Absolute Beginner Book Club

Korean Reading Book Clubs
21

How are we feeling over here? Are we still up for a beginner book? Any other nomination?

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22

I’m fine with either of them :slight_smile:

I must admit though, their level is quite low.. much lower than the Japanese versions (which i’ve read too). I’m curious to see if that’s true…

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23

Great!
I guess we can wait until Monday for any last minute nominations, and vote next week.

Yes they also seems very low to me for books that are neither graded readers nor picture books. I’ll guess we’ll find out soon enough :smiling_face:

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24

I already have 도라에몽 so I had a look and yeah, I think it’s definitely too low at the moment - it seems a little more difficult than 요츠바, which is L16 right now. 치 is still within range, but I’d say it’s more like L12?

I think translated Japanese stuff won’t always map to the same level across languages because Korean won’t have the same issues with furigana, whether words are written in kana for children’s books where they’d usually be written in kanji, etc.

Also I remember reading some of the Korean translation of To Kill a Mockingbird and understanding a couple of things that I hadn’t in the English since it was old-timey American slang. :laughing: So I think translations will often go for the most common way to express something rather than trying to match the register and find similarly obscure/slangy/archaic language.

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25

Apologies, yesterday got busy and I could set this up.

Here are the nominations for our next Absolute Beginner Book:

https://learnnatively.com/book/74256d1a0b/

https://learnnatively.com/book/508a890214/

And here’s the poll:

  • 도라에몽
  • 치즈 스위트 홈
  • 하얀 밤의 고양이
0 voters

I’m thinking 1 week for voting, then we’ll decide on the schedule :smiling_face:

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26

I mean… We also don’t have to wait, since there are only 3 of us and we’ve all been very reactive :grin:
Looks like we are reading 하얀 밤의 고양이!

When do you want to start?
  • This week (Feb 10th)
  • Next week (Feb 16th)
  • The week after (Feb 23rd)
  • Later (when?)
0 voters

The story comes up at 60 pages in total in my ereader, excluding covers etc. Do you want to do a typical 6-week club, or do you prefer a different pace?

What pace do you prefer?
  • 6 weeks
  • Faster
  • Slower
0 voters

I’ll make the thread when we are clear on the schedule.

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27

I’ll likely join as well, an easier book is always nice every once in a while

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28

Here we go! :blush:

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29

Welp this vote went up and disappeared before I saw it. :rofl:

I’m definitely not ready for a book club yet, but I was planning on at some point parallel reading Japanese and Korean manga/manhwa side by side, and already have both Doraemon and Chi in Japanese, so maybe I’ll bang my head against the wall join in the next round if either or those win. :blush:

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30

Woops, sorry! We were too fast :person_running::dashing_away:
The first book read by the club was Yotsuba (of course), so you might find that useful. I’ll remember to tag you for next round!

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31

Honestly it’s probably a blessing this time around bc I will literally be looking up every single word. But this gives me a reason to try and get my skills up to absolute beginner level by your next round. :blush:

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32

It’s so exciting that you’re joining the Korean side :star_struck: grammar should be relatively easy for you, so even if you need lots of lookups at first I’m sure you’ll be reading in no time.

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33

I keep on being like, why are these books rated so much easier in Korean and then I remember, ohhhh yeah, you don’t need to learn 500+ kanji just to have hope to read a beginner book :rofl:

So I’m hoping to just keep on working on my anki and in a month or two start with some of the graded readers and easiest manga/kids books..

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