Learning Korean - Why? How?

안녕하세요! (Hello!)

I`ve intensely experienced this K-World for about 2 years. And I was very frustrated for not be able to understand anything, just relying on other people to transcribe k-dramas, k-musics, k-mawhuas, twitters and news into English (Google Translate doesn`t do a good job when we are talking about Korean -> English ㅜ-ㅜ). Therefore, I decided to learn Korean but, for that, I stipulated a few rules to not create addictions or crutches to memorize sentences or anything. I really wanted to learn Korean without romanization and understand the essential grammar before trying sentences.

With this in mind I chosen a paid online course to guide me (almost US$40/year). It was elaborate by an American who started to learn Korean from the scratch just like me. In this course, romanization is rarely used, the audio was recorded by a native Korean and each lesson has a quiz! Among all online courses, this was the most adapted one to my needs and requirements. Here is the link for it:

Learn Korean Now!

To complement it, I've watched the free lessons of Professor Rob Julien (an American who lives in South Korea teaching ESL). They are really good, but I just didn't pay for the complete course now, because it is more aimed for foreigners who lives in Korea. But I'm going to sing up in the next future, when I feel that my reading and listening skills have improved more. But you can try it in this link: Learn Korean Online.

Other tools to help in learning that I use are:

• Flashcard Machine - for vocabulary
• Korean Learning for Correct Pronunciation - for Hangul
• Forvo - for pronunciation of words
• Word Reference - English -> Korean dictionary
• Talk to me in Korean - to learn Korean from natives teachers

I bought 2 books, but they didn't arrive yet. When I got them, I will write a post about my impressions. I also bought a Korean keyboard on eBay, but you can also buy just Korean keyboard stickers.

If you speak Portuguese and your English isn't enough to follow the links above, there are 2 really good sites to learn Korean in Portuguese (Br):

• Aprendendo Coreano
• Aula de Coreano Hara Haru

I will write new posts about this topic very soon. So come back soon!

또 봐요! (See you later!)
카카우