Learning Korean Part 1

안녕하세요!

I'm doing my best to study Korean for a while each day, and it's funny to me... but it seems like I'm concentrating more on studying now than I ever did while I was in college. It's amazing what kind of stamina you have when you're doing something of your own free will. Well, I did college of my own free will too... but that came with "non-free-will" classes like chemistry, geology, and math.

Anyway! I've done a lot of internet searching for good Korean language websites. There are quite a few out there. I guess it would depend on what type of learner you are.

If you're a visual repeater (example: you like learning by flash cards), then here's a fun way to learn the majority of the Korean alphabet:



Genki Korean is a subset of Genki English, a website dedicated to the "Genki" teaching of English to EFL students. The websites pretty cute and includes links to "Genki Math", "Genki German", "Genki Japan" and more.

The "Genki Korean" website is helpful in many areas. Some of the things, like the video for example, are useful for beginners of all ages. The learning numbers and useful vocabulary is good for anyone who learns things solely by repetition and not so much by practical application. The games are cute, but mostly for younger learners.

Hanlingo.com is a fantastic site for anyone (over the age of 16) interested in being part of an online "language assistance" community. The website is full of people of all language backgrounds looking for help and to help with language learning. For those of you with a phobia of networking sites centered around dating/romantic relationships, have no fear! Hanlingo.com is specifically for language and culture networking ONLY. Members can expect a clean, learning focused environment.

Learnkorean.com is a fantastic website originally created specifically for students taking Korean under the instruction of Dr. Oh. I can only be thankful that the website is available to anyone, because it's fantastic. The website includes useful korean words and phrases with not only the Korean and English translations but a romanized pronunciation guide. This website is great for beginners who are having a difficult time with sounds. Who knew that eo (ㅓ) would be so hard to pronounce? Learnkorean.com takes difficult vowel pronunciations like eo and transforms them into a more recognizable romanization (example: 'eo' become 'uh').

The Learnkorean.com website also includes recorded pronunciations of each word/phrase, Hanja lessons, Youtube Korean lectures, video news about korea, games (which are mostly all of the www.genkikorean.com games), a discussion forum and chat room (both of which, unfortunately, aren't used that often) and links to other great learning websites.

Other websites include (and I'll give proper reviews later):

www.learn-korean.net

www.learn-korean-now.com

www.korea.net (Yes, the official website of Republic of Korea has Korean language lessons!)

공부좋아요!