Korean 101: yet again

Previous installments: here and here

포스

I first came across this word on a Korean TV show that involved dancing, singing or rapping. I am certain that on Unpretty Rapstars someone was using that word to describe Jessie. I misunderstood 포스 for a long time because I never looked it up in English. I recall looking it up in Japanese and got the meaning of the word. I assumed that it came from POSE since I heard POSU. The Korean word is actually based on FORCE. When I read the meaning of the word I was peeved that they were forcefully imposing that meaning on top of the word “pose.” I must say digesting and remembering the meaning of POSU is easier after inputting the actual English root word. It reminds me of the time I thought style meant style in Japanese for the longest time since I never thought to look it up since I know English. However, it turned to actually mean body…. I wrote about it on lang-8 eons ago!

Another Korean-related snafu that I experienced was a ridiculously long sentence.

I was reading this blog entry about Produce 48 that was disguised as a news article. At the end of the article, they write this was from a blog or something that to that effect which sounded ridiculous to me. While I was reading this mammoth of a blog entry/article, I came across a long sentence that I could not follow. I had no problem understanding the clauses but I could not connect them together and comprehend the sentence as a whole. I read it multiple times and kept getting lost at the same part lol. After reading someone’s English translation, stuff clicked in my head and I had no problem following and understanding the sentence in its entirety.

here is that sentence!
이에 일본을 대표하는 아이돌 그룹이 자신들의 떨어진 인기를 회복하기 위해, 한국 아이돌처럼 뛰어난 실력을 기르기 위해, 동시에 이를 바탕으로 혹시라도 케이팝의 시장인 더 넓은 세계에서도 이름을 알릴 기회를 얻을 수 있을지 모른다는 기대를 갖은 채 자신들을 참고삼아 만든 것이 분명한 한국 프로그램에 참여하는 재미있는 상황이 벌어지고 있는 것이다.

and click below for the translation/explanation. Also I learned that this Korean person made a mistake in his writing in this crazy long sentence.

This sentence is so long I can’t follow it. what does 자신들을 참고삼아 만든 것이 분명한 한국 프로그램에 참여하는 재미있는 상황이 벌어지고 있는 것이다. mean??
byu/Sayonaroo inKorean

Moving on, I learned about the nuance of bun-hada when I was reading about Produce 48 in Japanese.

I read the article a few weeks after the show wrapped and I admit that I completely missed the bun-hada commotion. I didn’t notice at all. On the show they mistranslated miyawaki sakura’s comment when she said kuyashii desu which I’ve heard at least a couple hundred times in my life at least just from KATOU the geinin. Apparently, a bunch of korean netizens starting hating on her from that mistranslation.  Apparently they’ve screwed over asada mao and other Japanese people with mistranslations. I understand Japanese so if anything when people speak Japanese on Produce48 I read the Korean to learn Korean or to see how they translated stuff. So of course I’m not gonna go outta my way to look words in a Korean translation of Japanese speech when I understand Japanese speech. If you want to read about that maelstrom  google 분하다 미야와키 사쿠라 or watch the youtube vids about it.  Now I know the nuance of bunhada~

Additionally, I learned about 야민정음 when I was reading produce 101 season 2 stuff and ran into 국끄 which obviously is not in the dictionary. I can just tell.

Here’s a copy paste of the explanation:

국끄 is a sort of 야민정음, an alternative alphabet of Korean mostly used in dcinside and other sister sites related with it. The main rule of creating 야민정음 is to replace hanguls with other similar-shaped hanguls. So the actual meaning of 국끄 is 국프, the abbreviation of 국민프로듀서.

The fans of 프로듀스101 call themselves 국프, following the original concept of the audition program, which asks viewers to pick a contestant and vote as producers. When you self-claim as a 강다니엘국끄, for example, what you are trying to say is that you’re a 강다니엘’s fan/supporter.

END OF PASTE

To be completely honest, I hate that shit and I will never use it. Nor will I ever misspell words on purpose in Korean when I write in Korean. Reading Hangeul is labor-intensive as it is since I can’t help but compare it to my reading experience in Japanese… I was livid when I saw them misspelling words on purpose on this Korean TV show on MNET. It was a combination of yamin-jung-eum, making shit cute, and just for shits and giggles. I wonder what percentage of the words were spelled correctly on that show?? It was ridiculous and I’m so glad I didn’t see it 2012/2011. I would’ve been wtf and wasting a lot of time with google and dictionary if I attempted to decode that.

(<__- lol Japanese idols)

Lastly, I found out that hoarders exist in Korea too! If you think about it hoarders exist wherever consumerism exists. To fill your computer/phone screen with disgusting images search 호더즈 or 저장강박증

I gotta check out all the videos on youtube. It’s fascinating to me.

OBSESSED with BRODUCE!

    

haha I was originally going to name this blog post “found my crack for 2018!” That crack was gonna be Produce 48 but it turns out to be Produce 101 Season 2. This post was going to be in the same vain as my Unpretty Star post back in March of 2015 in the conception of the post in my head! I am genuinely surprised at how amazing this show was from start to finish! Unpretty Rapstars wouldn’t have blown up if it wasn’t for Jessie and it’s the same thing here. The show would not have blown up if it weren’t for the people in it.

This is my second edition of thank god I know Korean and that my inconsistent, sporadic efforts of watching korean tv (and mining words while watching and HALF-ASSING my reviews as much as possible) from 2012 to 2015 weren’t for nil. It really would be a pain the ass if I had look up something every 10 seconds or watch it with english subs or japanes subs or something ( IT’S JUST NOT THE SAME)

<-–  There’s so many interactions and convos that I loved to BITS in this show including this! unforuntaely I found out ahead of time that daniel’s group won before watching the eps since the mnet performance is already up on youtube since it’s already been over a year.

<- otome at full force! 

< – I took this screenshot because they didn't blur his tattoos.
 <- OMG Daehi’s handwriting! I took a picture because it looked interesting and unique to me. I notice there’s an OTOME quality to him that I like a lot!

 <- mnet’s editing here added to the hilarity. I wonder how jisung felt about the edit.

It was a bunch of coincidences that lead to me discovering my crack! I got to the OMONA lj somehow from googling something that popped into my head. Then I saw matsui jurina and I was like what is she doing there? Then I found out produce 101 was collaborating with AKB48 and their sister groups for Produce 101 season 3. To me that that sounded SO INTERESTING and it’s something that I never thought I would ever see. By see I mean like having a jpop idol perform in front of the teachers of Produce 101. Seeing their reaction was as fun and satisfying as I imagined it to be! (I was sad to hear that yabuki nako’s audition won’t ever be released since it was deemed too sexual and inappropriate or something. I actually know that AKB song –tonari no banana- and I like it alot because it’s catchy and the lyrics are interesting. If you want to interpret the song “that” way you can but I never did. I just thought it was cute and relatable). I was into AKB48 to some extent in 2008 to 2011 since they were being pushed like crazy and I was into Japanese TV and I had my oshimen and others members that I liked and they had the AKBINGO show which could be very funny depending on the episode. However the year is now 2018 and most of the members I liked the left the group so I’m not into them as much though I will forever be Sashi’s fan! I did watch the speeches of the members when the group was at its peak. I do understand the appeal of Japanese idols that even though they may not be good at singing or dancing the fans love supporting them and watching them grow/improve and sometimes cute/fun is enough for the fans. So when I heard about the show 2 eps had already aired so I watched them and I felt very impatient for the 3rd ep and I felt gald I found out about it 2 weeks in rather than before it aired because the waiting game is killing me.

I had seen Produce 101 season 1 and I enjoyed watching it but I didn’t feel compelled to watch season 2 because I figured it’d be the same format so I’d be bored. Also I THOUGHT that I find girl groups more interesting than boy groups so I didn’t want to watch it. Also the IOI group wasn’t much of a success in my eyes with their lackluster debut song DREAM GIRLS (It’s very generic and boring. calling it the poor man’s into the new world (SNSD) would be a compliment) and the other 2 songs that weren’t up my alley. But then I found out that the group formed from the second season was actually successful and I was so impressed by their debut mv ENERGETIC because the song was catchy and the dance was captivating. I’m not into kpop or boy groups but it grabbed my attention and I watched it beginning to end (usually I fastforward 45 seconds, listen/watch a little bit and then stop when it comes to checking out kpop mv and stuff since not everything is going to grab me). In a Produce 48 video that MNET posted on naver/youtube that wasn’t included in the episode they featured ariyoshi risa and takada kenta from the previous produce 101 seasons. So I wanted to watch it because I was curious about this Japanese trainee. I decided to watch it during the 6 days of the week when produce48 doesn’t air. Also I figured it’d make produce 48 easier to watch since the format is nearly the same down to the stuff they make national producer representative say.

Even though I’m watching Produce 101 season 2 a year after its initial broadcasting as opposed to while it’s airing. It worked out better for me in that I love this show so much that after episode 3 or 2 or 4 I knew I had to watch this show every day to finish it ASAP. I’d die if I had to wait a week for an episode. I usually am patient and able to wait weeks or months to watch the next episode when it comes to TV shows… it never really hooks me to that point.

I think the only other male-idol competition shows I’ve seen were the one for WINNER and the one for becoming a member of IKON ( I could not watch the last episode but i hate live-finales anyway.) and Produce 101 season 2 blows both out of the water both in terms of performances and entertainment value.

I’m going to write my random observations, rambling and ruminations about the show.

*******

I thought it was hilarious when the idol trainees did sexy dance moves during the 1st two eps that made the Lee Suk Hoon (a very talented singer who was on immortal song way back when) feel uncomfortable lol. He’s a guy and he’s not gay so it was awkward…

They had so many ranking ceremonies in this show. I don’t know if they had more than the first season but it seemed like a lot but I wasn’t bored by it. Compared to the 1st season the ranks move more dramatically and unpredictably. I don’t remember being this emotionally invested, shocked, and connected for the first season. It was incredibly sad watching it at times but it’s just the reality of the idol world/television surival series. I sometimes fastfowarded the parts when BoA described the trainee before announcing his name or when they took forever to announce stuff but I definitely had to listen to any and all other talking.

I loved seeing the interactions/facial expressions/reactions/bonding between the trainees. It was evident from the first 2 episodes like when dong-bin got nervous during his bubblegum performance or when people did cringey dances or when lai guan lin and his fellow chick trainee did their dance fundamentals practice routine.    I’m sure that was present in the 1st season but I didn’t love it to bits like I did for the second season. Surprisingly I loved the SPORTS FESTIVAL they did for episode 10(?). It was incredibly funny and fun to watch. A big part of the reason why it was so fun is because I got to know these trainees for the past 9 episodes and every episode is usually as long as a movie. I ABSOLUTELY LOVED the part when Jae-hwan started laughing like he lost his mind. I was genuinely jealous and happy that he was laughing and having so much fun rather than shocked. It reminded me of the pure joy and fun one experiences  during childhood. Usually when they play game and stuff on korean talk/variety shows I never find it that funny and fast-forward the crap out of it but I savored each second for this show. In the same vain I was surprised I enjoyed watching the arm-wresling ( I loved their interactions like saying something to the opponent to intimidate them ) and the ghost scare prank ( omg daehi screamed with such a high-pitched voice. I love his otome-ness. I also love fujimon’s otome-ness). For produce 48 they did some scare prank too but it wasn’t as interesting or funny ( it was the typical uninteresting crap I expect from korean talk/variety shows that doesn’t do shit for me so I fast-forwarded). I absolutely loved the bonding they showed between the trainees. It was fun to watch and made me fuzzy inside. Something about this show is very special. They were incredibly lucky to have daniel kang and all the other trainees that were incredibly talented or interesting. I was in pure shock when I heard Daniel thought of joining show because jisung wanted to join the show because I thought of the what if’s….  I don’t think Produce 48 could ever surpass this show simply because they can’t have interactions/conversations/lines that are as memorable simply due to the language barrier.  Even though the episodes are so long I feel so sad now that I can’t watch it anymore since there’s no more left.

(<—- hilarious!)

I loved the korean-ness of the show. By that I mean the ggal-ching (the thing you put in your shoes to make yourself taller), the lipstick, the cushion. I DID NOT realize Korean guys or kpop guys wear lipstick. for some reason I thought they stopped at guyliner. I was mistaken. I thought the Daniel's lips stood out sometimes but I never connected the dots in my head that that's lipstick. I think he did the gradation lip look at one point and it looked really good (unless that's his natural lip color). I also loved Daniel's blonde hair! That color works so well on him as if he's naturally blonde. I used to think that asians don't look good with blonde hair usually but I realized it just depends on the person and the shade of blonde.

I went into the show knowing that Daniel Kang won and during the first few eps I didn’t get why because he didn’t stand out. In fact he was never the center but sometimes I get the impression he’s the center of the particular performance because he stands out. It was apparent when I saw the 2 sorry sorry performances. People in daniel’s group had star quality and each person stood out while the people in the first group were difficult to remember/differentiate. I also noticed him whenever they put him in the shot for his facial reactions to stuff.

I could say so much more if I took notes or something while watching it but I loved the show way too much to be doing anything like that.

I noticed that in one of the earlier eps that they didn’t sub the second half of the episode. usually they do their editing/post-production thing where they put text on the screen to make it more interesting and fun to watch. most importantly, they add korean text whenever people talk so I don’t miss a word and generate anki cards with ease. I thought maybe they just ran out of time didn’t have time to add in the korean subtitles. I was annoyed though! there are english subs available for this show for anyone who like me is watching this  with learning korean as another impetus to watch besides pure enjoyment and joy. I would’ve definitely turned the english subs on for those parts if I knew they existed (so I don’t miss out. english subs is better than no subs… in case the translator catches something i couldn’t catch) but I didn’t bother searching for english soft subs. But I watched one of eps with the english subs on a little bit because that part wasn’t subbed in korean very much but I quickly realized I probably am much better than the translator at korean. i realized the translator misheard 과정 as 가족 which are katei and kazoku respectively in Japanese and went to town with it lol (I’m sure all you anime/drama fansub watchers know what I’m talking about when the translator mishears or misunderstands stuff and then translates with all this confidence and you’re like…. surely you’re aware that you’re unsure yet you translation oozes of unwarranted confidence). Even if you were speed-translating or whatever you call it no fluent korean person would ever mis-hear/misunderstand like this (those words sound so different… bad sound quality or not) especially with the way it was used in the sentence for that particular instance.

At first I thought the lyrics of na ya na is melodramatic with parts like “I’m scared that this might be a dream.”However, later I realized how the lyrics of the song matches the show perfectly and isn’t melodramatic since being a trainee is so depressing. ( lol I pulled up more of the lyrics   너는 내게 너무 예뻐서 꿈일까 난 너무 두려워. guess it is melodramatic but I’ve grown to love the lyrics nonetheless )  In the episodes where they announce everyone’s rankings there’s a lot of surprises and I remember this one particularly trainee was shocked and couldn’t believe his name was called and if I remember correctly he said “is this a dream?” or something along those lines.   Then I also thought how the lyrics apply to everyone since you can’t predict the results of the voting as evidenced by all the shocking, happy, and sad moments in the show during the ranking announcement ceremonies. It must be surreal to know you were one of the 11 people who got picked out 101 or 90 something trainees especially since BoA paused for a long time before announcing the name! (Well it’s not her fault). Other than the long pauses that BoA had to place I must say that MNET did a fantastic job with the live finale. I remember the kpop star season 1 finale being crappy in the way that live finales of competition shows are known for…

I thought it was hilarious how they used the dothraki background music from Game of Thrones on dong-ho (apparently he goes by baek ho in nu’est).

I recommend recording audio on clyp.it  to ask people online to transcribe for you if you want that.  I definitely use it when I get really curious and love whatever it is I’m watching.

Here’s a few of the questions I asked. I asked a lot of questions because I love this show and there’s 11 eps and each episode is at least 2 hours long so there’s definitely stuff I learned from the show.

1   2   3   4  5

I highly recommend this show to anyone who is remotely interested in it! It is hands down my favorite season of the PRODUCE series!

out of the final group my favorites are ji-sung ( i love talk/variety people), jae-hwan (his voice makes energetic that much more powerful), ong seong-wu ( love his unique last name, good looks, and talk/variety skills), kang daniel ( wow he deserves to number one), lee dae-hwi ( i only noticed him in the beginning for obvious reasons) , lai guan-lin ( loved his troublemaker routine with this trainee friend from cube and the part when they played charades and he was like i don’t know what that means and said PASS). So I will be very busy in the future trying to watch all the talk/variety show appearances by the members of WANNAONE (radio star, happy together, snl, WEEKLY IDOL – wow I can’t believe they made them perform nayana at 2x… etc etc LOL NEVER mind snl made them perform it at 8x ) because I want to learn more about them and my MO for talk/variety shows is usually watching the episodes that feature guests who pique my interest.

I decided to look up the meaning of words and take screenshots while watching the show so I can keep watching show instead of pausing to make anki cards. I think this might be more efficient since I’ll make the anki cards later on and just focus on that task instead of going back and forth between watching and making anki cards. Also giving myself that week between taking the screenshot and making the anki card may help in deciding to not add cards that aren’t worth adding if let’s say they use the word 10 times after I took the screenshot (at that point I may feel like I don’t need to make an anki card since I heard it being used so many times or make less cloze deletions). And as always native material didn’t fail me and I got some really cool and useful words/grammar (mostly vocab ) from this show!  I don’t understand those people that still do textbooks despite having gained enough proficiency to go after native stuff.

On a random note, I heard that show me the money season 7 is actually 777 which made me think that it’s airing on 7-7-2018 (okay I realize now that the year is 2018 so it doesn’t match up 100% lol) and I got excited and overwhelmed because I feel like I have my hands full with produce 48 because the episodes are so long. But then I realized nothing aired on that day and I find out that the auditions are kicking off on 7-7 and the show is airing in September.

on another random note I love learning Korean from song lyrics especially rap stuff like ZICO because there’s wayaku available (japanese translation) and also english translations available. It saves me a lot of time because the problem is either I don’t know the words or I don’t know how to interpret or infer the intended meaning of the lyrics (since there’s no subject so you gotta infer that and more + any new cool, hip, lingo that I am not savvy on. I seem to have more problem understanding korean song lyrics since korean grammar is more complex than Japanese grammar to say the least lol. I think I read somewhere there’s 10x more grammar somewhere but who knows… japanese has less grammar and keeps it simple but has pitch accent to make up for the difficulty level lol) and I notice this happens way more frequently rap stuff and trying to tackle this with only a dictionary (especially korean korean one depending on the word ) or google is just time-consuming.  This is kinda related since wanna one members collaborated with zico for the sub unit song and I mined from the wayaku while referencing the english translation.

random links

Dongho feat Megaton Bar
byu/pige0n- inBroduce101

https://kpople.com/hidden-meaning-behind-open-up-choreography-produce-101/

An appreciation of Never
byu/aikawanoonase inBroduce101

An appreciation of Never
byu/aikawanoonase inBroduce101

Translated comments from the Knetz Favorite Trainees Survey post
byu/hibaobao inBroduce101

A Korean online community made a post about our Favorite Trainees Survey
byu/tastetherainbeau inBroduce101

musings regarding my recent Korean output

So I know a lot of language learners are obsessed with perfection almost to the point of irritation. no nobody gives a shit about how your handwriting improved for the katakana or the hanguel or whatever from writing it over and over or copying long ass passages of god knows what… perhaps you should put your time to better use. they just irritate me because in away they’re promoting awful learning methods and also seem oblivious or narrow-minded to other various methods of learning out there. my school of thought is I suffered at the hands of compulsory education with the mind-numbing, awful activities like work-sheets or copyings things etc etc…. why are you willing subjecting yourself to this torture on your free time? One of the biggest realizations I made when I was learning Japanese was that I was spending so much time learning about how to learn or various ways to learn or what are bad ways to learn despite years of compulsory conditioning trying to convince me that it’s effective. But I don’t regret spending that time learning about learning because I don’t want to waste any more time on shit and in the overall scheme of things you waste more time learning ineffectively by not learning about learning.

ANYWAYS recently I was outputting my Korean because I had to communicate with this korean person via email (by the way I see no appeal in “pen-pals” whatsoever… I am only communicating with someone if I have something to communicate to that specific person). I just wanted to communicate and deliver the information I wanted to deliver and I also wanted to get answers from this person. My attitude going into this is “ugh let’s just end this in the most painless, efficient way possible.” (I work full time, I have shit to do, it’s the just natural attitude for me to have)

In my view, it’s best to not give a shit and just do whatever is least painful and strenuous because that will lead to MORE output in volume compared to re-reading your sentences or clauses or using the dictinoary to look up crap you don’t have to or just stressing about it because you can’t write as eloquently as a native ( this is such a stupid and asinine and invalid worry. you should be asking yourself WHY WOULD I BE ABLE TO WROTE ELOQUENTLY seeing as you only spent x hours listening/reading/writing/speaking. i wish more people would read AJATT). Because I set this low standard for myself OF COMMUNICATION I did not waste my time looking up words in the dictinoary or re-reading and re-writing my sentences obsessively. I did do the final re-read just to make sure it made sense and my message would be understood by the receiving party. Ultimately I did “proof-read” albeit lazily and half-assedly and I later realized there were still typos when I sent it. But I did not care because my goal was communication and I knew despite whatever mistakes or typos or unnaturalnness or clunkiness of the sentence or fragment the person will understand what I’m saying. And I genuinely did not care if my Korean output seems worse than actually it is due to typos and lack of effort on my effort. There’s a level that you reach in the upper intermediate stage where you know your writing is full of mistakes and it’s unnatural but you know for sure that the native person will understand what you wrote ( I will link my only lang-8 entry that’s in Korean so you can get some idea of my ability to output but honestly depending what I want to output (writing an entry on lang-8 vs cmomunicating wtih someone via email is completely different) the shit can get real raw and terrible as any language learner knows … I’m sure the lang-8 entry gives the impression that my passive vocab/grammar is smaller than it actually is.) in fact the person i was communicating with via email started writing to me in english because my korean output is so bad lol. my korean comprehension ability is great though! ) . some of the stuff you can obsess over with writing well is so minor with respect to comprehension like the ㅅㅅㅅㅅ you put in to make sentences more formal and respectful. I just shoved the ㅅ shit in when I felt like it because this person’s isn’t going to get pissed at me for not using it when I shouldn’t have or not using it when I should have because he knows I’m not fluent in Korean and he should be able to tell my main goal is communication since he don’t speak fluent english.

<- she’s talking about games clearly.

So as we have our e-mail exchanges I start to give a shit unfortunately. I take this as a bad thing because I’m wasting time that could be put to better use and it’s just emails so it doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect since the only goal is communication. ALSO EVEN if I look up whatever my email will still have mistakes. what happened was I GOOGLED 오랫만 WITH QUOTES because I was unsure if it was correct or not and google says it’s a common mistake it’s actualy oreNNNN man. before I googled it I was thinking o-ret-man is correct and oreNNN is wrong or vice versa or they’re BOTH CORRECT. So after I did what I did I was kinda disappointed in myself for wasting my time googling. so then he responds and he opens his email with OREtttttT MAN so I feel even more irritated at myself wasting time on googling shit. it’s so minor, it don’t matter and he don’t even know if it’s incorrect or he knows but still wants to use it (I know that feeling). Hell I felt like using it and I should’ve just gone for it. You know what I’m gonna ask him about it… I only make a big deal of this because it will be if I get into this tunnel-vision mindset of obsessing over little shit and waste a gargantuan amount of time. It seems like it’s not a lot of time but it really adds up if you’re constantly obsessing over minuscule crap.

Anyways, my ability to output in Korean is stagnant and I tend to or rather I feel lazy so I output my Japanese-style Korean which doesn’t surprise me. Korean grammar just seems more complex and complicated than Japanese when it comes to outputting. The biggest reason of course is that I do not practice output in Korean. I have no need or desire so I don’t practice it so obviously I never improve. My comprehension has been improving leaps and bounds since it’s a passive ability that I’ve been cultivating effectively.  For Japanese I was so passionate about it, I practiced output ASAP as in trying to think in Japanese as much as possible which led me to think about how to express xyz in Japanese. In the beginning, I spoke to extremely choppy, short, SIMPLE sentences or fragments or even phrases because my Japanese was so limited and I didn’t want to fall into the trap of making up on “own Japanese.”  IT totally worked because my output in Japanese improved leaps and bounds from that and COMPREHENSIBLE/COMPELLING input & sooo input only (for KOrean) doesn’t work. I have no problem understanding Korean and noticing how stuff is expressed in a really Korean way (different from Japanese and English) but when it comes to output I don’t remember shit. It’s like trying to remember a fancy speech or some dialogue in a movie or tv show word for word. I always remember the general idea and flow… enough to pass a multiple choice test lol.

I don’t have a desire to output or think in Korean… it’s too hardcore lol. I don’t have that kind of passion.

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.

HOW TO USE LANG-8

Here’s my advice on how to use lang-8. You could say my views are pessimistic but I think they’re realistic and recognizing and accepting reality is necessary.

If you notice on my lang-8 my writing has improved a lot and on one of my entries this Japanese person had said you know I can’t say that your writing is wrong or right because you have your own writing style. Of course within that entry there were legitimate mistakes or parts where there was a more natural way to express something but there definitely were parts that supported what this person had said. ONE OBSERVATION that you can make is that lang-8 did not improve my writing. I did not religiously force myself to write entries into lang-8 every week or every month. there are some long stretches of blanks on lang-8 and i can tell you that i never EVER EVER EVER ANKIED anything i wrote on lang-8 whether it’s my writing or someone else’s correction of my writing.

i hate people who shit on input-based methods especially when they arrogantly criticize it based on their TINY AMOUNT OF INPUT. i phrase it this way because people don’t seem to understand A LOT OF INPUT. I AM Speaking from experience feeling frustrated being stuck at the intermediate or advanced plateau where i did spend a lot of time in japanese but I still had not passed this elusive “threshold”. also i had my personal circumstances that prevented me from spending time doing things i wanted to do including things in japanese.  it took me longer to reach this elusive threshold point. or maybe it was the mcd format that really made an impact. That was something that organically transpired from me finally coming to terms with my wasting time on anki whether it’s making cards or doing them because the shit was not working.

Of course ultimately you have to write a lot if you want to improve at writing so you can’t just rely on input but input is still a part of outputting.

<- midorikawa-san on anime giga. he voiced xingke on code geass and zelgadiss in slayers

so my advice for using lang-8 to improve your Japanese is to use lang-8 for it is. You can write something and gauge how correct or natural your Japanese is. Don’t try to memorize the corrections or add the corrections to anki. Why does anyone think that sounds like a good plan? It is a site where people correct your Japanese… depending on the individual’s level it could be anywhere from fixing minor mistakes to making something unintelligible into something intelligible. PLEASE do not waste YOUR TIME and other people’s time writing unintelligible giberish or bs shit like watashi ha honyara desu. nihongo wobenkyou siteimasu. anime ga suki desu. If you write about something boring and generic no one will want to read it. IF no one ends up correcting your entry you really can’t blame them. IF you can’t understand anything don’t bother outputting. You’re just better off inputting if you’re those people writing unintelligible entries. Once you can output decently, find something you want to write about passionately and write about it. I submit entries to lang-8 sporadically but when I do it’s usually about a topic that I want to write about. It’s nice to see my old lang-8 entries and to see how good or bad my Japanese is. Sometimes I’m surprised I used a certain word or some obscure grammar thing I was into at the time due to the influence of JIN or something else.
What I attribute to my improved writing at lang-8 is a lot of input and output (talking to myself, writing) NOT trying to memorize lang-8 corrections by heart or word for word. input a lot, output a lot

ANOTHER tip is DO NOT USE THE DICTINOARY TO LOOK UP WORDS while you write. one reason is lang-8 is kind of a record of how much you grew so if you go out of your way to look up all these fancy words that you didn’t know then and you don’t know now to make your entry seem better than what your actual skills are it kinda defeats the purpose. plus it’s really obvious when people do that or use the thesaurus for thier native language. don’t have the motivation to show0off or whatever because you’re wasting time that could be put towards input. it’s a just poor use of your time.

I can understand looking up a word or two to write in your lang-8 (if a word is really necessary or if it’s on the tip of your tongue) but do not waste your time looking up countless words because you wont’ remember them. also i consider  5 years olds to be fluent in whatever language they speak natively because they’ve spent 5 unadulterated years with their language so even if their vocab isn’t huge they know how to use what they know really well like grammar or gion and manipulate the language with ease. you should be practicing what you know and try to maximize the possibilities. it’s not just about the number of words you know.

I loved what steve kaufman wrote in his latest blog entry. It’s kinda related to what I wrote about the futility in trying to consciously memorize corrections.
http://blog.thelinguist.com/learning-languages-is-a-subconscious-process

Also here is shokotan talking about someone that she likes a lot!

The first time I saw this I loled at Jackie’s delayed reaction. now that i think about it, shokotan should’ve paused more for the translator~ as you can see she has no trouble going on and on when it comes to complimenting someone she likes a lot.

Vocabulary lists

VOCABULARY LISTS
Vocab lists seem so tempting because it seems so efficient sorta like premade like anki decks. Of premade decks I’ve only used the heisig one successfully which I had to modify heavily to suit my needs. It’s tempting to go math crazy and do the 20 words a day x 356 days in a year = 7120 words or some other variation but I’ve learned the hard way the futility in doing that with my experience of misusing anki while learning Japanese.

I’m just posting about this topic because I just happened to come across these blogs that are an amazing fit for me to generate the anki cards in MCD format. These bloggers are sharing what they looked up on their blogs and they’re Japanese people learning Korean so this material is quite alluring to me.

http://uprive1.rssing.com/chan-2640801/all_p15.html
http://yokorea.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-62.html
http://erirang.blogspot.com/

****
6000 intermediate
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s167/sh/5d3a9f85-afd6-4466-82e5-9286d5e8d985/33a6ba3bb7d7c7ff42187680cb77f8c0

6000 advanced
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s167/sh/5b206c6c-9772-4199-9d2a-7f58d816549e/11a60d02ccedd27630da31b7d8a8dc9d

So I had saved this huge ass list of the top 6,000 Korean words from a some wiki website into my evernote. i had no intention of memorizing the list. I know how it may seem appealing for some hardworking rote-memorizing people but not to me. It just makes more sense to learn these words as you encounter them since they ARE SO GODDAMN COMMON AND USEFUL. also you may think top 6,000 words are mad useful!! but trust me they most likely aren’t. you need to figure out what YOUR TOP 6,000 KOREAN WORDS ARE as in the top 6000 words that come up in the korean media you enjoy. Anyways I kept it to sorta gauge my growth in korean vocabulary. for example a lot of the words were ha? the(japanese ha) or like wuh? from 2 years ago are now i know this shit. I’ll go “wow this shit is mad useful or i’ve seen it.” or i’ll be hardpresed to find words i have never seen or heard of. never mind it was from 4 years ago! 2012! If you still suck after 4 years you should reevaluate your methods and your goals.

Speak of the devil, here’s my worst nightmare realized

 

Has anyone reached proficiency through self-study outside of Korea?
byu/infringement153 inKorean

In my case by the time i reached 3000 cards in anki ( i didn’t anki for the first 3 or 6 months because i do not want to waste my time learning super common/useful words… that’s just stupid) I was understanding talk variety shows anywhere from 80 to 100% (depending on the show and how much I look up.. ). it’s not about the number of cards…

BTW memorizing all the words in this 6000 word list will not enable you to watch korean dramas without subtitles ( just looking through this list and thinking of all the words that i know on this list and all the words i know that i encounter that are not on this list… by encounter I mean strictly talk/variety shows). it’s literally the tip of the iceberg (all the awesome kickass words are obviously not in this list… not to mention korea is obsessed with trends so it feels like they invent 100 news words and that of that 90% die the next year, rinse and repeat. I’m just guessing here because I don’t keep up with that since I don’t watch korean dramas or korean shows on a consistent basis. in fact I’m chasing after random eps of shows that aired a few years ago or a fewdays ago or a few months ago… even with japanese I’ve read over 120 books and recently I looked up a few words from this new book I’m reading and I’m like woah these are some cool words why didn’t I hear about them sooner. this shit is never ending but at the same time I love how there’s so many awesome words out there that i do not know about. this applies to english as well OF COURSE). there’s so much vocab to know for korean dramas (even more for the saguk dramas) since as everyone knows the characters talk so much and they always drag out the dialogue and the scenes. literally every single character in korean dramas are chatterboxes. it’s a lot of vocab. well that level is fluency… in other words watching korean dramas without subtitles. I do know people who are Korean and fluent in Korean who watch it and understand/catch everything so that is what fluency is… for comprehension in my opinion anyway. I don’t like Korean dramas anyway so this doesn’t bother me but sometimes I like gauging my Korean by watching some clip of a korean drama to see my lack of vocabulary or my full comprehension if lightening strikes. sometimes it happens.

However as much as I find anking with mcd format to be effective for learning Korean at my Korean level (vocab, grammar, hours spent on Korean, etc) I can’t bring myself to use the material on these blogs to generate anki cards. It is intriguing to sorta gauge my level or rather see how much I don’t know from scrolling through these blogs.

I’ve been mostly getting words and whatnot for my anki deck from Korean that come out of people’s mouths on Korean TV and sometimes words on the screen that aren’t said ( I usually only do this if I feel really tempted because the word seems super easy to remember if it has no bacchim or I feel that I can associate something with the sound with the bacchim whether or not it is of sino-korean origin to remember the meaning). Partly that’s due to lack of motivation because I do not want to learn useless Korean. Maybe if you’re obsessed and driven to become fluent in Korean ASAP then maybe you have the urge to look up anything and everything but looking at it in the overall scheme of things that’s not an efficient way to go on about that.

The fact that I got something from a Korean show from a Korean person’s mouth imparts that word or grammar etc so much more value versus some word list with words that people think are useful based on their experiences with the English counterpart of those words or whatever variation of this. People just express things differently on a fundamental level depending on the language.

So anyways, some of the blogs that I linked did mine real Korean from a Korean article etc etc which imparts value on the list they share. However though it raises the value of the list in my eyes I personally didn’t read that article so I have no personal connection to any of those words and therefore no conviction that those words are useful. I won’t believe it unless I actually see it being used. But also I won’t force myself to read an article just so I can easily generate anki cards. I’ll only read the article if it interests me.

This site http://uprive1.rssing.com/chan-2640801/all_p15.html reminds me of textbooks. I am tempted for a second to learn from it but then the next second I realize there’s way too much awesome kickass tv show episodes of korean talk/variety shows to be watched. When it comes down to it, no matter what textbook it is, textbooks will never be more fun then native media. The whole point of textbooks is so you can stop using it and learn from Native material ASAP. If you think textbooks are fun you’ll probably faint from the shock of how much more interesting native material is. I see no problem using textbooks in the beginning stages but some people are like hey you got recs for intermediate/advanced? I’m thinking to myself do you want to learn korean for the sake of learning korean? how embarrassing.

If I had to choose between anking too much and anking too little I would choose anking too little. I think anking too much is worse because it’s proof that you are wasting your time that could be spent living your life doing things you enjoy whether it’s language learning related or not. To put a new perspective on it, I imagine what I would be doing if I were fluent in Korean and/or raised in Korea. The answer is not me reading from a textbook to improve my Korean. The answer would be I would be watching the exact same shows I’m watching now except I wouldn’t be looking up anything because I already know all those words and their nuances and their multiple meanings and the literal / figurative meanings of all the Korean because I’m fluent in Korean. I’d probably be multitasking like washing dishes while listening to it etc etc because it’s so effortless. I’m watching the show because I enjoy it. I don’t try to force myself to like a show or pretend that I like it or pretend that I like it or enjoy it more than I do just so I can find something to do in Korean…. I’m sure some people try AJATT and kinda think they’re doing it but they’re really not if they have to lie to themselves that they enjoy doing something or enjoy it more than they actually do.

When it comes down to it the number of anki cards I have or the percentage of mature cards is not an accurate measure of my Korean abilities. Ultimately it comes down to the amount of time I spent doing STUFF IN Korean while actively trying to figure out what I don’t understand or don’t know. Anki helps so much with making time I spent with Korean to be that much more fruitful and efficient with acquiring Korean vocab /grammar. I don’t have time to be watching Korean TV all day because I work full-time and I have other stuff I want to do that may not be in Korean. Why should I miss out on amazing stuff like Breaking Bad? Or God Tongue? Though I’m not able to spend a lot of time on Korean on a consistent basis (daily is ideal right?) due to time restraints and my volition that wants to do other things anki allows me to maximize whatever time I spent with the Korean show etc. I’ve never felt like I’ve moved backwards in Korean or even stagnant to be honest. The reason is that sometimes even if you don’t do something in Korean for let’s say 3 months, you still have Korean running through your brain that’s being digested. It’s some kind of delayed processing. I do still do anki on a daily basis or sometimes less frequently. It’s so strange how I feel like my Korean improved in certain ways despite cutting contact for x weeks or months. I’ve experienced this with Japanese as well in the past due to unfortunate circumstances. It was invigorating to hear other language learners talk about this EXPERIENCE on an episode on language mastery podcast. http://l2mastery.com/show/

you know I think the only possible way for my Korean to be stagnant or go backwards is if all I did was textbooks or cramming wordlists. I think to realize my efforts are for nil would be so devastating and disheartening AFTER x weeks or months despite torturing myself for x hours. One of the many reasons why I learned Korean after Japanese was that I did not want to waste my time with learning Korean. I equate stagnation and going backwards as wasting time. Learning in this order (with the foundation/scaffolding that is hanja and Japanese grammar) and using anki has ensured that I never feel like I’m going backwards with Korean. It’s just impossible. I never understood how people could motivate themselves to learn a language using methods that could possibly lead to stagnation or going backwards if they slacked or not get in contact with the language for x weeks or months.

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 t… 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~~

here are more interesting talk/variety shows where people talk about interesting stuff!!! i don’t watch kdramas because  i hate the way talk…  i like the way real people talk . k-wave is super helpful to korean content consumers since they upload on youtube

omg they added k-subs to the ancient strong heart eps! there’s 12 languages including japanese. wtff i wish i had it in 2012

Korean 101: Deuska no ka

All right here is another korean 101 thing that I still didn’t master even though I started learning Korean in 2011??  Well my history with korean is  mad complicated so for that read the about me section. even that is not detailed enough to make things crystal clear but hey it’s the internet i have no obligation to spill my guts.

SO recently I learned about the korean equivalent to ka IN JAPANESE.  as in honyarara or chome chome desuka

this was from IU’s song 23. btw i cannot taylor swift’s songs. I wish she would do something about her camel toe. no one needs to see that.

난 수수께끼
뭐게요 맞혀봐요

｢뭐게요?｣は｢뭐게?｣の敬語です。

例文もう少しあげますと

이 상자 안에 있는 건 뭐게?
この箱の中にあるのは何だと思う？

엄마한테 받은 선물이 뭐게?
母からもらったプレゼントが何だと思う？

뭐게요 맞혀봐요
なんと思います？当ててみてよ

뭐게요は文法的に, 무엇이게요（なんだと思います？）と意味は同じですが

前の言葉が받침(終声になる子音)がある言葉なら後ろに무엇이게요

받침(終声になる子音)がないか’ㄹ’の言葉なら後ろに뭐게요を使用。

I feel like I’ve never heard of this construction. I probably did but just didn’t notice but considering how long i’ve been at this it’s strange.  i’m sure the other Korean learners also feel that other grammar constructs that delivers the same meaning are used more frequently.  Is this common? it seems like it would be common or useful. It really is strange to me because I’ll watch episodes talk/variety shows and  I swear no one ever said muh-ge. I literally feel like I’ve heard every other construct but this for muh. Now that I’m aware of this now I can NOTICE if truly is useful and used. as of now i’ve never heard anyone use 뭐게요は文法的に or  무엇이게요 outside  of iu’s song

just to give a reference to make this whole situation clear I’ll watch a talk/varietyi show usually a talk show actually and i’ll understand 95-100% and i usually look up words that are unknown as i watch the show becasue the words are not that frequent to the point where i’m pausing the show every 4 seconds . usually i look up the word and rewind the show 20 seconds while i read the definition then rewatch the scene and keep watching and then add thatword to anki in mcd format later on that week etc. As you can tell that’s a lot of korean i’m hearing and comprehending in the span of the 50 minute show and it’s multiple episodes and also different shows so i feel like i have pretty good handle on common/useful/ daily conversation korean. so it’s like mind-blowing to come across something that seems so basic and useful and common yet i’ve never encountered it. and of course i’m not trying to be arrogant. we all need to free ourselves of hubris. humbleness is at the core of korean and japanese culture too!  I’m just mind-blown. that is all. that applies to this and the grammar thing from uprs 3

by the way I DO NOT INCLUDE GUHARA AND THAT OTHER KOREAN mc korea that talk like barbaric slobs in my comprehension percentage. it is irritating enough listening to their voices. if they say something and i don’t understand it or don’t catch it i do not bother rewinding though i do rewind almost always for japanese or for other korean people. when it comes to it it’s THEIR FAULT i didn’t catch it or understand it. also i only care to understand what i want to understand. I have the same policy towards beat takeshi and udo-chan because it’s THEIR DAMN FAULT i don’t understand them and they usually don’t say anything interesting.  i don’t avoid shows that star guhara and that other ugly annoying korean mc because that would just limit viable korean shows that much more. it’s hard enough as it is. and i have a feeling that part of the reason that they’re so hard to understand is because they’re lazy with moving their mouthes and pronouncing and enunciating shit clearly. i have a strong feeling. I am so certain. so it pisses me off that more. if some fluent korean speakers would like to confirm this that would be lovely!

btw i love chiebukuro. i get quick awesome answers in a language that is effortless to read.

Aw Shit. Never Mind.

So I just made a post about my progress in Korean and all that I’ve learned… (if you want more concrete info you can check out my anki deck by searching choronghi.. .but Like I said in that post I don’t really use my anki properly for Korean so I know probably 50% of the words in there as in if I were to encounter the word in a Korean show even if the card is in my deck I’ll probably look it up again!! because I have no idea if that card is even in my deck)
But then again I just learned the word “and” in Korean which makes it sound like my Korean comprehension ability is really basic and shoddy.

삼사위원이자 3반 트랙의프로듀서
When I came across this sentence in UPRS season 3 my gut instinct was DO NOT LOOK THIS SHUT UP IN THE DICTIONARY. IT WILL NOT BE THERE ( my gut feeling WAS RIGHT. I hate wasting time looking up shit that is not in the dictionary which is way more prevalent in korean than japanese). FYI all the japanese grammar is IN THE japanese monolingual DICTIONARY While for some korean doesn’t list all the grammar. wtf. So I went to chiebukuro and asked and no one answered and I wanted an answer sooner than later so I enlisted the help of the lang-8ers on lang-8 sure enough they came swiftly to rescue me from the frustrations of not understanding stuff.

here’s the explanation I got from a very helpful lang-8er 🙂

http://lang-8.com/869713/journals/146699303559777214863145541300399146030
That’s really high level grammer. Even though Korean, It’s difficult to differentiate their nuance. So, Korean SAT(수능) used to set them as questions. I’ll try to expain but I can’t be sure about that you can understand my poor english.

First,

As you know, “~이자” has no diffences in meaning with “랑/하고/과/와”.

“~이자” is actually combined thing with “이” and “자”

“이” is predicative pospostional particle(서술격조사). it can make “~이자” uses after noun.

and

“자” is conjunction. it can make “~이자” has meaning as “and”.

“~이자” is more like “at the same time” in english rather than just “and”, because “자” has meaning of ‘sth possess some qualification and another qualification’.

So, you can easily find “~이자” after human rather than things.

ex)
i) She is my mother and my best friend.
ii) She is my mother at the same time she is my best friend.
– ii) is more often transelated to “그녀는 나의 어머니”이자” 나의 좋은 친구 이기도 하다.” in korean rather than i)

Two,

I am highly recommend you use “그리고” rather than “랑/하고/과/와” and “~이자” as a meaning of “and”.

there are some grammatical rules in use them.

For example, “랑” and “하고” is not recommended to use in formal language especially dissertation and contract. because, they are colloquial style.

However, you can use “그리고” in anytime and any situation.

I get these moments in Japanese where I’m like even though I read a 100 books and watched thousands of hours of talk/variety shows I’ll come across something (words usually…) that seems so basic or easy or common sense that I still do not know… but none of them have been this extreme where I didn’t the word for “and” lol. Just thinking about the word “and” in English it just seems so ludicrous that I didn’t know it. I definitely could not infer the meaning from the context. And hopefully with that there are no more words for “and” in Korean that I do not know about… if it’s like archaic shit that hasn’t been used since the 1500s or something that’s fine (I don’t give a shit) but if it’s actually used like in an episode of UPRS I am embarrassed to not know it lol.

actually isn’t the more appropriate word to translate ija cum? If I think of it that way it is kinda advanced. I have yet to ever hear anyone use the word cum in speech. I’ve only read that usage in the books.