Domain Name Com's Elementary Korean (Tuttle Language Library)

Elementary Korean (Tuttle Language Library)

Domain Name Com's - : Elementary Korean (Tuttle Language Library)

- Incorrect pronunciation
*You would have to encode the page to "Korean", or you will not see the Korean character examples below.*

My husband (Chinese-American) recently purchased this book on the basis of all of the glowing reviews and I have to say I was shocked to discover the errors on the pronunciation of a few of the Korean consonants and vowels. I have not gone through the rest of book yet with my husband but after seeing the error in the pronunciation guide in lesson 3 of the book, I felt compelled to write a review, especially since the rest of the book is based on these basic sounds. As a native Korean speaker, I would like to clarify these errors.

The most difficult consonant sounds in the Korean language for a non-Korean speaker to distinguish are "b" and "p" sounds and "g"(the hard kind, as in "gun") and "k", and "j" and "ch" sounds. For example in the book, they explain the "¤²" is to pronounce is as "p as in park, but relaxed." This is incorrect. It's actually a "b" sound as an "bunk", therefore a more relaxed "b", but definitely NOT a "p". Instead of describing sounds of "b", "j" and "g" the book incorrectly uses variations of "p", "ch", and "k" to describe these sounds.

When a learner hears let say the "b" in "banchan" spoken fast by a Korean speaker within a sentence, the person might indeed hear "panchan", with some kind of a "p". But I would like to stress that this would be an incorrect way of learning. For a native speaker, there's a definite difference between those two sounds.

Another error I would like to note is the pronunciations for "¤Ä" and "¤À". In the book those two vowels are described as "a as in bat" and "e as in bet". The fact is, there really isn't a difference; it is always the "e as in bet". If you pronounce "¤Ä" as "a as in bat", it would make you sound less like a native. I can sadly imagine someone who has completed this book pronouncing "yes" in Korean incorrectly as "nah" when the correct pronunciation would be "neh".

To sum up this review, here's an excerpt I found:
"The more difficult aspect for the beginner is the difference in sound values of b and p sounds, j and ch,and t and d. This is compounded by the widely diverging romanization systems used for Korean: Lukoff, Yale, Horne, and McCune-Reischauer. This confusion can be easily avoided however if you learn the Korean script, Hangul, as soon as possible, and skip the middle step of romanization completely. This is strongly advised, because it will save valuable time, lessen your confusion, and greatly enhance the speed with which you learn Korean. It will also help you to avoid spelling mistakes (there are two T's, two P's, etc.in the script) when you start to write Korean Hangul script."

Most readers of this book will probably not have a native Korean speaker to point out these errors so I just wanted you to be aware. The grammar and dialogues in this book seems fine, but it is important for Korean learners to learn how to pronounce the Korean alphabet correctly and then tackle the rest of the grammar in this book.

Rating:

- good but...
This textbook has been an excellent (if slightly intimidating!) tool for me - an independent learner.
Of particular interest are the exercises at the end of each chapter. BUT a word of caution, I've noticed that some of the answers for Chapter 6's exercises (especially the translation ones) don't actually match the questions!

Just a word of caution. I don't know if the rest of the chapters are similar.

Rating:

- Very usefull and serious book
I'm a music student and there's a lot of Koreans at my school. So I wanted to get a book that would help me communicate with them. I perused the book and it looks very well-constructed and serious.

I've got very little free time, so I've only studied the first few chapters. This has already helped me A LOT! I can have little standard conversations and I'm able to quickly learn new words by listening to Koreans talk, because the language makes more sense to me now.

Rating:

- Good book, but lacking
I bought this book after reading the positive reviews here. I haven't ever used any other Korean books, so I cannot compare. The book does explain grammar and pronunciation in a clear manner. However, compared to other language self-study books, it is lacking in "feeling" - every lesson is a short dialogue followed with a long vocabulary list, grammar explanations, and exercises. I would have preferred it if the authors included some bits about Korean culture, history, etc. or at least some simple supplemental reading material in Korean. I feel the dialogues are far too short, and only use about 30% of the vocabulary you are expected to learn. It's very hard to learn vocabulary by memorizing long lists, and it would have helped to at least see it used in the dialogue or in example sentences(there are a few, but not nearly enough). If used in a class, this would be an excellent textbook, but for self-study it's a bit dry.

Rating:

- Great review
This is a great self study, I can refer to this book anytime and be focused and ready to learn...In other books, they were too difficult to follow.

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