. I'm currently learning French and will move on to Chinese, German, Russian, and so on. I watched this video.... and I would have agreed with you many years ago. Yes, I don't blame you for wanting interesting materials, who wouldn't, but I can't help but think you are missing things.
I just wanted to say THANK YOU for the LingQ system. It is how i learn all my languages that i can. I know Korean was recently added. Have you ever considered adding Hindi or Arabic?
"Look at all these silly books, there are lot of explanations, grammar, exercises, wow, what a ...; and now finally to the wonderful new l...q." I mean, come on, this is so transparent, even the casual language learner will notice this cheap strategy; btw. , someone who uses the word "linguist" for his advertising should really know the elementary basics of phonology so that he does not have to stop reading when a book contains a simple word like plosive or liquid ...
@ForeverOxford2 Most language learners, myself included, have no interest in these terms. They are of no use. I am a linguist in the sense of the definition that you will find in any English dictionary. Some who speaks several languages.
lingosteve is correct, though his title is a tad misleading. Also, people interested in linguistics with a decent background in its relevant fields (like phonology) might find the information he so /abhorred/ as a helpful bit (and thus make the book a good buy to them). Just a matter of preference. True, he did dismiss the series rather biased-ly (if that's a word :D ), which was reckless on his part
@ForeverOxford2 a little kid doesn't know any of these terms when he/she is a child. but you can understand them. grammar is mostly irrelavant when you learn a language as long as you know the word order and basic things like that. who cares if you are perfect as long as you are easily understood.
@KingKwon83 For me, the shorter and the fewer the explanations the better. Those books are heavy to redundant explanations and exercises and short on interesting content IMO. To each his own.
@lingosteve I agree. We use this series in my university and it's way too spread out across too many books as a ploy to make you spend more money.. Naturally they repeat a lot throughout the books since they need to fill space. I honestly felt like I was wasting time reading these books and feel ripped off. I guess it has a good reputation soley because it's the only comprehensive Korean series out there in English.
@Sanyadr I enjoy learning about the languages and cultures and ways of thinking of different people. Japanese and Chinese makes Korean a little easier for me than , say, Russian.
What about Professor Arguelles's "A Historical, Literary, and Cultural Approach to the Korean Language", and his other works on Korean? Do you them? I would like to hear from people what they think about them.
Great video. Don't hesitate to make more videos on material you came across with. It's quite helpful.
@AvanRJ The title of the Professor's book would throw me off right away. I just like content, simple at first, and then content on things that I find interesting.
"language addicts" - I have the same problem when I learn a language or just in general with phrasebooks/books of interest.. Although my collection is not as big as yours it still is many, certainly lots of money spent.
@daysin1234 I forgot to add. I also have this problem with textbooks. I Find a lot of them to be boring and full of unhelpful explanations which is why language learning was more difficult before I found LingQ.
I've been studying Korean by myself now for about 3 years. I actually used the Integrated Korean series >< Never the less finding resources at first was really hard. So I'm glad to hear LingQ will provide more resources to learn Korean!
Steve, great video! Congrats on launching Korean on Lingq. I am sure you will make it a success. The material you have on Lingq is a great resource for language learners.
You are not alone in your compulsive buying of language books...My name is Richard and I am a langaholic! :)
@samuraialfredo The yonsei courses are very very very very good !!! I'm using them ! I got them on internet but the condition is to know chinese because it's explained in chinese.
I used integrated Korean when I was starting out. It was like pulling teeth just to get through it. However I just went through the example dialogues and looked at the vocabulary. Sadly, it's one of the best textbooks out there. But textbooks are mostly useless.
I have been on LingQ for a little while, and I plan on making new content for beginners. A lot of the beginner content is still kinda crummy. But the system is AWESOME for reading interesting stuff.
learnjapanesehacker 3 months ago
Integrated Korean is a pretty damn good book series, but I may be biased since it is what my university uses, but nonetheless I am having good success with it. I supplement it too with stuff like talktomeinkorean and a grammer reference book from Yonsei and of course the much needed dictionary.
hubomba 8 months ago
韩语里有很多汉语词，所以如果你学过中文的话，你学韩文会更简单点
Mreleezy 8 months ago
Comment removed
rfwelsh 8 months ago
@rfwelsh We started Korean at the request of our learners who promised us lots of contents. We have been a little disapointed. If you have Korean content to offer, please let us know. Or you can import content that you like for your own personal use. We are about to add more languages and they will all be in the same position, dependent on member generated content. Only copyright free material can be shared at LingQ but members can import whatever they want for their own use.
lingosteve 8 months ago
Comment removed
rfwelsh 8 months ago
日本語もかなりできますので、日本の出版社の「日本人のための Easy Korean」という本も勧めです。うちのお母さんは韓国人なので、僕はもうハングル読めるし、またハングルの読み方とかいりません。この本はハングルで教え、イメージはカラだから、もっと面白いと思います。
AshitaNoKanousei42 9 months ago
DUde Steve! don't even BOTHER with books! Just do what I do and talk with natives! OR watch movies/ videos! One great tool is "Let's speak Korean" by stephen Revere and Lisa Kelley. You can find they're videos on Youtube!
Paulbarbato 11 months ago
Comment removed
rfwelsh 8 months ago
@rfwelsh Yes, It means absolutely everybody in the entire world should and that any other way should be banned and punishable by torture. Geez I was SUGGESTING it. Not making it a universal decree.
Paulbarbato 8 months ago
Comment removed
rfwelsh 8 months ago
Comment removed
Paulbarbato 8 months ago
@rfwelsh Okay, first of all, I didn't "Pick up a little Korean" I speak it. Second, If I was being condescending I would've degraded Steve's tactics by calling them "Foolish" or something, I can suggest whatever I want to whomever as long as I have some grounds to back myself up on in terms of experience. Whatever, I didn't start this argument you're the one who replied to my comment and is getting all annoying.
Paulbarbato 8 months ago
Comment removed
rfwelsh 8 months ago
this video is so funny! 하하하하 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
LearnKoreanJay 1 year ago
lol it's times like these where I'm like.....why don't you just buy Rosetta Stone? With all that money spent on books lol
I'm learning korean with Rosetta Stone....it's great for getting a conversational foundation. Fluency comes with practice and friends.
A2Zondeck 1 year ago
Now if you speak Japanese that's a different matter, we have almost exactly the same grammar order and very similar words. You'll learn Korean in no time.
LinguistTroubadour 1 year ago
Just my two three cents. Simply knowing grammar of a language will not make you a master, but judging from my experience grammar is essential if you're not a native speaker. I see this happening everyday. We Koreans are so obsessed and full of ambivalence with English not as a language but as an academic. That is bad, however I've not seen a single indigenous Korean who speaks English well enough not know the basics of English grammar. It's inevitable, every order of words here is the opposite.
LinguistTroubadour 1 year ago
Yes it's unfair you have to learn more than we have to. For example most people don't even care about what a suffixed morpheme marker or a postposition is. Yet without them you can't express anything, I mean anything in a Korean sentence. However knowing these will eventually lead you to wield the language even better than Koreans themselves, such as where to space between words (Korean spaces are goddamn hard compared to English, because of those suffixes) and probably more I don't realize.
LinguistTroubadour 1 year ago
You unlike myself were not born in Korea and therefore have to learn this language indirectly, and being the age you are, people (problably not excluding yourself) expect you to learn quickly and accurately. You want to express more things than a Korean baby might want to do. Grammar comes here in handy, as long as you don't get tangled in it and as long as you know there's more to the language.
LinguistTroubadour 1 year ago
If only pronunciation was the problem. I learned English the way I learned Korean, intuitively, communicating, and in youth. I hated learning English grammar because to me it was so unnecessary. Who cares if the two exclamations in English are "How + adj. + it is" or "What + a/an + adj. + noun + (it is)" But that was because I grew up with it. Besides, English grammar did help me eventually: subject-verb agreement, past participles, and so on. You can't just denounce them as unnecessary.
LinguistTroubadour 1 year ago
We need this vocabulary to explain the difference. Even g and ㄱare somewhat different, whereas many will think it's the same. Of course we can just say ㅈ=j and ㄹ=r/l, which is a much simpler explanation but is also a cruel approximation, and basically this will not help you with your pronunciation in the long run. Is that too much if we simply wanted be accurate?
LinguistTroubadour 1 year ago
You can't just back away from materials that have hard vocabulary or immense explanations. They're there to help you. For example the only affricative that exists in English is J. We don't have J in Korea, instead we have ㅈ. They're similar but different. There are two fluids in English, L and R. In Korea we have neither, only ㄹ, and this is more like the Spanish R, a flap.
LinguistTroubadour 1 year ago
Hi, I'm a native Korean and I admit I'm glad someone is trying to learn Korean for its own sake. I too am what you would call a linguist being able to speak Korean, English, and Japanese though not quite as well. I'm currently learning French and will move on to Chinese, German, Russian, and so on. I watched this video.... and I would have agreed with you many years ago. Yes, I don't blame you for wanting interesting materials, who wouldn't, but I can't help but think you are missing things.
LinguistTroubadour 1 year ago
I just wanted to say THANK YOU for the LingQ system. It is how i learn all my languages that i can. I know Korean was recently added. Have you ever considered adding Hindi or Arabic?
freakinchauncyjones 1 year ago
"Look at all these silly books, there are lot of explanations, grammar, exercises, wow, what a ...; and now finally to the wonderful new l...q." I mean, come on, this is so transparent, even the casual language learner will notice this cheap strategy; btw. , someone who uses the word "linguist" for his advertising should really know the elementary basics of phonology so that he does not have to stop reading when a book contains a simple word like plosive or liquid ...
ForeverOxford2 1 year ago
@ForeverOxford2 Most language learners, myself included, have no interest in these terms. They are of no use. I am a linguist in the sense of the definition that you will find in any English dictionary. Some who speaks several languages.
lingosteve 1 year ago
@ForeverOxford2 Steve may not be a linguist like me and you, but he's one hell of a linguist. You know?
illasduck 1 year ago
lingosteve is correct, though his title is a tad misleading. Also, people interested in linguistics with a decent background in its relevant fields (like phonology) might find the information he so /abhorred/ as a helpful bit (and thus make the book a good buy to them). Just a matter of preference. True, he did dismiss the series rather biased-ly (if that's a word :D ), which was reckless on his part
Galinaros 1 year ago
@ForeverOxford2 a little kid doesn't know any of these terms when he/she is a child. but you can understand them. grammar is mostly irrelavant when you learn a language as long as you know the word order and basic things like that. who cares if you are perfect as long as you are easily understood.
freakinchauncyjones 1 year ago
If you do a Google search for Dunwoody Press, you can find some very interesting readers for Korean.
qzchris 1 year ago
Integrated Korean is a great series! I don't know why you said they were terrible. They have the best explanations.
KingKwon83 1 year ago
@KingKwon83 For me, the shorter and the fewer the explanations the better. Those books are heavy to redundant explanations and exercises and short on interesting content IMO. To each his own.
lingosteve 1 year ago
@lingosteve I agree. We use this series in my university and it's way too spread out across too many books as a ploy to make you spend more money.. Naturally they repeat a lot throughout the books since they need to fill space. I honestly felt like I was wasting time reading these books and feel ripped off. I guess it has a good reputation soley because it's the only comprehensive Korean series out there in English.
shoemanbundy 2 months ago
ты всегда собираешься продолжать на русском и португальском?
djc463 1 year ago
@djc463 конечно
lingosteve 1 year ago
Do you learn Korean as an end in itself? What's that for?
Sanyadr 1 year ago
@Sanyadr I enjoy learning about the languages and cultures and ways of thinking of different people. Japanese and Chinese makes Korean a little easier for me than , say, Russian.
lingosteve 1 year ago
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mtmeiry 1 year ago
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mtmeiry 1 year ago
What about Professor Arguelles's "A Historical, Literary, and Cultural Approach to the Korean Language", and his other works on Korean? Do you them? I would like to hear from people what they think about them.
Great video. Don't hesitate to make more videos on material you came across with. It's quite helpful.
AvanRJ 1 year ago
@AvanRJ The title of the Professor's book would throw me off right away. I just like content, simple at first, and then content on things that I find interesting.
lingosteve 1 year ago
Comment removed
FluentCzech 1 year ago
Hallo Steve,
I just joint LingQ to learn Korean. Can you recommend any easy reading books in Korean for me? Thank you very much.
toobjoon 1 year ago
@toobjoon Sorry I do not know of any. Let's see what we get at LingQ. I will be working to attract content to our library.
lingosteve 1 year ago
Hallo Steve,
I just joint LingQ to learn Korean. Can you recommend any easy reading books in Korean for me? Thank you very much.
toobjoon 1 year ago
Hello Steve, you should use "Yonsei courses " available on uz-translations it's explained in chinese so no problem for you !
loki2504 1 year ago
@loki2504 I had a quick look. Thanks. What I am looking for is just content, audio with transcripts.
lingosteve 1 year ago
"language addicts" - I have the same problem when I learn a language or just in general with phrasebooks/books of interest.. Although my collection is not as big as yours it still is many, certainly lots of money spent.
daysin1234 1 year ago
@daysin1234 I forgot to add. I also have this problem with textbooks. I Find a lot of them to be boring and full of unhelpful explanations which is why language learning was more difficult before I found LingQ.
daysin1234 1 year ago
Steve, the vuvuzela sounds awesome!
1Pelito1 1 year ago
I'm looking forward to providing content to LingQ from our site :)
ever4one 1 year ago
I loved the way you introduced that Integrated Korean book! It sounded like a dentistry book! Hilarious!
robgillon 1 year ago
안녕하세요! Good luck with learning Korean!
shazbots 1 year ago
I've been studying Korean by myself now for about 3 years. I actually used the Integrated Korean series >< Never the less finding resources at first was really hard. So I'm glad to hear LingQ will provide more resources to learn Korean!
mmhmmrachel91 1 year ago
Steve, great video! Congrats on launching Korean on Lingq. I am sure you will make it a success. The material you have on Lingq is a great resource for language learners.
You are not alone in your compulsive buying of language books...My name is Richard and I am a langaholic! :)
Good luck with your own studies of Korean too! :)
Torbyrne 1 year ago
@Torbyrne Richard, thanks for you kind comments. Your genuine fluency in so many languages is an inspiration.
lingosteve 1 year ago
Do you still work on Cantonese at all these days?
qzchris 1 year ago
@qzchris I only use it at Chinese restaurants and occasionally listen to it on the radio.
lingosteve 1 year ago
This is great, I have been attempting to teach myself korean for the last few weeks. A welcome addition to my study indeed!
Owner46 1 year ago
Steve, that's great news about Korean on LingQ. Will you still be actively studying Russian?
LearningFrenchNow 1 year ago
@LearningFrenchNow Yes and Portuguese.
lingosteve 1 year ago
So there's almost no good Korean resources then eh?
samuraialfredo 1 year ago
@samuraialfredo We will see what we get at LingQ.
lingosteve 1 year ago
@samuraialfredo The yonsei courses are very very very very good !!! I'm using them ! I got them on internet but the condition is to know chinese because it's explained in chinese.
loki2504 1 year ago
@loki2504 I am not so interested in explanations, just content, interesting content.
lingosteve 1 year ago
Great new video. Glad LingQ has introduced Korean.
smartwarlord 1 year ago