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Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on July 13, 2010 at 9:50pm

My first approach when I got to Korea was to pull words out of the stuff I'd read. I'd put them onto vocabulary cards which I'd then carry with me on the public transport and study. That's what I should still be doing more of.

Here's a very good (free) vocabulary study program I use now too: http://www.teach2000.org/

Permalink Reply by Deborah Anderson on July 14, 2010 at 12:22am

Learning vocabulary has been relatively easy for me. I use a technique that my Spanish teacher in high school had us use for learning how to spell our vocabulary words. I wrote about it on one of my blogs, http://learningspeedster.wordpress.com/. I also added a video there. I haven't studied in a while so some of them have left me, but I remember a lot of them for the most part.

The way I created my vocabulary lists is from the words I found in the Korean language books I bought. I wanted to learn the nouns, verbs and adjectives beforehand so all I had to do is worry about the grammar while going through the book. I also provide some links on the side (on my blog). Sorry, I can't remember which ones provided lists of vocabulary words, but I'm sure you could Google it.

Permalink Reply by Ondrej Slechta on July 14, 2010 at 5:40pm

Learning Korean vocabulary has been one of the biggest challenges for me. There is simply too much words and very little cognates. The biggest Korean dictionaries contain about 500 000 words. At first I felt like on average there is about 7 Korean words for each English word on average.

Consider the following famous "father" example - depending on whether it is speaker's father or somebody else's father, and whether he is alive or deceased, the following expressions are available: 아버님, 부친, 아버지, 아빠, 아비, 애비, 엄군, 가엄, 대인, 엄친, 엄부, 노친, 엄시, 가대인, 가부, 가공, 가존, 가군, 가친, 노부, 영엄, 대인, 영존, 대정, 춘부장, 춘당, 춘장, 선대인, 부군, 선엄군, 선인, 선엄, 망부, 선고, 선자, 선군, 선친, 선군자, 선가존, 선부군, 선가군, 선가부, 선영자, 선엄, 선영존, 선장, 선영엄...

This is an extreme example of course because only a few of these expressions are used frequently but it nicely illustrates richness of Korean vocabulary.

Another famous example is variants of the word 푸르다: 파랗다, 파르당당하다, 파르대대하다, 파르댕댕하다, 파르데데하다, 파르무레하다, 파르속속하다, 파르족족하다, 파릇하다, 파릇파릇하다, 퍼러죽죽하다, 퍼러퍼렇다, 퍼레지다, 퍼르께하다, 퍼르데데하다, 퍼르뎅뎅하다, 퍼르스렷하다, 퍼르스름하다, 포르께하다, 포르대대하다, 포르댕댕하다, 포르무레하다, 포르스름하다, 포르족족하다, 포릇포릇, 푸렁, 푸렇다, 푸르께하다, 푸르누래지다, 푸르누렇다, 푸르디푸르다, 푸르락누르다, 푸르락붉으락, 푸르덩덩하다, 푸르데데하다, 푸르뎅뎅하다, 푸르퉁퉁하다...

Again, these are not so difficult to learn passively but imagine how much of the original connotation would be lost if you were to translate a poetic description of spring mountains!


The following approaches helped me to expand my vocabulary:

1) Always learn in context.
Learning a bunch of single words is the least efficient method to learn the vocabulary. When I studied Korean at Yonsei University the teachers were throwing at us between 100 - 200 new words daily, this was about 2000 - 4000 new words per month! Instead of impractical word cards, I went through a text, wrote unknown words on the edge of the paper, then I went through the text again memorizing whole sentences one by one and rewriting it on an empty sheet without looking at it.

2) Carry a small notebook
As opposed to vocabularies presented in textbooks, I use a small paper notebook where I note real life expressions I catch up around me. Because these words are associated with real life situations, they are easy to remember. In most cases, I found myself using expressions learnt this way shortly after I noted them.


3) Learn Chinese characters
This will help you to expand Sino Korean vocabulary. About 50-70% of Korean vocabulary are Sino Korean words. Learning at least passively about 1500-2000 Hanja will exponentially expand your abilities to understand the language. You will be able to guess meaning of thousands of unknown words based on your knowledge of just a couple of hundreds characters.

4) Study lexicology
You will learn about different layers of Korean vocabulary. You will learn how both Korean and Sino Korean words are derived across all word classes. Enthusiasts will learn regionalisms used in DPRK, Jeju island, and even among Chinese and Kazakh Koreans. All in all your ability to guess unknown words and remember them will increase.

Permalink Reply by Istvan Medvigy on October 1, 2010 at 10:59am

Ondrej!
Thanks for this useful input.
I also realized a while ago, that Chinese learn Korean much easier than others and going through Hanja may be a way, but thanks for concretization.
I'm at the moment somewhere between "ok-basic" and "low-intermediate" levels, - which is a shame after having been living 3 years here. So what I'd like to know is does it matter when you start learning those 1500-2000 Chinese characters? And is there a set of them, somewhere, collected together, ready to get/download and absorb?:))
I completely agree with the small notebook and learning vocab in context, - that's my exact way of doing too recently. Reading texts and marking and learning he new words in that way is way more effective. And enjoyable..

By the way, just to joing the "group of the ones who share their favourite websites" - I've found this one recently: Korean-Flashcards.com. If you subscribe (it's free, too), they send you daily exercise email. They are really short, but rather enjoyable. They have all kinds of levels but I guess this one is more useful for the beginners or lower intermediates, like myself. The website and the tool-handling are rather user-friendly.

Permalink Reply by Henri Langeveldt on October 19, 2011 at 11:41am

I have reached the stage where I have almost given up. This is great advice. Thank you.

Permalink Reply by Tyler Joyner on July 28, 2010 at 4:28am

I agree with Ondrej, especially concerning the Chinese characters. I don't think you really need to learn how to write the characters, but certainly learning the common Chinese derivatives in Korean words help a lot. I find that certain syllables are used over and over in different words, such as 공. 공 is used in many words having to do with the government, such as republic (공화국) and public school (공립 학교).

It's not 100% effective, but I find that you can often figure out what an unknown Korean word is simply by using the context in which you find it combined with syllables like 공 which you've seen before. I believe this contributes to a "bottom-up" understanding on Korean which will stay with you a lot longer than rote memorization.

Permalink Reply by Marissa Bonnici on August 7, 2010 at 7:40am

Hello everyone!

I just joined the group. The most effective way I have found to learn vocab is to pick 5-7 words a day and try to use them as much as possible. For example, write them down in a small notebook and (if you are in Korea, or in Korean class) try to use them in as many ways you can.

Simply writing down vocab has not been successful for me. I find it's better to actually say the words out loud. I agree the palm cards are great, you can bring them along on public transport and practice while you commute. I also have a huge whiteboard in my room, and I find it helpful to write my new vocab on that as well.

Permalink Reply by Robert Rittenhouse on September 22, 2010 at 4:09pm

Like a number of people here I've been using flashcard programs. There are a wide variety out there.

I particularly like Anki (http://ankisrs.net/) which is free, very capable, allows synchronizing and online use, and has a number of decks available for download.

Permalink Reply by Jamie Lee on December 14, 2011 at 7:57pm

I had returned to Korean after growing up in California and had to start from scratch as I got here...what I'd do was constantly read signs in Korea outloud to myself and write down any new words I'd pick up as I rode the subway, see signs on builings and street signs, in movie theatres....in other words "words in real life".

 

I've also just started vlogging and started to try teaching some Korean words as well.

I love feedback so please share if you have any requests or feedback about my vlogs. Since I'm bilingual it's always tough to decide if I'll do the vlog mainly in English or Korean. This link here is of my first 50:50 bilingual vlog.

 

 

this one below is my newest vlog mainly speaking in Korea teaching English. It's of someone trying to exlain "흔한 얼굴"(a familiar face) to a foreigner. I've just starting to pick up more editing skills, so I hope anyone who watches enjoys it.