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Why are Korean and Arabic considered hard | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Voodie Tetraglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 4803 days ago 17 posts - 40 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, GermanC1, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Written), Greek | Message 41 of 57 30 January 2012 at 10:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I don't think there are any insurmountable problems in language learning. But there are difficult aspects and it would be a good idea to point them out, especially in this topic.
As for "discouraging" prospective students, this was never my intention. On the contrary, difficulty of Arabic was always motivating me to move forward. It IS a great intellectual challenge and it's quite enjoyable, that's the idea I've been trying to convey here. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4691 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes  Studies: Korean | Message 42 of 57 02 February 2012 at 4:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Thank you! I think you're right. Today I thought about the 손모씨 being the name of a person, and then I saw your post! I didn't think of 단장 권익환 being a name though, but I think you are correct. So Leader Gwon Ik Hwan. That's the problem with Korean. Unlike English which has proper nouns distinguished from common nouns by capitalization, there is no capitalization in Korean. That solves the mystery of "환". I really couldn't understand this word and how it fit in the sentence. I was going to look up 화 but you saved me the trouble. As for hanja, I rarely come across hanja in my reading of Korean news articles. In fact, I don't recall coming across hanja once. I read online news articles and the Korea Herald. Of course, I haven't read much. I sometimes see Hanja on the windows of restaurants when they talk about portions. So there is Hanja for one person, and a different Hanja for two people being served. Also, I see Hanja used in describing glove sizes. Apart from this, I have not seen much Hanja. Maybe they used to use a lot more Hanja in the past. Scanning Korean newspapers and online articles there is no hanja that I can see.
Actually, news articles are easier than reading manga. News articles are definitely not easy but the formal style suits me as the words are regular and I can find them in the dictionary. The grammar is also regular too. Manga dialog is quite a different kettle of fish. There are so many colloquial expressions used by Koreans in casual speech that even though I look up every single word, I cannot make head or tail of what they are talking about. I tried to translate the dialog of a manga written and illustrated by a Korean person, but it took too long and I still couldn't understand it after looking up all the words. So I had to give up after a couple of pages.
I agree, atama warui, about these subordinate clauses that they're fun to learn but hard to produce. Once you get the hang of it though, you start using them a lot I found. I used it on my Korean friend and she was impressed that I knew this construction. Now I have a habit of composing sentences that use the "thing" 것 construction when I write. It seems like Japanese and Korean grammar are almost identical except Japanese grammmar is a lot simpler. It makes sense because I read that the Japanese language came from ancient Korean languages such as the Buyeo language, the Baekje language and the Koguryeo language. These kingdoms did not survive and their languages disappeared. (However, many of these ancient Koreans migrated to Japan and influenced Japanese society and culture greatly, for example, Korean immigrants brought over Buddhism to Japan; burial mounds of kings or "kofun" are in the Korean style. Many Japanese ancient royal artifacts are of Baekjan origin such as the sword and the mirror ancient treasures of Japan.) The language of the kingdom that did survive, the Silla Kingdom, influenced the modern Korean language. That could be why modern Korean is different to Japanese especially in terms of the vocabulary and could be why some linguists say there is very little connection between Korean and Japanese. However, there are also many similarities in grammar. The vocabulary of the ancient kingdoms may have been different but the grammar very close. Also the Japanese language has many words that come from Polynesian languages, increasing the distance that separates modern Korean from modern Japanese. I saw a paper by an American academic whose thesis was about this. She thought that Japanese came from ancient Korean languages which are no longer in existence. These ancient Korean languages did not influence modern Korean that much. Edited by Balliballi on 03 February 2012 at 1:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6436 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 43 of 57 02 February 2012 at 7:08am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
That's another complaint I have about Korean. Whereas with a language like Spanish or German you can look up words you don't know in a dictionary, in Korean it's much harder. Words get changed around so much the word you see probably won't even be in the dictionary. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5228 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 44 of 57 16 March 2012 at 3:09am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Balliballi - It seems to me you are quite good at Korean, and have the motivation to keep getting better. Nice achievement! Real quick, in this sentence 은/는 채 has a stronger meaning of "in this form". 채 means body, so with that in mind you can imagine the writer of this article was reporting on the physical form, the physical position of the man's body at death. Keep in mind with Korean grammar, and Korean news in particular, that the most important information is thrown at the end. Koreans even joke about their own language saying that you often have to be patient when listening to a sentence, because you know that the truly important clauses are at the end. So with the sentence you found online we can break it down like this: 친척 손모씨가 발견했다. Relative Son-mo discovered. (I think 손모 is a standard name used to hide someone's identity) 호텔을 방문한 This can stand as its own sentence - Visited the hotel. It is modified by the ㄴ to allow it to describe the following subject (I know you know this, but bear with me for a second). 이날 오전 9시30분께 서울 반포동 팔래스호텔 11층 객실 침대 옆에서 김 회장이 쪼그려 앉은 채 숨져 있는 것을 Everything before 김 회장이 describes the place and time. It's a lot for that kind of information, no? But it the Korean style, and it makes sense once you see enough of it. You should easily be able to pick this out because the locative marker doesn't come until the most specific locative information - 침대 옆. Everything before the 에서 just helps you pinpoint where and when, albeit in a way that is very odd for the English speaker. You can almost imagine zooming in on Google maps. First you see Seoul, then 반포동, then the hotel in 반포동, then the 11th floor, then the room, then the bed... From the 에서 you can now start recording the information you need to understand the sentence. 기 회장이... 쪼그려 앉은 채(로)... 숨져 있는 것을. Right there we have a small, incomplete sentence. Pres. Kim... in a crouched position... his death... 친척 손모씨가 발견했다. Relative Son-mo discovered. In "pretty" English we have... A visiting relative discovered Pres. Kim's dead body around 930 this morning, crouched next to his bed in his room on the 11th floor of the Palace Hotel in Banpo-dong, Seoul. ***(Edit: Thought about this a little more and I think this might be a better translation... A visiting relative discovered Pres. Kim's death around 930 this morning, his body crouched next to his bed in his room on the 11th floor of the Palace Hotel in Banpo-dong, Seoul.)*** Not exactly a word for word, and maybe bending the rules of English news conventions, but nonetheless a respectable English sentence that is clear and concise. There is nothing wrong with your translation, and would pass muster for a decent translation service, but if you want to take your translation to the next level, try to capture the nuances. You translated the verb as "was discovered", when in fact the Korean plainly states that the relative "discovered" his dead body. 발견됐다 would be "was discovered". Reading and understanding this whole sentence took me about 20 seconds, and it's because I didn't try to hold every word in my head as I read it. It's because I quickly skimmed over this part: 경찰과 저축은행 비리 합동수사단 (단장 권익환 부장검사)에 따르면. Once I saw 에 따르면 I dropped all the extraneous information (단장 권익환 부장검사 especially) and summarized it in my mind as this "According to the police and some specialized team related to banking and the law". This is all you really need. You can go deep into the details for translation, but if you just want to get the information (like you do in English!), then don't worry about the extra info. Find that 에 따르면, and quickly summarize that it's the police and some other team. Then move on! As I said, hold only the most relevant information in your head as you continue reading a sentence, forget everything else. Remember, the most important information is at the end! Once you see the true subject, the true object, and finally the main verb, you will have a much clearer understanding of what is going on (and technically you will have the main predicate in your head, which is hard to forget). It is then that you can go back and fill in the gaps with the detailed information, if you so wish. I've been using this technique for a while and it has done wonders for my reading comprehension and fluency. PM if you have any questions when reading Korean :) Edited by jtdotto on 16 March 2012 at 3:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| jtdotto Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5228 days ago 73 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 45 of 57 16 March 2012 at 7:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
싫다 means "is disliked". 싫어하다 means "I dislike". But they essentially mean the same thing. With a little exposure to how both are used, you'll get the context for how both are used fairly quickly (it's really just a matter of matching subject/object with the verb - X가 싫다 vs X를 싫어하다).
This may be your personal experience with the Korean alphabet, but I feel like other people should not take this as the general learner's experience. It is true, words are made of syllable blocks that use letters neatly placed into invisble blocks, and yes this may be very odd at first to read, but it is not an inferior alphabet in any way, just simply different. Once you get used to it, you'll be able to read full words rather than just independent syllable blocks that you sound out to get meaning. It's really just like learning any other non-Latin script. My reading speed is not hindered by the alphabet, it is only hindered by unknown vocabulary and tough grammar. My eye movements when reading are the same as English - left to right in a straight line.
Is this not true with any foreign tongue? If you go to France and ask native speakers where "Pear-is" is, would they not look at you funny? I feel like this isn't a Korean phenomenon, because it happens everywhere.
There are a number of Korean romanizations (something like 4-5, and that is 3-4 too many if you ask me). The truth is there's a debate between trying to represent the hangul faithfully versus the pronunciation faithfully. Because of this, it is simply best to just learn hangul well and you'll never have to deal with romanizations.
It sounds like you had some pretty crappy language tutors, and I wouldn't take those experiences as Korean people in a nutshell. Koreans in the US probably do speak better English than most Americans speak Korean. If you are an American and you really do want to get better at Korean, you need to find someone who can understand you when you say "I am going to pay you to speak to me ONLY in Korean, okay?" It's true, I've encountered false friends who wanted to hang out with me because they thought they could learn English. Once I picked up on this, I stopped hanging out with them, that simple. There's always people in the world with ulterior motives, this isn't just a Korean thing. English is a big deal over here, but if you are really motivated, you can get Koreans to speak to you in Korean. At the school I work at there are teachers who only speak to me in English, which is funny because we both know that the conversation would be much more fluid if we spoke in Korean, but I entertain this because they really do need the practice. Other teachers have given up on English once they realized they could actually speak to me. I feel like there's a threshhold in Korea with the language. Once you reach it, Koreans will speak to you in Korean. Before then, most just consider that it's easier for you if they speak to you in English. But again, like I said, if you are obstinate about speaking in Korean, there are PLENTY of people who will oblige.
Again, kind of a gross overgeneralization. It's a Confucius society so you cannot make friends beyond a limited, narrow group of people? Preposterous! What do you define as a friend? Someone you can swear at and they won't care? Someone you can have a drink with? Someone you can speak to with complete ease? Well, can you do all three of these things with just ANYBODY in the US? No, of course not. Probably not with your boss, probably not with your in-laws, etc. Same thing in Korea. It's a complex society, and in order to fit in you gotta learn the rules, but that's the same for America. America is more relaxed in many ways, and I'm not defending the lasting influence of Confucianism, but if you want to really learn Korean and Korean culture, you just have to accept these things. That's what being a world citizen is all about, and that's definitely what learning a foreign language is all about. And by the way, I drink with my male coworkers who are much older than me, I can make jokes and banter with my female coworkers who are much older than me, I can date girls 8 years my senior, I can sit down and have meaningful conversation over lunch with professors who are older than my parents, etc. Koreans are people, they're not some sort of robotic product of East Asian society. Yes, there is a lot of group thought going on over here, but is there not in the US? I tend to avoid those kinds of people in the US, and I do the same here. My Korean friends are not exactly the same - some of them follow the crowd, most don't. Some of them do taekwondo professionally, others are in never-ending graduate programs. Some learn Japanese, some learn English, some learn French. Some like to play music, others like to play tennis. We're friends because of how we get along, not because we are of the same age/sex/class in society. Sure, it's easier to get along with the young guy doing his military service at my school, but that's because he can go out for beers after work compared to most teachers who rush home to feed their kids. Isn't that the same in the United States? It's easier to flirt with the young student-teachers finishing their degrees here than the older female teachers... because they're young and sexual attractive and understand the youth culture that I play off of, not because Confucius said it was to be. You mention that if you're an English teacher you'd be working in an English-only environment? Not so. Sure, I only speak English to my students, but that's because I'm paid to do so. And if I let on that I can understand Korean, I feel like I would only be making my job that much harder. But on the contrary, this is a Korean school. Korean is spoken here all the time. The guy who had my job before was only able to make friends with the teachers who speak English. I've already made friends with teachers who can't. They said they kind of wanted to get to know the last guy, but because he couldn't speak Korean and they can't really speak English, it just never happened. I feel you wrote your list partly in jest, but I've seen too many posts on this forumn deriding Korean people for treating foreigners as English dictionaries and nothing more. If anything, I've learned more about the depth of friendship from my Korean friends than my American friends, which I can then bring back to the States and infuse into my friendships over there. However I feel I've had a unique experience with Korean. Even still, I've had that experience because I've put my heart and soul into the culture. Maybe it's a tougher culture to break into than others, but the rewards are just as precious, if not more so. ***EDIT - Fixed a quote. Edited by jtdotto on 16 March 2012 at 8:13am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Leurre Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5424 days ago 219 posts - 372 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Korean, Haitian Creole, SpanishC2 Studies: Japanese | Message 46 of 57 17 March 2012 at 3:45am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Since no one seems to be getting this, 손모씨 is referring to an anonymous person, giving
only their last name, 손. 모 is just another way of saying 아무개, or the rough equivalent of 'John/Jane'(without the 'Doe'). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| vientito Senior Member Canada Joined 6337 days ago 212 posts - 281 votes | Message 47 of 57 17 March 2012 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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in fact, I thought jtdotto already hinted at that above
I wonder if that 손 in 손모씨 in fact is the same as that used in 손님 ? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Afgjasmine16 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6005 days ago 29 posts - 55 votes Speaks: Pashto*, English, Hindi Studies: Bengali, Tamil, Indonesian, Turkish | Message 48 of 57 18 March 2012 at 4:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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To the original poster, I don't know about Korean but I have taken Arabic in College for almost three years now and it is difficult! After each class I get a huge headache from how hard it is. But I don't really know how to describe why it's hard. I do get the grammar and get the grammar questions on quizzes right but when I try to write my own sentence or talk to someone it becomes very hard to produce the sentence. The words are pretty heavy and hard to memorize and my native language has many Arabic loanwords in it. I don't think it's the most difficult language in the world, but it does require a lot of work!
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