The Korean language is a wonderful language to learn and the fact that you are here means you are slightly interested in learning it or maybe you’re a linguist who just loves learning about the ways people learn languages! Either way, I’m glad you are here and are showing an interest in the Korean language. In no way, shape, or form am I certified to teach Korean. I took a semester of Korean while I studied in South Korea for four months. I taught myself basic phrases and words before formally taking classes and have been in love with the language for years. These tips are coming from someone who appreciates the language and wants to share some tips to help anyone else interested in the Korean language.
With the rise of Korean entertainment across the world in recent years, I have noticed multiple guides available for teaching yourself hangul. I think finding an actual workbook that is meant for learning Korean is best, along with audio on how to pronounce each character, but online guides are amazing as well. I do not think there is one specific way to start learning it. You can choose to start on the vowels and then consonants, or learn them all together, or choose specific sounds first – it is all up to you.
Before I took a formal class, I taught myself hangul, although I was nowhere near comfortable with it. It helped while I was taking the class, but something from class that was even more helpful (besides having a teacher) was my teacher would put words on the screen that would incorporate new characters we were learning. So we would learn new words, while also learning new characters.
Learning the proper strokes of Hangul will help your handwritten Korean be easy to read and comprehend and also make it faster for you to write. It is done starting from the top left corner moving to the right, then bottom left and moving to the right. You can technically do shortcuts when writing them because it seems faster or more natural to you, but to me it is done in a specific order for a reason. The most characters that go into one box are four, and fitting them into one space is difficult, but I think if you follow stroke order it makes it easier to make the character smaller because it flows and they don’t look so jumbled. There are self teaching guides that do this, so I suggest looking at the guides that teach you stroke order as you learn instead of you looking at each character and deciding on your own which lines go first. Also, if you ever take classes, your teacher or professor can tell stroke order and may dock points off your quiz, test, or exam score so keep that in mind as you learn Korean!
This is a given for anything you are trying to learn. Practical ways to do it (instead of just saying do it and not giving ways to do it like some tips and tricks guides out there) start by speaking aloud whenever you can. Whether it be when you’re cleaning and you know what a mop is called in Korean, do that! Or if it’s about your family, talk about them in Korean when you can. Obviously don’t do that to people who don’t understand Korean, but if you can do it when you’re alone and thinking about them, do it in Korean. Any words or phrases you know I suggest speaking them when you can. It helps with you getting comfortable speaking the language and your brain really gets comfortable with it. Recording yourself speak. Compare your accent and tone with fluent speakers on youtube and try to get it as close to them as possible. You’ll have an accent, but who knows, maybe with enough practice you’ll be fine! Write as much as you can! Doo it daily, whether it just be your name or the day of the week, or whatever you’re comfortable with. Write short things each day to get used to the characters and feeling of writing Korean.
Learn everyday phrases because those are a great foundation before you learn verbs, honorifics, and particles. After that though, move on to a subject you care about and would love to talk about in Korean. For example, if you love cooking, but don’t care much for sports, learn phrases said while cooking, eating, and ordering food instead of phrases that are said during sporting events, in games, and positions of each sport. Your interest in the subject will motivate you to study and learn the subject, and you’ll have fun learning Korean. You’ll look forward to expanding your vocabulary and you will learn faster. Along the way you may learn about particles and sentence structure, but that will mostly be done in formal teaching setting, which I hope you take. Until then though, this is something I highly encourage you to do.
Language apps are great resources, don’t get me wrong. I used them to memorize and familiarize myself with Hangul, but they didn’t teach me stroke order and didn’t give me a good way to memorize them. No tips or tricks were included in the apps I used, and I don’t think any apps actually include tips and tricks like that. Like I said earlier, when I took my first beginners formal Korean language class, my professor taught us words to memorize the characters, but emphasized getting familiar with the sounds each character made instead of getting us to memorize the word. Language apps are great because of the convenience, but they don’t accommodate all the different learning styles. I suggest using books, audio and videos as you teach yourself in the beginning.
I know my previous tip said don’t depend on apps, and I stand bu that, but if you’ve gotten to the point where you want to practice daily conversation and do not have anyone to practice Korean with, language exchange apps are perfect. You can teach someone your native language, and someone who speaks Korean fluently can teach you Korean. Or if you live in an area that is populated by many Koreans, and you know of a hagwon or know someone who is willing to do a language exchange, take up the opportunity. Or if you have a friend who says they have been wanting to learn Korean, this is your chance to ask them to learn with you, and the two of you can practice basic daily conversations together.
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