I wish I knew these before learning Korean 

I am a retired senior who wishes to learn Korean. Why? The reason is that my granddaughter, who has just graduated from university, is a die-hard Kpop fan who got me interested in both Kpop and Kdrama. So now I’m hooked: I must be BTS’s oldest fan! HA HA. I told her that I would treat her to a trip to Korea (once it is safe to travel and COVID 19 restrictions are reduced or eliminated). It would be cool (to use younger ppl’s parlance) to learn to read and write Korean. Also, I understand learning a new language is possibly a good anti-aging defence for the brain. 🤔 This is a long-winded way of telling you that I am very thankful to have discovered your channel-and especially this episode-before I begin my Korean-language journey. I am now a new subscriber. Please wish me luck!

I can’t even make friends irl how am i supposed to make korean friends at that 😭

This is Charlie Puth when he gets older. 😂 😂

The only thing I regret is not finding Billy sooner😔

As a Korean studying English through RU-vid, I accidentally landed on this video. As you haven't talked much in Korean in this video, I don't know how good you are at Korean. Still, from the way you teach Korean to other people, you must be really good at Korean. I've subscribed to your channel not to study Korean as it is my mother tongue but to study English by listening to you speaking English explaining the way of learning Korean. A little bit funny. Right? Just wanted to remind you that some people can learn English by watching your video. Thanks.

1. LEARN HANGUL (0:52) 2. SOUND CHANGE RULES (3:41) 3. AVOID (SOME) PRONOUNS (4:46) 4. POLITENESS (5:59) 5. DON'T TRANSLATE LITERALLY (7:48) 6. PRACTISE IS IMPORTANT (9:26) 7. MAKE MORE KOREAN FRIENDS (11:16) 8. EVERYBODY SPEAKS DIFFERENTLY (12:45) Hope this helps....if the numbers confuse you its for the the time he speaks about each topic...

A whole video on the differences between how girls and guys speak would be very interesting!

I feel bad because I can understand a lot in korean if I'm listening a podcast, kdrama or whatever, but If I want to speak korean my mind is just empty :(

I'd just like to put an emphasis on "practicing" for any first time learners out there. If you do not have something consistent to watch in korean, someone to talk to or someone to write to, please take a break from your studies and find one. I have personnally studied spanish academically for 4 years as a third language and I don't think that I surpass the equivalent of beginner level in this course. On the other hand, I learned English by living in the US and studying in an english environment, and I can now follow University courses from England and the US with ease. Practice will make or break your studying so please new learners, value practicing over studying.

I will not give up on learning this language

One tip I have for beginners is to pay attention to the verb stem when you hear Korean. There are hundreds of different verb endings and nuances in Korean, and many do not exist in English and are often not even translated. As a beginner, if you catch the verb stem, you'll understand the gist of the sentence without needing to know exactly what the nuance that the verb ending brings is.

I fell in love with Korean during quarantine when I started watching Korean dramas. Not just their language but also their way of life interested me. I started picking up words. But then I thought it would be so cool to be able to understand Korean without needing subtitles. So that’s my goal. Everyone learns speaking/reading/writing a language the same way. Weather it’s our 1st or 2nd language we always start with our ABC’s. So my 1st step was watching Korean shows for small children. 😂

i just started watching this video and thought "wow that korean book i have sure is good, i already know all of this!" and then i realized its your book and ive been learning from you all along XD

For those who started learning Korean, I recommend you to watch a lot of kdramas because, that way you'll learn a lot of phrases and vocab and so on..

This was really helpful! Especially the one about not translating Korean literally. I am a beginner but slowly reaching towards intermediate and what I struggle with the most is feeling like I can't really understand a sentence if I can't get the exact English translation of it. Instead of doing this, what helps me is to keep saying the sentence out loud and if it makes sense in my head and I get the feeling of what the sentence is trying to say, then I feel like I actually understand it. Also what I've started recently is watching kdramas. This helps me understand more natural conversations and I find myself picking up a lot of the words I learned and the tones they say the words in.

I'm 7 months into learning Korean (only 1 month with using Billy's books and videos) and I've learned more in this month than I can even explain. He's such a ridiculously good teacher, it's crazy! Maybe it's just because I'm American but his explanations hit at 💯 I have tutors but his 시/씨 explanation finally got me doing the sounds correctly.

As a beginner, I used to panic a lot that I am unable to make a single sentence even after 2-3 months of studying. I wish I could go back and tell to myself 'take it easy, just continue what you are doing and you will get there one day' :-)

"Super easy, barely an inconvenience." Did he make a Pitch Meeting reference?! :D

a whole video about tips for learning korean, but the thing that touched me the most was the advice to yourself, "just pretend that you're confident" I'm taking it

이 영상을 보자마자 제 학생들에게 너무 보여주고 싶어졌어요. 제 페이스북 그룹에 공유할게요. ^^ 항상 열정적으로 한국어를 가르치시는 모습이 감동적이에요. 응원합니다. !!

Dude. I have been learning Korean for about a month now. This video was amazing and made sense of so many concepts that I am now becoming aware of (the honorific, etc.) I literally paused this video, went to Amazon, and bought three of your books. Thank you!

The whole video i think: "How lucky i am for finding you at my very beginning". I even learned Hanguel with you and Sound Change Rules. You are awesome. Really.

I am surprised you never mentioned "sentence order and how shockingly hard it is to make a sentence in korean". For someone who has studied english, russian, finnish, spanish, french, portuguese and even german, sentence order is the biggest puzzle piece for me. I am still (after 3-4 years) not able to make longer sentences than 5-6 words because grammar is still too hard and literally no book explains ONLY sentence order. Especially how it all changes when you change formality or the amount of people you talk to. I am able to use sentences what have been made for me by someone else and I just memorise them (informally or formally). Sentence order and how to say something by just taking words out of dictionary is literally the hardest for people who have never learned languages like japanese, chinese etc, what have similar rules. I think sentence order and rules (like you very briefly mentioned in the video), are extremely hard for beginners. Removing stems and adding something and using different ones depending on person etc. I think I spend more time on figuring out HOW to make a sentence than practising it or speaking it. I think every beginner should definitely, after learning alphabet, memorise ALL the sentence order rules because you pretty much can not go further from there. It's not logical like in majority of western languages (languages being spoken in USA and Europe like english etc). The position of prepositions, verb stems (past, present etc), pronouns and honorifics on top of everything is very very complex. I think it's easier to just memorise sentences and pretty much not focus on anything else in korean language, since I still have not found a book or website, what explains sentence order for dummies. It's always very shallow and literally confuses you more than helps you.

I learnt hangul 한글 in less than a week with the write korean app. It's quite simple to learn, so don't be scared. It's easy to mispronounced things like 아 and 어 and 우 and 오 at first but you just have to keep going. I'm still learning, I still consider myself an absolute beginner. My goal is to watch kdrama and films without subtitles.

Oddly enough I don't regret the way I studied Korean. For the first two years I didn't really speak Korean, I just mimicked what I heard by myself for a while. But one regret I do have is getting obsessed with making the perfect Korean sentence. Just practice and don't focus too much on that. Because it'll click eventually :)

This is super helpful!! I met my first Korean pen pals on Interpals in 2009 and they introduced me to Kpop music. I’ve been enjoying Korean music and dramas for over 12 years and still can’t speak. I’ve managed to learn Chinese and Vietnamese so I’m really hoping I can finally learn Korean… I know so many words and phrases but the grammar is hard 😫

Pronouns and knowing about politeness levels definitely. Also, I did learn 한글 (hard way) but in the beginning I also relied on romanisation as it was available in the books and I wasn’t confident enough about the letters. Eventually romanisation became a hindrance and I simply ignored it if it was available, but looking back I wish I had ignored it altogether. One tip to beginners: start saying things out loud from the beginning, don’t wait to ‘get better’ and use every opportunity to speak even if it’s just to say 안녕하세요 and 감사합니다. The first time is always the hardest and the step is easiest to take when you just say a few words, rather than waiting to use long sentences.

Y’all better listen to this guy because this is all true based on my experience. Reading the romanized “Korean” really affected my progress but on the positive side it made me more careful with my spellings.

From my experience, the order of studying a language including Korean is listening, speaking and writing, then grammar will naturally follow. This is exactly that of babies. but In reality, we start with letters and grammar. The best way to start with is to match sounds with images or emotions, not letters only sounds, and don't translate any. BTW I'm a Korean.

I'm glad you clarified and said people can learn the basics of Hangul in a couple of hours. Too many people make it seem like Hangul can be learned in such a short time. Which compared to Japan's three font systems and the thousands of Chinese characters yes its quicker. But it takes awhile to understand it well especially the complex vowels and all the pronunciation rules. Like batchim. Which can be misleading and discouraging to beginners

I made the purchase. Maybe a dream come true for me, my desire to learn Korean began in 1972.4 while stationed in the Republic of Korea, but duty called something else no time to learn. I had three tours of duty to the REPUBLIC; beginning in 1969.6.8 to 1970.07.03, then in 1971.11.12 to 1973.12.12 then again in 1975.12.12 to 1977.01.12. I was also one time married to a Korean for 11 years, so I was deeply into Korean, everything.

I learned Hangul 5 years ago within 4 days and I can read and write Korean without thinking hard. I became fluent in it for a month. For vocabulary I still learning until now.

I feel like this video is specifically meant for the current me, so much that I started panicking when Billy told about having korean friends. I just looked outside into the italian countryside with pure despair... then Billy proceeded to give me the solution, but that was an awful moment for sure! XD

I wish more textbooks had an option for no romanization. I've used white out to block out all the romanization in my TTMIK books because I cannot unsee it and get distracted from the actual 한글

Wow...I am new here and what I can say is that your videos are soooo impressive. I am not a native English speaker so I don't really understand everything in these kind of videos...but your English is so easy to understand. Honestly, I am fascinated about how I understood every single word. I know that you are american, but your way of talking is different from other americans. Also, I started to learn Korean a year ago and, thank God, I finally found someone who can explain culture, dialects, grammar etc in a such engaging way! Thank you and congratulations!

I agree that just living in a country will not make you fluent. That’s why when I lived in Japan in the 90s I made a point to meet as many young Japanese as possible and speak with them in Japanese as much as possible. But now it’s time to take my Korean to the Next Level and meet my naevis.

I wish I knew as a beginner that I didn’t need to worry about the endless list of sentence endings. I still cannot use them myself but now I try to get the feeling they express, and try to get used to them, instead of panicking about yet another one.

Agreed on the Hangeul part. Before I started learning Korean, I had exposure to various Romanized names of companies, cities and people. Turns out- it's all one inconsistent mess that will kill any attempts to learn the language properly. I know some sound change rules, but not all. Regarding politeness levels, well...I'm a low intermediate, and when I write in Korean, I most likely "mix" words of varying politeness levels without knowing, despite trying to be uniform. I suppose I'll be better in a few years.

I'm English learner and your English pronunciation is so certainly delivered to me lol :)

Fact number 8 explains a lot of my difficulty as a beginner using Duolingo. The program alternates between male and female voices and I get confused why a syllable sounds different depending on the voice. Thanks for the head's up

could you please make a video about the girls vs boys korean? cause for some of us it's hard to find friends who we could study with to figure out these details

I'm a few months into very casually learning Korean, still getting off the ground, and this was very helpful. The reminder to not focus on literal translation is something I need, and I wasn't aware that there's a difference between the way men and women speak. I mean, in hindsight that's not surprising, but useful to be aware of all the same. I'll have to pay attention to that going forward. Thanks!

I want to surprise my hubby. He's American born and raised but has Korean family and was taught from a very early age. It's funny hearing him speak English with his Tennessee drawl and then switch to Korean in the same sentence.

Vocabulary is important but not words that you might not use. But I did find out that without vocabulary very hard to move on. It's like any language some words you might never use. 3rd time I started beginner Korean. And know vocabulary has helped me understand

I wish I knew as a beginner how to more easily navigate Korean content (where to buy books, access readings, what resources to use, etc.). I spend quite a lot of time groping around in the dark until I finally came to a conclusion.

Wow I started learning Korean yesterday so this video is very well timed lmaoo

감사합니다!

Thank you Billy! This is so helpful!!

I am so happy I will start my Korean journey with your videos

I intend on learning Korean in the future and your videos are more than great when it comes to learning, they’re the go to source for being fluent in Korean

Very helpful tips. Thank you!

Great info!

Wow I didn't know this channel is still active until this popped up from my recommedations. I remember watching you when I was still in elementary school, I think 4 years ago when I was still a beginner in learning Korean, and I thank you for that 'cause you made my learning more fun and easier back then. I'm still learning until now and thank you for being my first teacher in Korean...I'll try to watch more of your videos and support you I wish you for more future success. Fighting🥰💕

I was lucky enough to find Billy's channel right on my way of starting learning Korean. It would be great to see such video for Pre-Intermediate learners!~

Thanks for your guidance ☺️

Thank you so much for this. This was super helpful! 🥺

You are an EXCELLENT teacher, Billy! I appreciate the sage and practical advice that you give and your willingness to fill in those little gaps that actually make a big difference! I've been studying Hangul for a couple months but your videos are so much clearer in presenting the foundation pieces. Thank you so much! I'm off to buy Book 1 from your collection.

Hey Billy thanks for the tips. As someone who is just starting out learning Korean through being self-taught, it can be very overwhelming but your videos and Korean Made Simple books are making it fun and making it feel worthwhile. I am very shy but I hope I can make Korean friends in the future too so I can further advance my Korean :)

I agree with all your points! So true!!

한국어 공부에 도움을 주심에 감사드립니다 👍 좋은 영상 많이 부탁드려요

I am so glad that I bought the book 'Billy Go Korean' ! It is really easy and fun learning Korean through his book .Very easy language.. Thanks sir!

I'm conversational in Korean around intermediate. I learned with resources for a brief time until I started to chat with Koreans everyday on Discord. I've picked up almost all of my Korean from just chatting and guessing words from context... It's awesome. I recommend it to everyone, effortless language learning.

I’ve been learning for about a year and a few of these I still didn’t know! Thank you!

thank you for being one of the few channels that posts about simple tips and tricks to know AS WELL as being super informative in your actual lessons. videos like these keep me motivated!

I am not a beginner at this point butttt still hade to watch this video…why ? Because it is made by favorite teacher 💗👌

Omg I somehow understood from minute 00:00 to 00:03. It’s cause I saw a video of someone correcting oli London lol and look! I learned a phrase :) proud 🥺

Great! Thanks, Billy.

You are out here dropping gems and doing the lord's work! Hahaha thanks so much! I already am far along but still best/relevant advice!

I am just beginning to learn Korean, and am almost done with his video on Hangeul. I actually feel quite relaxed being introduced to the politeness levels and literal translations since along with English, I also speak Urdu which has quite similar rules.

I am very new to learning Korean like 20 days into it. It is really fun. This video is very helpful as I am learning the Hangul as I am learning the language and I see already what you mean by the romanization of things don't quite help when learning. I am exciting to keep following you as I go on this journey!

Suuuuuper helpful vid!!!!

Thank you, that was important information💜

I’ve been trying to learn on and off since I was in the 5th grade (I am now graduated). I never got very far, and my motivation would drain within a month. I’m ready to take it seriously this time, and prove to younger me that I am capable of learning the language!

I knew that everyone speaks differently now only, cause I just wondered why they pronounced 여 as 요, or 요 as 유/우 thank you for telling this. I am just not confident of speaking Korean because I'm afraid of making mistakes. I want to know how to overcome this fear. Thank you so much for making me easy for learning korean. We will always remember you.

This is fantastic! Thank you for the tips!

Thank you Billy, your videos are always really helpful to me. They keep me going. Hope you're okay, lots of love from Spain :D

Great tips! What I can add from my experience: it's a good thing to always learn all grammar points and words with a lot of context, in that case you will feel how these are naturally used. Also, what works great for me is learning foreign language completely through another foreign language (instead of your mother tongue). In that case you start thinking in your target language much faster, so you can speak more naturally instead of translating things in your head.

Perfect tips. Thanks so much. Korean is challenging but I’m having fun with it. This is the seventh language I have studied. I agree. Acquiring vocabulary is the final step. I’m still working on learning Hangul and of course I’m pretty in to kpop so I’m really enjoying being able to actually understand some of the lyrics. Understanding people speaking is very hard native speakers seem to speak really fast. Although I remember thinking that when I was learning French. But eventually you know enough to pick it up. The Korean language is very well put together and feels pretty logical for the most part. There’s always exceptions lol Thank you for your help. I won’t give up.

THANK YOU FOR THIS!!!!

Super good video!! You speak and explain everything beautifully thank you 💚

I'm so happy this came up on my you tube recommendations! I'm a "silver army" and would love to understand what "my boys" are talking about more directly. I've always loved languages and feel inspired, in spite of my age, to start learning Korean. Thanks, a new happy subscriber.

Ok…you got me, Billy. I have been a long time subscriber to your channel and I even have your book….but have not started learning yet. But now, you made me feel guilt, so, I’m starting today!😂🤣😂 I have been too lazy…I will utilize your videos more and do better! 😆😆😆 cracking open your book, right now!

Thankyou so much Billy for your information

Your tone is not like teaching. It's like preaching! But you're good teacher. Thanks for the lessons.

Wonderful teacher. If I had known Korean was not as complex as Mandarin, I would have started learning long before. I actually started yesterday. I find it so fun. If this guy was my math teacher, I would love math, because it would not be difficult to understand. Makes Korean sounds and looks more manageable than it already seem to me!

Yes I agree with you, we have to speak to practice with someone, I have tried to learn myself in books, until now I still can’t speak in sentences, quite discouraged to go further, thought of quitting

I love your videos

So helpful, thank you so much!!

My tip goes for other languages as well, but it started with Korean. I got a book about learning Hangeul using Mnemonics, and it helped me to learn it in 48 minutes. I've since picked up how to read a few japanese kanji characters using the same method. Everyone has a preferred way to learn. Some by hearing, some by reading, mine happens to be mnemonic.

I’m so grateful to you, Billy, I can’t pick up the right words!!! I’m a beginner, truly beginner even though I’ve tried to learn Korean some years ago. English is a foreign language to me as well and your videos really help me to keep up with two languages at the same time. I really appreciate your work, thank you so much 🙏

This came at a perfect time i just started learning hangul this week! Thank you!

This advice is gold. Thank you (:

I learned 한 글 because of your videos. 감사합니다 …

I do love cultural references that are super easy. Barely and inconvenience.

Thankyou, I'm just new so this was great timing!!

thank you for this great video!!!

I'm an ARMY and want to learn Korean ! Since I've just finished my exams I'm tackling this now ~~ Glad I came across this

For some strange reason, I feel like I've heard all of these 8 points before. I will say this, although I had some false starts in learning Korean before finding your videos and books, I've been very lucky to have been given a ton of great advice...much of which you covered in your video. For me, someone who also suffers with speaking anxiety in Korean, I think the best tip you gave was to pretend to be confident. I'm confident in many things, but completely lacking in confidence in speaking Korean. As a result, and thanks to good advice, I'm pushing myself out of my comfort zone with conversation practice lessons, pronunciation lessons, a lot of contacts on Tandem and anything I can find to improve myself. It's tremendously difficult and often frustrating, but eventually I'll get to a good point in my ability to speak Korean. 빌리 선생님 감사합니다

This beginner appreciates this video - 감사합니다

3:01 That’s fraudulent accounting and most people know it’s wrong 😉😂