want to learn korean?

jackie · Tourist Joined: Jul 26, 2005 Posts: 23

"Survival Korean" by Stephen Revere is a veryyyy good book. If you really want to learn, you can learn from this book. It teaches you how to read/write, then vocabulary, then sentence formation and dialogues..and it also comes with tapes to listen to the dialogues. it's really good, that's how im learning, so i suggest it to anyone who wants to learn. ^.^

Samuel · Beginner Joined: Sep 15, 2005 Posts: 1

I think that Stephene Revere's book is poorly done for several reasons. First, it is poorly organized. For example, he lists at the end of chapters vocabulary that never occurs in the opening dialogue or in later sentences. The practice material is too little, too. He also refuses to transliterate from Korean into the Roman alphabet, but in many cases transliteration can show what words can only confuse. Most confusing is his attempts to explain the rules of euphony and coalescence that learners find challenging. There are better books available. Try Fred Lukoff's book that presents grammar in a much more systematic way. The book is somewhat cumbersome and pendatic at times, but at least he attempts to explain difficult points of grammar that Revere only dismisses as unimportant. Anyone who has learned Korean has tried to comprehend the differences between a topic and subject marker. Revere simply passes over that matter by saying that Phd. theses have been written on the subject, but the difference between the two markers needs to be understoond. Lukoff's book attempts an explanation that is quite clear and useful. There are others reasons to avoid Revere's book, but those reasons above are just a sample. If any one wants more reasons, I will post them eventually.