Billy Go's Blog

After months of work and a successful fundraiser on Patreon, it’s finally here – my new podcast for Korean learners. This podcast is for anyone learning Korean, and packs a variety of segments into a single show.

In this very first episode you’ll learn about failed Korean snack trends and new ones, you’ll listen to a native Korean listening practice, learn unique grammar forms, get a “Word of the Day,” and more. New episodes coming soon!

I’m starting a new Korean analysis series all about the group MONSTA X, a 6-member group consisting of 셔누, 민혁, 기현, 형원, 주헌, and 아이엠. I’ll post one new episode each week, starting with the first video which is about 셔누.

In this series I analyze what makes the members unique, and focuses on how each of them speak Korean – including their voice tone, intonation, filler words, dialect, as well as their handwriting.

Sometimes I felt frustrated when learning Korean, or I felt like it was a bit pointless to keep going. I asked Forrest what he does when he feels this way, and we shared how we overcome this sort of feeling, and what reasons people say for giving up learning the language.

I met up again with “한국어 한 조각” and we shared what makes Korean a “high context language,” and how it doesn’t often need pronouns, subjects, articles, and plural nouns. We also shared advice for how to better understand sentences with these limitations.

Last time we went to the bookstore Jeremy got $50 to buy whatever he wants. But I felt it wasn’t enough, so this time we doubled it to $100. Follow along with everything he picked and why. Maybe next time I should give him double?

(This is not a sponsored video and we paid for everything with our own money.)

My most recent live Korean class was about the form (이)나, and how it’s used to mean “no less than” and adds emotion to a sentence. I taught how it’s used in regular statements, and also how it can have a different meaning when used in some questions.

I asked you to send me your worst, funniest, most embarrassing Korean mistakes, and you delivered. I reacted with my friend 소영 to your worst mistakes, and also fixed them. Have you made any of these embarrassing mistakes before, or worse?

The most common ways to say “would have” are with the forms ~ㅆ을 것이다 and ~ㅆ겠다, but you can also use the regular past tense form with ~지 (e.g. ~ㅆ지, ~ㅆ잖아) at times. Here’s the summarized version of my most recent live Korean classroom.

I’ve seen all sorts of wild claims about how long it takes to learn Korean – everything from a few weeks to ten years. But how long does it take people who’ve actually learned to speak Korean? I talked with my friend Forrest about some of the fastest cases of people learning Korean, as well as what the averages are for how long it can take.

The Hanja 동 同 means “same,” and it’s used in many vocabulary words to mean that something is together with something else. In this episode I share many common verbs and nouns used with 동, including how it’s used with the word 동생 (or 동산).