How to learn Korean (the right way)

Everything you know about learning Korean is dead wrong.

The 3 lies they tell you about learning Korean:

Lie 1: Learning Korean is difficult.

People who say this are usually trying to sell you bullshit products or trying to justify their failure. Korean is the same as every other language out there. It has its own alphabet, grammar and vocabulary. You already understood a lot of your native language when you were a toddler who was dumb enough to believe in the tooth fairy. There's no reason why Korean should be difficult to learn.

Lie 2: Learning Korean requires hard work/intense studying.

You wanna know what takes hard work? Try giving birth to triplets. The lie that language learning requres hard work or intense studying is perpretrated by people trying to make themselves seem better than the rest (spoiler: they aren't). Language learning doesn't need hard work. In fact, the laziest people who stay in their room and watch TV for hours per day are the ones who make the most progress (for reasons which we will go over later).

Lie 3: Learning Korean requires speaking.

Now don't get me wrong, improving your accent and output will require deliberate practice. But speaking does not help you acquire the language plain and simple. If that were true, there would be no need to learn Korean because the language would just spontaneously come out of your mouth (obviously doesn't happen). We learn languages by one way and one way only: through receiving comprehensible input. No one in the history of mankind has learnt a language through speaking, so you don't need to do it either.

How to actually learn Korean:

As mentioned above, we learn languages by one way and one way only: through receiving comprehensible input. So what is comprehensible input? Comprehensible input is simply messages in another language that can be understood by a receiver without the receiver necessarily understanding all the individual words or structures contained by the message. For more information check out Professor Stephen Krashen. In general, the more of the language you expose yourself to, the more comprehensible input you get and the more language you acquire. That's why weebs who watch anime for 12+ hours a day learn Japanese fast. Same applies to Korean, the more of the language you expose yourself to, the faster you will learn it. It's that simple. It's even easier if you are exposing yourself to fun content.

The Quick & Dirty Guide

• Hangul (Korean Alphabet)
  • Go through this right now (don't need to write anything out)
  • Yes I know it's obviously oversimplifying everything, but there's no way you will have a perfect grasp of it on your first day. The sounds will be solidified through immersion, so don't worry.
• Anki
  • Download Anki here
  • Learn to set Anki up here, here, and here. (don't worry it wont take long).
  • Pre made decks:
    • Popular ones include the Evita Vocab Deck, Evita Grammar Sentence Deck and the decks by Retro.
    • Make a main deck, add your favourite decks as sub deck under the main deck.
    • Do 5 new cards a day.
  • Sentence mining:
    • Stop using pre made decks once you start seeing i+1 sentences in your reading. and/or you start to hate the preamde decks.
    • i+1 sentences are sentences were you know everything in the sentence except for a single piece of vocab.
    • Move all the cards that you studied from the premade sub decks to the main deck. Delete any cards you haven't studied and delete the premade decks.
    • Star mining you own cards. Where you have the i+1 sentence in the front with the target vocab underlined. The back contains a definition and/or picture.
    • If you feel like doing more than 5 you may, but never more than 10. Anymore and you risk spending too much time on Anki.
• Grammar
  • Recommended resources: Talk To Me In Korean Online Grammar Courses, Korean Grammar In Use Beginner and Korean Grammar In Use Intermediate. The sources linked aboved are all free.
  • Spend 10-15 minutes a day reading through the grammar resources. Don't need to take notes. You may mine sentences from the grammar books if any i+1 sentences come up.
  • You won't remember everything and that's ok. Search up any unfamiliar grammar points when you come across them during immersion. The only way to actually solidify grammar points is through frequent natural exposure in immersion.
• Active Immersion:
  • Active immersion, in this context, refers to watching content.
  • This will be your bread and butter as a beginner.
  • Rules for choosing content:
    1. Very f***ing fun. If you are bored, disinterested, watch something else.
    2. Made/translated/spoken by Korean natives
    3. Intended for Korean natives
    4. Entirely in Korean.
  • Watch only with Korean subtitles or no subtitles at all. Watching with english/native language subtitles is forbidden. You learn through watching content in Korean. Watching with English subtitles is the same as reading English i.e not learning Korean.
  • Don't worry about not understanding everything. Focus on finding content that is fun.
  • Look up things that pop out to you. Don't look up everything or you will easily burnout/lose interest. Feel free to mine sentences if any i+1 come up.
  • As a beginner, focus on content that is visual heavy/self explanatory. Cartoons or the famous Running Man variety show works well.
• Readinghttps://neocities.org/site_files/text_editor?filename=korean.html#
  • Reading is the magic sauce. The more you read the faster you will make progress. Start with just 15 minutes a day. Do it first thing in the morning. Slowly increase reading amount over time. Focus on making reading into a habit.
  • When reading, look up any vocab or grammar that sticks out to you. Don't look up everything or you risk burnout/boredom. Feel free to mine any i+1 sentences from your reading
  • Start with the Yonsei Korean Reading series.
  • Once you have finished 3 or 4. You can try reading folk takes. The stories are inside the links, listening to the audio version is optional.
  • When reading yonsei readers and folk tales, you can also read through webtoons. They offer more visual, more comprehensible material compared to pure text.
  • Once you have developed reading confidence. Try reading some webnovels. I give some personal recommendations in this video.
  • Once you feel very confident, you can try reading full books. The community at the Refold Korean server (not affiliated) have kindly provided a great selection of books.
• Passive Listening
  • Optional, but can help beginners get better at listening, acquiring the language subconciously.
  • Do it when you are busy with non-mental tasks e.g cooking, cleaning, commuting etc
  • Rules for picking passive listening material:
    1. There is speaking 99% of the time.
    2. Made/translated/spoken by Korean natives
    3. Intended for Korean natives
    4. Entirely in Korean.
  • Some people like using content that they have watched previously as passive listening material.
  • Some people like using shorter clips and listening to them multiple times (known as repetitive listening)
• Sample Routine for Beginners
  • Anki first thing in the morning (including reviews and new cards) to get it out of the way
  • After Anki, go through grammar points for around 10-15 minutes
  • After Grammar, read as much as you can, or for as much time as you can. Yonsei readers, folk tales, webtoons, web novels read anything that you find fun
  • Passive listening during commute, or whenever you can.
  • Watch fun content in the afternoon/evening. or read if you feel like it

And that's all there is to it. As you immerse, you start to develop your own routine that you enjoy. Remember, fun is the key. As long as you are having fun and immersing, the language will come to you.

If you have any questions or suggestions, you can leave a comment on my YouTube channel or hit me up on Discord at Not Satan#9857.

KEEP IMMERSING!