19 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3
nhk9 Senior Member Canada Joined 6805 days ago 290 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 17 of 19 08 October 2010 at 8:20pm | IP Logged |
Korean pronunciation is not that hard if you know what you are doing with IPA. Don't try to learn from non-qualified native speakers, as they won't be able to help you with the proper intonation and the consonants. Simply put, most native speakers don't speak the language as it should be.
I recommend that you study Korean if you have a serious cultural attachment to it, or that you need to be engaged with people from that country (say, if your spouse or your business depends on it). Otherwise, go with Chinese.
The last time I checked, about 800-900 million people in China can speak it. Compared to the 60million who speak Korean. That's a 15-to-1 ratio.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Asamajinja Pentaglot Newbie Germany Joined 5236 days ago 11 posts - 17 votes Speaks: German*, Japanese, Korean, English, Spanish Studies: Indonesian
| Message 18 of 19 04 November 2010 at 10:45pm | IP Logged |
IronFist wrote:
Korean is like a harder version of Japanese. The grammar is similar, but for every rule that Japanese has, Korean has 2 or 3 variations and exceptions for it.
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That's true :-)
I'm in the same situation like you - having finished my BA-degree in Japanese, and now continuing MA in Korean studies...
The Kanji you know will be an enourmous help !
(bimyôna sankaku kankei)
cf. 微妙な三角関係
미묘한 삼각 관계
(mimyohan samgak gwangye)
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| Gabungry Newbie United States gabungry.blogspot.co Joined 5134 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes
| Message 19 of 19 05 November 2010 at 8:21pm | IP Logged |
English is my first language, I grew up learning/speaking Korean and am reasonably fluent, and have just started learning Mandarin.
From that perspective, I would say that Korean is easier to start learning (phonetic alphabet), but gets much harder as you go along (all the above-mentioned rules and grammatical difficulty).
So far, it seems like Mandarin is hard at first (characters, tones) but gets easier as you go along (relatively simple grammar and structure).
My first adventures in learning Mandarin:
http://gabungry.blogspot.com/2010/11/microphone-agrees.html
1 person has voted this message useful
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