Elementary Korean (Tuttle Language Library) (Book & CD)

by Ross King, Jaehoon Yeon

Includes 74-minute audio CD.

This textbook offers a complete first year course for learning Korean. Loosely based on Beginning Korean by Martin and Lee, it includes updated dialogues, grammar notes, and transcription in the Han'gul character system.

The main objective of this book is competence in spoken Korean through a streamlined introduction to the fundamental patterns of the language. Based on the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, this book will provide students with an Intermediate-Low to Intermediate-Mid proficiency level. Reading passages enhance the lessons.

Genres: Language, Reference, Nonfiction, Textbooks, Linguistics

409 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 1999

About the author

Dr. Ross King is a Canadian academic. He is currently Professor of Korean Language and Literature in the Asian Studies Department at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, B.C.). Dr. King describes his primary research interests as follows:

"History of language, writing and literary culture in the Sinographic cultural sphere, with a specific focus on medieval Korea and the interplay of cosmopolitan and vernacular in other regions of the Sinographic cosmopolis"

His research interests also include Korean historical linguistics & dialectology.

Dr. King received a B.A. in Linguistics (Japanese-Korean) and Political Science from Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut) in 1983. He earned both his M.A. in Linguistics (1986) & Ph.D. in Linguistics (1991) from Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts).

Reviews

[Buck]

From an Indo-European standpoint, Korean is a pretty messed-up language. The syntax is all wrong, for one thing. It puts the verb at the end of the sentence and just omits the subject whenever it feels like it. It also seems to get by without the word ‘you’ most of the time. And then, nobody’s even sure what language family it belongs to (some say Altaic, like Japanese and Turkish; others consider it an ‘isolate’, like Basque). But for Westerners, the really crazy part is how status-conscious the language is: in Korean, you always have to be aware of the other person’s relative social position, and especially their age. This is built right into the structure of the language, so that when you’re addressing a superior or elder, you need to change up the grammar. Usually this involves sticking a –yo ending onto every other word. Unfortunately, to an immature English speaker like me, yo just makes everything sound hilariously casual.

On the other hand, there’s nothing crazy about the writing system. Koreans like to say that their alphabet, Hangul, is the most “scientific” in the world. I used to dismiss this as a bit of nationalistic cant, but there’s actually something to it. Unlike the the wild and wacky muddle of English spelling, Korean orthography is remarkably consistent and user-friendly (Korean: Hello, I’m a Mac. English (lamely): And I’m a PC.) The letters of Hangul are not just arbitrary squiggles, as in the Roman alphabet, but visual representations of their corresponding sounds. This fellow, for instance, is the Korean m:



It’s clearly meant to convey a labial suggestion (no, not that labia). In other words, the very shapes of the letters have a heuristic value, with the result that Korean kids typically learn to read well ahead of their English-speaking peers (though the fact that most Korean kids also have a scary-ass tiger mom screaming at them to do their homework probably doesn’t hurt, either).

On the phonological side, Korean doesn’t hold too many terrors, provided you can aspirate when called upon. By my count, there’s only one phoneme that’s totally alien to English (eui, which sounds like the strangled curse of a mortally-wounded kung fu fighter). Compared to the horror show that is Chinese, Korean intonation is mercifully flat, except that teenage girls have an annoying habit of stretching out there terminal syllables into a cutesy little whine ('jagiyaaaa').

The curious way in which Korean has metabolized the English language takes some getting used to. Ever since the first American GIs arrived here in the 1950s, Koreans have been “borrowing” English words with larcenous zest. The thing is, they often give loanwords a little twist or wrench – either to domesticate or murder them, depending on your point of view. The resulting sublanguage, “Konglish”, is easy to make fun of, but has a certain poetry of its own. One portmanteau word they’ve invented is “skinship”, which basically means intimacy, sexual or otherwise. So, like, if you make a move on a Korean girl, she might push you away and say, “No skinship!” (though she probably won’t, if you’re tall and have “big eyes”). It’s a useful word, answering a felt need in the Korean psyche, but one for which there’s no exact equivalent in standard English, ironically enough.

Well, those are my preliminary thoughts on the Korean language. I should point out that, despite my authoritative tone above, I can barely order lunch in Korean, let alone finesse my way into some good old-fashioned skinship. I really need to track down a PDF of this book, so I can get back to work on Korean grammar and quit slopping around here in this barbarous Germanic pidgin we call English.

[Dan Riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was our Korean 102 coursebook at UBC; the main author King was/is head of the Korean dept. I've given it a mediocre rating because it's simply really nasty for self-teaching, and like most language-learning textbooks, pedagogically challenged for course work as well.
What it does have going for it is its magisterial command of the language exposition proper, by two senior Koreanists and linguists. These guys have a half-century plus of knowledge about the language, and it's one of the top-tier textbooks anywhere.

Here's the good part: the whole book's entire material is represented on UBC's Korean site, and it's much better to go there and start in on Korean! (You don't need to sign in [at present, anyway], just go to korean · arts · ubc ·ca/online-textbook-korn-102/ [fix the dots, I don't know what goodreads does with live links] ) Everything instructionally rotten about the book is circumvented. There are lessons, exercises, audio clips, audio dialogs, etc. etc.
So don't waste money on the book. The workbook is pretty mediocre, so don't buy that either.
Also: the audio (both on the site, and the book's CD) is scratchy. It's in the original, so don't think buying the whole book and recording is going to get around that. That said, the audio is tolerably noisy. It's not like the Apollo moon-landing transmissions; you'll get used to it.

Finally, something you cannot do with the physical book, is copy-paste the dialogs from the site into Google Translate. This will give you a (crude) translation and transliteration, and surprisingly decent audio rendition. If you are particularly adroit with a Mac (or you can ask someone who is) you can rip the audio parts and do looping-repetition drills with words, phrases, sentences, and dialogs on your favorite audio player/editor, such as Wavepad or Audacity or whatever. I'm particularly fond of back-chaining looping practice, and if you've never heard of back-chaining for all kinds of things, I recommend you Google it. It originated in U.S. army language practice as far back as WWII, and yet is mysteriously one of the best-kept secrets of not only language-drills, but memorizing scripts, music passages, and who knows what else.

[Robert Mcclay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for self study, but it helps to have a Korean around to address any confusion. It doesn't get hung up on formal style, so if you go around trying to talk to people, you don't sound so stuffy. Furthermore, the language is more or less up to date and relevant.

The layout makes for a digestible read; each chapter begins with a dialogue and vocabulary list, followed by grammar points and exercises. The chapters are spattered with side notes that warn about common mistakes and caveats in a given lesson.

I also have the accompanying workbook, which gives a lot of good practice.

It's not perfect, but the best I've found so far.

[Alana Le · Rating 3 out of 5]

To begin, I bought this book at B&N for over 70 dollars and it really was not worth the money i paid for it. First, let me say it's not horrible. There's a wealth of good information in there. It includes the very basic of learning the korean alphabet, to basic phrases, vocabulary, and practice scripts. However, this is part of the problem. Now, i'm not saying i'm great at foreign languages, but i do want to say i'm above par when learning them, but from the get-go the book's too thorough and over complicates even the simplest of things like the korean alphabet which anyone could learn in an afternoon (i recommend the app TenguGo to learn hangul) making me question what little korean i already knew. the beginning chapters bombards you with phrases, grammar rules, sentence structure, and honorifics & formality rules-none of which you will remember. then, when the real lessons started it introduced a script and then some vocabulary words and it'd continue to move on like that, whch wasn't bad, but it's not my prefererred style of learning. It would have been much more convenient if they introduced a some basic phrases, not a laundry list, then brought in a little bit of grammar as you go that can be applied, not just a random fact you must keep floating around in your mind until you can actually use it, and then some vocabulary which should've been introduced before the script, not after. Overall, on first impressions skimming through, this book appeared very organized and thorough, but after actually using it, i haven't learnt much at all. It felt like it was trying to explain how square roots work without even thoroughly teaching multiplication or giving any examples like 3x3=9 thus 3^2=9. It could possibly work for others but it's definitely not for me. To put it shortly, i ended up returning it and i'm probably going to spend the $76 dollars on a different korean language book or program that will work much more efficiently than this book did.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book for a beginner!

[Kylee Snickerdoodle · Rating 1 out of 5]

For those learning Korean without knowing it's alphabet you may do well with this book. However if you have already learned the alphabet this book does not help you for the first few chapters. The author has a bizarre pronunciation guide that does not make sense. There is an example to differentient between consonants likeㄱ, ㅋ and ㅅ,ㅆ. For ㄱ they say it's pronounced like kitten, and that ㄱ(ㅏ) is pronounced like kill while ㅋ is pronounced like skill. I may be illiterate but I pronouce skill and kill the same. They go to make up there own characters to help you visualize this but it does not teach you that by placing certain vowels next to the consonants you change the shape of your word and therefore would not need a new special character. It was aggravating when I was trying to use this book. It does have good examples for vocabulary and expressions in korean but the pronunciation guided given makes understanding the rules of the language more difficult than it needs to be.

[Michelle Frane]

I cannot read

[Asadbek]

Ol