Just out of curiosity. Once one has an advanced level how long would a dialect take to learn like 6 months to a year at the most right, or are the dialects in Korea a lot more profound than that?
I wish I knew. My guess is that it’d be difficult and one would have to move to Busan and hang out in public parks drinking tea with Korean elders. Although that may be changing since dialects have been receiving more respect than they did in the past.
For English speaking learners who want to learn dialects, my understanding is that teaching/learning materials do not really exist. Strangely, it’s easier to learn the Busan dialect as a Japanese person learning Korean. Due to regional proximity there are more Japanese books teaching the Busan dialect than English.
There is some Busan dialect in the translation of Pachinko. The story begins over 100 years ago in an area close to Busan. In the early chapters almost all dialogue is in that dialect.
There are lots of free apps out there to learn Hangeul. I would recommend to start with those and then to move on to Lingq.
Romanisation of Korean is, in my opinion, unecessary and even harmful as it can lead to poor pronunciation and an over reliance on the Latin alphabet.
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I guess almost no one would want to learn to speak North Korean, the two dialects are mutually intelligible to begin with, albeit North Korean representing a “purer” more archaic version of the same language that doesn’t feature English loanwords and has reduced the influence of Chinese on the language. So, one would probably study it for comparative linguistic or philological motives, basically to gain a deeper understanding by using a comparative approach. Or, of course someone might want to prepare for the potential reunification…
I don’t have an overview of what is in LingQ’s Korean library and what percentage of it is in fact North Korean. So, it might not make sense to add this functionality, especially as much of the potential content could be considered propaganda.
As for Germany, the GDR indeed had unusually close ties to the DPRK, but I am not aware of significant material and this would be well over 30 years old and probably infested with communist language. Wilfried Herrmann taught at the Humboldt University in East Berlin, so it might be considered the culmination of their efforts. The book is by the way extremely thorough and grammar heavy it was intended to be used in a university curriculum. I believe this book is not easy to come by, if anyone is truly interested, they can contact me privately. Here is a video showing it briefly: Buske: Foreign Language Learning Series Reviews - YouTube
I think it would be unwise, at least from a business perspective, to tell customers to first learn the basics elsewhere and then come back to LingQ once they’re ready. I think it is reasonable to expect LingQ to offer a decent introduction to the alphabet so that even zero beginners can use LingQ from the start. The current way LingQ teaches the alphabet (The LingQ Korean Grammar Guide - Alphabet) is a bit unintuitive and frustratingly lacks any audio.
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Although I see your point I can’t say I agree. We all understand the need to use outside resources, e.g. grammar books, dictionaries, italki, YouTube videos, etc. Hangeul apps are no different in my mind. They can’t replace LingQ but are supplementary, and perhaps even necessary for people completely new to Korean.
Perhaps LingQ would better serve their users by admitting LingQ’s limitations and pointing people to outside resources.
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It makes much more sense to treat Lingq as a platform for integrating resources via the unique feature of importing than a content provider in general. The Hangul lessons at Lingq are the least appealing to me. However, I have practiced a lot of the Hangul alphabet chart with mnemonic hints (Romanization based) from Miss Vicky in simple pen and paper.
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Yeah this is true. Also, lingq could just copy these people’s youtube videos for the lingq learn hanguel course and now lingq has a better course lol.
Since the Korean dialects are mutually intelligent to a great extent, it’s more similar to comparing Mandarin spoken in mainland China and Taiwan. However, the latter has incorporated more terms from the Southern Min dialect, other Chinese dialects, and foreign languages. One curious thing is that most Sino-Korean words are closer to the Southern Chinese dialect pronunciation than Mandarin, as they have retained notable features of classic Chinese, with unique vocabulary and pronunciation included. In conclusion, I estimate it will take three to six months for a native Korean to get used to and become fluent in another dialect compared to six months to two years for a native Mandarin speaker to speak fluently in Cantonese.
It affects less the applicability and practicability of adopting a particular language variant once a learner achieves a more advanced level. People are more aware of the difference in the pronunciation and usage of vocabulary nowadays due to the closer contact with the advent of the internet.
Two great examples are the different pronunciations of the word garbage in Mandarin in mainland China and Taiwan, and Latin America has adopted a meaning with a rather vulgar version of the term “coger” compared with Spain. From a linguistic point of view, why haven’t more related words been introduced to Korean besides serve and service, such as server, servant, serviceable, servitude, etc., and other German words related to Arbeit?
Acceptance of the adoption may have to do with people’s general sentiment toward global Anglicization in the languages, such as English words in German. Which one of the linguistic purist or pragmatist approaches will prevail? Or rather, do they work together to a great extent in a potpourri?
First, kudos to master Steve’s series of Youtube videos on My 7 Language Learning Goals, and they lay one of the essential basic frameworks for learning any language in general.
I want to address some hurdles a typical Korean learner may face in the learning process and some crucial things, such as milestones or a detailed roadmap worth mentioning and dealing with in specific approaches according to each user at Lingq. Hopefully, they will answer some of the questions, especially those mentioned by ConsistencyIsTheKey and Florian as bamboozled at the beginner’s level.
These are my opinions based on my personal experience with the language. They may get more comprehensive and conclusive combined with insights from other experienced users, which I recommend sharing for the benefit of all.
Following is my roadmap according to the progression of difficulties with some of my comments.
Key elements
Hangul
Hangul functions effectively as a writing system. Romanization is only suitable for learning Hangul, but not so helpful in reading the Korean text in the long run. Learning Romanization for Hangul is comparable to acquiring Pinyin for Chinese characters with the same effort and learning Hangul to a few hundred Chinese characters as a beginner. However, we must realize a significant shortcoming of Romanization in representing Hangul phonetically in Korean compared with Pinyin for Chinese characters.
I have been practicing the Hangul alphabet chart with mnemonic hints from Miss Vicky’s Youtube video on pen and paper. In addition, I have reinforced my learning by watching or listening to more pronunciation and introductory conversation lessons in the language, and I have ignored Romanization accompanied by text. It took me a month to learn all the basics and three months to become comfortable with the writing. More work is needed through further exposure to the language to have a greater mastery of Hangul.
Vocabulary and comprehension
Vocabulary acquisition has been slowest initially, especially before acquiring the first thousand words in the language and a good mastery of Hangul. I have encountered incomprehensible sentences occasionally and relied on the translation to gain a better understanding. I usually don’t deliberately translate the sentence with the lookup of new words from the sentence.
Grammar
I have learned and absorbed most basic grammar from structured courses like Professor Yoon’s videos for Integrated Korean and the Korean language course by the Cyber University of Korea. Both are available on Youtube, and I have imported the text into Lingq from Integrated Korean I found online. In addition, I have been using the following resources as well.
https://kleartextbook.com/category/b_beginning/lesson-ppt/
Chinese characters (Hanja)
We have discussed a great deal about the topic. We can rely on Chatgpt in addition to the content related to Chinese characters and sentence mining in a dictionary, provided the accuracy is ensured. Does anyone else have luck with the following inquiry?
- List 10 Korean words with 면 as a common stem related to noodles but not a noodle itself.
- Create a short story in Korean using these words.
A different variation of the first inquiry may return a different result. Some definitions need to be more accurate and related to noodles.
Contents
I+1 contents are a good choice, and I usually focus on one or two courses or resources for an extended time. I have acquired most vocabulary by reading and learning more by focusing on different aspects upon multiple passes on the same content, such as listening skills, grammar rules, set phrases, etc. I expect to avoid repeating the same content after finishing the first TV series and the first book in the language.
Methods and concepts
One of the key ideas is the learning readiness of learners, specifically the ability to process the text comfortably from the learners for maximum efficiency at the corresponding language level. Of course, the first thing to do is discover the meaning of symbols by learning Hangul to the heart. I have subsequently consumed content with linear difficulty, along with my progressing comprehension of the language.
Roadmap
I was learning from scratch with various online resources imported into Lingq. Some of the practice has proven extremely helpful.
1st month
Goal: Get familiar with the language by learning Hangul through mnemonic hints for Romanization.
Jenny’s Korean
Integrated Korean: Beginning 1
Talktomeinkorean’s essential courses
First 1k words (Milestone and toughest IMO)
2nd month
I had been practicing typing by entering words from some courses into Lingq to enhance my mastery of Hangul. I highly recommend it!
Typing practice: Jenny’s Korean + samples sentences from Seemile Korean App
Integrated Korean: Beginning 2
Talktomeinkorean’s essential courses (up to level 4)
3rd month
Review less familiar content from 2nd month.
Login - LingQ (a breakthrough)
Integrated Korean: Intermediate 1
4th month
Integrated Korean: Intermediate 2
Quick Korean, Cyber University levels 2 and 3
Iyagi: Intermediate ⎟ Talk to Me in Korean
Review Lingq Mini Story for grammar, although I had never used it before.
A systematic grammar review with youtube channels
5th month
Quick Korean, Cyber University levels 4
Iyagi: Intermediate ⎟ Talk to Me in Korean
6th month
Consolidate my learning.
My learning in Korean has slacked off recently because I want to focus on reading English books. Anyways, the following is my want-to-learn list for further exploration in Korean.
Jadoo
Watching the Korean series Little women on Netflix will be interesting after reading the same title but a different novel by Louisa May Alcott and Pride and Prejudice.
외국인을 위한 한국어 읽기 (Korean Reading for Foreigners) at Lingq
These are my undertaking in learning Korean; others may have quite a different route from what I have experienced. Nevertheless, we should espouse the idea of self-improvement with visible progress after our little steps, albeit at a minimum. We will find the most suitable way comparable to the holy grail to prosper in the language and live the language to our original dream.
Please don’t hesitate to share some of your valuable experiences, especially those at the beginner’s level. They could be the paths a new learner searches for when trudging in a muddy quandary.
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Hi, I am an upper intermediate learner. I read novels, news articles, scripts.
I think the most useful thing would be an option that defaults to ignoring particles and verb ensings unless they are selected similar to the way a phrase is selected
For example 내가 너를 사랑한다
This is really 내+가 너+를 사랑+하다 +ㄴ다
I think giving the option to automatically trim 이,가,을, and 를 would be a good start.
Trimming the other ultra-common endings and conjunctions like 하고, 하다, 합니다 etc are going to cut down on the redundant links as well
For advanced learners this will make links more meaningful.
It’s not useful to have separate links for:
사랑하다 to love
사랑했다 he loved
사랑이랑 with love
사랑과 with love
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I reached full fluency in Korean specifically through LingQ, I have 4 million words read and I’ve been on the platform for a little over 3 years now. Here’s what bothers me most about Korean at Linq:
1) Punctuation and English being included in Lingqs. This makes it very tedious to LingQ the language as there is already a high permutability in Korean due to the vast array of conjugations possible per each root word. Examples:
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“사람의 진로에 조금만 방해가 되면 Excuse me를 연발했다.” in this sentence me를 is counted as a Lingq. As is “Excuse” despite this not being 한글. Only 한글 should be accepted as Lingqs.
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“그쯤 되면 돈 잃은 사람이 '개평 좀 달라’는 불멘소리를 합니다.” Here, 달라’는 is counted as a lingq despite this being a quoting form, not a separate word. 달라 should be counted as a word, not 달라`는. This problem Occurs when a punctuation mark lands directly, without a space, between two words or a word and an article.
2) Bad dictionaries. Now, this is not LingQ’s fault but the english naver dictionary is missing many, many words. I often have to resort to using native dictionaries in order to find definitions which makes it harder on learners. Now that I am fluent it is not such a big deal but in the past this was the source of much frustration for me. If possible, find a better dictionary, perhaps? I’ve tried all the Korean-English dictionaries and they were all bad, Naver English being the least bad.
3) Being unable to hide the Lesson Progress Bar. This isn’t a specific issue in the Korean section, but just a much needed QOL feature. It’s difficult for me to focus on reading when there is a bright green bar shining in my face reminding me of how much (or little) I have read. It breaks my immersion and is not unlike staring at the clock when working on a task; time seemingly flows much slower which creates fatigue and demotivates the individual - many people work far better when they aren’t staring at a timer or clock for the entire duration of the task. I was able to hide the progress bar via other means and it made my reading experience much better. Please see attached for an example of this, look how much cleaner and less distracting this setup is! This dramatically improved my reading experience and it should be an option available for users to toggle at will.
4) Lack of good beginner-intermediate reading material. Now I know that this isn’t Lingq’s responsibility per se but it would have been nice if there were more beginner-friendly reading material available on LingQ other than the mini-stories - which were terrible by the way. There is a huge gap between intermediate/high-intermediate reading and the beginner-level and the mini stories are nowhere near enough to bridge this gap. I believe LingQ would be more marketable if there was a wider, official, study library tailored towards beginners and intermediates. Though user submitted lessons can be browed through via the proficiency tags (beginner 1,2, intermediate 1,2, advanced 1,2) I find that users do a poor job at marking difficulties. Getting past this stage for me was excruciating due to how little i knew about searching for good materials and how bad my Korean was at the time which further limited my reading scope.
5) 
The Sheer amount of repetitive and redundant Lingqing. As mentioned prior, Korean is a highly conjugated language. Every root word has many, many conjugations and it can be draining to mark each and every single one. For example: 가다 (to go) can be conjugated as 가, 갔어, 간다, 갈거야. 갈거예요, 갔어요, 갔습니다, 갔습니까, 가셨습니다, 가실거예요, etc. etc. If there was some way to detect and specify the root of a conjugated form and link it to the base then instead of marking 30, 40 definitions we would only have to mark it once at the base. All of the conjugations of 갔어, 간다, 갈거야, 갈거예요, etc. could point to just the one “가다” root/base form of the word and the definition could attach there. This might be difficult to implement but Korean dictionaries already have this function as when you search 갔어 in the dictionary it immediately takes you to 가다, along with other possible variants. Please reference the screenshot below. “가셨어” was searched and the “가다” entry is returned. Also, please note that not only are conjugations counted as separate Lingqs, word + article is also counted. As andrewworihuela has already mentioned 사랑과 (과 being a particle meaning “and”) is counted as a separate lingq which further excacerbates the redundancy issue.
If anything else comes to mind I’ll come back and edit this post.
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I am an upper intermediate learner. Overall, the Lingq experience is good, but I find that separating particles and verb endings from the nouns/verbs to which they are attached would be a real time saver.
I mainly use Lingq to read Korean novels and the sheer number of redundant Lingqing is staggering. It would be nice if you could improve the user experience for more advanced learners.
Also, this is not specific to Korean, but the fact that the reading notes we sometimes create and attach to individual words are not visible anywhere is a problem. There is a vocab list displayed at the bottom of each lesson and I believe a notes list should feature there as well. I should not have to wait until I encounter the word again (which may be many moons later) in order to see the note attached to it. This would greatly improve my experience with the reader and it is a feature that is virtually available on every ebook reader out there.
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Transliteration is a great way for beginners to mispronounce pretty much everything. Basic lessons that teach beginners to pronounce things correctly would be much better for learning.
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I am not using much Korean here on Lingq but I have actually taken Korean as a class and followed the sounds and read the Hangul and I will say that I absolutely HATE transliteration. It’s not consistent as someone said above, at least to how I would even interpret something properly transliterated.
Case in point, two artists names, Lee Hyun Do and Uhm Jung Hwa. This spelling is common but not correct at all to me, if you want to be phoenetically accurate to how I had learned to associate the sounds it’s Lee Hyeon Do and Eom Jeong Hwa. Those are VERY different so when I suddenly saw how their names were actually spelled I was really pissed as I put in different Hangul for search results.
Japanese is much easier because a lot of those sounds already in English so there are close approximations. This doesn’t work though in Chinese and Korean.
Along these lines Roku needs NON English text support when you are searching for Korean and Chinese movies and actors and actresses.
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I already discussed it here, but stemming seems to be at least partly solved in programming, yet we get many duplicated words that should not be duplicated. I understand creating a separate word for different verb endings, but particles always act the same way.
Devs, please do something about this so you can take my money.
Fantastic post - can’t believe I came so late to this thread. I very much agree with #4 and #5 here.
As for #2 though, I think it’s sort of an 어쩔 수 없다 situation 
Naver is by far the best English-Korean dictionary available online, but any bilingual dictionary can’t/won’t contain every word (especially when we’re dealing with rarer homophonic hanja vocabulary, etc…) I think that the current resources on LingQ are probably the best they can do, and more advanced learners who have trouble finding a term in the standard Naver English dictionary should just take up the challenge and start trying to read/understand the native Naver dictionary (or other good resources like 우리말샘, or whatever.)
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Resurrecting this thread to say that it would be nice if you could introduce Korean fonts to the web reader. Not a critical improvement, but still it would be a nice addition to have.
Also, a wider range of TTS voices would not go amiss. There are only three currently and the two female voices are quite robotic. The only natural sounding voice at the moment is male.
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@TerraEarth
It’s been a while since your post but regarding hiding the progress bar:
Is there any chance you could share with us how you managed to hide it? I wholeheartly agree with you that when reading longer (especially difficult) texts that this is a huge distractor and demotivator.
Thanks in advance.
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