Tuttle Learner's Korean-English Dictionary: The Essential Student Reference Paperback – Illustrated, April 10, 2012

I've been studying Korean for three months, several hours a day. I noticed this book because I'd studied Chinese using Tuttle(books) and found the approach effective, clever, with a sense of humor. I understand the gripes some people have made about the romanization, but the first thing you learn is to make your own "romanized" sound approximations and take the Google romanizations with a grain of salt, or just dump them. They're often way off. As you speak the language, you'll get a sense of sounds that can't be romanized. Watch some Korean TV content/movies to practice, if you want. And of course, you'll hear different pronunciations of the same word, dialects (or North Korean sounds - the lead young woman in Squid Game) that you won't find with romanizations. Still romanizations are a blunt translation instrument that can get you started. I spent my first month on the alphabet alone, on specific sounds, repeating over and over. I began to realize, okay, this is going to take me a while. But at least I know the alphabet now and can generally read words well enough that I can dictate them back into Google translate if I don't have the korean, and more often than not, I get the word I want. So I mention all this as encouragement- there were a number of frustrated comments citing problems with the romanization. Aside from that, there is a English-Korean key link in the book for those who want to look for english words in this dictionary. In addition, someone said the word yaegi (book) appears on p. 302 as" a word with another meaning". Maybe I didn't see what that reviewer saw. "yaegi" is the shortened form of "iyagi." (see: 얘기, 이야기) Both mean "story." in Papago and Google translate. Maybe this book isn't for everyone. I find it just right, with a good selection for a beginner-intermediate learning fast. Sure, I have about 20 other Korean workbooks I find useful. This one will be one of my favorites, for sure. And PS, I have no connection to this book, the author, Tuttle, or Amazon, no financial gain from praising this book, etc- I just appreciate it when someone comes up with a smart approach.

It doesn't contain every single word, but It has so many that you can find in your workbooks, textbooks, crosswords, and so forth. If you need a dictionary to go along with your studies, this is the one for you! It works for most needs.

I was a bit disappointed with this dictionary because of the limited entries. I felt there should of been a better selection of words. Like in the beginning of the book you notice the word yaegi (얘기)is used in the beginning defined as the word "story" but when you flip to the entry on page 302 it's a different meaning(different word). I wish there were more entries included but overall it is decent material for a Korean language learning^^What makes this dictionary useful:Pronunciation guide in the beginningExample sentencesParticle UsageHigh frequency (mostly used) words have an asterisk next to them (which makes it easy for language hackers, as far as vocabulary/deck building goes)Index of 100 Chinese Characters Most Frequently Used in Korean WordsDownsides of this dictionary:Korean-English instead of Korean-English/English-Korean (meaning not useful if you're thinking I wonder how to say dream in Korean. You'll need another dictionary.)Hangul is not first so you may start to rely too much on it. Which is not a good thing.

This dictionary is what I was looking for my Korean language studies, I just received it yesterday and as a more than ten languages student that I am my impression was great: this dictionary gives you the hanja (chinese characters used in Korean) well at least the essential you will not find in any other books. Since the Chinese language has influenced Korean vocabulary so much is better to understand the words with the characters, Korean is like Japanese, a mixed script but in Korean hangeul is enough to communicate so is not NECESSARY to read and write hanja but it is makes you a better Korean language student if you learn them, to do so I recommend "A Guide To Korean Characters Reading And Writing Hangul And Hanja" by Bruce K. Grant which teaches you 1,800 chinese characters and how to write the hangeul letters.

I want to learn some korean. Korean isnt as easy as say learning spanish ir Germany. But this dictionary help with the process.