The “Korean Grammar in Use” series is one of the resources I recommend the most when people ask me which resources they should (or shouldn’t) use to study Korean. That is not to say that it’s flawless, but it’s solid for sure. If you want to start diving into advanced grammar or are looking for something to supplement your other advanced grammar resources, here are a few good and bad things about “Korean Grammar in Use (Advanced).”
NOTE: A lot of what I say here, especially in regards to the formatting of the book, will be applicable to “Korean Grammar in Use (Intermediate)” as well since the books follow the same format. I imagine that this also holds true for the beginner edition as well, but I can’t say for sure since I’ve never actually read a copy.
Pros:
One of the good things about the KGIU series is that it is available not only in English but also in other languages like Mandarin and Japanese. If you’re a native speaker of one of those languages and would like a more comfortable read, or if you’re learning one of those languages and would like to tackle learning Korean through one of your second languages, this could be really beneficial! A lot of Korean grammar resources are printed in just one language, so having editions in multiple languages is a plus.
As for the content, I find that KGIU’s explanations are fairly clearly written and easy to understand in both Korean and English. The initial description of the main function(s) of each grammar point is succinctly introduced and is usually accompanied by a table showing you how to conjugate the grammar point properly. Any specific limitations, extra usages of the grammar, or just other important things to know or remember then appear in the “더 알아볼까요?” section. After all is read and done (har har har), you’ll have quite a bit of information to work with! Compared to other sources I have used, I would say that “Korean Grammar in Use (Advanced)” is usually the most detailed when describing the usage of each grammar point, but the way in which that information is introduced and formatted doesn’t leave the reader feeling like they’re being barraged with too much at the same time.
Within the “더 알아볼까요?” section is another sub-section that I think is worthy of its own special mention. In the “비교해 볼까요?” sub-section, KGIU shows and breaks down grammar points that either look similar to the target grammar or have similar meanings (or both) and explains how each is similar and different with the target grammar. While other sources that I’ve used will usually mention things like “This grammar form can be switched with X form” as necessary, they don’t tend to have comparisons like KGIU does. Another excellent feature and a reason why I recommend this series~
Wrapping up the positives for this book is the amount of practice questions. Each grammar form has at least two pages of practice questions accompanying it, which is more than other books I have used. The exercises are fairly simple but effective, usually involving choosing the appropriate word for a sentence from a word bank and using it with the target grammar to complete the sentence, or changing or combining sentences using the target grammar. At the end of each section—the book is divided into sections of grammar with similar meanings and/or usages—there are also some extra multiple choice questions to check if you have properly understood the differences between the forms.
Finally, on to some things that are specific to “KGIU (Advanced)” and not the series as a whole!
(Okay, this isn’t really specific to the advanced edition, but this is almost certainly a non-issue for intermediate and beginner learners, so…) A lot of advanced grammar resources are written purely in Korean, whereas “KGIU (Advanced)” uses first Korean and then English for its grammar explanations and example sentences. Depending on how you look at it, this could be a good thing or a bad thing. If you are working on removing English totally from your studies, and think having the English translations right there might be too distracting, this might not be the book for you. However, if you aren’t quite yet comfortable reading grammar explanations in Korean but want to give it a shot and be able to check yourself, this is excellent. Depends on what you’re looking for!
Another thing to be aware of—and this really applies to all advanced Korean grammar study materials—is that you will often find yourself questioning the usefulness of grammar you encounter. Once you get up to that level, the remaining grammar left to learn is largely grammar that crops up in mostly literature or more formal settings like news and business presentations, etc. More than once I have asked a friend or coworker to help clarify a grammar point only to be met by “Why are you learning that?? I don’t think I’ve ever personally used that in my life!” Of course, they still know what it means, so while you might not find yourself using some of these grammar forms much, you still might encounter them and need to know what they mean. This isn’t really a good thing or a bad thing; just how it is!
Overall, I’m a big fan of the KGIU series, and I would wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone looking for a strong source for learning Korean grammar 🙂
Korean food is the best. It’s delicious and filling and affordable. One thing people always say is great about living in Korea is that it’s cheap and easy to eat out, and I agree. For the first few months I was here I ate out every day for most meals. But I’m broke and it did get too expensive, and was also hard to eat healthy (lots of meat, lots of soju, not much greenery). So for the past couple of months we’ve been trying to cook at home. At first it was really difficult to know what to cook and buy, what side dishes to make that wouldn’t go bad before we could eat it all, how to plan food for the week and stick to it etc. But we’ve started to get used to it and have been getting better at cooking and learning new dishes as well! Now we’ve all agreed that these days we’re eating well, feeling healthy, saving money and enjoying trying out new things. We still usually eat out on weekends because we’re usually out of the house, so I’ve made a short (and very low quality…) video to show what I ate this Sunday and Monday to show what kind of thing we usually eat during the week and weekends.
한식은 최고입니다. 맛있고 싸고 양이 많아요. 외국인들이 주로 한국에서 쉽고 저렴하게 외식을 할 수 있는 것은 한국살이의 장점이라고 하는데 제가 동의해요. 처음 왔을 때는 몇달동안 매일매일 외식을 했지만, 결국엔 비싸졌고 건강하지 않게 느꼈어요 (고기 많고, 소주 많고, 채소 없다). 그래서 요즘 집밥을 하도록 노력하고 있어요. 처음에는 무슨 요리를 해야 되는지, 어떤 반찬이 오래 가는지, 일주일 메뉴를 어떻게 계획할지 몰라서 조금 어려웠어요. 그래도 집에서 요리하다 보니 익숙해지고 새로운 요리에 도전하면서 요리 실력이 늘고 있어요. 이제 우리 모두가 집에서 해먹는 것을 맛있게 먹고, 건강하게 느끼고, 돈을 아끼게 됐다고 생각해요. 보통 주말에는 집 밖이라서 아직 외식도 하는데 주말 평일에 뭘 먹는지 보여주려고 짧은 동영상 만들어봤어요. 저렴하게 먹고 싶은 외국분께 도움이 되면 좋겠어요.
I recently started a YouTube series about food in Korea. I’ve always used Korean vlogs as a learning tool, so I’m hoping that this may help some people. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know!
So you know the basics of Korean texting slang.. but now you want more.. right? Let’s play with some new words that aren’t just shortened versions, here’s some common conversational slang for you to use.
콜 – to be down, sounds good (can be question or answer) “치맥 콜?” = “You down to get some chicken and beer?”
~각 – feels like “오늘 비도 오니까 막걸리각인데.. 막걸리 콜?” = “I’m feeling makgoli today cause it’s raining, down for some makgoli?” “한조에 겐지까지 있으면 질각인데” = “We have both Hanzo and Genji.. feels like we’re gonna lose.”
갓~ / ~느님 – God / Someone fantastic 3 pop culture gods of Korea “갓연아” – Yuna Kim (figure skater) “유느님” – Jaesok Yu (TV MC) “치느님” – Fried Chicken (who doesn’t love it?)
그린라이트 – Green light to move in (only romantically) “어제 좋아하는 남자애가 우산 씌워줬는데, 이거 혹시 그린라이트야?” = “Yesterday the guy I like held an umbrella for me, is that the green light?”
빵터지다 – Bust out laughing (빵 = sound, 터지다 = explode), LOL “가디언즈 오브 갤러시 2에서 메리 포핀스 대사에서 진짜 빵터졌잖아.” = “I busted out laughing at the Mary Poppins line in Guardians of the Galaxy 2.”
빡세다 – Something difficult “카페에서 알바하는데 생각보다 빡세더라.” = “Working at a cafe is so much harder than I thought.”
흑역사 – Dark past / embarrassing moment “마이스페이스에 올린 사진들 미친거 같아, 내 흑역사야 진짜.” = “I can’t believe my old myspace pictures, that was a dark period in my life…” “나 오늘 스마트폰 보고 가다가 넘어져가지고 또 흑역사 하나 생성하고 왔잖아…” = “I had the most embarrassing moment today.. I fell down because I was watching my phone…”
오그라든다 – Cringey “너가 한 아재개그때문에 오그라들었어..“ = “Your dad joke was so cringey..”
“I work at Gwanghwamun, writing out nice passages for free. Sometimes families come together, but for the most part, parents request phrases like ‘Let’s study constantly’ or ‘Make a lot of money.’ On the other hand, the kids often want things like ‘Let go to get more.’ It’s kids who actually see the most important things. It’s quite wonderful.”
“광화문에서 무료로 좋은 글귀를 써주는 일을 하고 있어요. 가끔 가족 단위로 오시기도 하는데, 대부분의 부모님은 ‘끊임없이 공부하자’, ‘돈 많이 벌자’같은 글귀를 써달라고 하는 반면 아이들은 ‘비워야 채우지’같은 글귀를 요청하는 경우가 많아요. 가장 중요한 본질을 보는건 오히려 아이들이더라고요. 참 신기하죠.”
Welcome to the first post of my new “漢字(한자) 배우자!” I love Hanja, but a lot of Korean-learning resources don’t really cover it unless it’s a resources specifically targeted toward people who want to learn Hanja. In this first post, I’ll start by briefly introducing what Hanja is and why it matters to Korean, and then I’ll introduce a few characters.
What is Hanja?
Hanja (漢字) is the Korean word for Chinese characters. About 70% of Korean vocabulary is based on Chinese characters, so being familiar with Hanja could potentially make it easier for you to learn and remember new words. I personally find Hanja especially useful in cases where the meanings of two words are very similar. If I know what their component Hanja are, I can work out the little nuances in the word meanings using the individual meanings of the Hanja.
While Hanja is no longer extensively used in Korean writing—it used to be the main writing form until Hangul was created, and even then it was used mixed in with Hangul for a long time—that doesn’t mean it has entirely disappeared. Names are one place where you can see Hanja. While some Koreans have native Korean names that are not based on Hanja, most have names that are based on the Chinese characters, which you can see on their identification cards. You might also see a few Hanja in newspapers or on the news, particularly to denote specific countries, and sometimes words in books will have the Hanja written beside the hangul if the word has a homophone with a more common meaning, or if the word being used isn’t a very common one. Just walking around the city, you can see Hanja over doors and gates in old historical palaces, on restaurant and building signs… There are a lot of places you might see Hanja!
Hanja are divided into levels, and there is even a test that one can take to determine their level of proficiency in Hanja. The most basic characters are 8급 (level 8) and the most difficult are 1급. There are also 특급 (special level) characters that are very rarely (or perhaps not at all) used in Korean. I’ve found that some common Kanji in Japanese and some common characters in Mandarin fall under 특급 or the higher levels in Korean Hanja’s ranking system!
Why learn Hanja?
A lot of the time when I tell Korean acquaintances that I study Hanja, I’m met with the question, “Why?” Many of them seem puzzled why I would even bother when Hanja isn’t commonly used in writing anymore, when the characters are so difficult to read/write/remember, when they say they’ve forgotten pretty much all the Hanja that they’ve ever learned and have no use for it… and I won’t pretend that Hanja is the most useful thing, because it isn’t, not anymore. However, I have a few reasons why I learn Hanja (and why I think others should too!)
I already mentioned one of the benefits I get from Hanja above, and that benefit is being able to work out word meanings easily. If I know the characters a word is made of, I can understand the nuances of meaning between words with similar meanings. This way of working out word meanings using Hanja also helps me understand words that I’m just encountering for the first time. If I hear or see a word that I don’t know, I can often infer which characters the word is comprised of and thus, can guess fairly accurately what the word means. Or, perhaps I see a new word and its Hanja written together, I can look at the characters and, if I know them, piece together what the word probably means. Of course, being able to do this requires having a decent mental storage of characters to choose from, but once you get there, the benefit is real!
The other reasons why I learn Hanja are less academic but no less valid! I personally find the characters beautiful to look at and fun to write, sort of like drawing, so that’s a plus for me, and knowing Hanja gives you something cool (depends on your definition of cool, I suppose!) to talk about when you meet new Korean friends! Getting into Hanja can be daunting at first if you’ve never dealt with Chinese characters before, but I hope you all at least give it a try to see if it works for you 🙂
Let’s learn Hanja
Now that you know what Hanja is and how learning it could help your Korean studies, let’s learn a few characters. I think it makes sense for us to start with the two characters in the word “漢字 한자.”
The first character we see is 한수/한나라 漢 (한) (읽기7급II). 한수 refers to the Han River, which cuts through the middle of Seoul; and 한나라 refers to the Han country, or the Chinese Han Dynasty, people of Han descent, and China. Since we know 漢字 is the word for “Chinese characters,” we know that in this case, the meaning of 漢 is 한나라 한 and not 한수 한.
The second character here is 글자 자 (읽기7급), which is a character that refers to writing. Combined with 한나라 漢 (한), we get the meaning of “Chinese writing” or “Chinese characters.
Let’s look at a few more words that use these characters:
漢:
漢江 한강 (한수 한, 강 강)– The Han River
漢水 한수 (한수 한, 물[water] 수)– Another (less common) way to refer to the Han River
字:
數字 숫자 (셀[count] 수, 글자 자)– number
文字 문자 (글월[writing, sentence] 문, 글자 자)– script, writing
EX: 무자 메시지 (text message)
Let’s write Hanja
Writing 漢字 is another fun part of learning the characters! While you don’t really need to know how to write them, I find it pretty fun, and they look cool too!
Each character follows a specific stroke order which usually goes from top to bottom, left to right. Try to follow along and write today’s characters!
11 Korean books down, and the 12th is the first book-length non-fiction I’ve attempted to tackle. I love this podcast, so it follows that I would have to get my mits on the two books they’ve published. So far, this is exactly what I expect from these guys: an accessible, fun read!
Finished this on my bus ride to work. A definite recommendation for anyone looking to acquire the vocabulary to maintain one’s end of an intellectual conversation. Many of the points in this book I’d already studied during my school years, but the way they are presented here in such a fun, clear way was so refreshing, I felt like I was really learning them for the first time while also gaining insight on how these ideas are applied in Korean society. The author does an excellent job of connecting each section of the book to the next, making the book’s flow easy to follow and resulting in a grand culmination of ideas and a simple question: what kind of world do you want to create? Like I said, 강추 강추 강추~ Onto 2권!
So I took my first practice tests for TOPIK II here. It was much harder than I expected, especially reading! I’m kinda shocked I did better with listening than reading because listening has always been my weakest point, but maybe this past year of living in Korea but not studying or reading anything other than Kakaotalk channel pages has changed that. I got 64 in listening and 58 in reading, I have no idea how to test my writing skills myself but if I estimate another 50 points I guess I’d get around a level 4. No way! I know I can do better than that! I’m really not used to taking exams and the main thing I felt whilst taking the practice tests is that I need to increase my vocabulary a lot. So, time to start actually studying!
Hanok villages are nice, but if you’re actually interested in seeing traditional buildings and lifestyles you’ve gotta go to the Korean Folk Village (민속촌) in Yongin(용인). As a tourist, there’s not really that much to do in Suwon, but this place is close by and definitely worth a visit.
한옥 마을도 좋지만, 정말 전통적인 문화나 생활에 관심이 있다면 용인 민속촌에 꼭 가보시는 걸 추천해요. 관광을 하는 사람로서 수원에는 관광지가 좀 부족한 것 같은데, 민속촌은 가깝고 확실히 갈 만해요.
Sutdy-Korean 