Introduction:
The Korean language is an East Asian language spoken by about 77 million people. It is the official and national language of both Koreas: North Korea and South Korea, with different standardized official forms used in each country. It is a recognized minority language in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin Province, China. It is also spoken in parts of Sakhalin, Russia, and Central Asia.
It is the sixteenth most spoken tongue and the official language of North Korea and South Korea.
It is a widely spoken language, with over 80 million speakers worldwide. It has a sizable population in places like China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Canada, Uzbekistan, Australia, Kazakhstan, the USA, etc.
The great Indian scholar, poet, and writer Rabindranath Tagore in the Nobel-winning collection Gitanjali wrote a quatrain in which he described Korea as the “Lamp of the East.”
Things to know
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1.Make a special effort to learn the “glue words” first.
By the 1st week, you should start learning “the little words”. These “glue words” occur so frequently, it’s best to learn them straight off the bat. Learn important glue words in Korean. The sooner you conquer them, the better.
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2.Learn collective words and pronunciation.
By the second week, you should practice speaking the phrases that you have collected in your vocabulary book verifying the pronunciations with Omniglot.com and Forvo.com to get better. And as you practice you see how different the Korean pronunciation is from English. It has the new introduction of: and unheard of in any other European languages! But don’t fret or get anxious over it. Speak aloud, record yourself and play the recordings until you get the pronunciation correct. Keep adding new phrases to your vocabulary book the moment you are able to perfect the old ones. Prepare for small conversations such as Annyeong ! nae ileum-eun disya
Now that you can hold small conversations(irrespective of the grammar correctness), I recommend you log in to online language exchange of the conversation exchange programs such as my languageexchange.com, speaky, and many more that are available online. In this manner, you will be able to improve your Korean by listening to the native Korean speaker and getting corrected at the moment you make a mistake via feedback. You can also take advantage of the free Korean lessons offered by a few teachers online.
After your first Korean conversation, I beckon you to prepare yourself for the third week. I encourage you to schedule a minimum of 3 Korean conversations a week so that you soon get into the rhythm of speaking Korean besides slowly picking up the language’s nuances.
Speaking will anyways enable you to remember what you are talking about and to help train your brain we recommend you use flashcard apps such as
Practice your flashcards for at least fifteen minutes per day. I also recommend you start reading something more complex than the simple phrases and words you learned so far. The sooner you master the basics of reading, the sooner you’ll be able to use Korean literature as a study tool.
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3.Try to communicate in Korean
Week three is a good time to evaluate what’s worked for you in learning Korean and what hasn’t worked so well. That is if you’ve kept up your practice. Chances are you’ve had some days when you felt super motivated, and some days when you were tired, bored, or had other engagements. This week is a great time to put things in their places and create a study schedule that works best for you.
Remember it is really very effective to study every day of the week even as little as 10 mins, rather than doing all your study in one or two days. A few simple reasons help you firm up your study routine and you don’t have to spend extra time trying to figure out where you left it last!
Throughout this week, keep reading, keep scheduling conversations, and keep building and practicing from your flashcard decks. Introduce yourself to Memrise, Drops, Duolingo to take further advantage of learning. No matter what else might get in the way of your studying, you can always find a few spare moments to check in your Anki deck.
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4.Talk to yourself
Make a schedule for learning
Tweak your schedule, if it has been a little too heavy considering the time that you have at hand so that it works for you. In the last week of the first month, I recommend you keep practicing and adding to your flashcard decks, resume listening to a Korean podcast or radio show, Korean playlists, and conversations with native speakers this week. You will also find your listening to have improved significantly and you would be able to identify spoken words better. So why not try some of the great YouTube videos available.
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5.Track your progress
Review yourself, your progress, your learning to see how far you’ve come in just a few weeks, even if you weren’t able to study as much as you wanted. You’ll be amazed by your progress and find it hard to believe that at one time, you could barely pronounce Annyeong! (As long as you studied consistently and didn’t give up, you won’t be looking back!
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Conclusion
So, above are the basic steps to get started. Following these will surely help you to ace your learning process and reach the goal. Also, Multibhashi offers the best courses for Korean, you can check that out.
