Let's Learn Korean - A Different Approach to Korean

Total words: 982

So I received three new Korean books through the post to keep me occupied over these few weeks while I reside in 영국. Waiting for my new teaching visa to be processed I thought what better way to spend my time than to study Korean and so an internet book-spending spree ensued.

I received the two books I mentioned in my last post, Professor Alexander Arguelles’s ‘A Historical, Literary and Cultural Approach to the Korean Language’, Minho Choo’s ‘Using Korean’. I also got hold of Minhoo Choo and William O’Grady’s ‘Handbook of Korean Vocabulary: A Resource for Word Recognition and Comprehension’, which has had considerable discussion on this site already.

First of all I would thoroughly recommend all three of these books for anyone above the level of a beginner, especially those like myself who find themselves straddling the line between being a beginner and intermediate learner and feeling disillusioned because of an apparent lack of appropriate studying resources. Quite simply I can be sure the money I’ve spent on these books has been an excellent investment for my learning already. All three of them are quite unique and different to anything else I’ve come across on the market.

Today I’ll give you my initial reactions to ‘Approach to the Korean Language’. Polyglot Professor Alexander Arguelles dedicates his life to studying foreign languages, as explained on his website here. He spent 9 years living in Korea, during which time he studied languages, especially Korean, for as many as 8 hours a day. In his own words the book is ‘an attempt to fill the need for a scholarly method for learning to speak, to understand and-above all-to read Korean.

This is a book in the same vein as Richard Harris’s ‘Roadmap to Korean’ of a book written by a foreign expert in the language, written with the perspective of an English speaker in mind. However I prefer this book to Harris’s so far due to the depth it goes into. In particular the guide to pronunciation changes in 한글 is the best I’ve ever come across explaining them in the kind of depth that would benefit more advanced learners too with names that actually helps you make sense of them and therefore remember them. An example is that of ‘nasalisation (코소리 되기)’ for example where ㅂ before ㅁ or ㄴ becomes [ㅁ] and in a similar fashion when ㄷ before ㅁ or ㄴ becomes [ㄴ].

Another point I really like is that he considers the Korean language as a whole including the North Korean form, which most books would almost have you believe doesn’t exist by their exclusive focus on the South Korean form.

He is very confident of his method for learning Korean and makes no excuses about the very high difficulty of Korean recommending that ‘constant repetition is the key to mastery and progress’. He also writes brilliantly on the practice of romanisation of 한글, often in books written by Koreans, that it ‘is ostensibly offered as an aid to the foreigner learner, but it is so obviously an impediment to the learning of the Korean script that it almost seems designed to prevent outsiders from learning to read Korean’. I couldn’t agree more!

After this kind of introduction to the language, reading 한글 and grammar the books goes into 20 lessons each beginning with a text, which gets increasingly long as the book goes on, introducing things of Korean cultural value such as traditional songs, rhymes, stories (such as the ungrateful tiger) and information about things like Korean food. Included in each lesson are pronunciation notes for difficult words in each text, cultural notes, grammar notes and the learning of Chinese characters - 한자 (one of my favourite bits of the book). Everything so far seems very thorough.

While I am no novice to Korean and would say I easily know at least 1000 words, I still encountered words in every lesson that I didn’t know, probably mainly due to the fact it focuses on written Korean. The cultural notes are invaluable too, for example one which describes the meaning of the 도깨비, which are imaginary creatures in old Korean folktales which are analogous to those of brownies, elves, imps and poltergeists in European folklore.

There are listening tapes which can be bought separately which would be a must for beginners still unsure about the sounds of 한글 and lots of exercises to test you after each chapter. Personally I am fine without the tapes and choose not to do the exercises, instead looking up new words I find in the ‘Handbook of Korean Vocabulary’ to learn the 한자 associated with them which helps me to remember them and link them to words I already know. So far I’ve managed to do 3 lessons in about 2 hours with this method studying alone.

All in all, an excellent book with a fresh perspective on Korean that definitely fills a much needed gap in the market. Best for beginners who are comfortable with the basics in my opinion, though it could be worked through as a complete beginner with the accompanying audio tapes.

The price is a drawback however - £27 = just over 50 US Dollars if you buy it from The Book Depository though worldwide delivery is free including to Korea. At this price it’s definitely for those that are sure they are going to make a commitment to Korean by working through it.

Another possible drawback for keen learners is that while at the time of publishing (2000) the book promised future more advanced volumes, 8 years down the line they have not yet been forthcoming. This could be because the Professor has been busy writing advanced Korean newspaper readers up until this point however, so hopefully he’ll get round to it soon.

Has anyone else got hold of it or books with similar approaches to Korean?

Posted by 제임스 on Tuesday Sep 30, 2008 in Books | |

Enjoy this post? Share it with others.

The trackback URL for this entry is:

트랙백:

James,
I did a quick edit of your post and moved half of it to the extended entry so that the first page doesn’t scroll so much.

I also wrote a review of Roadmap to Korea 4 years ago (before this blog started), and will definitely look into the book by Arguelles.

------
호랑이 굴에들어가야 호랑이 새끼를 잡는다

Posted by 王音癡 on Wednesday Oct 1, 2008 at 07:04 AM
Thanks, I was wondering how you did that. I’ll do it like that from now on. The link to the link to your review of Roadmap to Korean doesn’t work for me (?) Could you post the link in full?

Posted by 제임스 on Wednesday Oct 1, 2008 at 08:20 AM
James,
I fixed the link - mistakes like that happen when you have a hungry 2 year old on your lap while your trying to type.

------
호랑이 굴에들어가야 호랑이 새끼를 잡는다

Posted by 王音癡 on Wednesday Oct 1, 2008 at 08:37 AM