Korean Learning Update
I believe the hardest thing about this Korean language learning, besides having to learn a completely new alphabet and set of sounds, is that the language is so concise and so indirect at the same time. Am I talking about AN apple or THE apple? …okay fine, an article is not necessary. I can indicate that a noun is plural, but i don’t have to. If I choose not to it’s both plural and singular at the same time. And sure, if I wanted to add a subject, or an adjective to make a sentence I could, but why? I just need a verb to not only make commands but also make statements and questions.
Elementary Korean, King and Yeon - I’m still stuck on Chapter 7 of this book. It’s been this way for the past month. I hit a major wall. I sort of crawled over and saw some of Chapter 8 but the vines of the previous 6 chapters dragged me back. I shouldn’t be surprised. The intro of this book warned that this could happen. The concepts of Chapter 7 or of any other chapter are not difficult to grasp. It’s just that this introduces verbs, like 60 of them, and then piles up all the vocab and grammar from the preceding six chapters. I’m determined to make it over.
One annoying morsel about this book: While this is the most helpful book in my language learning, its also the one that has the most errors….by far! The answer key, in particular, is horrendous. Sometimes it omits answers, but not on purpose as some books do. In sets of questions, instead of giving the answers, it just gives the questions again. Many times, at least in the last three chapters, the answers don’t match the questions. This certainly doesn’t give me confidence, especially since this book claims to have had many revisions.