r/BeginnerKorean • u/mystic_turtledove • 1h ago
Looking for very beginner-friendly Korean resources for travel
I've been slowly learning Hangeul over the last few months, and I'm looking for what to do next. I'm still very slow at sounding things out (and I'm definitely not always getting the pronunciation right), so I'm looking for resources aimed at absolute beginners.
My goal is to be able to communicate at a basic level if I ever visit Korea, so I'm mostly interested in practical phrases I'd actually use while traveling. Things like greetings, ordering food and drinks, asking about ingredients in food, shopping and paying (including numbers), transportation related phrases, asking for help if I'm lost or don't understand something, useful phrases like "where is the bathroom?" and "I'm sorry, I only understand a little Korean, can you speak slowly please?"...and anything else that would be helpful in common travel situations.
Since I'd mostly be interacting with strangers, I'm assuming I can focus on the polite forms rather than casual speech used with friends. I don't need a deep dive into grammar at this stage, though some basic explanations to help me understand the phrases I'm learning would be helpful. I also don't really need to learn to write as long as I can read well enough, though learning to write might be fun.
For now, I'm interested in seeing how much I can learn on my own for free or very low cost (such as a book), on my own self-paced schedule. Maybe someday I'll be ready to commit to a paid course or private tutor, but I'm not there yet.
I've tried watching some of the YouTubers that are often recommended, but everything I tried seemed way over my head. I've also looked at a few supposedly beginner-friendly books, but I wasn't impressed by the sample pages (come on, there is no context in which I'd ever need to say "by any chance, are you an alien?").
Does anyone have recommendations for resources that would be a good fit? I'm especially interested in things that include audio so I can practice repeating the phrases. I'm open to anything that covers useful travel vocabulary, food/ingredient vocabulary, basic phrases, pronunciation tips, or other things that would be a good next step after learning Hangeul.