이제 漢字 쓰는 方法을 알게 되었다!
\nI was today years old when I finally figured out how to type Hanja (characters from China that were historically used to write Korean).\nIt struck me as very strange that this didn't seem possible in any of the obvious input methods.\nIn Japanese, for example, you get search-as-you-type style suggestions popping up as you type,\nwhether in Kana or Romaji mode.\nIn fact, until now, I mostly relied on my prior study of Japanese,\nswitched to that layout, and typed in a Japanese reading.\nThis was quite clunky though as I am now learning the Korean readings.
\nI even asked several Koreans if they knew how,\nand none did (at least for macOS), since it's relatively uncommon to use them these days,\nparticularly for younger people.\nWindows keyboards have a dedicated Hanja mode key,\nbut I've never seen an Apple keyboard with this,\nand I'm not even totally sure if macOS understands the key code\n(if anyone knows, let me know on Mastodon).
\nIt turns out this IS in fact possible; it's just uncharacteristically buried.\nThe trick is to press option+return.\nThen you'll get a menu where you can select Hanja matches\nfor the previous "word" (it seems to rely on spacing, which is not always completely consistent in colloquial writing,\nbut it's not too hard to get used to.)\nI found tip on Apple's website\nvia a search.
\nThis is probably only relevant to like 2 other people on the internet, but I thought I'd spread the word\nsince it was relatively hard to find!
\n", "summary": "", "date_published": "2026-03-07T00:00:00-00:00", "image": "", "authors": [ { "name": "Ian Wagner", "url": "https://fosstodon.org/@ianthetechie", "avatar": "media/avi.jpeg" } ], "tags": [ "macos", "i18n", "korean", "languages" ], "language": "en" }, { "id": "https://ianwwagner.com//finishing-dragonball-in-korean.html", "url": "https://ianwwagner.com//finishing-dragonball-in-korean.html", "title": "Finishing Dragonball in Korean", "content_html": "Over the past few days of vacation I finally had the chance to finish reading Dragonball!\nI started this a few years ago and have gone in spurts, sometimes not reading for months at a time as work got in the way.
\nThis post is a short reflection on what I learned,\nwhich I hope will be useful for other language learners.
\nI did this because I wanted to improve my Korean for various practical reasons,\nbut I'm also very lazy when it comes to studying.\nI also tend to like Japanese media a bit better than Korean\n(a few Korean webtoons and comics are good, but I'm more a fan of the Japanese manga art style).\nSo I split the difference and tried to find manga that had high quality Korean translations.\nI also have fond memories of devouring comics as a kid (mostly Calvin & Hobbes),\nand am sure that did something to improve my reading.
\nWith the general medium and genre decided, I looked for a series.\nI had watched several of the classics in anime form, including One Piece and Fairy Tail,\nbut they were a bit too advanced for my Korean level ~4 years ago when I started this.\nThen an acquaintance who is fluent in Japanese mentioned that he had read Dragonball in Japanese\nmultiple times.
\nI took a look at the preview and was surprised to find that it was not TOO far above my own level.\nIt was definitely challenging, but I could understand something like half the words,\nand most of the grammatical constructions, which was something!\nI should also not that I had never read any of the English translation,\nnor had I watched any of the English dubbed anime / films.
\nI was extremely lazy the first few years, and it was difficult to get going.\nReading was also a bit demoralizing at first with a failure rate of something like 50-60% for a while.\nBut the vocabulary and patterns were pretty repetitive so I did improve pretty quickly.
\nI found it helpful to force myself to NOT use a dictionary after the first few volumes.\nThis is how most kids learn a language anyways, and it had a few benefits for me:
\nThe story was (IMO) significantly more engaging for the first 16 volumes,\nand the earlier chapters also had more attention to artwork detail in many respects.\nI don't regret reading all the way to the end, but it got quite repetitive and predictable to be honest.
\nTo complement the reading (and provide a reward for the slog initially),\nI also watched Dragonball and Dragonball Z Kai on Laftel (NOTE: This may be region blocked),\nreading the chapters BEFORE watching them most of the time.\nI think that helped me focus on the text and improve my (weaker) reading.
\nI significantly improved my Korean reading comprehension and vocabulary.\nI also improved my knowledge of more advanced grammatical structures,\nbut to a much lesser extent.\nDragonball is extremely repetitive, which was great for reinforcement learning,\nbut it didn't dramatically expand my grammatical prowess.
\nOne unexpected area I also improved was my ability to understand humor and make jokes!\nEspecially word plays.\nDragonball's Korean translation is excellent, and given the cultural similarity,\na lot of the subtler jokes around things like age and respect translate well.
\nI can also sound like a cheeky teenager and know a lot of ridiculous sounding insults!
\nThis will NOT help so much if you're interested primarily in learning household / everyday conversational patterns,\nbut it IS conversational, so it can be a good complement to other TV shows and books.
\nWhat will I do next?\nI haven't really decided on the next series,\nbut One Piece and Fairy Tail are probably reasonable options now.
\nI think I might also work on my Japanese a bit on the side.\nMy Japanese is nowhere near as good as my Korean,\nbut the success of this experiment makes me think I could probably work my way slowly through the first 16 volumes.\nAs it's somewhat aimed at kids, it helpfully has Furigana so I could really level up my Kanji recognition.
\n", "summary": "", "date_published": "2025-09-08T00:00:00-00:00", "image": "", "authors": [ { "name": "Ian Wagner", "url": "https://fosstodon.org/@ianthetechie", "avatar": "media/avi.jpeg" } ], "tags": [ "learning", "languages", "self-improvement" ], "language": "en" }, { "id": "https://ianwwagner.com//learning-a-language-the-lazy-way.html", "url": "https://ianwwagner.com//learning-a-language-the-lazy-way.html", "title": "Learning a Language the Lazy Way", "content_html": "I've lived in South Korea for quite some time,\nand during my stay here I've become reasonably fluent in the language.\nPeople often ask how long it took to become fluent\nand if I have any tips for their language learning aspirations.\nThis post is about what I've learned from a decade-plus fascination with language learning.
\nStarting off, way too many years ago,\nI heard there were all these great tools that would help you remember ANYTHING.\nThe promise isn't exactly wrong, but there's something you should know about me:\nI'm pretty lazy 😉
\nMemorizing things in particular takes a lot of effort, at least for me.\nI very much dislike things that are boring or tedious,\nand this was definitely that.\nEven so, I want to be careful to point out that this strategy MIGHT\nwork for you if you follow a few rules.
\nClasses are hit or miss.\nWhile I was in the US, I took clasess over a span of 3 years.
\nI had a few 1:1 and 1:2 tutor sessions over a summer on a weekly basis.\nThis taught me how to read and write,\nand most of how to pronounce things.\nBut it wasn't very effective beyond that (neither was a professional and it was a bit rough).
\nAfter that, I took classes at a local Korean culture center.\nIt was great fun and I did learn some things.\nMostly I had my pronunciation fine tuned by native speakers.\nBut to be honest, I didn't really learn a lot of useful phrases,\nand the vocabulary were just words.
\nThis was mostly a function of the class, not the instructor.\nThe classes were cheap, highly social, and motivation was generally low.\nThe cultural background, history, and etiquette were the most important things\nI learned from these classes.
\nFormal classes and me don't go well together, so I didn't pursue those at all.\nAlso remember, this is about how to learn a language the lazy way!
\nQuick break from being lazy for a moment; graded readers are awesome.\nIf your language of interest has them,\nparticularly if you can get audio to go along with a bilingual book,\nDO IT.\nI learned a very respectable amount of German in a very short time\nthanks to Brian Smith's German readers.\nUnfortunately, I have never been able to find such good material for Korean.
\nWhen I arrived in Korea, I learned very quickly that I didn't know anything\nbeyond how to read and say a very few basic phrases.\nI didn't even learn how to order a cappuccino or lunch to go\nuntil my first week here!\nImmersion is hard to beat.
\nBut just being somewhere is not very effective unless you are very much out and about\nand able to engage with native speakers.\nImmersion isn't just going to a country and chilling for 20 years with a bunch of expats.\n(I know people who did this and they still only speak English.)
\nChoose your local friends carefully if you are serious about using them to learn a language.\nIf they can speak English (or some other language you prefer) comfortably,\nyou will both quickly revert to that.\nWhich means you both need to be pretty patient and committed to figuring out how to communicate.\nEating, drinking, and taking trips together with locals that can barely speak your language\nis the fastest way to learn the local culture, slang,\nand a reasonably effective way to learn your target language.
\nI used to not put too much faith in the whole "watch movies to learn a language" thing.\nI still mostly don't, but my views have evolved a bit over time.\nPart of my belief came from realizing that most movies (that an adult learner) wants to watch\nuse vocabulary and phrases that are at the wrong level.\nIt didn't really help that in my target language,\nI really had ZERO interest in the popular shows ("dramas").\nYou NEED to enjoy what you're consuming!
\nHowever... kids shows are gold.\nIf you want to learn Korean, go binge watch Pororo.\nSeriously.\nIt's silly, super basic, every day vocabulary\nat a pre-school level.\nYou'll learn idioms, nuance (the characters over exaggerate their expressions, since it's a kids show),\nand a whole lot more.
\nThe show is also EXTREMELY dialog-heavy.\nSo find shows like that, watch all 200 or whatever episodes,\nand you'll be able to move on to something slightly more advanced.\nFor Korean learners, I'd recommend Titipo next.\nI can only describe this show as a modern Korean version of Thomas the Tank Engine.
\nSubtitles?\nI personally don't like them, because they quickly grab my attention,\nand I'm watching the subs rather than listening intently.\nThis is a bit of a hot take, but I would highly recommend giving it a try.\nException: native language subtitles aren't as problematic.\nI don't use them often,\nbut it CAN be useful for improving your reading speed or stopping to look up a word.
\nSpeaking of stopping, try with all your might to not stop the show.\nThis is the lazy method, remember?\nIt's also how literally every native speaker learns.\nYes, it's slower, but your learning will be much stronger.\nAs you work through binge watching kids shows,\nyou'll learn which shows you can understand.\nAfter a few hundred episodes of at least 2 or 3 kids shows,\nyou'll have a solid base understanding to work with,\nand it won't feel like you had to work very hard for it.\nZero memorization ideally.
\nFrom here, try to stick with shows that you understand like 80% of the plot of every episode.\nI'm talking about an intuitive feeling by the way,\nnot necessarily even recognizing that percent of the words.\nYou certainly don't need to know every word to understand the general meaning of a phrase.\nSee the "optimal learning failure rate";\nsome scientists put this at 85%,\nbut I don't think it needs to be that high for word recognition.
\nWe gloss over words that we can't quite define in our native languages all the time,\nwithout impairing our ability to understand the meaning of a sentence.\nLook things up after you hear them a few times and want to clarify your understanding.
\nBooks I have personally had limited success with.\nWriting is a bit more formal, especially in Korean.\nBut comics... oh boy!\nFortunately, I LOVE Japanese Manga.\nAnd all the popular series are translated into Korean.\nSo I'd read the manga on my e-Reader\nand then watch the show.\nThis was an absolutely fantastic pairing which took me way too many years to discover,\nand regrettably probably only works for a few languages.
\nIf you are looking for Korean media,\nyou can find comics at Ridi Books.\nThey have pretty good apps,\nand I use it on my Boox e-Reader tablet (highly recommend).\nFor streaming animated series',\nI use Laftel,\nbut as far as I know it's quite difficult to use outside Korea (payments in particular are a problem).\nI think Netflix is also an option,\nbut Laftel certainly has a larger content library.
\nMusic is, in my opinion, interesting purely for enjoyment.\nI don't think you learn a language from listening to music,\nsince "musical language" is so different from how anyone talks.\nOften even the pronunciation is different.\nI can sing Dragostea din Tei perfectly from memory,\nbut could hardly tell you the meaning of a dozen words in Romanian\n(fun aside: O-Zone is from Moldova, but their popular songs are in Romanian!).\nSongs lack context to enable learning.
\nGrammar isn't on the curriculum in the school of lazy language learning.\nLearn how to spell.\nLearn the basic sentence structures,\nbut treat it like pattern recognition.
\nYou'll be surprised how much of conversational language use\nfollows a very limited subset of a language.\nJust focus on that, like the kids shows do.\nYou'll gradually pick up other rules over time.
\nFortunately, while Korean grammar isn't always easy per se,\nthe forms used in conversation are generally very simple and formulaic.\nUnfortuanetly this advice can't apply equally to all languages.\nFor example, German is complicated by gendered nouns,\nand Estonian is complicated by over a dozen cases.\nBut even there, just start with simple pattern recognition of what's most common.\nThe kids shows and friends will guide you.
\nHuh, what's this heading doing here?\nWell, part of communicating is learning to count.\nYou should do that.\nThis is some of the only "proper" study you'll have to do.\nBut you really just need to learn how to count.
\nOn a more philosophical note,\nI'm an engineer, and I love thinking in formulas, rules, and patterns.\nA lot of the way that language is taught formally\nattempts to put it in a box like this.\nYou study grammatical rules, forms, suffixes, and so on.\nBut the number of people who ACTUALLY learn languages this way is a rounding error.
\nYou will find more inconsistencies in any language than you can shake a stick at.\nThat's part of what makes learning human languages hard.\nComputer languages are, by contrast, easy.\nThey have to adhere to rigid rules,\nand after you've learned a few (much easier than it may sound),\nyou can often pick up a new one in a weekend.\nThis approach will only hurt you though with human languages.
\nAs Jack Sparrow infamously said,\nit's more like "guidelines" than actual rules.\nLoosen up and enjoy!
\nMy friend Andrew put together a list of useful resources he's found for Korean self-study.\nCheck it out on his blog.
\n", "summary": "", "date_published": "2024-11-06T00:00:00-00:00", "image": "", "authors": [ { "name": "Ian Wagner", "url": "https://fosstodon.org/@ianthetechie", "avatar": "media/avi.jpeg" } ], "tags": [ "learning", "languages", "self-improvement" ], "language": "en" } ] }