I’m considering buying these:
Nifty keyboard stickers
The site says that “You do not have to think how to apply Stickers. You’ll know it intuitively. Applying possess doesn’t take more than 10-15min. And you can immediately enjoy your brand-new English – Korean keyboard when making contacts with your relatives, friends and acquaintances.”
I never needed stickers for my Japanese typing. The layout is somewhat intuitive. For example when hiragana is selected typing ma gives ま. Nice and simple. However, it isn’t as intuitive with the Korean layout. At least, I’m having huge problems with it. I have to have the keyboard layout shown on my screen and it takes for ever to type anything! I wondered if anyone else had ever tried these little stickies and what you thought of them?
I don’t want to spend time buying and sticking if they’re not durable or if they don’t really work that well. I suppose though, at this point in time, ANY help I can get will be a bonus!!!
(And I’m still freaking out about Kyung Hee!!!)
미쳤어!
I definitely sympathise having once been in exactly the same situation. Personally I reached a point where my inability to type Korean words in a simple way was hindering the speed of my learning the language, and sapping my motivation as well.
I think stickers can work, but when I looked into this my research suggested they can be a bit hit and miss – some were surprisingly difficult to apply and some apparently came off too easily, so it might be better to avoid the cheapest/non-recommended ones. I couldn’t find anything I trusted when I was in England, so eventually I just printed out a mock-up Korean keyboard in Word and stuck it to the bottom of my monitor. Not ideal but better than nothing.
I considered buying a Korean keyboard locally, which I think would have been the best solution despite the extra expense, but then I moved to Korea so that solved the problem. When I moved back to England for a while, I made sure I took a Korean keyboard with me.
If you’re a Windows user, unlike the sticker solution, a real Korean keyboard has extra keys for switching between English and Korean, which are invaluable – however, I use Korean Windows so I can’t say whether this switching key would be supported under English Windows with a Korean IME – if that’s what you’re using.
Ahh thank you SO much for your reply. I am currently using a MacBook, so switching between Korean and English is really simple. My problem is just not being able to see the letters on the keys. I can pull up a *keyboard viewer* which shows the keys and corresponding letters, but it seems so awkward still (the viewer is relatively small and I don’t know if I can make it larger). But, like you say, I don’t want to waste my money on buying something that won’t work. I guess I’ll persevere with the viewer or rig-up some kind of sticker system myself. Hopefully it won’t take that long to memorize!!
Ah – this whole business of swapping keyboards is a bit more difficult if you’re using a MacBook :-) Sorry for being a bit Windows-centric in my thinking… I’m afraid being in Korea tends to beat the non-Windows thinking out of you because it’s almost impossible to function here with anything except Windows-based Internet Explorer with its terrible ActiveX plugins!
Good luck with learning to touch type in Korean :-) I’m still getting there myself I have to admit, so I often find myself staring at the keyboard when my mind goes blank. I wouldn’t rule out the sticker solution, if you can find a product with good reviews (unfortunately I couldn’t, but my options in England were very limited).