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Korean For Dummies
Start speaking Korean the fun and easy way with "Korean For Dummies," a no-nonsense guide to Korean culture and the basics of Korean language. Pick up basic phrases and commonly used words so that you can converse with Koreans in both business and personal situations. You'll learn Korean for everyday life and task-specific expressions for Korean on the go. In addition, you'll discover important and fascinating aspects of Korean culture.This handy guide won't burden you with lists of grammar rules; just look up the phrases and cultural phrases that you need or read through the whole book for a general overview. You'll be able to place material in a daily context with cultural tidbits, phonetic spelling of Korean words, and the recorded Korean dialogues on the accompanying CD. Exercises will jog your memory and reinforce everything that you learn. Find out how to: Use basic phrases and words correctlyConverse intelligently about Korean cultureDo business with a Korean companySay task-specific expressionsPronounce Korean wordsPut material in a real-world contextMake a good first impression with Koreans
Complete with lists of ten ways to learn Korean quickly, ten phrases to make you sound Korean, ten expressions that Koreans like to use, and ten things you should never do around a Korean, "Korean For Dummies" is your one-stop guide to speaking basic Korean and understanding the fundamentals of Korean culture.
Complete with lists of ten ways to learn Korean quickly, ten phrases to make you sound Korean, ten expressions that Koreans like to use, and ten things you should never do around a Korean, "Korean For Dummies" is your one-stop guide to speaking basic Korean and understanding the fundamentals of Korean culture.
384 pages, Paperback
First published August 4, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
January 24, 2012
If this sloppy, misleading volume is anything to go by, the For Dummies series must be responsible for any number of quilting disasters, scrapbooking snafus and RV vacationing cock-ups. This book is not just for dummies, but by dummies: dummy writers, dummy editors, dummy interns, dummy bike couriers with dummy girlfriends.... I only exempt the house cartoonist, Rich Tennant, whose panels provide moments of rueful, Ziggy-esque whimsy.
As several disgruntled Amazon customers have pointed out, the fatal flaw in Korean For Dummies is the complete absence of Hangul, the Korean alphabet. I can guess what happened: somebody in the editorial brain trust at Wiley Publishing took the author aside and said, “Listen, Wang, we don’t want to scare off the rubes with a bunch of funny-looking Asian letters. They can barely read English, these people.” But seriously, even dummies can learn Hangul in a day or two; people of average intelligence can do so in the eleven hours it takes to fly from Sea-Tac to Incheon, with plenty of time left over for Kung Fu Panda 2.
The omission of Hangul forces the author to use a really clunky makeshift: he first provides the Romanized version of the Korean, and follows this with a second, phonetic rendering. So you end up with monstrous-looking entries like this one:
ireobeorisyeotgunyo (ee-ruh-buh-ree-syut-goon-yo) You are lost
Yeah, I sure am, asshole.
To make matters worse, the phonetic spellings are not always consistent: a word transliterated as hang-nyeon in one line will be given as hak-nyeon in the next. Just to mess with your mind.
The book comes with a CD, which is actually pretty good. The problem is, the recorded dialogues differ slightly but persistently from the transcripts. Several sentences have been omitted from the recordings—probably because they were considered too difficult—but carelessly allowed to stand in the book. So you’re listening intently and reading along, concentrating like a futhermucker, and then the conversation suddenly jumps ahead a line or two. That’s when you scream “Keseki!” (gae-saek-ee), which is best left untranslated. It’s the freaking Watergate tapes of language-learning kits.
Finally, the text is riddled with tiny, tell-tale grammatical errors. Like many Koreans, the author is, shall we say, rather sparing with his articles. I don’t want to be a prick about this, because he obviously knows English better than I’ll ever know Korean, but his proofreader really should have had his back.
Still, you can learn a lot even from a bad textbook. This one may be light on grammar (those rubes again) but lexically, it’s a goldmine. I have to admit it’s helped me out in all sorts of practical ways. Just this evening, I was in a bar where I noticed some musical instruments piled up in a corner. After taking a quick peek at chapter 8, I casually asked the bartender if there was going to be a concert later. She smiled and said yes. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so gratified! Then she said a bunch of other stuff that wasn’t in the textbook and looked at me quizzically. I nodded sagely and backed away, clutching my beer. And that was the end of that.
As several disgruntled Amazon customers have pointed out, the fatal flaw in Korean For Dummies is the complete absence of Hangul, the Korean alphabet. I can guess what happened: somebody in the editorial brain trust at Wiley Publishing took the author aside and said, “Listen, Wang, we don’t want to scare off the rubes with a bunch of funny-looking Asian letters. They can barely read English, these people.” But seriously, even dummies can learn Hangul in a day or two; people of average intelligence can do so in the eleven hours it takes to fly from Sea-Tac to Incheon, with plenty of time left over for Kung Fu Panda 2.
The omission of Hangul forces the author to use a really clunky makeshift: he first provides the Romanized version of the Korean, and follows this with a second, phonetic rendering. So you end up with monstrous-looking entries like this one:
ireobeorisyeotgunyo (ee-ruh-buh-ree-syut-goon-yo) You are lost
Yeah, I sure am, asshole.
To make matters worse, the phonetic spellings are not always consistent: a word transliterated as hang-nyeon in one line will be given as hak-nyeon in the next. Just to mess with your mind.
The book comes with a CD, which is actually pretty good. The problem is, the recorded dialogues differ slightly but persistently from the transcripts. Several sentences have been omitted from the recordings—probably because they were considered too difficult—but carelessly allowed to stand in the book. So you’re listening intently and reading along, concentrating like a futhermucker, and then the conversation suddenly jumps ahead a line or two. That’s when you scream “Keseki!” (gae-saek-ee), which is best left untranslated. It’s the freaking Watergate tapes of language-learning kits.
Finally, the text is riddled with tiny, tell-tale grammatical errors. Like many Koreans, the author is, shall we say, rather sparing with his articles. I don’t want to be a prick about this, because he obviously knows English better than I’ll ever know Korean, but his proofreader really should have had his back.
Still, you can learn a lot even from a bad textbook. This one may be light on grammar (those rubes again) but lexically, it’s a goldmine. I have to admit it’s helped me out in all sorts of practical ways. Just this evening, I was in a bar where I noticed some musical instruments piled up in a corner. After taking a quick peek at chapter 8, I casually asked the bartender if there was going to be a concert later. She smiled and said yes. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so gratified! Then she said a bunch of other stuff that wasn’t in the textbook and looked at me quizzically. I nodded sagely and backed away, clutching my beer. And that was the end of that.
January 6, 2023
Interessante Einführung in die koreanische Sprache. Anders als in den anderen Reviews beschrieben bringt das Buch einem die koreanische Schrift bei- vielleicht wurde meine Ausgabe einfach nur überarbeitet? Wer weiß...
April 3, 2017
well, it was my first "...for dummies". in one word it really was for dummies XD
one thing that made me give it 3 stars was that it didn't use Korean alphabet and writing and since it was my main focus couldn't use it much but it still was pretty informative and interesting ;)
one thing that made me give it 3 stars was that it didn't use Korean alphabet and writing and since it was my main focus couldn't use it much but it still was pretty informative and interesting ;)
January 30, 2013
Korean for Dummies is just a book on how to learn the basic of the Korean language, the culture and habits you should look out for, and just a whole bunch of other thing you need to look out for and know when you're going to a foreign country.
With this not being a book with not plot, I still quite enjoyed it. Since I have a lot of interest in Korea, I couldn't put the book down since I wanted to constantly learn more and more about their langauge. Even with already know the basics of Korean before getting this book, it still helped quite a lot and it will come in handy whenever I go over there.
To like this book I would say that you have to have an extreme interest when it comes to Korea since this book is about the Korean language and it's culture. You can't just read it for no apparent reason since it will be boring to you and you won't like it. You have to have a devotion to read it.
With this not being a book with not plot, I still quite enjoyed it. Since I have a lot of interest in Korea, I couldn't put the book down since I wanted to constantly learn more and more about their langauge. Even with already know the basics of Korean before getting this book, it still helped quite a lot and it will come in handy whenever I go over there.
To like this book I would say that you have to have an extreme interest when it comes to Korea since this book is about the Korean language and it's culture. You can't just read it for no apparent reason since it will be boring to you and you won't like it. You have to have a devotion to read it.
April 25, 2015
The Dummies series is usually pretty good. That is why I was shocked when I read through an almost 300 hundred page book without Hangul. It makes no sense to to try to learn Korean without learning the Korean alphabet. There are many hard and challenging parts of learning Korean but Hangul is not one of them. Reading through the the other reviews I see I'm not the only one who noticed this. I do have to say the audio disk is good. It saved me from giving the book a 1 star rating.
February 22, 2018
The book is only of use to those already in the upper-beginner level—where you already have several hundred words of vocab down that you can comfortably recognize aurally—as an extra source of dialogues you can extract and imitate and fiddle round with basic substitution drills for speaking and listening practice.
As a straight beginner, it's going to be rough going, it's riddled with errors and typos and its own peculiar and inconsistent romanization/transcription spelling system. If you're reading it for the language-culture perspective STICK WITH THAT. Don't think you're going to learn Korean to any significant extent, beyond basic greetings you'll probably only impress Koreans with by the fact that they will probably figure out what you're trying to say, rather than that you're even saying it badly.
For those in the former category, you'll need an audio editor/player such as Audacity or Wavepad: the dialogs are first presented at full-tilt real Korean speed, then chopped up into phrases. You'll want to be able slow-speed loop sections of the real-speed portion, and tighten up the ridiculously long pauses (they are intended for repeating the phrases, but they destroy the semantic continuity; if you want pauses, you can hit... um... pause on your player, no st, Sherlock Jungwook.) for the chopped-up version.
You'll also need to scavenger-hunt for vocab items in the book for the dialogs because they are sort of thrown around helter-skelter in the general vicinity of the dialogs. Why do authors DO that? There's so much white-space around the dialogs in this thing, it would be a typographical, not to mention pedagogical, no-brainer to gloss new (and old easily-forgotten) words and phrases right there beside them.
As a straight beginner, it's going to be rough going, it's riddled with errors and typos and its own peculiar and inconsistent romanization/transcription spelling system. If you're reading it for the language-culture perspective STICK WITH THAT. Don't think you're going to learn Korean to any significant extent, beyond basic greetings you'll probably only impress Koreans with by the fact that they will probably figure out what you're trying to say, rather than that you're even saying it badly.
For those in the former category, you'll need an audio editor/player such as Audacity or Wavepad: the dialogs are first presented at full-tilt real Korean speed, then chopped up into phrases. You'll want to be able slow-speed loop sections of the real-speed portion, and tighten up the ridiculously long pauses (they are intended for repeating the phrases, but they destroy the semantic continuity; if you want pauses, you can hit... um... pause on your player, no st, Sherlock Jungwook.) for the chopped-up version.
You'll also need to scavenger-hunt for vocab items in the book for the dialogs because they are sort of thrown around helter-skelter in the general vicinity of the dialogs. Why do authors DO that? There's so much white-space around the dialogs in this thing, it would be a typographical, not to mention pedagogical, no-brainer to gloss new (and old easily-forgotten) words and phrases right there beside them.
July 5, 2019
This is so so so awful. I'm accustomed to the "Dummies" series being actually helpful and insightful, but this is just plain awful. I knew on the first page when the author kept incorporating random Korean words into his intro, it was going to be awful. Here's a short excerpt from the first page, first paragraph of the book:
“Surprising a woneomin (won-uh-min; native speaker) of Korea by perfectly pronouncing a mungu (moon-goo; phrase or a munjang (moon-jang; sentence) of their language can be jaemi (jae-mee; fun). And the purpose of this chapter is to help you do exactly that."
Oh God. Not only is this written so cringy, but the lack of use of the Korean alphabet (Hangul) is appalling. This book would be a decent read on the long airplane ride over to Korea if you're heading there for a trip, but don't expect to know grammar, vocab, and the like from this Korean for Dummies book. It's really awful and there isn't a lick of actual Korean writing in the book at all. It's all written with the Roman alphabet resulting in the book falling flat and failing to do it's job; educate.
“Surprising a woneomin (won-uh-min; native speaker) of Korea by perfectly pronouncing a mungu (moon-goo; phrase or a munjang (moon-jang; sentence) of their language can be jaemi (jae-mee; fun). And the purpose of this chapter is to help you do exactly that."
Oh God. Not only is this written so cringy, but the lack of use of the Korean alphabet (Hangul) is appalling. This book would be a decent read on the long airplane ride over to Korea if you're heading there for a trip, but don't expect to know grammar, vocab, and the like from this Korean for Dummies book. It's really awful and there isn't a lick of actual Korean writing in the book at all. It's all written with the Roman alphabet resulting in the book falling flat and failing to do it's job; educate.
June 20, 2023
I think this book's failing to teach Hangeul to its learners severely hurts its value to the student. It also means that when there are typos (which there are numerous examples of in the text) students have no means of checking with Hangeul text to verify which spelling is correct or accurately reflects the pronunciation.
October 8, 2021
This is a typical book for “Dummies”. When Covid started I began watching KDramas & found the culture & history of Korea fascinating so this was the first book I read to get acquainted with the country & it’s people. It definitely wasn’t my last but it was it was a good introduction.
November 19, 2017
It is not the typical abcd book but is very informative. If you are into Kdramas, it will be easy to understand sounds and apply in RL situations where you are to speak Korean.
December 30, 2019
There are quite a few distressing problems with this book, a few of which I will list below:
1. They never introduce 한글 (Hangeul), which is the Korean alphabet. This is such a glaring mistake for any non-Roman alphabet language instruction manual to do. There is literally no way you can learn Korean without 한글. For example, the language sounds are so unique to the alphabet that you would never accurately learn pronunciation (they only give you inaccurate approximations) and you can't read anything in the Korean language. If you never need to write, read, or speak (well) then I guess it's ok?
한글 takes about 4 hours to learn, so just do that instead.
2. The way they approximate sound equivalents is confused and misdirecting.
3. Lack of sufficient grammar explanation.
4. They use words inaccurately without acknowledging that endings change - it's a big yikes
5. There are so many typos and small mistakes
Ultimately this book fails to educate in any useful and efficient manner. I would suggest Talk to Me in Korean instead.
1. They never introduce 한글 (Hangeul), which is the Korean alphabet. This is such a glaring mistake for any non-Roman alphabet language instruction manual to do. There is literally no way you can learn Korean without 한글. For example, the language sounds are so unique to the alphabet that you would never accurately learn pronunciation (they only give you inaccurate approximations) and you can't read anything in the Korean language. If you never need to write, read, or speak (well) then I guess it's ok?
한글 takes about 4 hours to learn, so just do that instead.
2. The way they approximate sound equivalents is confused and misdirecting.
3. Lack of sufficient grammar explanation.
4. They use words inaccurately without acknowledging that endings change - it's a big yikes
5. There are so many typos and small mistakes
Ultimately this book fails to educate in any useful and efficient manner. I would suggest Talk to Me in Korean instead.
December 13, 2014
For me the book was no help at all.. Since the Author choose not to put Hangul the Korean alphabet in this book it won't help you much when you're there.. Hangul is very easy to learn and it wouldn't have been much work for the Author to put it in.. Well the rest of the Book wasn't particularly helpful too .. I was disappointed!
May 4, 2013
I was disappointed to find that not only is this book totally romanized, it doesn't even introduce Hangul whatsoever. It's also has a lot of typos and is unorganized. I did enjoy it's sense of humor it showed at times, though ("jeoneun Inigo Montoya imnida").
October 27, 2008
Looking forward to picking this up at Walden's soon. I hope to learn a bit more about Hangul and traditions.
October 23, 2014
Yes, I wanted Hangul script but this was my first Korean course so I still couldn't get bored.
December 27, 2018
Well written and easy to follow, good starting point for anyone looking to learn Korean
November 9, 2020
Bien écrit, très informatif.
Ce n'est pas un vrai livre pour étuder mais plûtot pour avoir des connaissances essentielles sur la langue et la culture avant de commencer.
Ce n'est pas un vrai livre pour étuder mais plûtot pour avoir des connaissances essentielles sur la langue et la culture avant de commencer.
December 23, 2021
Ce livre m’avait pas mal apporté lors de mon apprentissage du coréen, toutefois il y avait quelques erreurs sur l’utilisation du 존댓말 / 반말 …
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June 12, 2011dah 3 bulan tinggal..study balik..
February 22, 2016
Where's the Hangul script??
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews