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Japanese is Harder than Korean | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6331 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 1 of 57 06 May 2007 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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For a brief period of time, I was buying the assertion that Korean was harder than Japanese. But I recently found out that the degree of mastery required over Chinese characters for Japanese is much higher than that required for Korean. So now I'm back to believing Japanese is harder.
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| johntothea Senior Member United States Joined 6409 days ago 193 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian, Norwegian, Polish, French | Message 2 of 57 06 May 2007 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that most people thought that Korean was harder based on grammar, not the writing system. But I personally don't have any input, considering I know neither Japanese nor Korean.
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| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6331 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 3 of 57 06 May 2007 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||
I've heard Korean and Japanese grammar is pretty similar, Korean being marginally harder. I'm going for an overall comparison though, and considering the number of hours it takes to learn the languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| johntothea Senior Member United States Joined 6409 days ago 193 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian, Norwegian, Polish, French | Message 4 of 57 06 May 2007 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe some people would find it easier to master the writing system then deal with the harder grammar?
Ehh, it doesn't matter. Language difficulty is all relative anyway :P. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6558 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 57 06 May 2007 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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As you know, Japanese Kanji have many readings. So, unless you know the word, you can't be too sure of how to read it.
Korean Hanja usually have only one reading is what I have heard several times. Even from a Korean. Besides grammar, people have more difficulty with pronunciation and being understood in Korean. Personally, I would prefer the Korean Hangul writing system. To me, that would seem to cut the difficulty way down. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6621 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 6 of 57 07 May 2007 at 5:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Ardaschir was very clear about Korean being more difficult than Japanese. He mentioned the streamlined grammar in Japanese. In his view, the grammar is not just marginally easier, but substantively. What is more, Ardaschir considers it necessary to learn (at least) the 1800 hanja suggested by the South Korean government if you want to achieve real fluency...
I think it really depends what you want from the language. You can learn Japanese without the kanji. There are native Japanese speakers who struggle with kanji. Another aspect generally difficult for Western people are some of the Korean sounds... making a distinction between three kinds of p, t, and k where to some ears they all sound pretty much the same. Having said all this, I really don't want to take a position. I just don't know enough to make a real comparison. As was stated already, difficulty is always (at least to some degree) a matter of subjectivity. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Koreanboy8 Newbie Australia Joined 6196 days ago 16 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean | Message 7 of 57 07 May 2007 at 6:27am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know whether or not Korean is harder than Japanese becuase I don't know any Japanese.
But I can say I believe the Korean writing system to be really awesome and easy to learn. I think Japan should use it for their language.. haha The hardest thing I can see from Japanese is how the length of the word/syllable can change the meaning of what is said. I never consider grammar to be difficult unless you want to learn about a language and not how to use the language. I've never seen a 5 year old complain about how hard the grammar is in their native language. Why should we have to? Just copy the patterns till it's automatic, Language is an unconscious activity so why would you try to learn it consciously? Edited by Koreanboy8 on 07 May 2007 at 6:28am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| japkorengchi Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6461 days ago 334 posts - 355 votes | Message 8 of 57 07 May 2007 at 7:23am | IP Logged | ||
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I am doing researches on contrastive linguistics between Korean and Japanese. But my aim is to find the differences of them instead of pointing out the similarities. I hope by doing so I can tell the world that Korea is an independent nation different from the Japanese race.
Throughout the painful and tough process which I am still in, I take the view that Korean is harder than Japanese in grammar. Japanese writing is quite different from your imagination if your native language does not use Chinese characters. Even though Korean is more difficult, I receive so much help from sympathetic native speakers and they all help me to reach a new stage. Virtually NO Japanese came to my aid voluntarily on the other hand. In language learning, if the people is more friendly and helping, you will conquer the language someday. However, if they aren’t, you will just end up wasting so much time to speak a language and being discouraged and looked down on. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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