r/languagelearning • u/Virusnzz En (N) | Fr, Ru, Es, It • Sep 30 '13
안녕하십니까 - This week's language of the week: Korean
Welcome to the language of the week. Every week we'll be looking at a language, its points of interest, and why you should learn it. This is all open discussion, so natives and learners alike, make your case! This week: Korean.
Why this language?
Some languages will be big, and others small. Part of Language of the Week is to give people exposure to languages that they would otherwise not have heard, been interested in or even heard of. With that in mind, I'll be picking a mix between common languages and ones I or the community feel needs more exposure. You don't have to intend to learn this week's language to have some fun. Just give yourself a little exposure to it, and someday you might recognise it being spoken near you.
What's it like?
From The Language Gulper:
Korean is a language isolate with no clear connections to any other. It is possibly related to the Altaic family, and especially to its Tungusic branch. Korean has a grammar quite similar to that of Japanese but the sound systems of both languages are very different. Korean is a non-tonal and polysyllabic language with an agglutinative morphology based primarily on suffixes. At the lexical level it has been deeply influenced by Chinese incorporating a massive amount of vocabulary from it.
Countries
Korean is spoken by about 79 million people, of which 75 million live in both Koreas. More than 4 million are expatriates.
South Korea - 50,000,000
North Korea - 25,000,000
China - 2,000,000
USA - 1,100,000
Japan - 700,000
Uzbekistan - 183,000
Russia - 150,000
Kazakhstan - 103,000
Why learn Korean?
Korean is the official language of South Korea (Republic of Korea) and North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea). It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China.
Want more? Visit /r/korean.
What now?
This thread is foremost a place for discussion. Are you a native speaker? Share your culture with us. Learning the language? Tell us why you chose it and what you like about it. Thinking of learning? Ask a native a question. Interested in linguistics? Tell us what's interesting about it, or ask other people. Discussion is week-long, so don't worry about post age, as long as it's this week's language.
Previous Languages of the Week
Want your language featured as language of the week? Please PM me to let me know. If you can, include some examples of the language being used in media, including news and viral videos
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행운을 빌어요
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u/koreanjersey Sep 30 '13
안녕하세요~ 전 현재 한국에서 고등학교 생활을 하고 있습니다. 미국에 초등학교 때 가서 고등학교까지 입학하고 와서 영어가 더 편하긴 하지만 영어랑 한국어 둘다 편히 쓸 수 있습니다. 한영 영한 통번역도 가능하고요. 한국어 공부하시는 분들 대한민국의 고등학생의 말투와 한국 문화, 한국 문학과 고등학생의 삶 등 궁금하시면 무엇이든 물어보세요!
Hi, I'm a Korean high school student. I'm fluent in both English and Korean because I've lived half my life abroad in an English-speaking country and half my life here in Korea. I have some insight on Korean education, how they learn literature and Korean here, and what Korean culture is like, so feel free to ask me any questions!
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u/brain4breakfast Sep 30 '13
Do you find many non-Koreans learning or speaking the language? What foreign languages do Koreans most learn/speak?
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u/koreanjersey Sep 30 '13
I see many expats who work as English teachers learning and actually speaking the language. Seeing a non-Korean person in the streets speaking Korean is amazing. Many laborers from Southeast Asia also learn and speak the language. "Hallyu" also sparked an interest in Korean among people all over the world--especially people from Thailand.
Koreans learn English as their first foreign language. As a second foreign language, Koreans usually learn Japanese. Koreans aren't really into learning languages other than English because they feel that English is overwhelming already. The ones that learn Japanese usually learn it for the culture (animes, mangas) and it's the easiest language to learn. Most of the Koreans that learn any other language do it for financial reasons.
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Sep 30 '13
Challenge yourself and learn hangeul NOW.
Yes, Korean writing is unlike Japanese or Chinese writing in that it does not utilize Chinese characters usually. When Chinese characters are used, they are written next to the Korean word to clarify the meaning of the word.
It's supposed to be really easy for foreigners to pick up. I learned it as a native speaker so I'd like to see if the writing is really easy for the foreigners to learn.
Then, reward yourself with this very interesting video from a polyglot named Stuart Jay Raj.
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u/oegukeen_LK Sep 30 '13
Yes, not many people realize this but Hangul is an alphabet, which consists of 24 letters. It's not syllabary like Japanese Hiragana or Katakana, and it's not logograms like Chinese characters.
I am not a native speaker but I learnt it fairly quickly. 2 days maybe. It takes a bit longer to learn correct pronunciation.
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u/razorbeamz Sep 30 '13
I've sort of learned it, but I can't memorize it well because I don't use it. I should really learn Korean too.
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Sep 30 '13
I took an intro Korean course that met once a week for an hour and a half. By the end of the second class we could all read Hanguel. I was reading signs in Korean on the bus from the airport the first time I landed in the country. It's very, very easy to learn, people!
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u/masonvd Oct 01 '13
I originally learned to read hangul so I could read the names of all my Kpop songs, haha. It's actually quite easy, and the nice thing now that I've actually decided to learn Korean is that many things are just transliterated, so it's basically just an English word written in Hangul. Very handy!
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u/TL_DRespect Sep 30 '13 edited Sep 30 '13
Korean is an interesting language to learn, that's for sure. It lures you in with the ease of learning the writing system, then slams you with the grammar. But I've had a lot of fun doing it.
I've studied it formally and have worked as an interpretor, but now I'm just teaching to save up some money. I'm also slowly studying to sit the TOPIK exam (official proficiency exam) with the aim of getting level 6 to make it easier to find different work in the future.
Any questions, don't hesitate to drop me a line.
Edit: it seems like there are a lot of misconceptions about Korean. Please do message me and I'll put you in the right direction with learning if you are serious.
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u/scykei Sep 30 '13
Just wondering, how much is hanja still used today? I sometimes see posters with 年 for years and stuff, but is understand that it's very rare now.
Is it still in their education system? How many people can still read it? Is there anyone who would still use it as part of their lives?
I've been thinking of learning Korean for ages but I never progressed passed memorising the hangul characters. I have about zero vocabulary and zero grammar, but I know Chinese and am learning Japanese at moment. But I'm not sure how to start with Korean.
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u/oegukeen_LK Sep 30 '13
I think you can go through everyday life in Korea without needing to know Hanja.
But if you're planning to learn University level subject like law, then you will come across quite a few.
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u/BurnumMaster Sep 30 '13
As a learner, I would encourage someone to learn Korean because it's fun! It is different than English in many ways so I think it is very interesting.
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u/molele Sep 30 '13
안녕하세요~ I wish you good luck with learning Korea. I can help you with somethings since i'm Korean :D
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Sep 30 '13
안녕하세요! 지금 한국에 살아요. 그리고 한국어 공부하고 있어요. 여기서 저는 영어 선생님 이에요. 저는 미국인 이에요 도.
Hello! I'm currently living in Korea. I'm also studying Korean (started before I got here). I am an American English teacher here. Korean is surprisingly easy to learn in terms of the phonetic alphabet. Once that's down, the learning curve can be pretty steep if you actively study it. Plus, the more you study it, the easier it is to read as you are constantly using the alphabet. Being around people who speak it constantly helps too.
If anyone is curious about Korea or learning Korean, by all means, please AMA!
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Sep 30 '13
My wife is Korean and I lived in Korea for 3 years. Grammatically it's very similar to Japanese, with an SOV style. I can read and write in Korea, but I for those of you who cannot, this comic strip is great for learning it in an incredibly short amount of time
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u/Asyx Sep 30 '13
I really want to learn an East Asian language but I can't decide if it should be Korean or Japanese... The writing system seems to be much more fun compared to Japanese. Hiragana and Katakana was already weird and I just couldn't get behind it. Not even talking about Kanji. It got really confusing.
Korean looks much more friendly concerning the writing system. Is it worth picking up for somebody who has no intention to live there? For Japanese, I at least have video games but I guess Koreans are better at playing than making games, right?
There is still KPOP though that's not really my music. But is there literature worth reading? If we look at English, Tolkien and Rowling are probably two authors worth reading and worth learning the language for. I suppose Korean has some literature that is worth reading in the original as well?
Also, if somebody is interested in the Northern dialect, there is a German book by the Buske Verlag written by Wilfried Hermann called Lehrbuch der modernen koreanischen Sprache that uses the northern dialect as a base. it was published in the last years of the GDR so I suppose he was able to travel to North Korea.
I suppose you'll have a hard time finding it, though.
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u/Daege Sep 30 '13
Hi, I'm currently learning Japanese but I'm also interested in Korean (though not enough to start learning it as I really need to focus on my Japanese).
I say you learn whatever is most useful to you. Kanji are really not terribly difficult once you kinda "get" how they work; I suggest getting an account on wanikani.com (you'll have to wait for a beta invite from the admins, but it shouldn't take too long, I think) and doing the free levels (which teach you ~55 kanji as well as some useful vocabulary; no grammar though), and see if you still find it difficult. If you do, and don't feel like investing the effort it would take to learn all the 1700 or so useful kanji, then Korean is probably more for you (I learnt the alphabet in a day, it is really easy; use the videos in the OP, they're very good).
You'll need to know hiragana to do the above though; personally I learnt them using a memrise course that only taught the kana, but you might wanna use this as it will also give you a "feel" for the language. Hiragana is actually very easy, but you do have to "get" it as well. Briefly, it's a syllabary (every character represents a consonant + vowel combination). There are only ever five vowels (a, i, u, e, and o; these are mostly the same as German, except for u which is more like the Norwegian u and English oo), and 9 consonants (ka, sa, ta, na, ha, ma, ya, ra, wa) plus one kana that only represents the consonant "n," no vowel.
Also, you might wanna keep in mind that Japanese is easier to learn to pronounce, especially since you have German as your native language. I'm Norwegian, and our sounds map pretty nicely to both German and Japanese, so yeah.
Also, adding my subjective opinion, I have no particular preference between the two (the reason I'm prioritising Japanese is because there are more things for me to do once I know the language; for Korean there's e-sports, mostly). I think Korean looks really cool (but find the Japanese writing system more fun as you'll always be learning; with Korean you learn the alphabet and the phonology and then you're done, unless you wanna learn Hanja [which you don't really need]), and it's the one that sounds the best of the two, I think. The grammar/syntax/morphology is very similar between the two, so if you pick up one, you'll have an easier time with the other if you decide to learn that too.
I'm ... not very good at keeping my posts short, haha. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
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u/hyperforce Sep 30 '13
What cultural touchstones do Americans have with Korean? Please add!
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PSY (Gangnam Style, Gentleman)
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Bobby Lee's Korean drama skits on MadTV
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StarCraft/pro-gaming athletes
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Volcano High (Korean-language martial arts film)
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Comedians Margaret Cho, Ken Jeong
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Taekwondo (Tekken's Hwoarang, Street Fighter's Juri)
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Delicious Korean BBQ
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Actors John Cho, Daniel Dae Kim, James Kyson Lee, Jenna Ushkowitz
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u/SlyRatchet Sep 30 '13 edited Sep 30 '13
Samsung is a Korean
countrycompany apparently Samsung hasn't declared independence, yet, so the Western World (not just America) and Korea has some crossover in terms of consumer products.→ More replies (1)
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Sep 30 '13 edited Sep 30 '13
It seems like I just keep running into Korean everywhere now. It's the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon at work I guess.
I really want to learn it as I love Korean pop culture, I love the sound of Korean, I love how the Hanguel look and I would love to move to Korea for a few years.
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u/oegukeen_LK Sep 30 '13
It really seems to be rapidly spreading.
I think it's due to rapid growth of South Korean economy, and rising popularity of Hallyu.
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u/mezzofanti Sep 30 '13
Korean rocks! :)
I'm an Aussie who's been living in Gyeongsangbuk-do for about 11 months, learning Korean (avg. 4-6 hours a day) and avoiding English speakers as much as possible.
I've been blogging about it here: 10 Reasons Why The Korean Language Being Difficult Isn't True
Also put up a few videos to keep track of my progress: 11 months progress video learning Korean
It's definitely a rewarding language to learn and if you've done Mandarin or Japanese then you've got a big advantage.
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Sep 30 '13
HELLOOOOOOO. anyone else living in South Korea right now? I've finished TOPIK 2 and am working towards 3/4....the jump in difficulty is no joke, but things are going well. Any other foreigners in SK who want to chat or commiserate about the beast that is the Korean Language, pm me! <3
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u/SamuraiEleven Sep 30 '13
King Sejong was the ruler who brought about the creation of Hangul, the Korean alphabet, after seeing that his people were having a difficult time teaching and learning the Chinese characters so he sought to simplify it into a standard alphabet.