Best way to Read Korean on an eReader

I think reading is effective for learning your target language only if you find a way to make it more comprehensible. You still get benefit from reading a lot while looking up nothing but the benefit is so minuscule compared to reading something on the kindle where you can look up stuff instantaneously with very little effort due to its amazing pop-up dictionary ( You can even generate anki cards from the dictionary look ups via anki plugins). I have been looking into how to read a korean ebook (without drm) with dictionary look-up on an ereader this past week because I really hate how I can’t look up anything on the kindle. Your only option for learning Korean on the kindle is to highlight all the sentences you want to look up later as you read. I thought if insert hanja into the text via hanjaro that that would be enough to make reading in Korean on the kindle more conducive to learning but it’s not enough. Usually I more often don’t know korean-korean words as opposed to sino-words when I read Korean since I use hanjaro (and most or half the time it’s correct or at least helpful). What I especially love about the kindle is that I have no desire to add words to anki when I read stuff on it. The reason is that my interest in the word in question is at its peak the moment read it in the compelling book while possessing the knowledge of the full context. So when I look up the word on the kindle my curiosity is usually completely satisfied and I understand the sentence much better than before I looked it up ( don’t know about you but I usually suck at guessing/inferencing from the meaning of an unknown word based on text) and I could care less whether or not I’ll remember the meaning of the word or the word itself 30 minutes from that moment (Also I never understood the appeal of language notebooks where you copy the dictionary/example sentence etc in a notebook when you look-up words while reading… sounds time-consuming and ineffective to me). I sometimes highlight sentences and stuff if there are stuff I want to look up that I can’t look up or find in the kindle dictionary.

So it is possible to make a kindle dictionary for Korean-English. I came across one, I made 2 of them myself (from lingoes dictionary) but it seems like the kindle’s firmware doesn’t allow it to work somehow?? The dictionaries show up on the kindle but then when I look up a korean word it keeps pointing me to this same dictionary entry (I think it was margarita lol. I was livid since I was so close) regardless of what word I press on. They just don’t work on the kindle but there’s nothing wrong with the dictionary files themselves. I know they’re formatted perfectly exactly the way kindle wants it.

<— The brown thing at the bottom is a woodenbookholder I got off amazon. I highly recommend GETTING one if you read books.

I got the boyue likebook 7.8 inch ANDROID ereader in 2018 or 2017 (can’t remember) for the purpose of reading manga since the price seemed reasonable (to search for other android ereaders check out the good ereader blog or ebook reader blog). It was around $185 and I figured if I read 37 manga I would’ve gotten my money’s worth. I definitely did since JIN is 20 volumes, bokutachi ga yarimasita is 9 volumes and liar game is 19 volumes and I read other stuff too. It’s ironic because right now I’m not reading any manga on it. I will go back to manga once I finish reading this PDF of this korean novel (I think it’s a light novel if such a genre exists in Korean writing).

During my kindle investigation I realized that android ereaders might be the ONLY SOLUTION. I found this forum post about using goldendict as a pop-up dictionary on the Moon+ Reader app. So I got the apps and loaded all the stardict dictionaries (they’re available for free! Just google) for Korean onto it and it works! I loaded Naver Korean-japanese, korean-korean,  quick korean-english, edocu korean-english from lingoes, and vicom korean-english (I think the naver dictionaries are from 2009 because they match the lingoes dictionaries that were uploaded in 2009. ). Coincidentally the max number of dictionaries for the free version of goldendict is 5 dictionaries. The downsides are the lag and that the pop-up dictionary only does exact match. I mention lag because it’s slower than a tablet or a smartphone since it’s an ereader but it’s not ridiculously laggy and slow. Also if you were to read it on the smartphone/tablet you can configure it so the word is looked up on naver so you don’t have to do any deconjugating. As for the exact match, I sometimes have to erase letters just so the goldendict dictionary suggests “are you looking for this word?” in the dictionary window and then I click on the word in question. Other times I partially select the word before hitting dictionary look-up so that goldendict can suggest the word once the dictionary window opens. For example for 가다듬기  I selected 가다듬 then clicked dic to bring the dictionary up, then tapped on the search bar, at that point goldendict gives me suggestions such as 가다듬다 which I click on. For stuff like 서려서, I would either highlight the whole sentence to look up later or type 서리다 in the dictionary window ( only problem is I risk the chance of wasting my time if the word is in none of the dictionaries anyway. For some reason goldendict adds a space at the end of the word but it doesn’t affect the search results so I don’t bother erasing it and just type whatever I need to type to bring up the results ) . Also if the dictionary entry defines the word as a stronger/weaker version of x I can long press on x, copy it, then paste it in the search bar. Combining hanjaro with this pop-up dictionary makes reading in Korean so much more fun (since obviously it’s more fun when you understand what you’re reading), less burdensome, less exhausting, conducive to learning, and I feel no pressure to make up anki cards for words I look up. I like reading korean with hanja inserted as I explained in my love letter to hanjaro! Moonreader has other dictionary options like google translate and some other web translations but I never use them. I am kinda frugal so that part of me likes how this method does not require Wi-fi. One of the advantages of an ereader versus the smartphone/tablet IS the battery life… Though this isn’t as convenient and ideal as clicking on a word to have it looked up on naver dictionary automatically unconjugated, it’s still incredibly helpful and convenient for me at my current korean level since I’m not a beginner. I can imagine that this ereader reading method may not have much appeal to someone who has to look up 10-20 words a page. Though I would recommend such a person to do something else and go back to novels later since it sounds like the book is too hard or their Korean would be better improved through other activities.

Actually now that I think about it, even if the dictionary worked in kindle it’s inferior to goldendict since it searches via exact matches (most of the korean dictionaries don’t have the inflections included) and it doesn’t give you the option to search the dictionary like with the 가다듬다 example I mentioned. As far as I know that only one of the 5 dictionaries has inflections (all the manys ways you conjugate stuff ie 가다듬다, 가다듬기. Korean grammar is super convoluted so the inflection list would be very long if you were to make a kindle dictionary that functions well. ) but even then it has less entries than naver korean-japanese dictionaries so I’m not sure how helpful it’d be. After all the whole point of reading novels is so you can come across words you don’t necessarily hear/read everyday.

Because goldendict doesn’t dictionary save look-ups, the only way to save sentences to make anki cards is to highlight or add notes (copy/paste the dictionary entry. Moon reader gives me the option of copying the text or looking up the word in the dictionary when I tap once which works great for japanese since there’s no space between the words. I can also highlight text in the dictionary to copy if I long press but dragging is annoying so I stick to the normal tap) on the ereader app. The moon+ reader app allows multiple highlight options such as squiggly line, straight line, different colors. I stuck with the squiggly line since I like the way it looks. To highlight I long press on a word, extend the highlight as far as I need it to be extended, then click on the highlight option among the options of HIGHLIGHT, NOTE, and DICTIONARY. I’ve accidentally looked up whole sentences in the dictionary by mistake due to mis-press. Moon+ reader allows export of notes and highlights one book at a time so you can’t export your highlight/notes for all the books you read at once on the ereader. That’s not a deal breaker for me since it makes sense for me to e-mail the highlights/notes after finishing a book rather than months after finishing the book. To send it, go into the book, double press in the center to bring up the notes/bookmarks options, go in to the bookmarks section, then press SHARE. Under share it brings up many options but I stuck with the one that involved emailing it via gmail.

It was formatted like this in the e-mail. It shows the title of the book, author, number of highlights, number of notes, the highlights in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. Each highlight is preceded by a square which I appreciate. Considering that the book is 300 pages long, I think 199 highlights + 3 notes seem reasonable. It doesn’t even include dictionary look-ups and as I’ve said I usually don’t highlight stuff that the dictionary elucidated. I think he difficulty level of this book is pretty similar to 엘리베이터에 낀 사람 by 김영하 which is also a collection of short stories by the same author. The number sounds right to me. For the elevator book, I only added stuff to anki for some of the short stories because I had the physical book and I only wanted looked up words for the short stories that I had found an electrical copy for since manually typing stuff is too labor intensive. Google works wonders 🙂 I could’ve taken pictures while reading and then run them through google keep for OCR then generate cards but I didn’t know about google keep’s capabilities back then. It’s a shame because there were even a couple paragraphs in the later stories that made me go wtf did I read? I literally took my red pen and drew an arc next to the paragraphs. I love learning from sentences/paragraphs that I don’t understand by asking on chiebukuro and other places.

무슨 일이 일어났는지는 아무도 – 김영하 (Highlight: 199; Note: 3)

───────────────

◆ 무슨 일이 일어났는지는 아무도

▪  SENTENCE I HIGHLIGHTED

▪ SENTENCE I HIGHLIGHTED

I wrote this because I like reading stuff on an ereader and NOT on a smartphone or a tablet or a computer screen due to the eye strain those devices cause. Although, I’m sure there are many great options for looking up words while reading Korean on the tablet/smartphone/computer screen.

My initial goal of getting a korean-english/korean-japanese/etc dictionary on the kindle working ended in futility since I didn’t succeed. However I got my answer of “no you can’t use a Korean-English dictionary kindle.” Just in case you’re curious, the English-Korean dictionary works perfectly on the kindle but I don’t need that! From this experience I learned how to convert dictionary files to STARDICT format (which enables me to use them for wordquery anki plugin and so now I have 5 dictionaries that I run through the wordquery plugin on anki for my Korean cards), I know how to convert tab delimited files to the kindle format though it’s pointless for Korean, and I found my holy grail Korean font as you can tell from the screenshot. This was tricky because I like reading Korean with hangeul and hanja together so the hanja can’t look hideous. Unfortunately I had to eliminate some fonts that were gorgeous in their hangeul letters but hideous in their kanji/hanja forms. There were some korean fonts that only had hangeul and no hanja so the hanja just became squares or blanks which shocked me. Also, I thought the hanja looked gorgeous on the UnGungseo font but for some reason the letters are spaced way too far apart so I can’t tell where the spaces between the words are since it looks like there’s a space between every syllable block. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a Korean font where the hanja looks gorgeous the way it does on ungunseo so I settled on 서울 font and 한겨레. I have a distinct disdain for straight Korean fonts which make me that much less motivated to read Korean and increase my anxiety. I must say that using a font I love in the ereader makes me that much more excited to read Korean but I’m sure the novelty will wear off .

I aptly titled this the best way to korean on an ereader since it’s the only way as far I know for us korean learners that do not live in korea. I’ve heard of this korean ereader crema that is overpriced, is slow/laggy, and only has korean-korean dictionary WHICH just doesn’t appeal to me since the android e-reader is much better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crema e-readers in USA? from Korean

Also, I unfortunately bought physical Korean books  a year or two ago.  I finished one or two of them and for one of them I kept writing in the kanji in the margins of the book because I hated and resented being forced to spend unnecessary energy to figure out the meaning of the words because they only write in hangeul (Sometimes I could clearly tell it’s hanja but I had no idea which one it is despite the context so I felt even more resentful). I can only imagine how much more fruitless and hopeless it would feel if I was illiterate in Japanese and knew nothing about hanja…. I think I’ll try to go back and finish reading them all after I read all my ebooks (about 30 or so). I’m sure it’ll be a breeze by that point.

Here are the dictionary files I used for goldendict + moon reader for anyone with android! I got 2 from lingoes (they had to be converted and that’s the edocu and the vicom one), and 3 from stardict. I edited 2 of them with stardict editor because there were no line breaks which makes reading the entries unnecessarily difficult.

MEDIAFIRE LINK

to break it down

vicom is korean-english (from lingoes)

edocu is korean-english ( from lingoes)

quick-eng-kor is korean-english

naver is korean-japanese

koreandic is korean-korean

ALSO! here is the link for all the stardict dictionaries that you can use on the FASTWORD QUERY OR  wordquery plugin.

MEDIAFIRE

There are 4 dictionaries in the korean-english dictionary folder. The other dictionaries are korean-korean, korean-japanese from naver, and hanja (all it does is insert all the homonyms). This brings the grand total to 7! I had to edit some of them with stardict editor because there were NO LINE BREAKS which makes the entries hard to read. The one titled github was converted from the tsv file on this github page

I like the quick korean-english dictionary because it’s so BRIEF and short. Of course my favorite is naver korean-japanese. If I’m desperate or I feel like it (if it’s the only field that’s filled from running query) I check out the korean-korean definition since reading Korean is labor intensive and fruitless at times (when you read it, or even re-read it and don’t understand what you read). There are 2 English dictionaries that generate a lot of text since they’re FULL of example sentences. They might be identical but I’m not sure so I just kept both.

Here’s another reddit link where someone mentioned using koreader on a kobo ereader to read korean.

 

 

 

 

What’s the best way read Korean on android and iphone or ereader for learning Korean?? from Korean

HANJARO – 漢字路 Resource Recommendation

HANJARO | 漢字路  |  한자로 ♪～（･ε･ )

EDIT on 11-2019: As of maybe October or September  they blocked access to the site for people outside of Korea so you either have to be in Korea or use a VPN. I emailed them and they said they’re going to make another link for people outside Korea. I hope it’s very soon.

I recommend this useful resource for Korean learners who know and can read Japanese or Chinese. This is a site that inserts Chinese characters into the Korean text you paste. For longer texts like ebooks you have to download their program and use it on hancom or microsoft office. The hancom/microsoft word plugin has more options to customize rendering ie only show hanja for the first instance of the word, ignore single syllable words, ability to add more words to the list, etc.  I recommend pairing hanjaro with lingoes off-line dictionary for reading on the computer!

It gives the user various options to customize the rendering to his or her needs:

• • paste the text or paste the URL. I usually paste the text because I usually hate the formatting of the website.
  • replace the hangeul with hanja or place hanja next to the hanguel word
  • the option of choosing from Chinese characters used in Taiwan, China, Japan, or Korea.
  • when it places the hanja next to the hangeul it place parentheses around the hanja word so what I like doing is doing control + h  (to bring up the FIND AND REPLACE WINDOW) and replace ( with space (
    so I can use lingoes off-line dictionary since lingoes only processes exact matches for Korean (I double click for it to look up the word). For example, instead of 논의(論議) I get 논의 (論議).  Parentheses inserted in by Hanjaro and the space inserted via control +h facilitate the use of lingoes pop-up dictionary (Before I’d manually insert spaces between sino-words and particles so I can double-click and look up the word on lingoes). Lingoes is great at compensating the weakness of hanjaro which is that it only inserts one hanja that matches even if there are multiple homonyms. Hanjaro makes lingoes even more useful by making it easier to look up sino-words. Lingoes offers k-j, k-e, and more ! ( I use K-J and K-e) Also, Hancom word processor has a k-k dictionary which works as a pop-up dictionary too! (however like lingoes the stuff has to be unconjugated and the kango words need to have a space from the verb etc) I do like how the dictionary searches as you type like Lingoes.   Unfortunately lingoes pop-up dictionary does NOT work on hancom word so I read the articles on notepad (the formatting on these Korean websites are terrible for reading) and I use lingoes pop-up dictionary (I also send text lingoes to look up words to save time for words that need to be unconjugated etc) then either look up the word using one of the authotkey shortcuts for opening a dictionary website with the word already inputted. However, lingoes comes to the front when I press control + L and also minimizes when I press control + L so looking stuff up isn’t cumbersome.
• 
  • <-FOR THIS particular word the corresponding meaning was not listed under the k-e english dictionary lol. It was however listed in the K-J naver dic for lingoes which I reached after scrollling.
  • 
  • I  have it set it on lingoes that if I hover over a word in the definition and press SHIFT, lingoes looks up that word! Also I only have the computer’s language set to Japanese because I can only set the computer language to Korean or Japanese because those are the only keyboards I have installed since it’s a pain to switch between keyboards if I have English, Korean and Japanese. also the korean keyboard includes English so it is redundant.  I prefer reading Japanese over Korean (I prefer English the most though! I’d rather read English than katakana which is the case with the computer) so I switched it to Japanese but now I’m considering changing it back to Korean because now hancom is full of gibberish since it can’t render Korean.

• I use it when I generate Korean anki cards from readlang.com. I use the cloze deletion format so I put the text rendered by hanjaro on the back of the card instead of the original sentence to lower the barrier of reading. Also the sentences that I encounter via reading  tend to be dense with information. UPDATE: I now use authotkey to collect sentences and it’s the best thing since sliced bread. It’s just more convenient for me than readlang.com. Also I LOVE EXCEL!

Here’s an example of text that went through hanjaro. I chose hanja for the rendering BUT as I’ve mentioned you choose kanji, simplified hanzi, etc.

7일(日) 한 매체(媒體)는 ‘프로듀스 101’의 네 번째(番째) 시즌이 내년(來年) 4월(月) 방송(放送)을 목표(目標)로 제작(製作)을 준비(準備) 중(中)이라고 보도(報道)했다. 이에 대(對)해 Mnet 측(側)은 “새로운 시즌을 논의(論議) 중(中)이다. 하지만 편성(編成) 등(等) 자세(仔細)한 사항(事項)은 아직 확정(確定)된 부분(部分)이 없다”며 말을 아꼈다.

‘프로듀스 101’ 시리즈는 그동안 아이오아이, 워너원 등(等)을 탄생시켜 대중(大衆)들의 뜨거운 반응(反應)을 이끌어 냈다. 또한, 가장 최근(最近) 시즌인 ‘프로듀스 48’에서는 아이즈원까지 출범(出帆)시켰다.

I actually know and am already familiar with all the words in the article excerpt so I don’t need the hanja inserted but I definitely read faster with hanja than without. The name of the program, Hanjaro, reminds me of 活路 sure enough for a myriad of reasons. The word exists in Korean too so that’s a freebie!

Here’s the before:

7일 한 매체는 ‘프로듀스 101’의 네 번째 시즌이 내년 4월 방송을 목표로 제작을 준비 중이라고 보도했다. 이에 대해 Mnet 측은 “새로운 시즌을 논의 중이다. 하지만 편성 등 자세한 사항은 아직 확정된 부분이 없다”며 말을 아꼈다.

‘프로듀스 101’ 시리즈는 그동안 아이오아이, 워너원 등을 탄생시켜 대중들의 뜨거운 반응을 이끌어 냈다. 또한, 가장 최근 시즌인 ‘프로듀스 48’에서는 아이즈원까지 출범시켰다.

It has its limitations which primarily stem from the existence of homonyms that exist in Korean. However, that’s almost nonissue to me since I am very literate in Japanese and I’ve gotten fairly proficient in Korean from the time put I put into the language from the summer of 2011. It’s obvious to me when the hanja is wrong based on the context. I use the hanja as a visual aid to exert less effort and lower the burden while reading and to read faster. The beauty of kanji and hanja is that I read its meaning automatically, without my volition, and instantaneously. If I had to quantify the amount of energy it takes to read hangeul for meaning it’d be 1 and for Japanese kanji it would 0.1 or 0.01. The only analogy I can think of to explain it to someone who can’t read Japanese/Chinese is numbers and even then it’s not a perfect analogy since hanja/kanji aren’t numbers and numbers aren’t hanja/kanji….

Here goes: Would you prefer to read 123,865,987,123 or one hundred twenty-three billion eight hundred sixty-five million nine hundred eighty-seven thousand one hundred twenty-three?

Or how about 천이백삼십팔억 육천오백구십팔만 칠천백이십삼?

I definitely prefer the former. And on a related note, I hate reading numbers in kanji which would be 一千二百三十八億六千五百九十八萬七千一百二十三 here according to aChinese number converter. All the characters here are the same as the characters in Japanese with the exception of MAN. Not as labor-intensive to read as roman numerals but still way too demanding for me. I never got good at understanding/using man/oku etc because usually they’re talking about money so I’m always converting to USD to see if the people on TV are over-reacting or exaggerating.

Here’s another one:

would you prefer to read Breaking Bad or 브레이킹 배드,

orgasm or 오르가슴?

lol j/k but seriously I take English’s spelling inconsistencies over reading English words in hangeul any day! The first time I encountered 오르가슴 in a Korean novel, I thought it was a Korean word that had something to with chest lol… BTW 얼룩말 has nothing to do with words or talking… I didn’t know the word before I watched so I was just as confused as they were…

I am acutely aware of how labor-intensive reading Korean is compared to Japanese when it comes to reading for meaning. It’s especially noticeable when I see a Korean sentence with a Japanese translation when the sentence is full of sino-words such as this huge deck I made from dumping in stuff I found on cool, helpful Japanese sites… That’s just one reason why going “monolingual” for Korean is so different from going “monolingual” for Japanese which I don’t support anyway. It takes SO MUCH MORE effort to read uninteresting Korean stuff vs uninteresting Japanese stuff simply because hangeul is labor-intensive to read compared to Japanese… I especially noticed this disparity between the writing system when I do my huge pre-made Korean deck that I made from Japanese sites. I read the Japanese automatically with 0 effort and even if I try to focus my energy on reading the hangeul first etc during my anki reviews because kanji gets read automatically without my volition…. On a side note, I like learning Korean using Japanese because it also helps my Japanese since it helps my notice how exactly stuff is said/worded in Japanese since it’s not always a word-to-word translation from Korean.

ie this

Front:

A: 회사를 그만두고 독립하기로 결정했다.
会社を辞めて独立することにした。

Back is the same as the front.

Some sentences are longer or more boring or more complex or have words that I am less familiar with and those factors contribute even more to me rejoicing that I don’t need to read Korean translations of Japanese books/manga/etc. I personally think it makes sense to take advantage of ALL THE LANGUAGES you know to learn a language rather than LIMITING yourself one language (even if it’s that’s the target language or especially because it’s the target language) to learn the language. It’s common sense. Sometimes the English/Japanese/Korean is more memorable or explains it better etc and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Hanja is a fantastic companion to hangeul for reading for lazy people like me who happen to know how to read Japanese. I use hanjaro for internet articles and korean ebooks. It makes reading Korean more pleasant for me even despite its limitations.

Now, I can finally put my foot down when it comes to adding hanja based words to anki. Sometimes I’d be almost mad at myself for not recognizing a hanja word that I already know since I know the Japanese equivalent and they sound sorta similar and/or I’ve already looked it up in the past. I get into this conundrum of should I put this into anki to make sure I don’t waste time looking it up if I don’t recognize the word in a future encounter even though it’s kind of a freebie since I know Japanese or should I not add it and hope I will be able to conjure up the word’s meaning next time I encounter it from having looked it up and just based on the hangeul and context. Now because of this site I will only add hanja-words to anki that are truly difficult or tricky to remember. After all, the korean korean words (ex 코딱지 and no that word is not in my anki deck) are hard to remember as it is and I want to focus my energy on those words as opposed to hanja-words I already know that I don’t recognize that hide behind the hangeul-mask.

I found the the site by googling in Japanese when I reached a chiebukuro question. and I’m just kicking myself for not having done it sooner. The thought popped in my head because I was reading about the pros and cons of writing in Korean in hangeul only vs writing korean in a mixed script of hangeul and hanja on this wiki website that was outlining all the points of contention between the 2 fierce groups. I was surprised to learn from that site that there are so many ways to propose mixing the hanja and hangeul in writing ie only write x type of words in Hanja. I never realized that there were so many ways to go about it. At first I was interested in finding a news site or blog of some sort that writes in mixed hangeul-hanja writing but there’s not much out there and I have no interest reading newspapers from the 70s, 60s etc. With hanjaro I can read any site with hanja inserted and most importantly it allows me to customize the rendering. I never choose the option to replace the hangeul with hanja since the hanja may not be correct due to homonyms or hanjaro mis-identifying non-sino words as sino-words since they happen to share the same sounds such as when it thinks someone’s name or a verb conjugated a certain way or a noun with a particle attached ie ㄴ is a sino-word (this is something they can’t fix since the only way to determine the correct, intended meaning is to look at the CONTEXT precisely because it’s written with only hangeul). Also, if it replaces the text hanja, and I don’t know the reading of the hanja then I’m completely shit out of luck, not to mention it may have replaced the hangeul with the wrong hanja, and most importantly I can’t look up hanja on lingoes pop-up dictionary. Anyway, I love this site because it enables me to take full advantage of Japanese proficiency. I’m sure if I discovered the site in 2016 and NOT 2019/2018 (of course it didn’t exist in 2012/2011! when I started Korean), my Korean would have improved much faster and I definitely would have read MORE. COMPREHENSIVE INPUT ALWAYS TRUMPS INCOMPREHENSIBLE INPUT! I find this site more useful than naver translate since it puts the hanja right next to the word while for naver translate and other translation services, you have to search for the word you’re unsure of in the long-ass translation which also sometimes means I am skimming gibberish Japanese.

I believe I will improve at reading HANGEUL ONLY texts better and faster through reading hangeul text that has hanja haphazardly inserted in than reading the original hangeul only text. It means I constantly reinforce the hanja-based words with the hanja next to them (or by double clicking with lingoes pop-up dictionary to get the correct hanja if it’s the wrong hanja. This is a inconvenience that I don’t consider an inconvenience since it makes me more aware of homonyms and Korean people are pretty much doing this while they read since they possess a huge vocabulary since they’re fluent in Korean and have plenty of experience reading hangeul) instead of seeing them veiled under hangeul and look them up manually over and over EVEN with authotkey scripts + gaming mouse. Before I knew about this site, I would waste my time looking up hanja words I already know but didn’t recognize because they were written in hangeul. I am free of delusions and illusions that somehow reading hangeul-only texts will help me improve at Korean as much as hangeul texts with hanja haphazardly inserted in. Reading hangeul as a native Korean is a completely different experience from reading Korean as a Korean learner simply for that fact that I’m not fluent in Korean. You can boast about your ability to phonetically read hangeul as much as you want but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re not comprehending the information like a native due to lack of vocab, shoddy parsing skills, lack of knowledge, lack of grammar, etc… There’s no reason to subject myself to what natives read which is hangeul-only text for silly, vapid, ascetic (? lol) reasons. I am not a native Korean speaker and somehow pretending that I am one and acting like one, does not serve my goals and aspirations. For one thing, I know English and Japanese and I am very literate in both so I can never look at hangeul the way Koreans (who can’t read hanja/KANJI/ETC) look at hangeul. Hangeul’s weaknesses and strengths are obvious to me and I can’t pretend to be illiterate in Japanese/English. I’ve recently developed a new-found appreciation for hangeul when I found out how misleading pinyin is! The most damning anecdotal evidence that I have to back reading text with hanja haphazardly inserted over hangeul-only texts is my experience of learning/reading Korean pre-hanjaro and post-hanjaro. It’s better to read comprehensible text than incomprehensible text and hanjaro increases comprehensibility despite its defects so it makes reading Korean more fruitful and I am at a level in Korean where I’m not being overwhelmed with the inclination to read the hanja next to the words with the Japanese readings and disregarding the Hangeul that corresponds with the hanja (Though I have a feeling I would’ve benefited from hanjaro from the get-go in my Korean learning since it would’ve cut-down on dictionary look-ups).

here’s an example of a hanja word that I couldn’t figure out from the hangeul and the context. It happened like a year ago or maybe years ago ?? It’s the only example I can come up with right now because I’ve been loving the hanjaro site and I’ve gotten more literate (in sense of understanding what I’m reading as opposed to being able to read shit out loud) in Korean these past few years. Variations of this has happened to me so many times!

So, I read an article and it used the word 화재 a bunch of times and I said to myself it’s definitely not 화제 (hot topic) and nothing is coming to mind as to what kanji/hanja word it is (I just know that it is a noun and it’s definitely a kanji/hanja word). of course at the end I either looked it up or figured out its the korean version of kasai (Fire disaster). Without fail, I realize that I already looked up 화재 sometime before the second I learned what the meaning was (just seeing the hangeul is completely arbitrary to me). So at that point I had read the whole article not understanding what hajae was other than it was a noun and it’s based on hanja so obviously I missed out. At that point I decided to not re-read the article because it annoyed me immensely and I did not care about the article that much. If you asked me THEN what’s the the hanja reading for 火 and 災 I would say hwa and se/je. I know hwa of course because of TUESDAY and other words but just seeing it in hangeul doesn’t guarantee that I will instantly think of 火. The only thing that evokes  火 without fail is 火 not 화 nor ひ nor か. With the hangeul, depending on the weather, my mood, color of Mun underwear etc, I may or may not make that connection ( there is just no guarantee especially since there are multiple hanja that have that reading. Though sometimes nothing comes to mind .  I would answer se/je from guessing since I know that sound conversion rule well since it’s so simple and logical. I think half the time when I read hangeul-only text when I come across unknown hanja compound words NOTHING comes to mind (even if I know a ton of words that contain that hanja) or I think of a few hanja/kanji that would fulfill the pronunciation requirement but clearly does not fit the context so is most likely wrong so I feel pissed that I’m robbed of my energy. I can’t blame myself for not magically figuring out the word on the spot all the time… that’s just the way it is. The other half of the time, I FIGURE IT OUT correctly or think I did but I did not lol or more like FML. It bothers me tremendously because this shit never happens in Japanese because they use Kanji. The thing is your language-learning is a never-ending endeavor… it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at it, there’s always going to be something you don’t know ie vocabulary. When I use hanjaro (I think of it as KATSURO sometimes), reading takes less effort, I read faster, and I don’t waste my time looking up words I pretty much know but have a low familiarity with (I’d rather learn sino-based words from encountering it 20-30 times with the correct/incorrect hanja next to it than to look it up multiple times manually and making anki cards. There’s no urgency for me to grow my korean vocabulary in a brute-force, unnecessarily painful, and laborious manner). It’s a win win win situation. 

Also sometime last year, I tried learning from Korean news through this Japanese site that provides korean news in Japanese with links to the original articles in KOrean. For a second I thought that having a Japanese translation would lower my apprehension and burden dramatically. It was a big fail because I don’t like reading about news about government/economics/etc especially when I don’t live in Korea… that stuff bores me. It’s like watching the weather segment of the Korean news except it’s 100 times harder to understand and I live in America. Also darting my eyes between hangeul and Japanese searching for the translation of the unknown word is a pain. Also, sometimes the Japanese version of the article would omit the sentence that I specifically wanted clarification on! More than anything the site made go why the hell would I read this in Korean when there is a Japanese translation with all that kanji since it’s so dense with sino-words written in hangeul.  I think this year I may try to learn from this site since now I have hanjaro added to my arsenal.  I will blog about it if I go through with it~ I’m thinking of setting low goals like 1 article a month etc. EDIT: I did not do this because I have a million other things I’d read in Korean than korean news articles about politics and whatever other boring topics on that site… I’m not into reading news regardless of the language at least the hard-hitting news. I will read news about stuff I’m interested in. Life’s too short to read stuff you’re not interested in. EDIT: this youtube channel is pretty cool. They put japanese subs on short korean news clips and i find it helpful for training listening comprehension haha. i find it better than watching it with english subs, korean subs, no subs in the situation where I watch the video only ONCE with rewinding because my korean level is high and japanese subs serve as fantastic hints  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkSHg01LkqghdfbE_Ru5amg tHIS REMINDS me of the time I saw BoA in a Japanese documentary-type show where she was watching a korean drama with japanese subtitles to practice reading Kanji. I thought it was brilliant due to all the sino-vocab overlap!

I tried using the site for Korean subs to see if it would help me comprehend/reading the subs faster but I found it incredibly distracting since hanja is traditional characters (there’s a lot of stuff going with one character lol). I tried with kanji just in case but it was still distracting since it’s not 100% correct. Not only that, it was subs to YG treasure box on V-LIVE (it is subbed in MANY languages) which is very easy to understand anyway. I love hearing the incorrect Korean from the Japanese people lol. They direct-translate like crazy and they always correct their Korean in the subs. I usually make anywhere from 2-5 anki cards per episode. It’s not as challenging as SMTM or talk shows for obvious reasons. I am better off with hangeul-only subs for this situation. BTW Viki has a lot of dramas with korean and english subs and you can download the subs!

On a related note, whenever I go through korean song lyrics if I think the artist or song is remotely popular I google the song title, artist and wayaku because it’s so much faster for me to go through the lyrics with that compared to me going at it with a dictionary and the korean lyrics. Also I generate anki cards so it would speed up the process.

Part of the reason I do that is because Korean requires interpretation skills that I don’t possess yet. I’ll read the lyrics and be confused or unsure as to what it means because they often leave out subjects. I’ll figure out all the ways something can be interpreted and then I’ll come to a decision and then later find out (through an english or japanese translation) that I was wrong in that none of my interpretations were right or the one that I thought was the least likely was correct. I believe I gain more by using wayaku and just getting the answer to the correct interpretation than wasting my time trying to figure out the interpretation every time I look up song lyrics to a song I like. It’s time I don’t have and I don’t believe the labor-intensive activity of looking up all the words and interpreting the lyrics myself instead of reading the wayaku will help me grow my interpretation skills. I think I’ll eventually hone in on this skill once I spend enough time inputting comprehensible input.

Hanja compliments Hangeul because hanja makes the text easier to read by rendering the act more effortless. There’s an effortless quality that I attribute to reading Chinese characters compared to phonetic alphabet like English or Hangeul. Hangeul represent sound while hanja represents MEANING and SOUND (if you know the reading. It’s a quality that’s highly desired by lazy people like me (Of course I’ve experienced first-hand that learning to read and write 2000+ kanji takes more time and effort than learning how to read and write hangeul. I did like how it broke up the monotony of studying grammar. I enjoyed having variety in that I had the option of doing an acitivity to learn Japanese that involved a different part of my brain or a lower level of energy or so it seemed.). Of course, if you don’t know Japanese or Mandarin you may assume that phonetic alphabets are superior to logographic writing systems in every way. It seems that a lot of Korean netizens always say that hangeul is acknowledged by scientists as the MOST brilliant, logical writing system and that Korea was able to abandon hanja ( The scientists statement is complete bullshit and I feel terrible that it keeps being stated over and over again since it makes Koreans and Korea look bad. I think it’s great that they celebrate Sejong the Great but he didn’t invent hangeul with the intention of changing the writing system to hangeul-only and they kinda make it seem like he would support that even though there’s no evidence to support that. I hate it when people put words in other people’s mouth. ) while Japan has a crazy writing system where you have ask people how to read their name which is a sign that they have a primitive writing system ( Of course that’s what precisely what some Japanese netizens say about hangeul) and China is spending too much time and energy learning all those characters. Statements like that only demonstrate their ignorance and close-mindedness. There are disadvantages and advantages to the 3 writing systems.

When I went into Korean knowing English and Japanese, I knew that no matter how much I read hangeul it’ll never feel as comfortable as reading Japanese as far as reading for meaning or speed (as in not reading it out loud) in terms of obtaining the meaning or exerting least amount of effort possible. The inherent nature of the PHONETIC hangeul writing system and its limitations are obvious to me. I think if it came down to which language I can read out loud fastest without taking comprehension into account it would come down to English and Korean of course but that defeats the point of reading which is to understand what you’re reading. Of course the downside to Japanese is that I have the dilemma of being unsure of the readings at times but I prefer knowing meaning over reading any day. I find not understanding the most “frustrating” part of sucking at language rather than not being able to read it out-loud. Reading hangeul is tiring. Reading Japanese is less tiring and takes less effort once you’re literate. As a lazy person, I’m glad I learned Japanese because of how effortless it can be to read stuff in Japanese at times. Every time I see a block of text in hangeul when I open online articles I feel a tinge of anxiety and ominous dread because I have a point of comparison. It’s the analogy of why would you go back to black and white when you can have all the colors  or why go back windows 95 when you have windows 10 (I can’t think of a good one). The point is I’ve experienced the wonders of reading Japanese. It’s obvious to me that the Japanese writing system plays an integral role in the popularity of reading in Japan. Also it seems like everyone on TV has written a book because I constantly add stuff to my amazon.co.jp wishlist or dokushometer when I watch Japanese TV shows (there are so many interesting books to be read). I’ve always cared about being able to understand a piece of writing more than being able to read it loud. Also, I’ve never had to waste time looking up words like MARTHA or 오르가슴 or VOLDEMORT (no i was not reading harry potter) since they write foreign words in Katakana meanwhile I’ve had that bitter experience many times with Korean since they only write in hangeul (in printed books they write foreign names and foreign words in a different font). That was one of the most demotivating characteristics of Korean with respect to learning it for me personally. I am very happy and blessed to have found HANJARO.  I just wish I found it in 2016!

Ultimately for kango words like KASAI/HWAJAE I prefer to sort it out by encountering it multiple times with the hanja next to it when I read rather than seeing it in anki or looking it up over and over and over and over when I read to my dismay and disgust (that’s what I feel when I look up a Korean word that I already know on some level but don’t recognize it when it’s just hangeul and the context is not strong enough to conjure the meaning). I believe in being as lazy as possible at times by not going against the current. I don’t aspire to reach a point in Korean where I read hangeul-only texts “fluently” with such ease that going through the rolodex of words to find the corresponding meaning only based on the context is imperceptible to my consciousness. I have no desire to strive to reach or reach the level where I read hangeul like a Korean native. It’s a pipe dream that I never had for Korean. The alphabet only represents sounds since it’s an alphabet which means to read as fluently as a native you’d have to as fluent as a native to parse the words, and go through your gargantuan mental rolodex of words etc etc. I have no desire to dump the Naver Korean-JApanese dictionary on lingoes which has at least 90,000 entries into anki and memorize it (ha even if I did that I’d still run into unknown words since I go to the internet when the dictionaries lingoes fail me)… You will always have to convert this PHONETIC INFORMATION into meaning when you read hangeul. This means there’s a minimum prerequisite of possessing a huge passive vocabulary that rivals a native speaker to read fluently like a native  AND know korean grammar INSIDE AND OUT AND the ability to parse written Korean like a native which is herculean feat lol. If you think about it, even trying to reach the passive vocab level of 8 year old korean is pretty huge since they understand korean tv, kroean -dubbed anime etc 100% or nearly 100%… I am aware of deficiencies in my Korean such as onomatopoeia and obscure vocabulary which I know that korean kids know really well but I don’t (for example they love using onomatopoeia and use it well. I notice the same thing for Japanese… onomatopoeia is one of those tricky, never-ending things that natives use frequently but I can’t seem to use/remember them easily as natives and that includes the KIDS. I accept it and move on). I’ve come to the conclusion that I read much faster when hanja is haphazardly (it’s just not 100% correct) inserted into the hangeul text via hanjaro and I completely accept it and embrace it.   This fact will never reverse unless somehow I become illiterate in Japanese which seems impossible to me. My conviction is rooted in my literacy in Japanese,  my understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the Korean and Japanese writing systems that I gained first-hand, and also from reading about the topic in 3 languages. I can’t imagine a day when I don’t run text through HANJARO before reading when I can (maybe if I’m reading a short paragraph or two??). To me, not running a text through hanjaro is equivalent to asking myself if I want to subject myself to the experience of reading a Japanese article or book that’s only written in hiragana/KATAKANA. Sure you can do that but it is torture! 😦 Sometimes reading hangeul feels like reading Japanese that’s only written in hiragana if the percentage of the words I don’t know (or I do know but have low familiarity with) is high enough. It’s just that much more demotivating and irritating. Nonetheless, even if I know all the words really well in the article, book, etc, it’s still easier to read with hanja than without as I expressed with the example in the beginning of this post. I think for me, I would’ve NEVER EVER EVER EVER learned Korean to this level if I didn’t now Japanese. It’s just way too frustrating, inefficient, and stupid otherwise. Plus the Korean-Japanese Naver dictionary is a god-send. It just feels like a waste of my time reading hiragana/hangeul that has no meaning to me. Reading a text or a book full of unknown words in Japanese is a completely different experience from reading a text of book full of unknown words in Korean because it’s just that much more fruitless and painful in Korean. The same can be said about using a korean-korean dictionary and japanese-japanese dictionary. It is NIGHT AND DAY!  and yes I have seen them use the word to define the word in the korean-korean dictionary. It’s a real nightmare that I don’t have to deal with for Japanese since they have better dictionaries and write stuff in hiragana/katakana and kanji. Of course my go-to authotkey script is for google searching the word with IMI WA appended to it). For Japanese even if you don’t know the word, if it’s written in kanji you get something out of it and you have some obscure, vague idea of it (and you can even use pop-up dictionaries like rikai-sama, yomi-chan, etc. pop-up dictionaries exist for Korean but they suck compared to japanese ones) while in Korean you can waste a lot of energy trying to figure out the meaning solely based off the “sound” of the word (the fact there are homonyms and countless hanja that share the same pronunciation doesn’t help. this was exemplified by the KASAI/HWAJE example I mentioned.). Also, I think I was more acutely aware of my deficiencies in listening comprehension in Japanese when I was at an intermediate level years back precisely because reading Japanese is easier than reading Korean. That is because the written form of Japanese represents sounds and meaning while for Korean it only represents sounds. Written Japanese is easier to understand than written Korean for language learners because it’s more transparent due to the writing system representing both sound and meaning.  There is a greater disparity between reading comprehension and listening comprehension for Japanese compared to Korean when you’re intermediate/etc ie for Japanese you may read and understanding something just fine but end up not understanding it when it’s just audio while for Korean that would never happen! For Japanese you have visual cues that represent meaning and sound (or just meaning if you don’t know the reading) while for Korean you’re SOL if you don’t know the word. Actually I can think of a couple exceptions, Korean words that aren’t pronounced phonetically due to pronunciation rule ie 격려, 심리, 설 수 있다, 굳이, 폭력, 짓이기다 etc (answers are 경녀, 심니, 슬 수 있다 , 구지, 퐁녁, 진니기다 and no I never bothered to memorize the rules so don’t ask me why). A recent example I can think of is the word 視姦　(しかん) which I encountered when I was watching hanseikai. I’ve never heard of this word in my life but I know the kanji that make up the word and I don’t need to look it up since it’s obvious from the context and kanji what it means. This kinda stuff happens from time to time and it will never cease to stop occuring since obviously you can’t memorize every single word in the Japanese language. Conversely, in Korean all you get is the sound of the word so when I come across new words that are sino-based I may or may not figure it out on the spot or I may think I figured it out but I figured wrong ( SINCE THERE are plenty of hanja that have the same reading). Initially the kanji mountain seems like a huge deterrent for learning Japanese compared to Korean but once you’re over the mountain you realize the mountain for Korean is never ending because they write everything in hangeul lol.

I’ve always felt super entitled as a person who knows Japanese that whenever I looked up hanja-based words that I already know that sound similar to Japanese or exist in Japanese I would feel irritated and mercilessly robbed of my my time and energy. Also I know about the history of the Japanese language and the Korean language ( I inadvertently learned about the influx of foreign words into Japanese during the Meiji Era when I was reading a book about Korean/Korea in Japanese. ) which makes me even more flummoxed to being subjected to reading hangeul-only text. Now I have no reason to feel that resentment when I read Korean on the internet or ebooks! I have a lot of articles and topics I’m interested in reading on the Korean internet and now I can finally hop to it. I would’ve never fathomed in 2012 that I would read Korean novels/books one day but I am (by read I mean reading and understanding 85-95%! NOT just having the ability to read it out phonetically while not understanding shit or coming across an unknown word in every other sentence etc. I could do that in 2012! Ain’t nothing productive or admirable OR NOBLE or fun about being able to read something outloud 100% phonetically while missing all the important details. Maybe for Koreaboos it’s cool enough??). I hope to read more in 2019!

HERE are some articles I read so far: I like reading about people or topics that are of interest to me.

http://www.hankookilbo.com/News/Read/201605122062423406
http://www.pressian.com/news/article.html?no=69280#09T0

https://www.sisain.co.kr/?mod=news&act=articleView&idxno=26576 <-this was hard to follow at times. It was pretty bad. I didn’t understand the main points of the article. It was unclear to me and I had no motivation to re-read stuff to figure out the meaning of the sentence or phrases. I kinda gave up on this one. It’s too hard for me at my current level or I’m just too lazy to apply myself (no that’s a good thing because I gotta read what I’m really interested in) I think I’ll read an article about it in Japanese sometime in the future. I feel content with my expectations and my goals. I don’t need to kill myself AND read anything and everything in Korean. I have a choice to read about topics in English or Japanese instead just so I can satisfy my curiosity without having to spend ungodly amounts of time and effort. It’s just more fruitful and beneficial to focus on reading stuff in Korean that I really want to read in Korean. Enjoyment is VERY important and can never be tossed aside.

http://news.donga.com/Culture/more29/3/all/20141010/67068211/1

https://namu.wiki/w/%EC%9B%90%EC%A0%95%EB%85%80

https://www.sisain.co.kr/?mod=news&act=articleView&idxno=24942 <- about hanja

http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2014/03/02/2014030202553.html

http://monthly.chosun.com/client/mdaily/daily_view.asp?idx=1998&Newsnumb=2017111998

https://theqoo.net/square/1043395792   < – seungri’s interview

 

 

 

 

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승리입니다 제가 이시점에서 연예계를 은퇴를하는것이 좋을거같습니다. 사회적 물의를 일으킨 사안이 너무나 커 연예계 은퇴를 결심했습니다 수사중인 사안에 있어서는 성실하게 조사를 받아 쌓인 모든 의혹을 밝히도록 하겠습니다. 지난 한달반동안 국민들로부터 질타받고 미움받고 지금 국내 모든 수사기관들이 저를 조사하고 있는 상황에서 국민역적 으로까지 몰리는 상황인데 저 하나 살자고 주변 모두에게 피해주는일은 도저히 제스스로가 용납이 안됩니다 지난 10여 년간 많은 사랑을 베풀어준 국내외 많은 팬분들께 모든 진심을 다해 감사드리며 와이지와 빅뱅 명예를 위해서라도 저는 여기까지인거같습니다 다시한번 죄송하고 또 죄송합니다 그동안 모든분들께 감사했습니다

A post shared by @ seungriseyo on Mar 11, 2019 at 1:39am PDT

tiffany’s apology

티파니, 자필 사과문 게재 “부끄럽다..깊이 반성 중”(전문)

tiffany’s main apology
http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2016/08/26/2016082602778.html

https://www.hangeul.or.kr/modules/bbs/index.php?code=bbs23&mode=view&id=12281&page=14&___M_ID=47&f_head=&sfield=&sword=

http://blog.daum.net/_blog/BlogTypeView.do?blogid=0CgXV&articleno=5862561&categoryId=510472&regdt=20060925005221

My Holy Grail CLOZE DELETION Anki card format for Korean TV SHOWS

UPDATE to this ENTRY

My HG format is multiple clozes with huge intervals!

front of card

word or word in a sentence, definition in japanese/korean/english, screenshot WITHOUT text

This is my anki card for GGADDAK

Back of the card

answer to cloze, more definitions from wordquery, screenshot from Korean show.

Front for card 2 of the same note. It  only has the ttk blanked out with the {{c2:}} code

well what I see is black and white since I use an ereader but it’s legible nonetheless.

HS RAPPER (spoiler below)

HIGH SCHOOL RAPPER

to be completely honest I didn’t want young b to win high school rapper for the sole reason that I liked his song the least out of everyone who performed in the finals. I acknowledge that he’s great at rapping but I was confused as to how he got the most votes. Maybe it was different seeing the performance in person or maybe his popularity/fame from show me the money had a bearing on the results. I knew for the longest time he won this show because they mentioned it a million times on show me the money so when he finished performing on the HS finale I thought that’s it??? since he was the last to perform and the ante had been getting upped time and time again.

+++++ end of spoiler

another example:

FRONT: ++++++++++

the Korean definition was generated by hanseido. I don’t obsesses and waste time trying to go 1000% monolingual dic especially for korean ( I love what steve kauffman says in his youtube vids about the issue.)

On an unrelated note I learned why for certain korean/japanese words it’s so much easier just to learn the english word…. it was because the word was ORIGINALLY IN ENGLISH and it was translated to Japanese and then the korean people just took the words that japanese people painstakingly translated and brought the words into korean by reading the words with their hanja readings . I found about it from a japanese book I was reading last month which talked about how Japan was obsessed with learning from other countries in the 1800s?? 1700s?? in the various advanced fields like science and so they had to translate all that shit from other languages to Japanese and of course they came across words that don’t exist in Japanese so they had to invent them using the kanji that they have. So that is why with some words it’s easier to use English because it was the original word (but then again they translated from many languages…. not just english. there were so many countries with booming culture and sciences back in the day) and the 1 word is so much easier to remember than an explanation/essay. ).

I set up anki so that Hanseido look-ups come to the front of the card since I won’t even read it let alone remember it if it’s in the back). I usually don’t put screenshots in the front because it’s too much work (for this one I just felt like it and I thought it would help me remember) and I will never put a screenshot with text on the front.

Back:+++++++++++++++

Edit field just to show the multiple cloze deletions I have going on here. sometimes I do c3 for the definition. it all depends on what I feel like doing.

the c2 card:

FIRSTLY, I find cloze deletion and anki great for upper intermediate/advanced and may even more upper intermediate (these terms all just broad… ). I don’t recommend it for beginners or intermediate. I think it’s self-evident whether or not this card format is viable at your current Korean level.

I recently came up with a brilliant format and process for making anki cards for Korean while watching korean talk/variety shows. I’m sure it could be applicable to other languages too. I love cloze deletion cards and they are especially effective for me for Korean. This is in part due to my level, my vocabulary because I would think it’d be very taxing and painful to do cloze deletion cards as a beginner or intermediate even. If anything though I think you’re better off doing other things like actual reading/listening to build your vocab than making and reviewing srs cards if you’re a beginner　（I think that using anki to learn the top 1000 words of a language to be really inefficient compared not using it especially if you have a lot of free time). I find it to be really helpful as an advanced korean learner. I hate the traditional sentence/plain word vocab card formats for Korean when using anki because to me it makes no sense to be testing yourself in anki the way you’re testing yourself whenever you watch any native material containing unknown words which is the majority of native material since you’re not gonna 100% of the words native speakers use in speech. Of course that was my go to format for Korean in the beginning! At the time, as far I knew it was either look up words and make anki cards when I watch the show or look up words and not make anki CArds (this will guarantee that you will end looking up the same word 5-10 times if not more). It was clear to me that I’d rather make anki cards than look up the same word 20 times in the dictionary (this made me inexplicably angry probably since I’m not as passionate about Korean as I am about Japanese and because half the words were sino-words).  At the time of  I didn’t even conceive the possibility of other ways of using anki ie other formats besides the usual flashcard format.

ie:

Front: Word

Back : definition in english/japanese and maybe a screenshot of the sentence from a Korean tv show

---

Front: Sentence

Back: Japanese definition entry from naver j-k dictinoary of the word in the sentence that I don’t know (from lingoes) and maybe a screenshot of the sentence from a korean tv show

The way I see it is that the whole point of doing anki cards is so that when i add word x to anki and do the reviews I expect myself to recognize it (and remember the meaning) or at least know that it’s in my deck when I see it in the wild again. By recognizing I mean instantaneous recognition so anything longer than 5 seconds is really BAD. If I add word x by itself on the front or the sentence containing word x on the front of a card with the answer on the back (the usual flashcard/anki format) I’m essentially putting myself in the same exact situation as when I initially come across unknown words on a tv show or novel or article etc. for example, I’ll watch a tv show, they’ll say something I don’t know and they also happened to have the text across the screen and I care enough so I look it up in lingoes or google or naver etc. What usually happens is if I find the correct definition everything is crystal clear and I understood it and I may or may not completely forget the word or definition or both 5 minutes/30 seconds later if I don’t use anki. For me, the traditional format is too much work and it’s not effective. What happens is I either I don’t engage with it properly so I’m not really doing the reviews or I do engage with it properly and do the painful thing where I force myself to conjure the definition out of thin air since the only clue is the word or sentence containing the word only to mark AGAIN a month later or just draw a blank go no f’in idea (the former with the thinking hard thing is especially awful and ineffective in my experience). When I half-ass it I either read the sentence or half-read it (reading it in a lazy way) or don’t read it (but don’t realize I’m not reading it) or only read it a little of it (not enough) and I usually press the SHOW answer after 0.5 seconds (barely enough time to actually engage/think about it but I am impulsive like that especially when I am not into it and maybe I grew irritated at this format over the years), read the answer go yeah that seems familiar but for some reason I can’t remember it at all (or it’s like the first time I’m reading it) and proceed to press hard ASAP (again barely enough to read it or I half-read it) until I feel like hitting AGAIN in some future session. So of course this didn’t happen with all my korean cards but it happened frequently enough to make me not give a shit and keep marking hard, then again depending on how I felt rather than if I actually knew the answer. I acknowledge that my disenchantment towards Anki played a role in rendering the traditional format ineffective for me. That was inevitable from having used anki all these years and having a lazy disposition. However, I recall that even when I did my reviews seriously (using the traditional format of sentence/word on the front and definition on the back) I could tell some of it was just not working and I was wasting my energy. Also, I felt that anki was less effective for Korean compared to Japanese when I made cards in the traditional format even taking into account the disparity between amount of time spent watching korean tv vs japanese tv (everyday while korean is like every few weeks, months etc). I think the the writing systems played a part in that.

If I add word x to anki and I want to be able to recognize it/remember the meaning when it pops up in native media in the future, the best way to remember it using it anki is NOT testing myself in the exact way that I encountered the word minus the sound ( I never considered adding audio to my korean cards because I don’t need IT and it takes up time. I only record if I’m going to ask people “what did this person say” ) or putting a word I encountered on the front and the answer on the back. Doing either of those things makes no sense. It took me a long time to recognize this and do something about it unfortunately! One reason I don’t feel inclined to read the sentence in my deck is that it’s BORING! My disinclination quadruples when that sentence is written in hangeul vs. Japanese or English for good reason. I’ve tried bolding and underlining the word in the sentence to see if that would lower the burden and motivate me to read the anki card and it didn’t make much of a difference. It was because it did not change the fact that it’s boring to make myself to read a sentence. You’re subjecting yourself to the same experience minus the audio. I feel that much more unmotivated to read something I already read especially if it has an unknown word in it. Also reading sentences written in hangeul is very labor-intensive to me because I have points of comparison (READING Japanese versus Korean is like night and day or 月とスッポン in  Japanese since Korean is a phonetic alphabet while Japanese uses kanji which represents sound and meaning. Also Japanese has katakana and hiragana which makes reading Japanese more learner-friendly since it let’s you know what’s up and makes parsing sentences less of a chore ).

I’ve also made the observation that there are words/sentences in my deck in the basic format that I know I read at least 10x times in my anki deck,  yet i still have no idea that the word/sentence is in my deck and don’t know the meaning of the “unknown” word the cards are testing me on either. I think it’s because I find the information extremely arbitrary due to all vowel/syllable/bacchim/etc combinations in Korean…  It’d be probably 100x more arbitrary if I was illiterate in Japanese (=hanja literacy) and was completely oblivious to the hanja behind the hangeul. However this would never happen with the cloze deletion format. It’s just impossible since you’re presented a card with something blanked out. In the traditional format I am presented the word or sentence in its entirety so there are cards where regardless of how many times I’ve read it or seen it, I don’t remember the word and/or the meaning etc. The act of recalling information that is blanked out is more powerful than passively reading something over and over again over a long, extended period of time even if the interval is scheduled by anki. Also just seeing an anki card with something blanked out is inherently more memorable than seeing an anki word with nothing blanked out especially when you blank a part of a word rather than the whole word. Basic anki card formats are especially prone to failure with Korean since there are a myraid of vowel/consonant/bacchim combinations are possible. I’ve read in a book that you can remember stuff better if you practice recall which I agree with whole-heartedly and I find the cloze deletion format more conducive towards practicing recall than the basic sentence/word on the front.  By reading I mean I listened to the audiobook at 1.5x or 1.25x BY USING one of my 4 library cards! Also, here’s  another book review with a summary of the points. And another

You have to practice SMART not HARD. Training and performing are completely different activities. Basketball players do other things besides play basketball to train and piano players don’t play the song over and over again from start to finish to practice. They do stuff in training that they don’t do during the performance because it’s effective. You could write out each of the regular usage kanji ( about 2000) a thousand times and still not be able to write all of them out off the top of your head (OF course I’m recommending RTK for this very reason) but I think in Korea they encourage nonsense like this last I heard because they love working hard (they should focus on working smart more). However in all seriousness learning 2000 hanja is not hard when you’re fluent in Korean provided you’re using effective methods that does not involve copying/writing each character and its meaning/readings a couple hundred times. You have to approach it in a strategic manner or you’re just wasting time. It’s great that you’re hard-working and you have all this energy and drive to reach your goal but if you’re going it about it in the wrong way it can be ineffective and tortuous! It’s not always no pain, no gain. I knew it was more effective than the traditional formats for me but I couldn’t explain why until now.

Clozing multiple syllables of the word (I usually do the first 2 syllables of a word since most words are 2 syllables) makes korean anki cards more effective. When the word is long ie 3 or more syllables I usually choose 2 syllables to blank out. If the word is really bad I cloze more than 2 syllables. The only time I kill a whole word is if the word is one syllable and if it’s hard i give myself a hint with a letter from English alphabet like j for 지. I prefer the English alphabet to using hangeul for hints since English stands out among the sea of Korean and Japanese therefore takes less effort to notice/read. Erasing the whole word and trying to remember that is TOO MUCH WORK and I don’t think it’s worth it. I even put in hints for particularly challenging 2 syllable cloze cards during review if I can tell that I will never remember the word from having failed it a few times ( I can just tell!) . Coming up with the Korean syllable using the hint is challenging since there could be bacchim and Korean has a lot of vowel and consonant sounds. I don’t mark all cards I got wrong AGAIN. I mainly employ this strategy for the sake of conserving time and energy since my number of cards to relearn would double or triple if I were to truly answer AGAIN for anything I got wrong (this time and effort is not proportional to the benefits at all in my opinion. 99% of the time it doesn’t matter if mark the card AGAIN now or 5 days from now or 3 months from now ). I’m kinda balancing my load myself without the plugin insofar as failed cards are concerned. I have my step set to 2400 as it is so I don’t see failed cards until 2-3 days later (this is to help build my excitement and enthusiasm to read the failed cards). Also, if I’m close to the answer ie the bacchim is wrong or the vowel sound is wrong or the consonant sound is wrong I usually don’t mark AGAIN since it’s very much possible I could get it right the next time since I just got an exposure to the word or maybe I’ll read it or hear it somewhere in Korean media before the next review. Korean just has a lot of vowel and consonant sounds so it just so happens that sometimes I’m CLOSE but not correct. However there are times where I will mark the card wrong if I got it wrong because of bacchim because I felt compelled to see the card again sooner because remembering that particular word exactly is important to me. Taking a lax approach to failing cards allows me to focus on words/sentences that I truly want to learn. Furthermore, sometimes I can’t tell how useful/important the word is since what dictates that is Korean native material and I don’t watch Korean tv 10 hours a day everyday let alone everyday etc (I can try to guess or make assumptions based on the meaning of the word for all I know… However, the word I considered most unlikely to be useful could show up over and over again and the word I thought would be the most useful may not be encountered again until 5 months later etc)… NOT ALL CARDS ARE EQUAL. I notice more easily now with the huge intervals that some cards stick well from repetition of seeing it multiple times ie 6x times over a long period of time (I’m talking months or a year here) while other cards don’t stick well despite the repetitions because that’s as far as that anki card will take me for that particular card (and it probably didn’t show up again in my reading/watching since I added it) and it’s obvious that I have to see it being used however many more times in native material in emotional, compelling ways. I recognize the limitations of anki and this is yet anther reason I don’t press FAIL strictly based on whether or not I actually failed the card.

An example with 3 clozes!

front:

back:

clozes:

I initially tried out the multiple cloze format for Korean on a whim because I like being lazy and half-assing anki as much as possible to get the benefit without racking my brain excessively. I noticed that making 1 cloze doesn’t work so I started my experiment by making 3 clozes for each word I added to anki since it would make reviews easier. Of course I pondered to myself if that would mean that reviews triple which probably means that it’s not worth making 3 cards per word (I quickly reached the conclusion that they would not since I have huge intervals and gave it a shot. I’m sure my reviews would’ve quadrupled if I used the default anki settings *shudder* the default steps are so awful). The first 2 clozes each clozed a syllable of the word and the 3rd cloze clozed part(s) of the definition. Later on I tried making 2 clozes instead of 3 by making the cloze for part(s) of the definition the same cloze number as the cloze that is clozing the EASIER syllable. I had to try it out to see if it’s as effective as clozing 3 syllables since 3 cloze cards sound like over-kill. As far a I can tell 2 clozes is as effective 3 clozes for the most part so I only make 3 clozes if I feel like the word/definition etc is that tricky to remember. I realized that for words that seem easy I’m still better off clozing 2 syllables  of the word as opposed to one syllable because I gain familiarity with the word better with 2 clozes than 1 cloze. I only only only make 1 cloze for the korean word if the word is a single syllable or it’s a double-syllable word that’s ridiculously easy  (the word itself is easy to remember) but I still want it in my deck and WANT to ensure that I remember the definition. I almost always have at least 2 clozes for Korean anki cards because I have to practice recall with the word and the definition otherwise I feel like I’m wasting my time. After all, what’s the point if I don’t remember the word itself or don’t remember the definition or neither…

You’d think that making 1 card is better than making 3 but it’s the exact OPPOSITE in my experience if you do it right (the time difference for making 3 cards vs 1 is a matter of 2 seconds and reviews for cloze deletions cards are much easier, faster, and more fun. Regarding the fun factor, clozing is the only significant thing I’ve encountered that makes anki reviews more fun (the colors, fonts, nonsense anki add-ons abt conquering crap etc don’t do shit in terms of fun factor). Multiple cloze cards is like doing steps in ANKI except it’s better and more effective SINCE YOU are seeing variations of the card. Additionally, I can change the ease intervals, minimum interval, graduation interval etc so it really takes up less time than the traditional format. It requires production from me but it’s not burdensome. In fact, the traditional format of sentence on the front with the definition on the back is so burdensome I can’t even get myself to do the review properly since I can’t make myself read the sentence lol… AND I painfully go through the cycle of not remembering or mis-remembering – this is a waste of time and you most definitely never do this with multiple cloze cards provided that you don’t cloze the whole word).  I went through a phase where I made Korean anki cards like I made Japanese anki cards and had to acknowledge that it’s just not working for Korean. For Japanese I usually have only one cloze that’s one syllable (hiragana) of the word by itself or the word in the sentence with the full definition in japanese and english below it. When I tried to adopt the strategy for Korean it was still too difficult and I came to the realization that ONE SYLLABLE in Korean is more complicated than the one syllable in Japanese. That is because Korean has spelling and all these vowels and consonant sounds that don’t exist in Japanese and of course there are Japanese sounds that cannot be properly represented by Hangeul. You’d think that blanking out a syllable is as easy as it gets but it turns out that is not the case for Korean.

I had been misunderestimating Korean and Hangeul all this time haha… Korean is not Japanese so obviously I have to modify my strategy for maximum efficiency and efficacy!  something about the bacchim and number of possible vowel and sound combinations just make it hard to remember the word or maybe it’s better to say that much easier to forget it or remember it vaguely or incorrectly (vague to the point that I don’t know if the word is in my deck or not or i have no idea what the f the word means even though the word has been in my deck for x years with a screenshot from the korean tv show) ie 3 or 4 syllable words that with syllables that all have different vowel sounds and some or all have different bacchim in them. hell even 2 syllable words can be tough to remember due to the myriad of bacchim/vowel combinations (though I know Japanese so I take full advantage of hanja to easily remember the sino-words ie not thinking of the vowel of the sound as an arbitrary vowel since I know the damn hanja. but half the time words don’t even have sino backgrounds!! ) Guess I love me some bacchim-less multi-syllable words that have repeating vowel sounds for the syllables like 비나리, 사이비,거시기,누리 lol (these words are random but easy to remember lol).

Furthermore, CLOZE deletion is wickedly effective for onomatopoeia and the four hanja character stuff compared to the traditional format. Cloze deletion cards help me notice things that I wouldn’t notice in the traditional format or immersion (by immersion I mean I watch shit I like and care about and understand 90%+ without look-ups). Cloze deletion format is a MUST for me for Korean.

Example:

まことしやか = MAKOTOSHIYAKA… cannot be broken down any further… there’s no small tsu, long vowels, etc so it’s pretty damn straightforward.

얼렁뚱떵 (ㅇ+ㅓ + ㄹ, ㄹ+ㅓ+ㅇ ㄸ+ㅜ +ㅇ, ㄸ +ㅓ +ㅇ) – eol   leong   ttung  tteong

here you gotta remember the vowel sound (THERE are 11-20 vowels in korean vs 5 in japanese), bacchim (if there’s double bacchim then it’s even more burdensome lol), consonant sound, whether the consonant is double or not double (and of course it’s half and half and not all or nothing here) etc etc even if I were to make one cloze card….. It’s very to easy to mis-remember/not remember the syllable of the word. For Japanese I can get away with clozing one syllable like ___ことしやか for the example but for Korean making ONE cloze is still WAY TOO much demanding ___렁뚱떵 and I get poor results. It’ll feel like it’s working for a month or a couple months and then I totally blank out and go back to square one, play some guessing games (alternating between the 2 strong contenders usually due to a vowel sounds ) and rinse and repeat for eternity to never remember. It’s wasted energy. HOWEVER I noticed that when I made 2 clozes ie __렁뚱떵 and 얼__뚱떵 I remembered it much better. I learn/read the word in parts which makes me remember/read the word as whole much more easily. It makes me attentive, notice, and connect the dots in a way that immersion or traditional flashcard formats or reading cannot. It’s the only way I can kinda emulate what children can do which is to remember stuff word by word, syllable by syllable with little effort and therefore notice crap easily. As an adult I take the laziest way possible so I will mis-remember and forget the words if I were to test them in the traditional anki format because it’s so easy to not remember it exactly as its written. Additionally, by using this cloze format, I am essentially abiding by the cardinal rule of making flashcards which is KEEP IT SHORT AND SIMPLE (KISS for short).

The only way to make the cloze card effective for Korean is to make multiple cloze cards (c1 c2 c3) to break the information down. I didn’t like the idea of multiple cloze cards because you’re making 2 or 3 cards instead of one but from doing the single c1 cloze with Korean I realize making multiple clozes actually takes less time overall since my anki settings are super lax. Compared to making one cloze card, multiple cloze cards are  less burdensome, I spend less time on anki than if I had created ONE card even though I created 2 or 3 cards for one word since I fail it less frequently and press easy that much more often. Even if I press OKAY, anki will still send the cards out far. Currently my settings are set that for new cards it’s 7 days for okay and 11 days for good. I think my settings for japanese is like 9 days and 14 days?? Also the step is 2900 minutes. I was initially hesitant about making my intervals that huge for Korean but it turned out that I underestimated my memory skills. My fail rate did not increase astronomically and in fact the big, initial intervals are a boon because I can truly focus my energies on cards that are difficult rather than begrudgingly press easy on easy cards too frequently which was exactly what I would’ve experienced even with my original lax anki settings. If I was using the DEFAULT anki settings I’d be wasting a lot of time! Those settings are overkill especially for languages.

Of course my retention rate is not 100% with the cloze deletion format but it’s definitely higher than the rate for the traditional format. And I don’t think you should be aiming for a 100% anyway… I don’t know what the exact ideal number is but I would rather be undertested than overtested. I want to reap the benefits from anki without the unnecessary time sink.

If It’s not obvious, the point of this anki format is not to practice output; it’s to ensure that I properly engage with the information, digest the information in bite-sized pieces. Yes, I am asking myself to fill in the SYLLABLE which is output in a limited capacity (I have the whole sentence, the other syllable, the meaning, definition in english, a clue with the English letter telling me what the consonant sound is etc) but it’s nothing compared to actual output when you’re conjuring something out of thin air. I certainly don’t expect myself to be able to conjure up words in writing or speaking because I have it in my deck in this clozed deletion format. Cards I see periodically via this format definitely leave enough of an impression where I know whether or not a word is in my deck or not if I come across it again while watching a Korean TV show or reading a Korean book etc. I CANNOT say the same about the cards that are the usual word on the front and definition on the back or sentence on the front and definition in the back (I can barely get myself to read the sentence let alone make sure I remember the WORD, the SENTENCE, the MEANING, etc and there’s a reason for that which I’ve written about in great length in my hanjaro post.  Luckily nowadays I can at least have sentences I mined from reading have hanja inserted in before importing into anki.   ). I think learning words involves remembering the word itself, the meaning, and how you use it so that’s why I like breaking it down like this. I use this format is for my passive Korean ability. It’s between passive and active in a way since it does stuff for me that just watching/reading/hearing Korean (stuff I like. Stuff I may rewind while watching etc. I do not indiscriminately watch tv regardless of the language ) doesn’t do for me. Anki helps me either build or strengthen my “relationship” with words! Without anki, I get exposed to words WHICH I would immediately forget after looking it up or not encounter for months or a year. However, if I use anki, these words inevitably leave an impression on me in most cases since they are presented in this relatively easy QUIZ format. As a title says, I find this anki format to be the best for learning korean from TV SHOWS. It’s a great way to prime the words and make them memorable since ultimately I’m relying on the korean TV shows/books/articles/etc to help the words stick via memorable/emotional contexts but the words are not used that frequently ( I’m past those words and the words I’m trying to learn aren’t useless since they are words a native knows. ).

Using anki is better than mass-watching thousands of hours of korean tv passively (look up nothing, not rewind, use no subs with the exception of korean subs etc) and expect to magically understand everything 100% (which won’t happen since Korean culture is probably very different from your culture for one thing), watching korean tv looking up the majority of unknown words in google/dictionary while not making any anki cards or copying shit into a notebook to never review the aforementioned shit. Finally, half-ass anking is better than no anking. On a similar note, it could be construed that multiple cloze cards IS half-assing anki compared  to the much recommended sentences cards or word cards (target language on the front, definition/explanation on the back), but when it comes down to it multiple cloze cards  are more effective for me. Difficulty is desirable when doing anki reviews since it makes the memories that much stronger but it shouldn’t be excessive. Excessive difficulty ultimately wastes your time because if it’s too hard, you can’t do your anki reviews properly and you waste time and effort trying to make it work and lying to yourself that it’s you and not the format or you lie to yourself it would work if you’d just torture yourself and push harder for abyssmal results.  I strive for an ideal level of difficulty and the multiple cloze deletion format facilitates that. I’ve come to the conclusion that for me half-ass anking is better than no anking for learning languages!!

I’ve found some great ways to STREAMLINE THE PROCESS for generating cards while watching KOREAN talk/variety shows. I have a different for process for stuff I mine from reading because I go after efficiency.

I recommend and use the following:

lingoes dictionary – I use the naver japnese/korean dictionary from 2009 (?)(that’s the date on lingoes if I remember correctly.) as well as the k-e ones.  I like it because it’s really fast since it’s off-line and searches as you type. You can also set it up so it looks up text you double-click on, look up a word in the definition with a shortcut,etc but it does not know how to unconjugate so it’s only helpful for nouns for the pop-up function. You can bring the lingoes program to the front and to the back with a shortcut. I also wrote an autohotkey script to send korean text to lingos.

Also recently I’ve fallen in love with the example sentences. I always ignored them until this year lol. I always ignored them because I only cared about what the word means in the instance that I came across.

AUTOHOTKEY (set to naver/daum/some korean-english dictionary/naver k-e example sentences/naver j-k examples sentences/ and my HG and OG Japanese google imi wa appended to the word). as I mentioned the lingoes dictionary is not up to date. I wish it was up to date! I got the idea from this blog https://mykorea.blog/look-up-a-word-or-phrase-in-a-korean-dictionary-using-autohotkey/ PAIR This with a gaming mouse with the macros set up and you WILL save a lot of time and feel more motivated to stuff up

WORD QUERY – this anki plugin is amazing. after installing it you find and install the dictionaries then go to word-query when you’re in anki and set-up a card-template for the look-up. You put the word in the specified field and it generates the defintion entry in the specified field ! it does not know how to unconjugate since it searches the dictionary. It can be run in EDITING window and BROWSE window. The only downside is that for some of the dictionaries it will only insert 1 matching entry when there are more ie any word that is a homonym. I can circumvent the homonym issue for naver J-k by pasting from lingoes since the lingoes dictionary file is the same as the stardict naver JK dictionary file. Also, some dictionaries put all the definitions under 1 entry (the korean-english ones) which sometimes makes the entry extremely long. However, I do not spend time editing/trimming that stuff since I don’t have the time and it doesn’t bother me. I set it up so the wordquery stuff shows up on the back of the card. The clutter doesn’t bother me lol.

click here for the mediafire link that contains 6 dictionaries that I use

to break it down

vicom is korean-english (from lingoes)

edocu is korean-english ( from lingoes)

quick-kor-ENG is korean-english

naverkrjp is korean-japanese

koreandic is korean-korean

hanja just inserts all the homonyms

biggest korean dictionary online with 900,000+ entries

and more…

the one titled github was a tsv file that I converted from this github page

I think there might be a duplicate there….

For Korean I use korean-english/ korean-korean and naver korean-japanese dictionary and the hanja dictionary (sometimes it’s helpful or maybe I just do it for the shits and giggles. it generates all the homophones in hanja form! I usually don’t pay attention to this).

I also use it in conjunction with readlang and rikaisama (Japanese) since I import cards using those programs/services. Readlang doesn’t know how to unconjugate so you’d have to painstackingly unconjugate the verbs so I only use it on certain cards which I mark via tagging before importing.

HANSEIDO – This gives you korean definitions. I use it to mass generate defintions. I select all the korean cards in browse and generate the definition. again, it does not know how to unconjugate. you can not use it in the EDITING FIELD. It can only be executed in the browse field. I was curious and tested it to see if it would look up hanja since there are lotta of homophones depending on the word and it WORKED!

CLOZE DELETION SHORTCUT PLUGIN called BASIC C1 WRAPPER- I installed other plugins I would never use and replaced the code with the cloze deletion shortcut for c2 and c3 and c4 etc. so for me it’s control + 2, control +3, control + 4 to make the highlighted text clozed. there’s also the space bar one

CLOZE EACH CHARACTER PLUGIN – it’s based off the cloze shortcut plugin which uses control + space bar AS THE shortcut for c1. Therefore, the spacebar cloze plugin stops working if I install cloze each character. So, I chose this over the spacebar plugin!)

as is this (I use the new button/short-cut for clearing all the clozes in the field) and this

PAINT.NET PROGRAM – for cutting out the text from the screenshots. I like this over gimp and MS paint and this other program. I use the shortcut key “s” to select a chunk of the picture so I can cut it and paste it into anki. Also I use the macro mouse for copy pasting (control c, control v). Unlike the other programs, paint.net has shortcuts for accessing a specific picture when you open up multiple pictures. Sometimes I take screenshots and save them to generate cards later and so after I open a handful of pictures I switch between the pictures by using the shortcuts control + 1 for the first pic open, control + 2 for the second pic open, etc etc

EDIT: I now use sharex. check out mattvsjapan’s youtube vid about the program!

TWEAK ANKI SETTINGS

This isn’t a plugin or a program but anki is completely different with different settings. I used to be overtested like crazy from the default settings as well as the damn steps. So I don’t feel burdened or ashamed of generating multiple cloze deletion cards simply because my settings are set so I can push easy cards far out rather quickly and cloze deletion cards are easier to remember than regular cards and I did regular cards already and know they don’t work as well. My settings for Japanese are even more lax since I’m that much more confident and comfortable with Japanese. I have different settings for each deck depending my level and the format (THE CLOZE DELETION card format has huge ease intervals etc for obvious reasons!). as you get better at a language at the language you should increase the ease interval/etc.the default settings are just too much. and if you need those default settings to retain a decent percentage than you’re probably better off not using anki and YOU SHOULD instead read and listen consistently to learn/familiarize yourself with the common words/sentence patterns/ etc.

https://vladsperspective.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/optimize-your-anki-youre-overtesting-yourself-on-too-few-cards-make-huge-gains/

and don’t forget to change the STEPS. I hate steps! My step is just one and it’s usually 2900 minutes. If I fail a card I do not want to see it 1 minute later since it will interrupt the flow of my anki review mojo. I love anki now. But seriously why the hell do people want to see anki cards 1 minute and 10 minutes after failing… that just sounds like torture (It literally ruins anki reviews because I get CONSTANT interruptions not to mention I can’t fathom how anyone can consider 1 minute and 10 minutes intervals to be SPACED. if you need to see it that frequently that maybe you shouldn’t have added that card. I feel more motivated to read my anki card after failing it if anki shows it to me 2 or 3 days from when I initially saw it rather than the next day or 5 minutes later.

When the dictionary and google and naver translate fail me I go to chiebukuro, reddit, korean discord, or korean stack exchange. I prefer chiebukuro solely for the fact that it’s less of a pain in the ass. Also Japanese people are very kind and sometimes Japanese is better than English for the explanation since the 2 languages are grammatically similar but Japanese and Korean are very different languages and some shit is just is hard to translate to Japanese and vice versa. the stack exchange wants me to write a paragraph in the question field or something. it always bitches about how I don’t have enough text. It’s ridiculous.

So I usually download the episode than watch it on youtube or ondemandkorea etc because it’s so much more convenient with rewinding and fast-wording or even looping. I use kmplayer because I can set it up so that I can rewind and fastforward by scrolling my mouse and that is very convenient. Also I can press f5 and f6 to set point a and point b respectively so I can loop the video (I don’t use this often). also if I press control + c kmplayer will take a screenshot and put it in my clipboard which I can paste into paint/gimp/etc. KMPLAYER takes the screenshot of the video at full screen which makes the text BIGGER so it’s really convenient since korean shows are notorious for having small text. Meanwhile Japanese shows have HUGE text literally covering 20 % of the screen as you can see all over this post which I like for practical reasons ie reading/putting it into anki though sometimes I wish it were a little smaller but it’s still better than Korean TV text. I always gotta make the Japanese video smaller before taking a screenshot to add to anki while for Korean it’s ALWAYS fullscreen just to get that tiny text as big as possible.

So when i come across something that I want to add to anki I…

1) press control + c on kmplayer. I either let the video play ( I can rewind if I want to etc) or loop it at a specified scene.
2) paste in paint
3) search lingoes
4) run word query with control + enter (right enter). I set it up so that the word-query dictionary fields do not show up during reviews. they take up a lot of space so I just copy whatever I want into the cloze field.

5) if that doesn’t work I go to google or whatever. Or I could add a tag to it to go back to fill the definition in later so I can just keep watching the episode. sometimes I have to ask on chiebukuro or korean stack exchange and the responses can take days sometimes.

6) I cut out a square or rectangle that contains the text and paste into the screenshot field of my anki card. I set this to show up in the BACK. Sometimes I find the scene itself ( without the text) helpful to remember so i’ll include it on top of the text.

7) if I find something in lingoes with an example sentence I paste the definition, example sentence, japanese translation all on the same field. then I use the shortcut for cloze deleting and cloze delete each syllable of the word (usually 2), and a part of the definition (a syllable or two). I try not to make too many cloze deletion cards. I usually generate 2 cloze deletion cards since first card is for the syllable of the word & syllable(s) of the defintion and second card is for the second syllable. I cloze the definition under the cloze of the syllable that’s EASIER to remember. If the word is particularly hard I will make 2 clozes with 2 syllables of the word and a 3rd cloze with only parts of the definition clozed out ( I rarely do this one because I don’t like making 3 cards for a word unless the word is particularly tricky or challenging). it all depends on how I perceive the difficulty of the word in terms of remembering it.

I repeat the steps if the word has another meaning (which was not used in the talk/variety show) that I think is easy to remember/ it seems worth remembering. kill 2 birds with one stone.

b) if lingoes doesn’t find anything but word query dictionary finds something then I use that. If i don’t have the sentence I just use word and definition with stuff clozed out.

** when I initially discovered the wonder of cloze deletion I was between a rock and a hard place because cloze-deleting a screenshot of a tv show is time-consuming (compared to clozing text with the ms paint and copy-pasting. i sure as hell won’t type out the sentence) but effective since the screenshot is memorable and I actually get something out of my anki review since something is blanked out. Inserting a screenshot that contains text without blanking anything out does nothing for me for korean. I realized one day that I can cloze the definition entry and put the screenshot on the back as a reminder/test as to why I care about the word. That’s why I love clozing the example sentences in lingoes. I feel more motivated to read the sentence or phrase in the screenshot knowing that I read the definition or explanation just a few seconds ago.

8) as I’m adding my cloze deletion cards I also add the word by itself to another field so I can look up all the crap on hanseido later on. I put the hanseido definition on the front since it’s a different definition than the one I grabbed from the other dictionaries and I’m more likely to read it if it’s on the front of the card. no scratch that; i will not read it if it’s on the back. it’s some psychological/conditioning thing! I’m very impulsive with the pressing.

9) after I’m done adding for the day I run hanseido in browse

10 ) be amazed by the number of cards I Made (remember one word could have 2 or 3 cards) in one day and actually remember shit! If you want to know how many NOTES you have rather than number of cards, type Card:1 in your card browser after selecting the deck.

Anyway, going back to the initial example I gave courtesy of some episode of HIGH SCHOOL RAPPER. I know that if I did the traditional format of pasting the screenshot let’s say on the front and the answer on the back I may not remember the word or the meaning despite countless reviews on anki. For example what I get out of the anki reviews could be that it’s a 2 syllable word i failed a bunch of times, or a 2 syllable word that starts a with a gg sound, or I’ll remember the definition but not the word itself ( so I may not recognize thy the word when I see it in the wild) , or I’ll remember. the word but not remember the meaning ( or assign the meaning to that word). There’s too much going on in those 2 syllables to just make ONE CARD.  There are double consonants, one syllable has bacchim, the other syllable doesn’t, i gotta remember which syllable has the bacchim and which doesn’t, i gotta remember the hangeul that makes up the bacchim,  definition is not as simple and straightforward as concrete nouns like pig etc (I think ggaddak is an adjective? korean grammar is confusin’).  I gotta break it down to get something out of it and I wish I figured that out sooner.

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BACK:

<- I actually already had this word in my deck from months or years back.

I found it!

So it was set up as

Front:

이도 저도

Back:

So when I initially looked up the word the meaning of the word, the meaning was crystal clear since I looked up the word while watching Strong Heart in 2012 or 2013?? I definitely remembered the meaning and the definition for at least 30 minutes in my head due to short-term memory since I heard it/read it/looked up the definition, it made COMPLETE sense, and it was used in a funny way in native speech. I added it to anki and reviews for this word went swimmingly for a while but eventually I completely forgot the meaning of the word and the word probably a few months or a year later. It was on the default, overkill anki settings with the steps and everything so it’s obvious it’s the card format that’s sucking not to mention the default steps are soul-sucking and just completely unnecessary for cards you make yourself. At that point I entered the cycle of learning and remembering and forgetting the word and the meaning and I’m sure half the time I was half-assing my reviews which includes not even reading the back of the card (like I said impulsively press enter or spacebar after 0.5 seconds). Passively reading stuff doesn’t do shit in this particular case. active recall is what counts… I ended up never regaining the initial crystal clear comprehension and  familiarity with the word and the meaning that I possessed when  I first looked it up. Actually maybe I did regain that level of clarity to some extent transiently when I would read the card in its entirety but that memory never lasted a significant amount of time because I am not practicing active recall with this very common anki format. It seems like a simple enough task to extend my memory of this word/phrase and its meaning that I learned almost effortlessly by encountering it in a memorable context but in hindsight it’s clear that this anki format is terrible for that. I’m sure if I added the card in the multiple cloze deletion format I would’ve remembered/learned this word and its meaning first and foremost and with less time and effort and I most certainly wouldn’t have looked it up while watching PRODUCE 48! I’m not implying that if I added the card in 2012 in multiple cloze format then never saw it outside my deck that I should know it in 2019. What I think happened was that I encountered the phrase HOWEVER many times after adding it to anki in 2012/2013 and probably looked it up again even though it’s in my anki deck since the anki reviews weren’t effective then decided to not add it again since it’s already in anki. I am aware that I left out “anida” in the front and I’m not surprised I did that since as I mentioned before I half-assed anking when it came to Korean. I don’t think the presence of “anida” on the front of the card would’ve made a big difference in the end result x months/years later since the anki format is inherently lacking. ido-juhdo is the meat of the phrase anyway!

I added this word AGAIN in 2019 while watching Produce 48 either knowing that I already have it in my deck (it’s easier to make a card than to search, find, and edit a card or suspend a card) or while not even being aware. I knew it wasn’t my first time encountering this word or looking up the definition but I also knew that I was looking it up now since I had no idea what the hell it meant. In this clozed format I learned the word and its meaning easily (THERE’S NO BACCHIM OR DOUBLE CONSONANTS ETC and the context is memorable) and I kept hitting easy so I could focus on other cards that are harder. I have come across Korean words in Korean tv shows (2012 to now) that are used in fun and memorable ways but because I didn’t add it in the clozed format, I missed out on learning the words!!! Trying to learn the word (remembering Korean words is not the same thing as remembering Japanese words or English words or Spanish words etc etc. It’s demanding in its own way ), the meaning, the usage (Korean grammar/conjugation/etc is no damn joke. I nodded when I read someone say it’s Japanese grammar times ten. it’s not an exaggeration actually), etc all at the same time is not following the principle of KEEP IT SHORT AND SIMPLE. 

How I EFFICIENTLY learn Korean from reading

EDIT: 11/2018 – not sure when exactly it happened but I found a much more efficient way to go about this of course. It involves readlang.com and I will post it about it in the future if I feel like it. Also my 2016 post on learning korean with anki is also really inefficient compared to what I do now 🙂

1) I don’t like staring at the computer

2) I’ve been at learning Japanese for like 8 years so I’ve been obsessed with efficiency as of late and have let go of stuff that just sucks up time but doesn’t make a big impact. In other words I’m optimizing my use of anki as much as possible.

3) my anki usage for Korean works because of my current level in Korean. I could not do this with Spanish fo sho.
I hate reading Korean sometimes. I only say this because I’m super used to reading Japanese and them Chinese characters. while for Korean words I know are hiding behind a mask until I look it up and go goddamnit that’s such a simple, obvious word. of course the upside to Korean is that it’s easier to type and look up stuff but then again sometimes trying to figure out the meaning that matches the word can be more of a pain in the ass compared to looking up a Japanese word with the Chinese characters in the word but that’s what chiebukuro and lang-8 are for when my analytical and critical thinking skills are lacking or when I don’t want to use them lol. that isn’t to say that my Korean reading is weak. I read fast because it’s inevitable with alphabets to get faster at reading them but alphabets don’t give me that effortless feel that I get when I read Japanese with the Chinese characters. the reading is automatic and effortless because the Chinese characters are so distinct looking.

4) I only read about topics that interest me. the generic advice of read news articles everyday is BULLSHIT. I’m sorry no one gives a shit about the news at least not as much as you unless you don’t even follow the advice you are saying. by the way the most important thing you need to notice is that the person who is spouting this nonsense is not even fluent in their target language. what is up with these assholes that are not even fluent giving advice that are shit.

5) I learn Korean using Japanese. once in a while I use Korean to learn Korean because I just got taken a site with Korean definitions instead of Japanese definitions when I clicked on a link in Google and I didn’t want to waste anymore time in Google since the definition made sense to me. ALSO I don’t have intentions of going monolingual dictionary at all. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel that way. for the most part I prefer to read Japanese because it’s more efficient because they use Chinese characters while Korean they don’t so you gotta really use your brain every f’in time and figure out which word they’re using based off the context at times (which is perfectly, fine, acceptable and effortless to Korean native speakers I’m sure. but I sure as hell am not subjecting myself to unnecessary mental somersaults)

the main reason I want to share this is for THE EFFICIENCY ASPECT. I hope to inspire people to stop being damn perfectionists because it will slow down the rate at which you learn the language. but seriously what is up with those people with the “language notebooks” it’s like their obsessed with their handwriting saying it looks ugly or pretty or improved. it’s like it’s inefficient.  IT’S SERIOUSLY ridiculously depressing how inefficient and ineffective the notebook stuff is especially if you handwrite all the definitions (even worse if you do example sentences from the dictionary or add the hanja) to the words you look up in a book or something and then NEVER Look at it again. talk about a time sink. i don’t know what possesses people to do this shit. it will not get you to fluency and it is not smart. i could never even get myself to do it because i see the futility in doing that like how will this serve me 5 years from now 10 years from now 6 months from now. these people are clearly not trying to become fluent or they refuse to see the errors in their ways in that there are better ways to go about it. clearly their goal is not fluency though they don’t seem to realize it.

First things first, I’ve been reading articles about hanja usage in Korean like mixed vs only hangeul and people’s thoughts on the advantages and disvatanges for both sides.

So I printed out a bunch of articles on my topic of interest. by a bunch I mean 180 pagesworth. I format that shit like boss on microsoft word! I went through half of it so far.

What I do is

1) I read it and circle words/grammar/anything with a red pen.
2) Then on a later day I type in all the words/grammar whatever (not the whole sentence) in a notepad file (I don’t type whole sentences or paste the sentences/paragraphs because then I’m spending a lot of time searching for my single word that I don’t know on the right side of naver translator which makes this shit REALLY INEFFICIENT ). sometimes i do take the sentence or the clause but usually i don’t because it’s not worth it.
3) I paste that into naver translator and translate Korean to Japanese.

“http://translate.naver.com/#/ko/en/

4) I read the sentence or the section of the article again with the definition in mind and finally comprehend the sentence/paragraph in its entirety. for the words where the TRANSLATOR fails me or I want a more detailed definition I just mark them to back to afterwards (put a star next it whatever **) because it’s more efficient that way. i mark that in the notepad rather than the naver because naver is finicky. also simplenote is probably better than notepad since it automatically saves but my computer has been rather stable lately so i’m not worried about stuff suddenly closing/crashing.

5) I look up the words in which the translator definition does not satisfy me on naver dictionary by searching all the words in the search bar. for example you can look up multiple words at the same time by putting spaces between them ie “겨워 대신”. You can do a lot like infinite??? but then it gets more difficult to read through so I usually do 5 words at most. I got really excited at this and I tried it on dic.yahoo.co.jp but it didn’t work 😦 but we have rikaisama for Japanese!

OR I use LINGOES dictionary WHICH HAS the korean/japanese naver dictinoary and it has the pop-up option. and i’ve configured it so that if I copy a korean word that is unknown the definition pops up in 30 pt font and I’m able to highlight the definition or multiple defintions and save them. Maybe I prefer this because there’s no internet required so there’s no lag involved.

6) for the stuff that fails naver translate I go to Google and do “word 意味は”” and then if that fails I ask on chiebukuro with a  ほにゃららってどういう意味ですか？　and  the whole sentence or the whole paragraph if I need too. sometimes I go directly to chiebukuro (sometimes lang-8) after naver dic fails me because I don’t like wasting time and I have a feeling that Google will fail me. by the way I don’t have to ever do this for Japanese… it’s really rare. usually the Japanese dictionary has my back. but seriously why does the korean dictionary refuse to carry korean grammar stuff.
7) I paste the stuff I get from Google/chiebukruo/Japanese blog into notepad
8) AT THIS POINT after having reading the sentence with the definition I have deleted any words I do not want to learn for whatever reason ( useless/not interested/too easy/ too obscure/etc/etc). I delete the words on NOTEPAD and NOT naver translate because naver translate is finicky and I do not want to waste my time. so I usually repaste my modified list of words into naver translate.

ANYWAYS, I paste the stuff in the LEFT SIDE OF naver translate into EXCEL

9) I paste the stuff in the RIGHT SIDE OF naver translate into excel.
10) REPLACE OR ADD to the entries of the RIGHTSIDE of naver translate with the stuff I got from Google/chiebukuro/Japanese blog WITH if I’m adding. BY THE WAY I DO NOT OBSESS OVER getting PERFECT or complete definitions over every word because that is a waste of time. anki is a tool. it should not be your only contact with the language and you really can’t know a word until you encounter it multiple times in the wild. hence I do not stress over PERFECTING my anki cards (that is a waste of time after a certain point). I only do this stuff with Google/chiebukruo because the dictionary fails me.
11) I select column D and paste =CONCATENATE(A1,11,B1,22,A1)
12) I copy column d, paste into notepad and replace 11 with : and 22 with : using control + h … I’m gonna start doing a1,11,b1,11,a1 so I just replace 11. I used to do

instead of : for the part between the definition and the cloze deletion blank.
13) blank out the random syllable of the Korean word on the left side by using * to blank out all the parts then using control + h to replace that with ____ for my blanks
14) add tags: article on the top of the notepad file so that they’re ALL tagged with article
15) import into anki with the card specifically formatted with 3 fields for cloze deletion blank, definition, whole word or sentence (it’s not often but sometimes I do get the whole sentence or phrase). that way I can edit card type/format whatever so that I get cloze deletion blank definition on the front and whole word on the back.

I feel very content that I’m able to go about it in an efficient way. Because of this I’ve been able to add like anywhere from 20-50 words to anki per week because I work full time and I like to do stuff I enjoy and minimize my use of anki. My expectations are that I won’t really notice much of a benefit from doing this until I add a few thousand words just because I’m not at that sweet intermediate stage where everyday you feel like you improve so much. Right now I’m at a point where I know the majority of the commonly used words which enables me to notice the less commonly used words and also allows those words leave more of an impression on my mind. This is just my assessment of my current situation with Korean based on my experience with Japanese. THe UPSIDE to this upper stage compared to the intermediate is that I will notice improvement from ignoring Korean/not doing stuff in korean. By that I will go weeks without watching/doing something in Korean then watch something or read something and I feel like my korean is somehow better in that certain concepts or words or whatever just makes more sense or is more automatically processed then before. the reason is there’s a digestion/processing thing that happens while i’m not even doing shit in that language. it’s a subconscious thing.  steve kaufman touched on this specific observation in language learning but i don’t know which youtube video it was.

Just sharing because I’ve been  learning Japanese for long and though I cannot take back all the time I “wasted” by doing stuff inefficiently etc I can learn from that and figure out ways to make stuff efficient from here on what. also i try not to think about it because it’s too depressing lol. by the way for japanese i use rikai-sama, excel, capture2text, microsoft word (holy shit control +h for ^p is MIND BLOWING!and i wish i knew about it sooner ), transcripts of japanese tv i linked on the side to be more efficient about it.

if you’re confused about my anki format here is an entry

https://choronghi.wordpress.com/2016/11/24/how-i-learn-korean-with-anki/

if somehow you can think of ways to optimize this process even more let me know. as far as I know there isn’t because there’s no pop-up korean dictionaries that’ll enable me to do this and this is the most efficient way to look up words.

I will post my KOREAN 101 post when I gather up a few more words that make me go why the hell don’t I know this yet.

Interesting Korean Article with AUDIO

They have the whole transcript of the audio!! It’s a goldmine for language learners. For me with my current level of Korean it doesn’t really matter if I have the audio or not but nonetheless I will definitely listen to this once I read this article and look up all the words. Plus I’m curious how calm and collected and composed everyone will be since sometimes debates get heated. One of my favorite things I love watching/listening to Japanese is people debating about something heatedly and the atmosphere gets tense and people start talking even faster and interrupt each other and start saying things that are kinda mean but in keigo etc etc lol… it’s just great entertainment and great for my Japanese learning.

The link to the interview is below. The topic is writing Korean using only hangeul VS writing Korean with hangeul and hanja mixed together. That’s a topic that’s really been of interest to me as as person who is learning Korean after Japanese (I’m still learning Japanese but  I am just saying it like this because I recommend learning one language at a time. I absolutely don’t see the point of learning 2 languages from scratch at the same time unless you love being inefficient!!! ). I’ve been able to find interesting articles to satisfy my curiosity in Japanese but there are articles that aren’t translated into Japanese for obvious reasons so I just had to read the Korean articles and discussions. This is the only one I found with audio so I felt that it was my duty as a fellow Korean learner to share in case anyone else finds this topic interesting. I personally have printed a lot of articles including this one to read… I’ve been looking up stuff using naver translate because that enables to generate anki cards in MCD format EFFICIENTLY.

http://www.nocutnews.co.kr/news/4590668#csidxd4064261da1b001b5a4543e4f382073 

I will paste one little excerpt from this interview-y thing that totally resonated with me.

그러면 한 가지 예만 듭시다. 어휘력이 상당히 떨어져서 상당히 외래어를 많이 쓰는데 제가 아주 답답하고 불쾌한 것은요. 바로 어제께도 뉴스에서 어떤 문제가 나오면 이슈라는 말 잘 써요. 당면문제, 시급한 현안 해도 될 것인데. 그 다음에 TF팀을 구성한다 그럽니다. TF라고 하는 걸 태스크포스라고 좀 더 분명하게 말하는 경우도 있는데 그것은 특별전담부서라고 하면 됩니다. 그러니까 점잖은 우리 말이 있는데도 불구하고 자꾸 외래어를 쓰고 하는 거는 우리말이 황폐화하고 있다는 증거예요.

원문보기:
http://www.nocutnews.co.kr/news/4590668#csidx0384ba9ef7c53588abf9a061eb1621c

There are some foreign words they use in Korean that I absolutely despise and “issue” is one of them! If I ever write in Korean and need to say issue I will definitely use one of the other words he suggested. BTW I wrote my very first lang-8 entry in Korean earlier this year out of necessity. I just had to ask for suggestions and of course nobody answered. I didn’t make much mistakes but the person was fixing all the spacing errors since I didn’t space anything lol.

holy crap.

I’m not the type of person to share stuff like sharing haul photos of Japanese books ( it’s only meaningful if you actually read the books you hauled) or my handwritten Japanese writing but I thought this was interesting to share since I’ve been going at Japanese for so long.

holy crap I still have this notebook where I use to work on remember the kanji. I’m not the type of person to keep everything like those frightening hoarders on TV. A good rule of thumb is to throw shit away if you haven’t used it or worn it etc in over a year. If anything I would love to be a danshari expert like SAKAI MASATO. He loves throwing crap away.

SO I’m surprised by the fact that i was able to fill up a whole page in such a neat manner. Writing so that the letters fit between the lines is a big deal to me because I’m lazy and I hate writing stuff by hand. It’s evidenced by the messier picture. Of course there are worse pages but 3 pics are enough for this blog post. Coincidentally I also found little entries I wrote in Japanese which is cool (entries where i just wrote something in japanese without looking up how to write x word on the computer because that’s pointless… might as well type it on the computer then) because I’m like oh I was able to do this then. I would think this notebook is from 2008 or 2009 maybe 2010. For remember the kanji reviews I usually wrote it anywhere and everywhere and then threw the paper away. nowadays I do kakitori reviews on anki because I eventually had to convert the cards over since I can read Japanese and it’s nonsensical for me to stick with the original format of key word + whatever.

So anyways if you just look at this notebook I look like I”m super hardcore and dedicated to Japanese learning right? at least to some random person who doesn’t know Japanese. It looks intimidating lol. If you look closely you’ll notice I’m not just copying the chinese character OVER AND OVER AND OVER OVER AND OVER AGAIN which is a strategy that is very much emphasized and used in Korea probably even now for learning hanja ( those poor kids). It’s great that the emphasize working hard but stupid learning methods are stupid and wasting people’s time and energy that could be put to better use. I was doing remember the kanji where you remember the story and write the kanji. Of course I didn’t fill up the whole page in one day though it would be easily done if all you did is copy the same character over and over again which is just stupid since it’s not effective.

I think I started remember the kanji in 2008 or 2007 and I used anki and it’s 2016 and I”m still using anki and i converted most of it to kakitori and i average 10 cards a day? But the thing is writing by hand isn’t that important nowadays for any language, not just japanese, so I try to not put excessive time into my heisig deck so I don’t go out of my way to add more cards unles I come across some word that i really want to know how to write by hand. Sometimes I want to learn to write a certain word just because I want to not necessarily because it’s useful or common. I still haven’t broken down and drilled the japanese surname/first name anki deck. I don’t care!!! I’ll literally read a japanese novel and for x character they’ll put the furigana on the name the first instance and then the next time i read the book and get to the next instance of that person’s name i don’t know what that person’s name is though I recognize the kanji or the meanig of the kanji and i keep reading and if they do not repeat furigana again i finish the book not knowing their name. if they repeat the furigana then i might remember it at that point or remember it for a little while and then forget it again. I don’t think it’s too bad because even if i don’t know the reading, I do recognize the kanji and or the meaning of it. I just don’t see the point of me putting effort into name readings. words are more important to me. most of the japanese names I can read are probably names I learned from talk/variety shows because they have so many people on the shows.

rather than writing, I think my time is put to better use reading or listening! I am just apersonthat hates writing stuff by hand whether it’s english or korean or japanese. I just hate writing… the physical movements with my hand are just so demanding for me. But I still want to know how to write Japanese so I’m glad I stuck with it!

How I learn Korean with Anki

I touched upon this on this previous post but i wanted to break it down. I’m pleased with the streamlined process. There’s some info I have to share beforehand which is that I usually don’t take more than 3 seconds with each card and only one format works for me and I know this from my experience with learning Japanese (It’s just my personality and I can’t get myself to read each card thoroughly and slowly… as soon as the answer pops in my head I press the space bar and give my answer). If you take more than 5 seconds with each anki card you should really reevaluate what you’re doing. As amazing as Anki is with the spaced repetition, if you use it wrong you are wasting your time and in the worse case scenario you’re deluded into thinking that you’re kicking ass in x language when you are wasting time.

(yes it says 3.9 secs but I’m still converting the format over for old cards that are still the traditional format of word in front and definition in front. I think that’s why my answering time is longer than it is because like I said it’s in my personality to press that space bar ASAP)

Another thing I have to mention is that I am only able to do this mcd format because of my current level of familiarity of Korean and my current korean vocabulary. I had mentioned in that previous post that I recently started this format because I finally reached a point where I passed this vocab level/korean familarity threshold where I am actually able to engage with the MCD card format and doing those cards are virtually effortless. Well more like really easy. AND another thing I HATE IT when people write stuff off without thinking about the possibilities!! in a previous post I mentioned how people think TV is a waste of time blahblah blh but that i disagreed because ultimately it came down to the TV show because there are really well-written, well-produced shows with words I gotta look up words in the dictionary if I want to understand them in their entirety. Anki gets a bad rep too because people don’t realize the possibilities like the different formats of cards you could set up in anki. for me this format has been soooo good for my Japanese and now my Korean. Of course I am using anki properly as in supplementing my learning from Native Media as opposed to putting all my time and energy into anki. There is an ideal ratio of how much time you spend with anki vs your language and my personal belief is that in the beginning you should especially spend more time with the language and native media etc rather than anki. For Korean, in the beginning when I added cards in the traditional format of word or sentence in front and definition in back I could tell from doing the reviews that this shit wasn’t happening because anki does not replace actually spending time with the language. also I think in the beginning certain words are just easier to remember than others just because certain words are that much more common and useful and it’s overwhelming in the beginning with all the Kango. So even though I was adding these cards and knew I wasn’t actually retaining most of it I still did the anki reviews but I didn’t take it seriously. I would half-ass it and put as little effort into it as possible and I would mark GOOD instead of AGAIN when I had no f’in idea what the answer was because I knew there was no point drilling this in anki till i “know” it because that shit will not happen. ANd now in 2016 I get to convert those cards into mcd format and actually learn them and actually engage with anki.

I was going to leave the deck I originally shared on anki and then share my mcd format deck but anki just ended up over-writing the original deck so… that’s unfortunate.

SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO here is an example of the streamlined anki process!!

step 1) Watch a korean tv show that I will actually enjoy and gain something from. It’s truly amazing all the different information and stories I hear from watching korean tv and japanese tv that i would never get from american tv and vice versa. it’s enriching and I love it.

SO I found out about this episode of As I say from googline unprertty rapstar in google news because i LOVE unpretty rapstar season 1

http://www.ondemandkorea.com/as-i-say-e7.html

(this site actually has english subs but i don’t use them because that’s just counterintuitive for me at my level)

this episode features CHEETAH who was a fierce and talented rapper from unpretty rapstar season 1 . sometimes I torrent the episode of the tv show but for this particular show there’s no torrent for it. I enjoyed listening to alllll the guests in the episode in the end ! Another show i REcently did was 이몽사몽 episode where the girl was saying that her mom was a video game addict. I wanted to watch this episode because it sounded mad interesting.

step 2) I use my iphone and search for unknown words in my korean-japansee dictinoary while watching the show. I IGNORE any words that plop on the screen that are not words that came out people’s mouths like sound effects or describing crap. Sometimes I do get tempted to look up and add background korean text IF it looks like it’ll be really easy to remember like no bacchim. Usually they “sub” the dialogue so I can usually look up the word. If I find the correct definition i copy it and paste it into my notepad in my iphone. so while I do this I usually rewind the show 15 seconds using the left arrow (whether it’s the .mp4 playing or this website) or I just let the show play and rewind back to the spot after I’m doing looking up the word.

step 3) email that sucker to myself

부종 (浮腫)

[명사][한의학] 浮腫ふしゅ; むくみ

単語 (1件)
팽그르르

[부사]
0. 滑すべるようにまわるさま: くるくる.
기로 (岐路)

[명사]岐路きろ; 分わかれ道みち; 境

さかい
노발대발 (怒發大發)

[명사]かんかんになって怒おこること

自分じぶんのことをうまく処理しょりしていくこと; よくめんどうをみて世話せわすること.
집안일을 잘 건사하다
家事かじをうまく切きり回まわす

연민 (憐憫·憐愍)

[명사]憐憫[憐愍](れんびん).

아우성(―聲)

フリガナ T T
명사
• 大おおぜいがどっと上あげる叫さけび; 大おおぜいのわめき.

노동 (勞動)

[명사]労働

질척하다

[형용사]どろどろである; べとべとし
ろう
최서윤

돈독이 오르다
金かねに夢中むちゅうになる; 金かねにがりがりとする

거스르다

[타동사]
0. (거역) 逆さからう
이 정도 고통까지 느껴보면 여자는 자연의 섭리를 거스르고 있는 것이 아닌가 싶으며 털에게 항복하고 싶어져요

と聞こえます。

ㅉㅉ / 쯧쯧 :

カテゴリー：

ホーム ＞ ネット ＞ チャット用語、絵文字 ＞ ツツ
—————————- 単語 ————————————
読み方

：
ツツ
—————————- 類義語 ———————————— —————————- 対義語———————————— —————————- 俗語———————————— —————————- 雅語———————————— —————————- 類義語 ———————————— —————————- 反意語 ————————————
意味
：
ツツとは、相手にあきれた時の舌を鳴らす音

説明

——————————— 写真の配置 なし ——————————-
ㅉㅉ = 쯧쯧 / 쯔쯔 = 相手がかわいそうだと感じた時、
または相手にあきれた時の舌を鳴らす音の韓国語絵文字。
※日本の舌打ちとは違う。

복지 (福祉)

[명사]福祉ふくし

잇속 (利―)

[명사]実利じつり; 打算ださん.
잇속

[명사]歯並はならび.

新しい

따지다

[타동사]
0. (셈을) 計算する; 勘定する.
0. (시비·까닭) 詰る; 問い詰める; (問い)ただす

単語 (1件)
우르르

[부사]
0. 図体の大きいものが大ぜいで, 一時に
図体の大きいものが大ぜいで, 一時に急ぎ走りだすか追いかけてくるさま: わあっと; どかどかと; わんさと; どやどやと.

무속 (巫俗)

[명사]巫俗; 巫女の風俗.

新しい

응가

フリガナ T T
명사, 감탄사
• [유아어] 幼児に便をさせる時に使う言葉: うんこ
•
골방 (―房)

[명사](居間などについている)小部屋.

新しい
• 
추상화

[명사][미술] 抽象画.

新しい
•
눈여기다

フリガナ T T
타동사
• (主に‘눈여겨’の形で) 注意深く見る.
눈여겨 살피다
注意深くうかがう 재생

step 4) format the shit out of that in notepad using html and also adding the tag and using control + h to mass delete crap. and of course I delete any words that I don’t think are worth adding whether it’s too easy or useless etc.

tags:말하는대로-TV
___종

(浮腫) 浮腫ふしゅ; むくみ :부종
팽___르르

滑すべるようにまわるさま- くるくる. :팽그르르
___로

分わかれ道みち; 境기로 (岐路) 岐路きろ:기로
노____발

(怒發大發) かんかんになって怒おこること :노발대발
___사하다

自分じぶんのことをうまく処理しょりしていくこと; よくめんどうをみて世話せわすること.: 집안일을 잘

家事かじをうまく切きり回まわす
연___

(憐憫·憐愍) 憐憫[憐愍](れんびん). :연민 최서윤
___우성

(―聲) 大おおぜいがどっと上あげる叫さけび; 大おおぜいのわめき. :아우성
___동

(勞動) : 노동 労働 최서윤
질___하다

どろどろである; べとべとし :질척하다
돈독이 ___르다

金かねに夢中むちゅうになる; 金かねにがりがりとする :돈독이 오르다
___스르다

逆さからう

자연의 섭리를 거스르고 :거스르다

이 정도 고통까지 느껴보면 여자는 자연의 섭리를 거스르고 있는 것이 아닌가 싶으며 털에게 항복하고 싶어져요
너___레를 떨다

お喋りをする : 너스레를 떨다
tzu x2

相手にあきれた時の舌を鳴らす音

相手がかわいそうだと感じた時、

または相手にあきれた時の舌を鳴らす音の韓国語絵文字。※日本の舌打ちとは違う。:쯧쯧
복__

(福祉)福祉ふくし :복지
___속

(利―)実利じつり; 打算ださん. :잇속
___속

歯並はならび :잇속
___지다

計算する; 勘定する. :따지다
우___르

図体の大きいものが大ぜいで, 一時に急ぎ走りだすか追いかけてくるさま:わあっと; どかどかと; わんさと; どやどやと. :우르르
___속

(巫俗)巫俗; 巫女の風俗. :무속
___가

幼児に便をさせる時に使う言葉:うんこ :응가
___방

(―房)(居間などについている)小部屋. :골방
c_____상화

抽象画. :추상화
눈여___다

(主に‘눈여겨’の形で) 注意深く見る.:눈여기다

actually ___스르다

逆さからう

자연의 섭리를 거스르고 :거스르다

이 정도 고통까지 느껴보면 여자는 자연의 섭리를 거스르고 있는 것이 아닌가 싶으며 털에게 항복하고 싶어져요 this is from a question onchiebukuro where i asked someone to transcribe a line from something tangu- show and so it’s tagged wrong but i don’t give a shit… point is importing cards into anki KICKS ASS.

one of the reasons this format works so well for me is that i am very familiar with Japanese so reading in Japanese is automatic as it is with english but i think it’s moreso with Japanese due to the Kanji and visual aspect of the written language.

step 5) import into anki

step 6) effortless anking 😀 🙂

as far as i know this is the most efficient way to go on about it and I got over 20 cards from this episode. I love living in 2016 with all these technology and time-saving tools.

by the way the oldest card in my korean anki deck is from 2012 01 22 which means I’ve been neglecting this anki deck for like 5 years before i truly started to engage with it~~ also I had started learning korean in 2011 summer but did manual srs because I knew the words i would learn would be common and useful and not worth anking and so my deck does not start from beginner/easy af. I loved how I had the clarity to know that that was the right way to go. it’s just not worth anking in the beginning of language learning imo except for like remembering the kanji.

btw generating anki cards for Japanese is even more effortless and efficient due to rikai-sama~~