Nejimakidori wrote:I can now officially READ 한글. Yeah
First of all, congratulations on reaching an important milestone!
Nejimakidori wrote:I thought it was going to take something like two weeks (the time I needed to remember the Japanese かな syllabaries) but Hangeul was learnt in less than 3 hours! It's a very enjoyable script to learn.
This was a wonderful surprise for me too! Not only Hangeul syllables, but even individual Hangeul characters are built up according to a logical system. They aren't kidding when they say it's an ingenious script.
Nejimakidori wrote:But I don't like the Microsoft entry system for Korean, I wonder if I should put some stickers on my keyboard or... ?
If you're going to be using the layout a lot, perhaps it's just as well to not rely on stickers though? At any rate, there is sort of a system to the layout:
The left-hand side of the keyboard contains the consonants. On the bottom row are the aspirated plosives, in the order k, t, ch, p, from left to right. On the top row are the unaspirated versions of the ones in the bottom row: g, d, j, b, but in the opposite order, from right to left. In the middle row are the remaining consonants.
On the right-hand side are the vowels. The basic vowels are placed in the middle row and the bottom row, and the vowels formed by combining a vowel with i are placed on the top row, except for yu, which is placed next to u on the bottom row. Yo, yeo and ya are placed directly above o, eo and a. Unfortunately, there's no consistent system beyond that as far as I know.
Nejimakidori wrote:After studying 2 beginner level lessons, I felt as if I was studying Japanese again from the beginning. The syntax is almost the same, the words of Chinese origin sound like their Japanese equivalent most of the time.
But... the absence of 漢字 in today's Korean confuses me too much. I think I would learn much faster with them.
Anyway, Korean seems very logical to learn after studying Japanese.
I agree with you there. Students of Japanese and Chinese taking up Korean could absolutely benefit from having textbooks with hanja in them. Fortunately, it's quite simple to look up the hanja for a new word online though, for instance at
http://alldic.nate.com/ and
http://dic.naver.com/ .