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The ’I Hate Korean’ Thread | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 25 of 131 01 July 2011 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
If you actually read my posting, you might have read the sentence "I can tell apart and produce m, b, p' and bb, but to me that's a four way distinction of sounds that do not match the phoneme inventory of any of my other languages, neither in their boundaries nor in their interaction." I mean it. It's not that Korean is particularly nasty, or anything. Its phonology makes sense, in an entirely Korean context. The problem, however, is that there is so little overlap between Korean and any other language I've studied so far that it is very difficult to learn the Korean system, because I can't use any of my existing systems as a peg for a Korean sound. It doesn't help that, for example, a sound that is very similar to my native German long o and a sound very similar to my native German short o are different phonemes in Korean, and of the same length. (In German, their actual sound value is dictated by syllable structure, so one sound gets replaced by the other if you artificially lengthen/shorten the syllable.) Which would still be just fine - if there weren't cases in which Koreans replace one sound by the other in spoken Korean because it is easier to pronounce for them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5561 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 26 of 131 02 July 2011 at 2:25am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hmmm, I think I might do Korean for my 6WC. That should break the back of it.
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| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6950 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 27 of 131 02 July 2011 at 3:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
What do you mean, "conveniently"? What kind of agenda do you think I have? Like I said in my original post, I'm interested in learning Korean so I honestly want to know your perspective. If Korean is really as difficult as you say, I want to know why, and if you were exaggerating some parts for dramatic effect (who doesn't enjoy a good whine once in a while?) then I want to know that, too. The parts I quoted were not in the interest of making you look bad, but in the interest of keeping my post brief because those are the only points I wanted to address. Everyone here has probably read your original post and understands the disclaimers you have made.
I don't doubt that you are a native English speaker, but again, I'm interested in knowing why you say that. As others have mentioned, French is not exactly known for having clear word boundaries, and I have heard the opposite opinion from learners of French whose English is just as native as yours, and I'm not aware of any phonological features that make word boundaries easy to find in French (such as sounds that only appear word- initially or word-finally), so that's why I asked.
This is the kind of experience I'm intrested in knowing about. I don't disbelieve you, but as a Japanese learner who is used to hearing a lot of scare stories and exaggerations about how "impossible" the language is, you must understand my tendency toward skepticism until I hear a plausible explanation. Bao's comments about how sounds change is the first such explanations I've heard so far, so I think I'm starting to understand. Edited by Lucky Charms on 02 July 2011 at 4:19am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Kitchen.Sink Newbie United States Joined 6181 days ago 20 posts - 67 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 28 of 131 02 July 2011 at 4:59am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
In hindsight, French was not the best example to use. French word borders are significantly easier to identify than Korean's, but to keep the comparison simple, I probably should have used Spanish or Italian -- languages with a fairly regular tempo.
I'll try to explain what I mean, then. This will also tie in with the French comparison I used earlier, and maybe help it make a bit more sense. I, too, have heard about how "impossible" Japanese and Chinese are, and to be honest, I found them quite a bit easier to speak than several European languages. They both have simple grammars and an easy flow of words, ones that the native English-speaking ear can pick up on quickly. For instance, take the Japanese phrase, "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu". In spoken Japanese, it tends to sound more like "yoroshku onegaishmas". The emphasis tends to be on the second or third syllables. The point is that it is not so different each time the Japanese say that phrase that your brain has a hard time recognizing that phrase for what it is. To use another example, in English we might say, "He gestured through the window." The emphasis, provided that the speaker isn't angry or being sarcastic, would sound something like this, "He GESTured THROUGH the WINdow." This leads to a fairly regular pace, so much so, that the brain can pick up on certain cues, the "win" in "window" and the "gest" in "gestured" tend to always take emphasis and thus the brain can easily pick out those words, even if the others are sketchy. Since verbs and nouns in English tend to follow this pattern, you will be able to pick out the most important parts of spoken English. Over time, through exposure, the brain will begin to fill in the blanks for the less important parts, such as adverbs and pronouns, naturally. It's all part of the process of language acquisition. With Korean, however, the mind has no foundation to settle on. For instance, the phrase "jaedongeul arabwa" can be emphasized in a seemingly endless number of ways, especially as one word bleeds into another without the slightest shift in emphasis or tone. JAEdongeularabwa jaedongEULaraBWA jaedoneularaBWA To make this even more frustrating, keep in mind that Korean, like Chinese and Japanese, has a very limited amount of total sounds that it can make. Korean has more than the other two, but it pales in comparison to a Western language. This means that "jae" alone means something very different than the "jae" of "jaedong", and that "jae dong" is not the same as "jaedong". The Chinese have tones to deal with this troublesome aspect. Korean, on the other hand, seems to have nothing at all. This does not even include the inexplicable shifts in sounds that Koreans like to perform as the whim strikes them. For instance, the "bwa" at the end of that sentence (봐) will sometimes get pronounced as "bwa", others times as "ba" (바). There is not necessarily a dialect that does this change consistently, there is no rule that you can learn, it's just something Koreans do, where if it's easier for their tongue to say it that way, they say it that way. To a native Korean speaker, the mind can intuitively figure out the irregularity. To someone studying Korean, it's a nightmare. The Koreans do this all the time. When women try to sound cute, they will sometimes pronounce "do" (도), meaning "also", as "du" (두), which could mean any number of things, depending on what came before it. They don't always do this consistently, sometimes they will even use these different forms in the very same sentence! This only begins to scratch the surface of why spoken Korean is so insanely difficult. Edited by Kitchen.Sink on 02 July 2011 at 5:03am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 29 of 131 02 July 2011 at 6:03am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Kitchen.Sink, yes that was a very nice whine. And I have never studied Korean, not even a single word. But I'm going
to go out on a limb here and say it's not more difficult than Mandarin or Japanese for the average native English speaker. I think your difficulty could be one of several things. Some possibilities off the top of my head: 1) You have found your own "killer" language. It's more difficult, maybe even impossible, for you for some reason that doesn't apply to others. 2) Although you may feel like it, you haven't put nearly as much time or effort into this language as you have with other languages that you've learned to fluency. 3) You have sabotaged yourself with your bad attitude, or some other psychological weakness that keeps you from getting the same return per hour that you got on other languages 4) There is something wrong with your learning plan and execution. Probably the only thing we could help you out with would be 4). But that would require you giving a detailed description of what you've done to learn this language. Edited by leosmith on 02 July 2011 at 7:04am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Po-ru Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 173 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Spanish, Norwegian, Mandarin, French | Message 30 of 131 02 July 2011 at 7:34am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I am not going to read all 30 messages, just the OP. Korean is undoubtedly one of the
most challenging languages for English speakers to learn. Phonetically, lexically, and grammatically, it is drastically different. However, with strong dedication and putting in the time, myself and others on this forum have seen the great results. Not many Westerns get to a huge level of fluency in Korean and there's no wonder why. However, through constant practice one will certainly pay off 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4966 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 31 of 131 02 July 2011 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Slightly off topic, but anyways - In principle, you can guess what a word unknown to you means with your prior knowledge of vocabulary, but not create meaningful units yourself. As in any other language, you can create groups of words or sentences with known words, but not create individual words, just because they are compound ideograms. To the OP: I wish you good luck learning Korean. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5229 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 32 of 131 02 July 2011 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm sorry I came off as haughty and condescending. All I meant to say was that Korean sandhi didn't sound that different from other languages to me--I'm entirely open to learning how it's more difficult than it sounds. Edited by ScottScheule on 02 July 2011 at 7:29pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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