Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Korean Phrasebook (Lonely Planet Phrasebook: Korean)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a French teacher, teaching students French language in Seoul. As a language teacher and a resident of Seoul, this is THE best phrasebook I've ever encountered.
If you are done skimming through this book, you can get by perfectly in Korea. The romanization system in this book is different (which I like the most!) but it's more accurate than any other system, so when you read the words out from the book to Koreans, they perfectly understand you. (This was never the case with other books. They NEVER understood me.) It's thrilling that people understand me when I simply read the romanization from the book.
The grammar section and the dictionary section are what I really needed, too. It's so easy to understand and tells you the things that you really needed to know!
Lastly, the book is so solidly made that it never falls in pieces even when you abuse the book so much like I do. (I wish the book was a little thinner, though.)
I LOVE THIS BOOK! I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!

Living in Korea, I've seen and used several phrasebooks. In most respects, one is as good as another. But this one has the best elementary explanation of Korean grammar I've ever seen in a phrasebook; if you plan to be in Korea long enough to learn a little Korean, this will be the most helpful phrasebook that I know of.

The problem is that they created their own system of romanization and a few phrases in the book are presented in it but not in Korean. That is really annoying; the phrases are completely worthless unless you want to study LP's unique romanization.

While this title is not mainly a Korean /language/ title, or a book one expects to learn in depth language nicities, nonetheless, the book does an amazing job of condensing these minutiae very quickly, accurately, and somewhat completely (at a begginer level of course), in very clear language, without any weird linguist smarty pants fancy grammar jargon.

This is the intro. The rest of the book follows the content and layout of similar titles, and is fairly useful for the beginner.

This book is quite pleasant and useful to read and browse from..
However I missed the fact that the dictionary located at the end of the pocket-sized book only shows romanized korean (written Korean using English letters) and does not show Hangeul (the Korean letters).

This 3rd edition is much, much better than the 2nd edition. Thank God, this edition keeps the old Romanization system. The grammar explanations are simple but meaningful. A good little book to carry around if you haven't had a chance to take language courses yet. There's some culture in it, but you'll need to carry around a Lonely Planet guide for the whole country.

It all makes sense now! My adoptive daughter was born in Korea, so our whole family has been trying to learn a little Korean. But believe me, it wasn't easy.
However, this book's grammar and pronunciation sections did a great job of explaining things. The book is very well organized. I'd have to say it's the best such book on Korean I've seen.
Somehow they have come up with just about every possible expression you might need, which means the only drawback to the book is that it's a little thick.

I've been looking for a good Korean Phrasebook and this one is just perfect. It has all the essential expressions and it also provides many cultural notes, which are very useful. I really appreciate the grammar part as well; everything is so clearly and logically explained! It's fun to read!
Now I am all ready to visit Korea!

The Lonely Planet(LP) Korean phrase book contains all the things you would expect from it. Unlike other phrase books the LP book has a great introduction to the language with a brief but useful grammar section. LP phrase books always seem to be much more than just a phrase book.

However the grammar section only contains the romanisation of Korean rather than using the Korean script, Hangul. I think this would be a simple but very effective addition to the book.

Also I must say that one of the most useful and often entertaining parts of other LP phrase books I own(German and Italian) has been the "dating and romance" section. This section of the Korean book is neither useful nor entertaining. It is simply far too conservative. I assume it has been kept in line with the old confusion traditions of the country, but Korean is now a modern westernised country and far more open and liberal than in the past. It would be nice for LP to reflect this in the subject matter of their phrase book.

I have been in Seoul off and on - for business - for the past year. Despite rumors to the contrary, I find this an extremely difficult language. Most Koreans under the age of thirty have a working knowledge of English. Ordering coffee at Starbuck's is certainly not a problem, restaurants are often a problem, department stores pretty impossible. Once you get used to the sections in this book, at the very least you can point. Certain phrases are just good to know. It may seem stupid, but being able to say "Hello" or "Thank you" is extremely endearing to Koreans and it seems to me that this is the very least we can do. The size makes it easy to carry around and it's the least expensive phrase book I've found.

I finally got this book and am 100% content with it. For a person going to Korea for World Cup like me, this book kindly shows various expressions about the game. It's very well organized and easy to read! It's a lot thicker than I thought, though. The description shows 256 pages but it actually has more than 300. Hope I can put this in the pocket! ;)