The Korean and Japanese projects : Lack of motivation

En français

Yesterday I experienced a big lack of motivation.
I think that there are severals causes.

The progression of the kanjis learning.
The "no"progression of Korean.
The lack of Korean background audio during the week-end.
The huge amount of work to do to reach fluency.

Learning the kanjis is taking a lot of time, a huge amount of time. When I started the Heisig method I expected it to be a bit difficult, easier than learning by using the visual memory but I never expected it to be that easy and interesting.
When I learned Chinese characters before it was by copying then again and again.
Of course I was breaking them into pieces sometimes but without any real organization.
Now I know about 1200 kanjis without that much of efforts. I mean, OK I'm spending something between 3 and 6 hours a days learning them, creating all the story including the elements, reviewing them on Anki and writing them 5 times to learn the stroke order and trying to have a nice writing style but it doesn't feel like a core at all.
And it's a bit scary to see it going that well when I have been struggling so much before.

Then the Korean problems. I spend so much time learning the kanjis as I was so excited by this new project that I really left the Korean in a corner. The only thing I really did what to listen to it all the time as usual. I have a enormous number of sentences waiting on Mnemosyne.
I didn't even read the wonderful web site full of manhwa I found earlier in the week.
So it's not getting that well, and as I really want to learn Korean, that's a bit depressing.
Now there is also the fact that I'm not as isolated during the week-end as I am during the week so I can't have Korean playing that much. And that feel a bit empty. Listening to Korean has became as essential as breathing or eating. If I don't get enough during a day I really feel extremely bad. It's kind of an addiction or something like that.

Then the 800 kanjis remaining as well as all the work to do afterward to master Japanese and Chinese as well as all the Korean work I still have to do, feel like a huge mountain.

So I what did I do to stop this lack of motivation and confidence ?
I decided to take a break.
A small one, until today. I'm not crazy, I don't want to ruin all the efforts and all the work I have been doing for so long.

So, no more kanjis, it's not going to hurt if I didn't learn some 100 new kanjis yesterday.
And today I'm just going to review what I have seen so far. So I will make sure that I really know them all and that it's not just a crazy idea.
Then I put the Korean back on, and loud, that made me feel nearly instantaneously better. I did some ironing, some cleaning, some knitting, meet some friends, watch the last episode of 내 이름은 김삼순.
And then I did what is probably the most important thing to get my motivation back. Instead of looking at what I don't know and have to do, I took a look at what I already know.

Few month ago, last September to be precise, the only thing I was able to say in Korean was 안녕하세요? and I wasn't even able to write my name properly.
Now I can write email to my friend using a dictionary, write everything I hear almost right, even if I'm not that confident about that due to my poor spelling even in my mother tongue, and say entire scene of 그 놈은 멋있었다 He Was Cool and 늑대의 유혹 Romance of Their Own ... by heart.
Few month ago I was only able to recall few basic kanjis. Now I know more than the half of the Remembering the kanjis book, I can recognize them in the street or on stuff and explain them to my friends and that's really cool.
So I just need to take it easy and learn more because learning languages is really a great thing and make you happy.

The Korean project : Reading problems

En français
I was wondering why after 8 months of studying Korean my reading is still so poor, when I see myself understand better written Japanese and Chinese after only few weeks of learning kanjis.
And then it strucks me, that was so obvious, I had the answer in front of me since the beginning and I couldn't see it.
And the answer is VOCABULARY. Of course I knew that I lack of vocabulary, the problem was how to really deal with that.
The answer, learn Korean vocabulary as I'm learning the kanjis, that is building up a complete set of words that I'm going to learn by heart.
If the answer wasn't so obvious is probably because in the original method it is said that we should learn sentences and not words, so that we also learn how to use those words, so I was focusing on sentences.
But Korean is a phonetic language, so you can read phonetically first and then know the meaning of the words, in contrary to languages written with Chinese characters.
So that's an idea. I'm not saying that it is the best idea ever and that it's gonna work 100 % but I'm going to give it a try.
The words that I'm going to include in my basic set of vocabulary come from here.
That is a list of 1750 French words a 4 year old kid is supposed to know. It's probably not the same for Korean kids but it's diversified so that mustn't be a problem for a kick start.
Anyway, I'm so desperate to improve my Korean that I would do any thing.

A second idea is to use my new knowledge of kanjis to learn Korean vocabulary from hanjas. Hanja is the name given to the Chinese characters used for Korean. That for I can use Neo Hanja, the first one give 1525 words written in hangul and one hanja, the second give 240 compounds. But I think I first need to finish heisig 1 because they are written in completely arbitrary order, or more exactly given in the order of the proficiency test from level 5 to 3.
Level 5 is giving the writing of characters used for study purposes. and level 3 allows one to read newspapers and general subject material. A list of the hanja by level can be find here.

Anyway, I really need to read more to become good at reading.

The Korean project : Basic Vocabulary

En français

Now that you learned how to read 한굴, if you haven't or don't remember take a look here first, I think it can be a good idea to learn some basic vocabulary.


안녕하십니ㄱ까? Hello, How are you?
안녕하세요? Hello, How are you?
미안합니다. I'm sorry
미안에요. I'm sorry
고맙습니다 Thank you
천만에 말씀입니다 You're welcome
실레합니다 Excuse me (present)
실레했읍니다 Excuse me (past)
실레하겠읍니다 Excuse me (future)
안녕히 게십시요 Goodbye to someone staying
안녕히 가십시요 Goodbye to someone leaving
또 뵙겠읍니다 See you again

In Korean, there is a lot of way to say the same thing with different degrees of politeness. Here you have the formal polite style (ending in -ㅂ니다) and the informal polite (ending in 요). That's the way foreigners are supposed to speak in the first place.

The Korean project : 형사 (Duelist)

En français
I already talk a bit about " 형사" (Duelist) in a previous post, but I think it really deserve a post on itself. And not only because I'm a 강동원 (姜東元, Kang Dong Won) fan.
What I really want to talk about is the artistic part of the movie.
As most of the Korean movies I have seen, the music is absolutely wonderful.
The costume and the reconstitution of the scene really suit the characters and the actions.
The scene of fight are extremely well realized especially because of the organization of the slow transition between fight and dance which I had seen nowhere before.
There is also a great organization of the colors, and between light and darkness.
The mystery is kept around the name of one of the main characters, that keeps the suspense going on.
The expression of the characters deepest feeling from looks and the part of silence are also the kind of things that help the spectator to became part of the movie.

If you got a chance to see it, don't miss it, relax and enjoy.

There is also some Chinese movies like 英雄(Yīngxióng, Hero), 臥虎藏龍(卧虎藏龙; Wòhǔ Cánglóng, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), 十面埋伏 (shí miàn mái fú, House of Flying Daggers)...., which are made in the 武俠(武侠,wǔxiá) style that I really like.
Duelist has also the advantage of being funny.
Cinema, Manga, Animation Content

The Korean project : There is no such a thing as silence.

En français
The common legend is : to really learn a language you need to go to the country.
In a sense, that's true... in a sense, that's not.
So lets analyze the situation.

Why do people in a foreign country don't speak the language ?

1) Foreigner tend to stay with people from there own country : French with French, Spanish with Spanish, Chinese with Chinese... So they only speak their mother tongue
2) They jump on everything in the mother tongue : films, books, web sides... So good for listening and reading comprehension
3)They don't really try to learn the language hiding behind the "It's so difficult anyway".

Why is there in the foreign country about the language that you don't have at home ?

Everything that represent the language itself : the native speakers, the movies, TV, radio, books, advertisement, music, real need to know it...

Except the "real need to know it" everything else can become yours at home without so much troubles. The only thing to do is to replace the "real need to know it" by "the real desire to know it no matter what".
When you are serious about that and ready for the learning process, forget everything about silence.
What I mean by that is that you will have to live in your target language, having it all around you, swim in it, as long as you need to make it your.
That for, get movie, get music, find a good radio on internet, (for Korean radio see here) and let get started. 24/7. Nearly I'm not listening to Korean while sleeping, but I'm not sleeping that much anyway.
The most part of the Korean I learn was from listening, movies, radio, songs ( For Korean lyrics see here). You will catch nothing at the beginning, but then a word, then two, then a sentence... I don't understand everything yet, but I truly know that I'm on the way.

The reading is more difficult but it will come by itself by working on it step by step anyway.

So let get started and stop worrying, there really is no difficulty that can't be erased.
Aja aja, fighting

The Korean project : How to do the SRS repetition.

En français

Doing SRS repetitions is the simplest thing ever. First you enter the questions and answers, then you do your schedule repetitions everyday. 10000 questions-answers should be enough.
The problem is if you enter a lot, let say 100 a day or as I did a lot in one go without putting them in your head, the number of schedule repetitions will increase a lot several-100 repetitions a day, it can soon be difficult to do everything.

Here are several ideas :
1) Do 200 (or whatever you want) then do something else and go back.
I like that one, you can do some, when you get tired of it do something else, so you just take it easy.

2) Do your repetitions and don't add 100 more every day.
That one is for the emergency, if I need to stay longer in the lab, go out, or do some exercises (I like swimming).
I mean as long as you do the schedule one it's fine, but I tend to get board if I see the same cards everyday, even if I don't remember them all. And the problem with me is that if I say to myself I do 100 more every day I feel bad if I don't do it.

3) Do them all at ones.
My favorite, I know I'm crazy. When I learn Korean for several hours without stopping, I feel like there is a moment where it becomes mechanical. Instead of get bored or tired, my concentration increases, my understanding increases, it just like being absorbed by it and being completely receptive. I also remember them better the next day. Do anybody else felt that too ? If yes just tell me.

Another thing :
The reason why I enter a lot in one go without learning them is that it's a bit annoying to make the entries with translation.
In the method for Japanese they said to use only monolingual card but I think that this is valid only with the language using Chinese characters.
If you learn the meaning of more than 2000 characters from the Heisig method than you have a basic vocabulary. As you can't do that for a phonetic language, you have to begin by using bilingual cards.

Polyphasic sleep, 30 days trial

En français

In the basic of polyphasic sleep I told you that you need to prepare something to do, to make sure you aren't gonna get bored and go to sleep.
If you don't have a big project why not to try several small ones, or some that can be organize in "30 days trial".
I get the idea from here. Basically the "30 days trial" is something that you decide to do every day for one month, to quit a bad habit or create a good one.

Why is it good to do that in polyphasic sleep ?

It is good to do that during polyphasic sleep because if you fail at being polyphasic you will fail with you trials too. So that give you some more motivations. I fail two days ago because I couldn't have my day time nap for social reason, so that give a day without doing nothing in the trial as well. I was pretty unhappy about it. As a result I decided to give up the idea of Ubermann schedule. Of course I stay polyphasic, I feel to well with it to quit, but I'm not going to try to get ride of my core nap.
I generally get a core nap between 6 am and 8 am and I really enjoy it anyway, as I can sleep very deeply. And it also allows me to sleep only ones in the lab instead of to with is good as I got more trouble to fall asleep there. I basically get 4 hours sleep a day instead of 3 but that's still less than most of the people so I guess that's OK.

What are my "30 days trials" at the moment ?

1) Play violin everyday, I really like to play and since I begun the trial one week ago I'm really improving a lot. I still don't play very well but as long as I enjoy myself I just go for it.

2) Do all my SRS programmed repetitions + 100 everyday. 100 is a very big number but I keep with it cause I really need to let the Korean enter my brain. So far it's OK, but the more entries you memorize the more repetitions are programmed, even been polyhasic, I'm affrayed of running out of time to be able to keep this rhythm.

3) FSI Korean lesson oral everyday. This is a great way of review everything I learn so far and it helps a great deal with my pronunciation and comprehension.

4) FSI Korean lesson writing 1 hour everyday. This help me to memorize the vocabulary as well and to practice my writing skills, as I'm absolutely not confidant about the spelling . The fact that I decided to do that for one hours is to prevent burnout and to make sure I got time for everything, because even a polyphasic sleeper can run out of time.

5) Review physics course from first year at University 1 hour everyday. That allow me to refresh my memories about part of physic that I'm not using anymore and about things that I may need but don't remember.

6) Read a chapter of a book everyday. You always need to read to improve, to gain more knowledge, and because it's fun to read anyway... At the moment I'm reading "Musashi" from Eiji Yoshikawa. That's nearly 1000 pages so if I stop reading for to long I'm going to be lost. I like historical novel.

7) Write a post on this blog everyday. Yes guys, you have something new to read everyday and posted at the strangest hours possible from the middle of the night because it's a trial.
That doesn't mean that I will stop posting after that of course, I have to much things to say.

The Korean project : How to read 한글 ?

En français
As more and more things are written in Korean on this blog and as I hate transliteration, I think it is about time to show you how to read 한글.
I hate transliteration for several reasons :
- It looks absolutely awful
- It is very difficult to read contrary to the real thing
- There is no basic rules to transliteration in Korean as you can find in Japanese or Mandarin
- Some people separated each syllable while writing instead of words so it's not understandable
- It's pretty stupid to learn a language without learning how it is written.

And 한글 is so easy to read ... It take me 4 days to learn it, because I wanted so badly to do it well that I was doing it very slowly. Trust me ... It is also called the morning alphabet as you can learn it in one morning...

한글 was invented by the king Sejong scientifically so it's just perfect for Korean.

The consonants

There are 19 consonants in Korean.
Here is the approximated pronunciation :
ㄱ g, (ㄲ k tense), ㄴ n, ㄷ d, (ㄸ t tense), ㄹ l, ㅁ m, ㅂ b, (ㅃp tense), ㅅ s (ㅆ s tense), ㅇmute or ng, ㅈ j (ㅉ tz tense), ㅊ tsh aspirated, ㅋ k aspirated, ㅌ t aspirated, ㅍ p aspirated, ㅎ h aspirated.

The vowels
There are also 21 vowels
ㅏa, (ㅐ a , ㅒ ya ), ㅑ ya, ㅓ u (cut) (ㅔ é, ㅖye), ㅕyu, ㅗ o (ㅘ wha, ㅙ wa , ㅚ oi), ㅛ yo, ㅜ oo (ㅝ oowho, ㅞ ouai, ㅟ oui), ㅠ yoo, ㅡ oo or eux (ㅢ), ㅣi

The writing

The characters are formed in two different ways :
Consonant + vowel : 가 ka, 더 tu, 니 ni, 무 moo, 쉐 souai ....
Consonant + vowel + consonant : 감 kam, 문 moon, 쉡 souaib ....
You have to read from left to right and from top to bottom.
When a syllable begins with a vowel sound you have the mute ㅇ before : 안, an, 울, ool ...

For more detailed explanations see wikipedia

Now try to read the map

The Korean Project : Materials

En français

To study Korean I'm using different types of materials. The idea behind "not only use one textbook" is not to get bored. In fact when some thing gets boring you just have to change.
The first thing I get was the FSI Korean Basic Course with mp3, it is available here as well as for lost all other languages. It's a bit old I think and they really use very strange transliterations in the first volume. But that gives you a good start and the necessary grammar. The fact that it comes with mp3 allows you to also listen to it often and while reading, which is good for your pronunciation.
So far I enter the sentences up to lesson 30 in my SRS, only 17 to go :).
That means you also need an SRS, at the very beginning I was a bit skeptical about that as I prefer to use paper and pen in general, but it works very well. I'm using Mnemosyne apparently it's not the best one but it's free.
To practice reading I get myself some books, I have a grammar book with lot of sentences, a manga, 그 놈은 멋있었다 (He was cool) in two volumes and some scripts from the drama 풀 하우스 Full House with one of my favorite Korean actor 정지훈 (鄭智薰, Jeong Ji-Hun) also known as 비 (rain). He also plays in the funny movie 싸이보그지만 괜찮아 I'm a Cyborg, but That's OK which is very useful for me as I have Korean subtitles, even if I don't read fast enough to follow everything yet. This movie is a bit crazy, at the moment I'm listening to it everyday with my mp3, and for now nearly understand everything, as well as for 늑대의 유혹 (Romance of their own).
Watching movies is very important for me because it also allows me to know more about the culture.
The more things you have in your target language, the better. Don't hesitate to get crazy movies, it doesn't matter if it gives you vocabulary that you will never use in a conversation as long as it allows you to continue to study.
"Aja aja, fighting !!!"

Korean amigurumi

En français

So far I have three Korean amigurumi.

The first one's name is 마시마로 (Mashimaro). He was introduce to me by a friend two years ago. He is a naughty rabbit, but cute and funny. You can meet him and his friends here. He is the hero of the first cartoon made in animation flash. On his web site you can see cartoons, some stories and cute pictures.

The second one is 뻬루, he comes from a Korean drama called 이 죽일놈의 사랑 (A love to kill). He is a bit of a mix between a dog and a boxing rabbit.
I like this drama very much, of course the fact that 비 (Rain) is playing in it is also great.

The third one is 뿌까 (Pucca). She is a 10 year old Korean girl, that like eating Zamzam and run after her lover 가루 (Garu) a very well trained ninja. You can see the flash animation here.

Learning a new language makes you happy

En français

I like learning foreign languages.
I like starting to learn them, find a fancy book, learn the basic vocabulary and the basic grammar. But then, after few weeks of real motivation, it's all gone, no more fun.
Well, I'm not the kind that gives up things that easily, so I continue in the back ground in general.
Until a day when I discovered that there is something funnier about a language than start to learn it. (And that happen because of a strong will of learning Korean.)
That is living in it. And that makes me very very HAPPY.
First I began as usual, to look at text book, then I watched a movie...
I don't know about movies in general but I really like Korean movies, and TV shows.
I want to see them all !!!
I feel so great after watching them, that became the first thing I do in the morning while eating breakfast. And that makes me HAPPY. Then I can tell the story to my friends as they are not gonna watch it anyway.
When I listen to Korean music and suddenly understand I word or a sentence, that makes me HAPPY.
At the moment I'm really bad at reading books but I have a Manga "Daa daa daa", so cute, translated in Korean so I can understand words and fine out some more with the pictures
that makes me HAPPY.
So if you really want to learn a language, whatever language it is, just jump in it. That will make you feel great, without speaking about all the advantages of knowing the language in itself and the amount of general knowledge you will gain. And you will never want to stop learning it again.

I don't feel good if I don't have enough Korean every day. That's why I'm listening to it all the time.

The Korean project : Guiyeoni's stories

En français

I like Korean romance movies. My favorites are 그 놈은 멋있었다 (He Was Cool) and 늑대의 유혹 (Romance of their own or Temptation of Wolves).
They both come from books written by Guiyeoni.
She writes too other stories, Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do, that has already become a movie, that I haven't seen yet but hope to watch soon, and To My Boyfriend that is being filmed at the moment.
I have the book 그 놈은 멋있었다 in two volumes at home but I haven't read it yet because I lack of vocabulary. I hope to be able to read it soon. One of the main character of 늑대의 유혹 is played by 강동원 (姜東元, Kang Dong Won) who is also playing the main character in the Duelist 형사, which is a very beautiful movie with lots of very artistic scenes. I'm using 늑대의 유혹 on my mp3 player to learn Korean and nearly know it by heart now. I also watch frequently 그 놈은 멋있었다 twice in a row while knitting during my polyphasic nights.

A link to this post can be find here.

The Korean project : Introduction

En français

Six month ago I decided to learn Korean for real.
What does "for real" means, that I'm not playing with it.
In fact, from an external point of view I'm also learning Chinese, Japanese and Russian. From my point of view, I'm just paying with them, that is, I was going to the class for two hours a week until last week, doing the minimum of practice at home and that's it. That's what my friends call learning languages, and what I call playing.
Why ? And why is Korean so different ? Because I'm applying the basic rules of how to learn a language successfully.
That easiest way to explain what I actually mean is to describe a basic day.
1) Watch a Korean movie for 1 hour during breakfast.
2) Listen to Korean music and movies converted to mp3, while I going to the lab, working in the lab and coming back home.
3) Listen to Korean radio in the evening and working with a SRS.
4) And add everything think possible you can do in Korean.
If you want more details about that kind of things you can visit the web site for Japanese
It's very interesting even if some advices can't be taken into account for languages that don't deal with Chinese characters.
I still feel that I don't know enough, that I'm working to slowly but I'm trying to fix that.
The time problem will tend to disappear as I'm trying to become a polyphasic sleeper, but that's not easy. We will see what the future can bring.