UniLang

can anyone recommend some good books to start learning korean? like the alphabet and then reading, writing, speaking, and then listening or in any order...thanks.

If you have someone to help you (online or otherwise), and you don't mind some blood, sweat, and tears, I can recommend the KLEAR textbooks (Integrated Korean).

inquisitive wrote:can anyone recommend some good books to start learning korean? like the alphabet and then reading, writing, speaking, and then listening or in any order...thanks.

Well I don't think you need an entire book to learn Hangul.

When I first started Korean I was using Living Language's Spoken World: Korean
http://www.amazon.com/Spoken-World-Comp ... rld+korean

....and I still have the book today. Its audio is fine, and I love the practice you have at the end of each lesson; and also how after lesson 5 you need to totally memorize the script as romanization stops. However, it throws words and phrases out in lessons without describing them until later on. Perhaps this won't be an issue for you but to me it was because I want to know exactly why ____ is used/said.

Overall, a really good book and comes with 6 CDs (though I've lost 2.. )....

Other than that:

Speaking Korean by Francis Y.T. Park....
http://www.amazon.com/Speaking-Korean-B ... +y.t.+park

Very good book. It's the first in a series of 3 books. It explains everything covered in each lesson followed by an entirely in Korean reading practice, and then some examples of translating from Korean/English and vice-versa. If anything I haven't come by a book with so much detail and depth as this one.

I've had the book for 2 years and only went to page 150 out of 482 so far. I tend to just skim around but it is definitely an amazing book, and should be for its price. It's obviously geared more towards classroom-learning as despite its huge size as it only has one CD. I will say though I'd learn Hangul before diving into it. There is no romanization used in it at all.

For flash cards Tuttle's Korean Learning flash cards is a nice choice. I have it and the image/word is printed on one end followed by its meaning in English with sample sentences on the other. It also comes with a large poster with all of the flash cards printed out on it.

http://www.amazon.com/Tuttle-Korean-Kid ... lash+cards

Other than that I mostly just use the web and friends for my Korean learning. I don't like using books really if I don't have to. But other resources you can use that I don't have:

TY Korean (heard it wasn't stellar but pretty cheap, 2 CDs and a nice-sized book)...
Pimsleur Korean (for audio)
Elementary Korean
Integrated Korean (as already said)

księżycowy wrote:If you have someone to help you (online or otherwise), and you don't mind some blood, sweat, and tears, I can recommend the KLEAR textbooks (Integrated Korean).

I suppose I can expand on my recommendation, like eddeux did:

You are thrown into the hangeul quite quickly. It seems (in my experience anyway) most courses either hold your hand too much or throw you too the lions with the hangeul. But the alphabet isn't really that difficult.

There are five levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced intermediate, advanced, and high advanced) with two volumes per level (so 10 books in all). So to get them all, it is a bit expensive, but all together it is a very comprehensive and expansive course. Also, the audio for the first two or three levels is available online for download for free.

The biggest downside is that the textbooks are meant for class study, not individual study. Thus there is no answer key for any of the exercises. Hence the reason I said someone to help you would be necessary. But on the plus side the grammar is explained quite clearly (from the parts I've gone through).

Radio Korea
http://www.radiokorea.com/

Why haven't anyone mentioned Talk To Me In Korean? It's free and it's awesome: http://www.talktomeinkorean.com/

Hello everyone! I wanted to share this resource with you all, the authors of Korean from Zero have made a PDF version of their book available online legally for free:

http://www.koreanfromzero.com/downloads ... -04-02.pdf

It is very basic but pretty good if you don't know anything about Korean!

Two Korean Apps I have been using:

ZKorean
https://zkorean.com/korean-alphabet-hangul

TenguGo
http://www.tengugo.com/korean/hangul_app/hangul

They are both just for learning Hangul but quite good

Minji Tube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT4rIm ... 8Vj23Ur3BA

Has a lot of good videos on Korean culture and Korean slang.

księżycowy wrote:

księżycowy wrote:If you have someone to help you (online or otherwise), and you don't mind some blood, sweat, and tears, I can recommend the KLEAR textbooks (Integrated Korean).

I suppose I can expand on my recommendation, like eddeux did:

You are thrown into the hangeul quite quickly. It seems (in my experience anyway) most courses either hold your hand too much or throw you too the lions with the hangeul. But the alphabet isn't really that difficult.

There are five levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced intermediate, advanced, and high advanced) with two volumes per level (so 10 books in all). So to get them all, it is a bit expensive, but all together it is a very comprehensive and expansive course. Also, the audio for the first two or three levels is available online for download for free.

The biggest downside is that the textbooks are meant for class study, not individual study. Thus there is no answer key for any of the exercises. Hence the reason I said someone to help you would be necessary. But on the plus side the grammar is explained quite clearly (from the parts I've gone through).

I wanted to update my previous review of the KLEAR textbooks to say that not only have they been updated to a second edition, but they also have an answer key available for self-study use. The audio is also still freely available online. This makes this textbook series all the more attractive!

The answer key is not exactly free, nor are the additional web resources, but last time I checked (which, admittedly was about a year ago) it was only a one time fee of 10US$ to get access.

http://kleartextbook.com/

What are some good Korean radio stations both talk stations and music stations?I have tried searching some Korean radio on tunein but a lot of them play English music