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HomeLanguagesKoreanRoadmap to Korean |
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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review:
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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Helpful for an absolute beginner Aug 05, 2008
This book has a lot of good information that will probably be helpful in learning Korean, but if you are looking for in depth explanations of grammar systematically, this is not the book for you. I suggest you find a book used in a classroom. The author gives lots of insight into the culture and history of the language and points out a few of the barriers that he had to overcome, but all in all, this book did not help me actually work with the language. He explains the problems that you will have, but he does not actually introduce the grammatical conundrums that bring about those problems. If you have a grammar book to go along this one, that might be a winning couple, but I do want people to know the limitations of this book. It is not a systematic and comprehensive Korean Grammar. You'll have to find that somewhere else.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Roadmap to Korean May 09, 2008
As a beginner in Korean, I was looking for something more than a dictionary, but with the understanding of an English
speaking person who has learned Korean. This is it! Richard Harris explains the joys and pitfalls of learning
Korean in an entertaining way. It's just shy of having a conversation with the author. Very enjoyable learning
experience!
5 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Great book Jul 22, 2007
This book gives tons of great advice on how to learn Korean. If it were up to me, it would be standard issue for students studying Korean at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
An absolute must for learning Korean - buy this! Jul 18, 2007
This is an absolutely ESSENTIAL item for ANY student of the Korean language, especially those whose native language is English. Why? 1) It bridges a gap no Korean educator has ever thought (or perhaps known how) to address or even acknowledge. 2) It does the job superlatively well.
While Korea has no shortage of well-meaning and skilled teachers of their language (including several I've had) they invariably fall short in one key area: understanding exactly what obstacles a foreigner faces in learning Korean, and how to help us past them. (In fairness, Korea is still relatively new to the game of exporting their language and culture on a major scale - compared to, say, America or Japan.) Richard Harris turns out to be just the guy for the job; a long-suffering yet enthusiastic student of the language, and a straightforwardly engaging writer to boot.
Aside from drastically different grammar, most of the roadblocks turn out to be conceptual - areas of culture and living where Koreans and non-Koreans simply think differently, in ways that defy literal translation. (this is a language in which one might ask "How are you?" by saying "Have you eaten?" or "Where are you going?") It's in the illustration of these tricky areas that Harris truly excels; anyone who's spent much time in Korea, such as yours truly, has stumbled into more than one of these minefields!
Bottom line: if you're learning Korean, BUY THIS BOOK. It'll save you an incalculable amount of time and frustration, and enlighten you about a lot more than just the language in the bargain.
13 of 13 found the following review helpful:
Great Book Oct 08, 2004
Roadmap to Korean is a great book explaining the languistic structure, culture, and history of Korea(n). Richard Harris has done a great job explaining the most important parts of the language that no other book has bothered to cover. Harris explains the troubles that English speaks will have with the language and specific differences are explained in an English speaker's point of view. I have read over this book many times since I have been studying Korean and each time I get something else out of it. It is a definite buy for anyone wishing to learn the language or just want to simply learn what it's about. It makes an excellent reference for verb conjugations, phrases, numbers, and much more. If you want to learn Korean, this is the book to start with. You will not be disappointed.
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