Korean?

[KumaruRockz]

Does anyone here speak Korean? I want to learn but it's so complicated!

[Peanut]

There are a few (myself not included) who do. MSP I know knows some Korean and I'm pretty sure Bobtheduck can speak some Korean since he's living there currently...

[goldenspines]

Moved to Tutorials.

The only Korean I know is from my martial arts class. XD; I can understand how it would be hard to learn though. The pronounciation is very strange.

[Bobtheduck]

I'm trying to learn some Korean. The pronunciation is, indeed, rather difficult. Apparently, the structure is close to Japanese, but that's it... There is almost no vocabulary in common, and a LOT of false positives...

WHile every language has mumbling to some extent, Koreans mumble more, even, than Americans. THey don't say "Kamsa Hamnida" they say "Kamsamnida" for instance... Nearly everything is mumbled, making the hearing part a lot more difficult that the much more consistent nature of Japanese.

I've been listening to pimselur Korean, but half the time, the male Korean Teacher that's close to my age doesn't even know what I"m trying to say, and he's always saying I should be saying something else. This happened with Japanese, too, but in that case it was just "That's too formal" THis is "What the crap are you even saying?"

When I use the words and phrases he tells me to, he says my pronunciation is very good (could just be that false politeness of course, same as in Japan... I wonder if I may have been a bit offensive because I don't have that as an American) so I'm kind of wondering if there would be a benefit to getting through Pimsleur. I may just have Taylor making me Anki cards when I finish learning Hangul, which I'm close to doing. I still get some of the vowells mixed up... When most of them are the same symbols rotated, it's very difficult for dyslexics (I'm mildly dyslexic)... Also, when the shape of a couple of the consonants changes depending on where it is in the square, that makes it a bit confusing too.

I'm going to start the Pimsleur lessons over again, and go through all of them. I should have Hangul down in the next week, then I'll get Taylor to make me some cards in Hangul and start learning that way.

I'm also still doing the Japanese cards... Yeah. As long as I do both sets, I'm able to keep it seperate 99% of the time. I'm a bit surprised, actually.

[KumaruRockz]

Good to know I'm not alone in my frustruations, Bobtheduck lol.\

I just found out that unlike Chinese and Japanese (to some extent) Korean has an easy-to-learn alphabet! And I'm starting to get a little bit of it already lol. First time I've ever taken notes at home. lol.

[Bobtheduck]

So I've got the basics of Hangul down, but I'm having a really big problem:

Hangul makes no visual differentiation between voiced and devoiced consonants... And it's not like I can choose whichever one I want, because Koreans won't understand me when I do it wrong... I've also noticed that the way the consonants become voiced is really subconscious in Korean, because they can't explain it or break it down. It's one of the things that gets in the way of learning other Languages (It's kind of funny when some of them speak Japanese "Gonnichiwa")

I would really like to get this figured out, because I'd like to start making and studying anki cards in Hangul, but if I can't get this very important thing straightened out, I'll be learning the wrong words.