Learn Korean Online - Simple Explanations in PLAIN English

If you really want to learn Korean to a point where you are conversational and can actually form your own sentences and questions from understanding, not just memory, then one skill you absolutely HAVE TO learn is how to conjugate verbs.

Conjugating verbs in Korean is not terribly difficult to understand, but it will take some time and practice to actually be able to do it with speed and accuracy. But once you have it down, you will have moved yourself into a position where you can really start to SPEAK Korean and from there it’s only time and practice to where you’re really, really good at speaking.

These next 5 videos are made to show a couple things…1) exactly how to conjugate verbs in Korean, and 2) why it is an absolutely necessary skill to have if you want to take your Korean to the next level and become a conversational ninja.

So give these videos a watch, and if you find them useful (and don’t mind doing so), please click over to the Youtube page hit the “like” button just below the videos (or whichever one you found most useful). It’d really help out a ton!

And any thoughts you have on these videos or any questions these videos may lead to, feel free to leave them below in the “comments” section.

Thanks, and happy learning!…

Rob…

A very common question from people when they first start learning Korean is which to use, ㅔ or ㅐ, ’cause as I say in the videos, they both sound virtually the same.

The answer to this is that it is virtually the same as learning how to spell in any language, which basically just requires experience and practice. For most words in Korean, they can generally just be sounded out and spelled phonetically, but in this case, because it’s going to be more difficult to hear the difference, you more or less just have to remember the spelling, more specifically which words use ㅔ and which use ㅐ.

I wish I had a “magic pill”-like answer that would make it much easier, but unfortunately I don’t. The bright side of it is though, is that there are not so many cases of this sort of thing in Korean. However, a few other cases that are like this are…

When to use ㅗ and ㅓ. For a lot of words, it can be easy to tell the difference, but there are still a significant number of words which are more difficult. I remember when I first started learning Korean and I tried to spell the word “where”. I wrote 오디 (’cause that’s what it sounded like to me) and my boss at the time just laughed and corrected it to 어디. That’s how I learned that word, and I never forgot it.

Another case: when to use ㅚ, ㅙ, or any of the other ones that look and sound like these. The same thing applies (just experience and practice), but I will say this, that those two are definitely the most common and if you were going to just pick one, pick one of those two, not the others.

Hope that helps. Happy learning, and I’ll speak to you soon!

Hey fellow Korean-learner!

In today’s “learn Korean” post, we’re going to be learning how to speak in the past tense. It’s actually not that difficult, but as we’ll see, there’s just something about each verb and what we have to do to it that we need to know before we can speak in the past.

Check out the video and if you have any questions after, please let me know. And if you find the video useful, feel free to click the “like” button just above it (it’d be much appreciated!).

Thanks, and happy learning!

Rob…

p.s. if that stuff is WAY over your head ’cause you’re just a beginner, then you may want to check this page out. This is where I recommend everyone new to Korean starts.

Hey!


Here’s the next set of vids in the “How-to Korean series, going over some basic (and some not-so-basic) things you can say in different situations around Korea. Below each video, there’s a list of what expressions that particular video goes over. So check those out and watch the videos for basic explanations and pronunciation of each one.


I hope you find them useful, and if you have any questions you’d like answered, or any expressions you’d like to know how to say, just reply to this and let me know.


And one other thing, in the videos you’ll notice that I NEVER use English phonetics to write Korean. I personally think it’s a waste of time and creates more confusion than actually helps. So if you don’t know how to read and write, then I highly suggest that’s the first thing you do. And if you would like to, well you’re in luck! Check out this page. You can get the first four classes (just under 4 hours of videos of videos) of the online class here at LearnKoreanOnline.NET totally FREE. Classes 1 and 2 will show you everything you need to know to be able to read and write.

Rob…

Hi,

Another question was asked, this one about consonant clusters (if you don’t know what those are, don’t worry, they’re explained in the video) and whether or not they are worth learning.

Check out the video to find out what I think!

Happy learning…

I hope that helps, but if you haven’t yet learned how to read or learn anything about the basic sentence and how it breaks down, then I highly suggest you head here to claim your free gift – the first four classes of the online class, just under 4 hours worth of videos along the printable handouts we use in class so you can follow along with everything we do in the videos. If you are new to Korean, then that is where you want to start. Study those videos, then you can come back to these “how-to” Korean videos.

Hey,

This’ how-to Korean’ video is actually an answer to a question by one of the students of LearnKoreanOnline.NET.  The question was about the statement ‘무수 말인지 몰라요’ which translates to “I don’t know what you’re saying”, and actually the question was more specifically, what does the ‘무슨 말인지’ part of that sentence mean?

So check out the video (down below), and if you have any more questions about it or anything else, fire away.

Cheers, and happy learning!

Rob…

p.s. If you’re new to Korean, this video will be a bit over your head so my suggestion would to head here and get the 4 hours of free videos teaching the basics. That’s where you want to start, and you can always come back to this later.

This is the first video in the ‘how-to korean’ series here at learnkoreanonline.net. The question asked was, “How do you say please in Korean.

Watch the video to find out. And after, if you have any more questions, feel free to reply to this post and ask away.

Cheers, and happy learning!

p.s. by the way, I will never use phonetics in my videos. If you plan on learning Korean, then the absolute first thing you should do is learn how to read and write. And if you’d like to do so, head over to this page and register for the 4 hours of free videos taken from my in-class course that has been running here in Korea since 2006. The first two classes you get will teach you exactly how to read, write, and say the Korean alphabet. Then the next two classes will get into the basic sentence. So if you are interested in learning Korean, go get those videos and they’ll make the video above, and the ones to come, make A LOT more sense.