Learn Korean Online - Simple Explanations in PLAIN English

Hey there, I’ve got some more videos and an mp3 download for you!

A student just asked another question. The sentence has asked about is REALLY useful as it’s something that we will ALL have to say at one time AND another during our Korean-learning journey, and probably not just a couple times, probably quite a bit if you’re actually using Korean (which as I always say, you should be if you actually want to improve your ability).

The sentence he asked how to say is…

“I’m learning Korean but I don’t know that much yet so I don’t really know what you’re saying.”

Now taking a closer look at this sentence and the main structures, it can actually be broken up into three smaller chunks, “I’m learning Korean but…”, “I don’t know that much yet so…”, and “I don’t really know what you’re saying.”

Below are some videos showing how to say this. The first video just tells exactly how to say it without any explanation of it. Then the following videos show the structures at work and how you can change the sentence by using different verbs, etc. Each video will explain each of the 3 structures at work.

So check those out, and if you find them useful at all, feel free to hit the “like” button (it’d sure help out a ton!).

Thanks!

Rob…

p.s. Click here to download the mp3 file of this sentence being said by a native Korean speaker.

Video #2: The breakdown of “I”m learning Korean but…”

Video #3: The breakdown of “I don’t know much yet so…”

Video #4: The breakdown of “I don’t really know what you’re saying.”

p.s. if these videos are way over your head because you’re just new to Korean, then you want to start here. Here you’ll get 4 hours of free videos taken from the full online course here at LearnKoreanOnline.net, and goes over the most important aspects of the basics, including how to read and right (can honestly be learned in a day!) as well as the basic sentence and how to form questions and answers using one of the most common verbs in the language. So check that out and when you’re ready for it, you can come back here. Thanks!

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!


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…

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.