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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Erubey Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6236 days ago 82 posts - 92 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 31 08 August 2008 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Every korean learner I know says that learning Hanja is essential if you want to improve your korean. Its true native koreans usually don't know any. Most will know...some, usually the numbers along with things like: Famous shop signs, popular music artists that use Hanja in their name or albums, Hanja that represent stuff like Honor or Warrior that are used everywere, etc. Even totaling that, it would be very low. Its true that newspapers and some publications use Hanja, but most people don't read them.
If you can't decide which to learn first though, I recommend looking into which one has more speakers and materials available near you. I chose japanese first because there are a ton of japanese people here. If there were none I would have gone on a different route. Either way, prepare to lose 4-5 years of your life. Good luck 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hollow Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States luelinks.netRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6545 days ago 179 posts - 186 votes Speaks: French*, English*, SpanishB2 Studies: Korean | Message 10 of 31 08 August 2008 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Oh lord, that's not what I meant at all. What I mean is that the meaning is, in the case of about 65% of the vocabulary, modeled on Chinese characters. Whether it's written as Chinese characters or not is not the point. For example in English, when we say "China" is it composed of our words for'Middle' and 'country'? No, right? Yet like Chinese, in Korean (Japanese does the same thing too, yeah?) you say 중국, which corresponds to the Hanja for 中 and 國. To say 'everyone, young and old', in Korean you say 남녀노소, which has it's own Chinese counterpart 男女노소 (don't know how you say old and young yet in characters, but you get the idea). So I'm not talking about how prevalent the Hanja characters are in the language, but rather their meaning. There are Japanese and Chinese speakers in my Korean class, and when there is a word they are puzzled about, the professor just writes it in Hanja, and everyone goes 'Ohhh', writes it down, and doesn't forget it again. The same cannot be said for myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6556 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 11 of 31 08 August 2008 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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From the standpoint of a native English speaker, Japanese and Korean grammar are both very difficult, with Korean
being slightly harder. Both have very simple pronunciation, with Korean being slightly harder. The main difference is the writing system. Japanese is very difficult. Korean is not nearly as difficult, even if you learn the hanja. But Japanese will better reinforce chinese characters, which may be more important to you than difficulty. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Erubey Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6236 days ago 82 posts - 92 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 12 of 31 09 August 2008 at 12:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Like the Korean language profile says, Korean grammar actually extends further than Japanese, especially in honorifics. There are many levels and many shades of meanings. The good thing is though, from people telling me, is that you can forget about learning most of them if you don't want to. Sure your Korean won't be perfect, and I guess since this is a language learning group thats kind of what we want, but you can more than get by, in fact excel without knowing the complexities of the grammar. Aside from that Japanese/Korean have very similar grammar patterns, enough so that linguists debate whether or not each developed independently from each other.
the professor just writes it in Hanja, and everyone goes 'Ohhh', writes it down, and doesn't forget it again. Hell yeah. Learn those characters! They're super cool, look great, etc. There is no downside except time taken. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Deecab Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5967 days ago 106 posts - 108 votes Speaks: English, Korean* Studies: Mandarin | Message 13 of 31 09 August 2008 at 1:15am | IP Logged | |||||
Hmmmm I'm not too sure since I lived in US for quite a while now but it's a bit reach to say they only few signs and numbers. And it depends on which audience you're asking to. Lot of the older generation is pretty proficient as far as I know because Hanja was being used till 1980's. They just don't take it seriously imo, which hinders their motivation to try to remember them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Deecab Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5967 days ago 106 posts - 108 votes Speaks: English, Korean* Studies: Mandarin | Message 14 of 31 09 August 2008 at 1:31am | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with everything but I personally view that Korean and Japanese grammar are different rather than difficult. They are almost nothing compared to European languages with complex inflection and gender. I have my own bias as Korean but I have done some analysis with grammar comparison and indeed came to conclusion that Korean is a bit more complex and has more rules. Japanese grammar is somewhat mainstream while Korean grammar is dependent on what words, or letters before the usage. As for difficulty challenge, I recommend Japanese. The multiple Kanji reading takes long time to learn even if you're Chinese or Korean. Korean is pretty simple compared to Japanese because of writing system. And Korean doesn't use much Hanja anymore and is known by very serious literature learners or professionals in certain fields nowadays. Edited by Deecab on 09 August 2008 at 1:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| qklilx Moderator United States Joined 6192 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 31 10 August 2008 at 5:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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When it comes to reading and writing, Japanese is pretty much unquestionably harder than Korean. This is mostly due to hanja not being a necessary aspect of the language for basic fluency, whereas kanji is.
When it comes to speaking and listening, I think Korean is measureably harder than Japanese due to the larger number of sounds, the sound changes for certain letter combinations, and the similarity in sound of some of the consonants and vowels. When it comes to grammar, Korean is many levels above Japanese in terms of difficulty. More levels of politeness, more grammar with similar yet different meanings from other grammar, many irregular verbs, and exceptions to certain rules, among other things. Sure they start off about the same, but once you leave the basic Korean grammar be prepared for a ride. Another thing to consider is which Chinese script you're learning. It's probably simplified, which means Japanese would be the better choice. Hanja is generally traditional Chinese characters, right? I haven't studied it so I'm unsure. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Erubey Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6236 days ago 82 posts - 92 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 16 of 31 10 August 2008 at 9:52am | IP Logged | |||||
That is true. I didn't mention that pretty much all the people I've spoken to were young koreans.
Yeah, its in traditional, but it doesn't really add difficulty in terms of it already being hard. Less strokes don't make characters easier to learn really, and the simplification of japanese characters isn't to the extent of actual Simplified Characters used in the Republic of China. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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