kangmi: learning korean

Counting systems question

Korean uses two counting systems, commonly referred to (in English) as Korean and Sino-Korean.

Question: What are these two counting systems called in Korean?

Posted by kangmi on October 11, 2004 at 2:00 PM6 comments

The Supermemo section

The Supermemo section is now up and running. All future Supermemo commentary will be confined to that section.

I’m looking forward to seeing new content from members posted there.

Posted by kangmi on October 11, 2004 at 8:00 AM0 comments

What I didn’t know about 한글날…

(and you probably didn’t either) is that it has its own song.

You can listen to 한글날노래 here and read the lyrics here.

From both sound and appearance, it seems like it would be suitable for a church service.

For the right price, I will personally sing it to you.

Thanks to 인선 for digging up this gem.

Posted by kangmi on October 8, 2004 at 8:00 PM0 comments

Supermemo

I’ve started Supermemo collections. I’ve deleted Supermemo collections. I think about making Supermemo collections. I’ve yet to dream about Supermemo collections, but I’m sure it’s coming.

What I’ve learned
I’ve learned a lot about Supermemo in the last few weeks. My most significant findings (available here as a primary source):

• Supermemo is not about learning new material. Supermemo is a tool to remember material you have already learned. This is extremely important, and not understanding it caused me to get hung up for a while.

• Creating good question and answer pairs is essential. It’s best to make the question and answer focus on one piece of information, rather than several.

What I use
I use the free online version of Supermemo, which uses the QA format. I haven’t tried (and currently don’t intend to) either the desktop or handheld versions. The QA format can be created in any plain text editor, which is a lot easier than entering them online.

How I’m using it
As I am learning Korean, and not English, as far as possible, all of my Supermemo questions and answers will be in Korean.

Understandably, this is not a simple process, and it’s certainly not speedy. It’s not a matter of creating a QA pair like this:

Q: Wednesday
A: 수요일

It’s more along the lines of creating a pair like this:

Q: 일주일의 넷째날을 뭐라고 하나요?
A: 수요일이예요.

How I’m doing
You’ll remember that it’s neither a simple nor a speedy process. I’ve been spending a lot of time figuring out the best way to create question and answer pairs. Language is not some hard list of facts. It’s ethereal, transient, growing, changing, dynamic. It’s clay, and Legos, and sticks and stones and boxes...never the same thing twice.

So you can understand why integrating my foo-foo perspective with Supermemo has been a long, slow process. These resources have been useful in giving me ideas for creating better Supermemo language items.

The future of Supermemo at kangmi
My orderly heart likes Supermemo, and it also likes what it’s doing for my retention. In the interest of furthering Korean language acquisition worldwide, I will be adding a Supermemo blog here at kangmi. Most posts will be lists of QA items that you should be able to use in your own online Supermemo account. You may wish to use some, but not all, items in any given post. You may wish to edit items for your own purposes.

And once I figure out this whole membership thing, you should be able to add your own Supermemo QAs.

Posted by kangmi on October 6, 2004 at 8:00 AM0 comments

한자

A couple of weeks ago, I announced to 인선 that I wanted to start learning 한자. However, since my quest to become literate in Korean is not as pressing as the quest to become fluently conversational, I asked to limit my learning to one character a week (slow, but not nothing, and I eventually plan to pick up the pace). 인선 thought that learning 한자 wasn’t so important for my conversational Korean either, but she soon forgot her inhibitions when she asked which characters I already knew.

What 한자 I know is rusty, so I jokingly started out with 一, 二, and 三 . She moved on to other common characters: 山, 水, and 江.

So much for one a week.

The following week was no better. I had dug up my one 한자 book, Jacob Kim’s Pictorial Sino-Korean Characters: Fun With Hancha. I thought that starting at the beginning seemed like a good idea, so I spent the week studying 光. But 인선 had discovered that I’m weak on the days of the week (I know them as words, but I often forget to which days they belong).

In addition to telling me to learn the days of the week by singing them to the melody of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star*,” she decided to continue the 한자 lesson with 日, 月, and 水.

She then assigned 木, so I got into the spirit of things and included 林 and 森.  I met my match in 葉, but I’ll get to it later.

I’ve listed several 한자 resources , but my newest favorite is Naver’s 한자사전.  This site has the best graphic representation I’ve seen of how to write each character.

*She tried to get me to sing right then and there, but I’m not one who likes to sing in front of other people. How did you make it through four and a half years in Korea, you ask? Edelweiss became my song of choice, and as often as possible, I got the group to sing with me. It’s a nice group song.

However, I can recommend the “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” method of learning the days of the week ("일, 월, ...). 

Posted by kangmi on October 4, 2004 at 8:00 AM7 comments