How to Learn Korean (AND Have Fun): Beginner's Guide with Pro Tips & Practice Methods

So I know in the thumbnail i'm wearing glasses And I want to look studious for this video, but this glare is not going to cut it We will wear these glasses later. They have absolutely no function. They're just cute Hello, my friends. It's nina and I have returned with one of my favorite videos to make which is a study tips video I will be giving you my updated tips on how to learn and study korean If you are familiar with my channel, I have made a lot of videos on how to study korean But as time goes by i'm always learning new tips new techniques So I like to come back and share my updates and tips with you guys So here is my updated 2024 version. So to start I will briefly talk about my journey with learning korean So i'm korean-american. I am ethnically 100 percent korean, but in my entire family I was the first to be born in the u.s So my entire life I grew up in the u.s. I grew up speaking english learning english in my household I heard both english and korean My parents were both born in korea and then my dad came to the u.s when he was around nine So he grew up in america, which is why he's fluent in english and korean But since he grew up in the u.s He is more comfortable with english and so he ended up speaking english to me and then my mom moved to the u.s Around college, so she grew up in korea, but later moved to the u.s Now she's also fluent in english and korean. But again, she still mostly speaks in korean culturally korean, etc, etc So I had two parents who had very different cultures They came together and they made me I have to teach korean to myself. So unfortunately, I didn't properly learn korean growing up There's a lot of korean americans who can speak korean fluently. I am not one of them I am the other case where I heard english growing up and so I have to now teach myself I have been teaching myself korean since 2017 I actually wanted to start out by taking korean classes in college That did not work because I was waitlisted after that experience after getting kicked off the waitlist and not getting that class I never tried again to get a korean class. I just decided I am going to teach myself And so that's where things have been since then I can say that i'm finally at least at an intermediate level I will try to avoid repeating tips from past videos But if you want to check out those videos, they will be somewhere here or in the description But without further ado here are my updated tips and methods on how you can study korean effectively like a pro Even if you're a beginner, let's begin first things first. No Excuses learn the korean alphabet. That is the first thing you should be studying The korean alphabet is called hangul. You can probably study it within a day within a few hours to be honest If you want to learn korean The first thing you should get out of the way is properly studying hangul If you don't get used to the alphabet now and you only depend on romanization You're not going to really ever be comfortable with studying korean do not depend on romanization That is going to probably confuse you. I have taught my own friends who are not korean how to read and pronounce the korean alphabet They all got it down within a day without fail so you can do it too And then here is also a big pro tip in order to have an easier time learning korean You need to throw away any knowledge you have of the language that you speak currently and only learn the korean alphabet As if you're a baby learning a language for the first time, for example, I speak english, right? If you also speak english, you might be tempted to learn through romanization You can compare the english letters to korean letters and then you think that will help the issue at hand Is that the korean language has a lot of sounds that don't really exist in english or it does but it's different The placement of your tongue is different. The opening and shape of your lip is different For example, we have the pube, right? This is the sound pu in korean You might be tempted to compare it to an english b or a p it is in between those You have to remember it as its own sound It'll become harder when you reach other characters that might be harder to pronounce Throw away the knowledge of how you pronounce sounds in english open your mind Just have a brain reset and not just for english But for any language you speak some things might be similar some things might be different but try to just study Specifically what they teach you to pronounce and read korean if you can get yourself to comfortably read korean Then you will be able to learn korean without too many struggles. This is also important because most study programs textbooks workbooks They're going to show korean words as korean words with the characters They're not going to show you romanizations That's also not going to be effective if you're traveling if you're reading korean menus or signs It's all going to be in korean So make sure you get it down first so that when you're using other study Resources you can read what has been given to you after you have learned the korean alphabet Next you should find a study program It'll help you stick to learning korean while also teaching you things that you can't teach yourself I have tried a lot of study programs in the past few years I find that the best kind of program is one that specifically has audio features so that you can hear korean being pronounced and something that also allows you to speak korean while you learn a big part Learning korean and any language to be honest is practicing and developing muscle memory I also recommend a program that will help you learn practical vocabulary grammar So you can use it in real life as soon as possible. And what is a good program for that you ask? Well, I have an answer a perfect program for this is rosetta stone Who is also our lovely partner for this video? So what makes rosetta stone unique to other study programs that i've tried is its dynamic immersion This means that it gives you images and words in an immersive environment That way you can actually make connections for yourself through reasoning and context It's the fastest and most effective way to learn any new language So you're given images and the words are only in korean For example, you're given a simple picture of an old house that's going to mean that we lived there So you're going to choose a sentence that refers to the past based on context and reasoning And so we've got There is a picture of spilt milk First off I don't even know what But assuming out of context we have a toy. So i'm assuming Yes, you have to figure this out yourself and it really gets your brain going rosetta stone also enables perfect pronunciation You can learn to read write and speak like a native korean and you are given actual korean pronunciations You also get the opportunity to pronounce korean yourself with the voice recognition feature This compares your pronunciation to native speakers so you can sound more like a local I think it's much more effective than simply just reading a textbook or workbook with no audio I will demonstrate the voice recognition feature for you right now. Let's go into unit four. This is shopping core lesson 1.1 Let's go. All these lessons are less than 10 minutes to start learning And this is what I mean by throwing away any knowledge you have of the language that you speak I pronounce sunglasses as I would in english do not do this pronounce it with korean sounds Let's go into Unit eight. There are so many units to choose from this is dining and vacation start learning Piano So obviously rosetta stone is made for the real world I personally wanted to learn korean so that I can engage with people literally around me my family Friends people in my community when I travel and whether it's korean or any language Basically, you want to be able to engage with more of the world rosetta stone helps you learn real world things such as greetings Introductions shopping travel work in school and much more and of course another thing that I love is that it fits every schedule You can study rosetta stone at your convenience on their app or even on a desktop wherever and whenever I love using rosetta stone on my phone But I also love using it on my desktop when i'm taking a break from work and I want to get a little study in I love that their lessons are not only quick but also efficient too. We are all busy people You might be a student or a working professional But with rosetta stone the lessons are as short as five minutes and you can easily squeeze them between Classes or meetings and even when you commute or when you're on the go Basically get yourself a study program that you can have in the palm of your hands Rosetta stone has a special offer for you If you want to learn korean or any other language available You can get over 60% off rosetta stone's lifetime unlimited subscription with my exclusive link down below in the description But only for a limited time this will get you a one-time payment of 149 So you get access to 25 languages forever And since it's the holiday season, you can also gift this subscription to someone You know who also loves learning languages. I think this would make a great holiday gift You can enter the new year with a resolution to learn a new language Thank you rosetta stone for partnering with me on this video and let's move on to the other tips Now that you have found a study program that will help you keep studying korean Another big tip that will help you learn korean so much faster is consuming korean media Anyone will tell you this with any language you're learning But luckily there is a lot of korean media to consume if you can try to get yourself to hear korean As much as possible this will train your brain to not forget the korean you're learning and another big plus You will actually eventually also become familiar with korean yourself It is such an amazing feeling when you're learning a certain grammar structure or a new word And you actually have heard this word or phrase before examples of korean media. You've got kdramas I also highly recommend watching korean variety shows reality shows anything that's real or unscripted Of course korean music korean books korean youtube videos vlogs and even podcasts I think the more unscripted and real the media is the more helpful it'll be so you can hear everyday korean vernacular This will help you learn to speak like an everyday person Now let's move on to my favorite part practice methods I will show you some of my updated practice methods that I love to do So my first practice method is a method that I have talked about in the past But I have an even better version of it I love to do song lyric translations and what this is is you basically choose a song that you like or are familiar with Or even a song that you want to be familiar with maybe you don't know the lyrics and you want to understand But choose a song that you enjoy It's also helpful if you choose a song that kind of has a lot of everyday modern language Sometimes songs can be too romantic or too poetic so you don't get to use a lot of everyday speech But with songs I feel like you can get the words that you don't really ever run across which will be better for your brain It'll definitely expand your vocabulary 100% and grammar too. I do this both handwritten and digitally Here is my big notebook for studying languages Oh, yes, here is an example of an old one that i've done This is bts zero o'clock one of my favorite songs I feel like it has a lot of everyday language So it was a good song to choose what you're going to do is on the left side you write down the korean lyrics You can find this online. My favorite one to use is color-coded lyrics. Basically just write down the korean lyrics You can also copy paste if that's faster for you I personally will handwrite it if I want to practice handwriting and then on the other side You're going to write down the translation again with color-coded lyrics. They show the english translation So if you're a beginner with korean just write down the english translation and you can kind of compare the lyrics together And my favorite thing to do with this is with the korean translation You can run through it and underline words that you don't know or phrases that you don't know And of course I color code everything so on the left, it's black right It's blue and I will underline it with red just like that I will make note of words that i'm not familiar with you're going to make a little word bank or a phrase bank This is where you bring down those words that you've underlined and you're going to translate it Now this is the beginner version of this practice method But now I have developed an intermediate version of this and I do this on my laptop Here we are at my desktop to make it a little bit more useful and challenging instead of doing two sides You're going to make three columns. This is btob beautiful pain one of my favorite songs So on the left side you have the same thing. You're just going to copy paste the korean lyrics It's so much easier when you do it digitally, but you do miss out on the handwriting part So up to you what you want to do I feel like my handwriting now is decent so I can just kind of pass on that and on the next column or the middle Column instead of copying pasting the english translation that's already available Don't even look at that make your own translation first based on the lyrics You're going to make your brain work by translating every line If there are some lines you genuinely just can't figure out just skip it But as best as you can try to translate what you're reading This is definitely when you feel a little bit more comfortable with korean And then when you're done with that on the right on the third column You're going to copy paste the actual english translation Now you get to compare your translation to the english translation or whatever translation And you can see if you got it right or not But what I like about it is you can also compare what you thought the sentence meant and what the sentence actually Means and of course we do the same thing in the korean lyrics I just highlight words that i'm not familiar with and then I bring them down to the grammar notes and the vocab bank And then you can translate what you don't know and you get to know what the songs that you love are about You can squeeze it in whenever you have time, but this is why I recommend listening to korean music There's so much good korean music get yourself into it Another practice method that I like to use is active listening whether it's for kdramas reality shows variety shows podcasts youtube videos Whatever it is when you're consuming that media do not depend on just these subtitles use your active listening If you're just starting out Here's the beginner version basically just watch any kdrama with subtitles But as you're watching listen for words and phrases that appeal to you pause what you're watching Have your phone out or even have a notebook just make like a kdrama word dump page Write down that word or phrase and write down the translation Try to make note of anything that will be useful to you when I watch anything I always just jot down a phrase that I heard or a word that I keep hearing and I finally want to figure out You can do this with anything 책임 책임. I don't even know what responsibility in korean is If you want to see the actual korean word and you don't know how to spell it switch to korean subtitles Relationship That's what she said I didn't even know how to say it. So This is why vocabulary is so important Equals itself See isn't this fun kids? Wow Active listening. I just learned a bunch of words that I never questioned to myself for the intermediate version of this watch A kdrama that you're already familiar with but this time don't put subtitles on scratch that you're going to put on korean subtitles We're here to learn korean after all and try to see if you understand what's happening You would be surprised how much you actually recognize without depending on subtitles and i'm emphasizing watching something that you've already seen So you don't really miss out because this might be hard and you don't want to miss out on a lot of plot Now the advanced version of this which is what I like to do take a new show something You've never watched watch that and do the same thing. No subtitles do add in korean subtitles though My mom and I love watching korean shows together. She can obviously understand everything. Sometimes she'll be like, oh nina There's no subtitles. Should we wait till tomorrow and me being impatient? I'm like No, let's watch it right now with no subtitles So I accidentally ended up doing the advanced version But honestly this engages my brain so much and I also realized that I do Actually know more korean than I thought because you don't know how much your brain is capable of so I have been challenging myself By doing that and even if i'm missing a lot at least my mom's there She can help translate when I actually don't know what's going on That's also another big tip when you're learning language If you can try to have speakers of that language around so they can help you luckily for me My mom is fluent in korean. I spend a lot of time with her And so I have been able to learn korean pretty fast because i'm constantly trying to talk to her in korean She helps me when I don't understand something and it's also helpful to speak korean as much as possible But if you don't have someone to speak korean with talk with yourself Another practice method that I have been doing recently that I probably should have done much earlier is reading korean books If you already enjoy reading this will be easy for you But for me, I am still trying to make reading an easier practice for myself Just for some reason reading a book makes me sleepy But all of my friends tell me the same thing reading korean books will help you so much more So here are a bunch of korean books that I got recently Aren't they so cute? So I just got these in the bestseller section at a korean bookstore I actually got these in korea. I'm sure you can order them or find them somewhere in your bookstore Here are just a few I will be able to just read in a lot of korean There's going to be a lot of things you might not understand But that's why you have your phone with you. Just get your translator app. My favorite translating app is pop ago It's my neighbor you can translate from korean to english. So whenever you feel stuck translate it as you go Here's another book So those are the books that i've got But a little bit of an easier step is to get a book that you've already read in english or whatever language you speak So for instance, I love the little prince. I've already read it. I have the english version already I also have the korean version. This is entirely all in korean I feel like i'm saying korean so many times in this video And so since I know what the book is about already I am just depending entirely on context and what I remember and I am reading this Luckily, I have the english version as well So if I get stuck I could just refer to this book or of course just translate on my phone But another recommendation just get the korean version of one of your favorite books And I think that is most of the tips that I can give for this video There are hundreds of tips that I could give but I think these are just the most efficient ones that i've been using And also realistic ones that any of you guys can use as well Let me know if you have any tips that you'd like to share share it down in the comments Let's help each other out I actually need to get myself to lock in and study as well So maybe some study vlogs in the future, but that is going to be it for these study tips Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in my next video Let's bring it in for a hug as always goodbye my friends