Annyeonghaseyo (안녕하세요)? Have you been swept by the Korean Wave, which is also known as Hallyu 한류(韓流) in Korean? Have you been binge watching Korean dramas (e.g. Kingdom, Crash Landing on You, Itaewon Class) on television, Netflix or on other websites? Have been listening to the hottest K-Pop tunes by artists, such as IU, BTS, NCT, TWICE, Blackpink, Momoland, etc.? Then, it would be great for you to learn Korean, the language of your favorite stars, and you can do this in the comfort of your home online. Talk To Me In Korean (TTMIK) is a website that allows you to learn the language through videos and podcasts, and lesson PDFs and materials. 배우자 (Let’s learn)!
Website Features
The website offers 9 levels and 265 unique lessons. Furthermore, as you click on the lessons, you can also download MP3 recordings of the podcasts and PDF documents that give good explanations about the grammar. As you listen to the podcast lessons and watch the videos, you get to learn from entertaining hosts, such as Sun Hyunwoo and Choi Kyungeun. You also get to look at sample sentences using the introduced grammar points. If you upgrade your membership to Premium, then you can learn from sample dialogues and do review quizzes for the lessons. But before you can begin, you can start by learning the Korean alphabet Hangul, which is said to be one of the easiest alphabets and can be learned in 15 minutes or hours depending on how fast you can learn (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-AeTqNStzU OR http://www.ryanestrada.com/learntoreadkoreanin15minutes/). Talk To Me In Korean (TTMIK) also has a bookstore that allows you access to a wide set of interesting books that help with your Korean.
Learning Results and Verdict
According to a friend of the author, after completing all of the lessons and various exercises in Talk To Me In Korean, he was able to understand most of the conversations in Korean dramas. This is due to the emphasis of the website on conversational Korean.
When it comes to the type of Korean that is introduced and used, the website introduces you with Informal Polite Korean or Haeyoche (해요체), which is the most common type of Polite Speech or Jondaemal (존댓말). It is the most common form of Korean because you are expected to be polite with strangers and those older than you (It’s the Korean where all the sentences end in -yo or ~요). Eventually, you will learn about Casual Informal Korean or Haeche (해체), a form of Banmal (반말) or Casual Speech, which one uses with younger people, close friends and immediate family members. There is also Formal Plain Korean or Haerache (해라체), which is used in publications (sentences ending in -nda ~ㄴ다 or -neunda 는다), as well as Formal Polite Korean or Hashipshioche (하십시오체), which is mostly used in speeches, advertisements and news (sentences ending in -mnida ~ㅂ니다 or -seumnida ~습니다). Luckily, you only have to deal with four politeness levels nowadays (Historically, Korean had seven). With the useful grammar points introduced, TTMIK is a very good website for learning Korean.
With that, we hope that you are able to learn new things online and do some fun activities at home during this time. With many of our students and employees in AHEAD interested in Korean culture, we thought it would be great for them to have some learning tips for Korean. We believe in giving great opportunities as well, especially since Korean has become a popular language nowadays, and since there are good scholarships and employment opportunities in South Korea. With that, we wish everyone the best in their learning in different fields and subjects. 수고하세요 (Do your best)!