I speak Polish, German, Swedish and English. 3 of them are Germanic languages so they were easy to learn because they are so closely related. Polish and German I learned as a child so it was kind of automatic.
Now I have to learn Korean and struggle so much! After 3 months I have learned about 100 words. Any tips how to get to the first 1000 words Ina reasonable time? Especially in a language where none of the words seem to resamle anything from my previous languages.
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The key to adquire vocab is to find a method that you’re comfortable with, and that you don’t mind repeating in a timely manner. Two that I personally like are:
semantic map
As you learn a new word, you write it down, with an explanation (translation, drawing, up to you), and then connect it to words that are conceptually related, that you already learned.
So for example. Let’s say that you were learning English instead of Korean. And you just learned the word “chicken”. You could do something like this:
You can extend those maps as big as you want, and also include other useful bits of info, like grammar - because you’ll need that info later on. Also note what I did there with “(ptak)”, leaving a blank for a word that you’d be planning to learn later on; when you do it, you simply write “bird” over it and done, another word in the map.
It’s important to review your old semantic maps; either to add new words or to review the old ones.
flashcards
Prepare a bunch of small pieces of paper. Harder paper is typically better. Add the following to each:
- a Korean word
- a translation in a language that you’re proficient with (it’s fine to mix)
- small usage details, as translations are almost never 100% accurate
- some grammatical tidbit (e.g. is this a verb or a noun? If a verb: stative, descriptive, active, or copulative?)
- a simple example sentence using that word
- [optional] some simple drawing
Then as you have some free time (just after lunch, in the metro, etc.), you review those cards.
I’m doing the flashcards but only with the word in Korean and English. Perhaps I should add more things to it.
The mindmap I’ve never heard of it, but it seems interesting because you make clusters of words in topics. I will try that out too.
Thanks for your practical tips!
Menus.
I find a menu from a local place and learn everything on the menu, I try to find a place with disposable menus so I can take home, and once I asked the restaurant if I could take their regular menu home to study.
Food is going to be something I experienced daily anyway when I’m in a new country so it’s practical and helps me form a foundation.
Once I know the food items, common questions become natural extensions of the food items.
So menus are usually my base, and then I expand with a teaching app or YouTube videos and then I talk to people.
An incredibly effective method that is boring but quick is to choose one movie in the language you’re studying, and watch it once per day, really paying attention to all of the speech.
That boosted my Mandarin like crazy in comprehension, but it can be a slog for the four to 6 weeks it takes.
I like to do similar with recipes and songs. Find something I like the sound of and make it then you know all the vocab for cooking related things. With music I find a band I like and listen to an album until I know the words.
Another good one is watching sports in the language you are learning. It’s quicker because you can often infer what words are by knowing what just happened in the match. I find this a bit of a more natural way anyway. I appreciate that may not be easy for every language though.
Oh, nice. I have done the song thing before, but never a recipe. Good idea.
I don’t play sports ball much though so a lot of the advantages of your second suggestion might go over my head.
Watching a Kung Fu movie on repeat is a lot more my style haha
Well indeed watching movies helps. How about dodgeball! The best might be some comedy show you’ve seen before in your mother tongue so you even know what’s going to happen. When you get good you notice which jokes they completely change because they make no sense in the other language.
Yea, good idea.
Sorry, I was referring to this other thing I mentioned in a different thread.
I’ll take a movie dodgeball, any movie where the actors speak clearly is fine, and I watch that once a day for 4 to 6 weeks.
It boosts my comprehension like crazy, because I’m not just learning new words but my brain’s getting used to recognizing the rhythm and syntax instinctually, but obviously you have to be pretty disciplined to go through with it because it gets to be boring!
Effective, and pretty rapid learning, but it’s a real jog through molasses for a while there.
