Customer Reviews

Reference Grammar of Korean (Tuttle Language Library)

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I would like to stress the comments of the previous reviewer. This book should come with a warning label: uses a non-standard romanization system (why use a romanization system at all when writing for an audience this advanced?) that is HARD to pick up, and this book would only be of use to Korean Linguists and the very most advanced students. I think that there are better Korean grammars for student purposes that are easier to understand, even when they are entirely in Korean.

Yes, this book uses romanization, but there are advantages to using such a system over the native alphabet in analyzing the language. If you're a casual Korean language learner, this book is not for you. If you're an advanced student or Korean linguist, you'll appreciate this book a lot.

This book contains a wealth of information. The author describes working on this book for 40 years, and it seems clear that at least 40 man-years of work went into it. If you are linguistically inclined, this book makes terrific bedside reading. I have been enjoying reading this book, a few pages every night before I go to sleep.

It is refreshingly precise and wonderfully illustrated with examples. It has both breadth and depth-- covering Korean from the early days to the present through the full range of linguistic attributes of the language in both North and South Korea. The detective work on historical linguistics contained in this book is very interesting.

If you are anthropologically inclined, you can learn a lot about the Korean people both from their grammar and from the examples given.

A lot has been said about the romanization in this book, and I think those people are missing the point. The romanization system isn't any harder than any other, and there really isn't a standard way to romanize and be true to all the sounds of the language. Anyone who is dissatisfied with the romanization can take comfort in the fact that anything in Hangul can be easily transposed into the Yale system and vice-versa. It really isn't hard to get the hang of if you know any Korean and you have a reasonable amount of patience.

It's true that the book presupposes a certain amount of linguistic maturity, as well as overall maturity. I don't think this book could be used in a high school class, although I think it's not beyond the understanding of a bright and intelligent high school student. For anyone who is serious about the Korean language it is well worth the price.

For organization, clarity, precision, and scholarship, this book ranks up there with other landmark grammar books like this author's "Reference Grammar of Japanese" and Denniston's "the Greek Particles."

This book is a must have for any Korean linguist, as well as the serious student of the language. The Yale romanization system will take a lot getting used to for those who are not familiary with it, but the content of the book makes it well worth the effort.

The Hangul script has got to be one of the most logical and one of the easiest written languages to learn. I cannot believe any serious student of the Korean language would not first invest the time needed to learn the written script. Thus I find a book on Korean grammar using Romanization of Korean words to be uncessarily confusing. I have been eagerly searching for a thorough book on Korean grammar in English; this book however, was of limited use.