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Popular misconceptions about languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| kenshin Triglot Newbie Taiwan Joined 4824 days ago 17 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German, French | Message 97 of 100 09 April 2011 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Next time you see Korean script on scroll paintings, don't ask Chinese or Japanese people
to decrypt. Korean is like Greek to me. :) At first glance it seems Hangul (Korean alphabet), Chinese characters and Japanese kanji all look similar, even though Hangul actually doesn't share any similarity with the latter two. After one or two weeks of studying you will be able to spell and write Korean words since Hangul is a phonetic alphabet, like Latin and Cyrillic. On the contrary, have to learn to draw doodles to express your thought in Chinese and Japanese. Edited by kenshin on 10 April 2011 at 6:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| koba Heptaglot Senior Member AustriaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5662 days ago 118 posts - 201 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, French | Message 98 of 100 09 April 2011 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||
Fact: no language is easy. The biggest misconception for me regarding Mandarin is quite the opposite, that it's the most difficult language in the world and even seen by some as "unlearnable". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sanghee Groupie United States Joined 4862 days ago 60 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 99 of 100 09 April 2011 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've heard a few misconceptions about Korean in the time I've been studying it..
The most irritating is the people who assume North Korea when I mention that I'm studying Korean. I've gotten comments about how I must love dictators, or comments from people wondering why I want to learn the language of a country which hates everyone else, or comments along the lines of "What Korean media? I thought that country is basically broke.." and "They make video games and TV shows??". It's like they have no idea that South Korea exists and is completely different from North Korea. Another misconception is that Korean has "characters" (similar to Kenshin's issue but from the perspective of someone who can easily read Hangul and knows only a few Chinese characters). Yes it has some hanja, but it mostly consists of an easy to read alphabet. I've had people tell me about some Korean product they found, only to show me a product covered in Chinese characters. My mom listens to some Korean music (due to my influence :P) and she can't even tell the huge difference between Chinese characters and Hangul when I ask her which "Asian characters" she's talking about. Even before I knew anything about Korean I could easily tell the difference (though at that time I thought Korean looked weird and had too many circles because I didn't know that it was an alphabet :/). [ETA: I noticed I got a little off topic on this one. The main misconception is that they think Korean is made of "characters" when it's an alphabet.] And finally, people seem to think that Korean has a Chinese accent. I've had people start faking a Chinese accent when I told them I'm learning Korean. One guy asked me to say something in Korean and then had the nerve to tell me that my accent is bad even though he doesn't know any Korean, just because I didn't sound like what he thinks a *Chinese* accent should sound like. Edited by Sanghee on 09 April 2011 at 10:07pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| koba Heptaglot Senior Member AustriaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5662 days ago 118 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, French | Message 100 of 100 09 April 2011 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||
You've got a point there. English, besides all, still maintains the essence of a Germanic language and it should be seen as one. Still, there's a reason why English is seen like that. If you consider the amount of loan words you will realize that English is one of the least conservative of all languages and that it has one of the most Latin based vocabulary for a non-Romance language. I wouldn't go that far and say that English is a Romance language or a Romance-Germanic mix, because English after all has kept its Germanic structure basically; but let's face it, the Latin vocabulary is very transparent and present in English, distinguishably more than in any other Germanic, Slavic, Finno-Ugric language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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