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Japanese is Harder than Korean | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| hokusai77 Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6946 days ago 212 posts - 217 votes  1 sounds Speaks: Italian*, FrenchB1, EnglishC1 Studies: GermanB1, Japanese | Message 9 of 57 07 May 2007 at 8:06am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, it really depends on whom you meet. I have never had any problems in being helped by Japanese people to improve my knowledge of the language. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6453 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 10 of 57 08 May 2007 at 9:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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There are probably many more people studying Korean than Japanese. Perhaps the novelty factor makes a difference.
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| japkorengchi Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6474 days ago 334 posts - 355 votes | Message 11 of 57 08 May 2007 at 11:01am | IP Logged | |||||
Have Korean learners outnumber their Japanese counterparts in the States? In China I think Japanese still holds the seat for the most popular foreign language.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6233 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 12 of 57 08 May 2007 at 11:17am | IP Logged | |||||
I suspect he typed it backwards. I've never met anyone in person who's learning Korean, either in Switzerland, or in the States. I was last in the States this January, and while there were quite a lot of resources for learning Japanese, there were next to none for Korean.
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| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6266 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 13 of 57 09 May 2007 at 2:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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Between video games, manga, and anime, there are definitely far more people learning Japanese. ;) As for how many people are putting in a serious effort, that's a different matter, though Japanese probably still wins. (I'm one of those relatively uncommon guys who decided to flirt with Japanese one day because of video games, but actually became serious and determined when he saw how hard it actually is, instead of running away like a little schoolgirl. ;))
It could be reasonably argued that I don't qualify to make this statement as I haven't studied Korean at all, but I'd imagine the kanji problem with Japanese is much harder than the grammar problem with Korean. Hanja are a pretty advanced topic for Korean, whereas kanji are essential for learning written Japanese. Even if you have to memorize many hanja, you can do it at a relatively slow pace, whereas I'm more or less diving into kanji to try to get the most nightmarish part of it over with. So, for the most part, this question is "Japanese kanji vs. Korean grammar", and I have trouble believing that any extra grammar rules that Korean has can be harder to learn than kanji. Perhaps you're just not using a method for studying Korean grammar that's right for you. - Kef 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Clintaroo Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6665 days ago 189 posts - 201 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Tagalog, Indonesian | Message 14 of 57 09 May 2007 at 3:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'll just say that I hardly think it's fair to say that Japanese is harder than Korean based on the usage of Chinese characters alone.
And if you look at sheer access to and the number of learning resources - Japanese is by far easier to learn in that regard. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6266 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 15 of 57 09 May 2007 at 3:57am | IP Logged | |||||
There is certainly some truth to that, and I certainly don't take a stance that "Japanese is definitely, unquestionably harder than Korean". But I think that it puts the burden of proof in the argument on Korean. I'm simply not in a position to make that judgement. But I do have something concrete and well-understood to be extremely difficult on the side of Japanese, but we've yet to really say in this thread what might make Korean harder. Just saying "the grammar" doesn't really cut it. I'm not denying that such reasons exist, merely that they haven't been stated yet. Also, kanji really is a huge obstacle. I mean, consider this: to learn the meaning of every kanji, that's 3000 distinct elements to memorize right there (1945 jouyou kanji plus about 1000 more that are commonly used), and that's not even counting how to correlate those with written words. For almost every word you learn, you have to remember its kanji, its pronunciation, and its meaning, and sometimes none of these have anything to do with each other. (To be fair, there's usuallly a correlation between the kanji and the pronunciation, but this correlation is rarely completely predictable, considering many syllables have several possible kanji, and many kanji have several possible readings. There's still an extra burden on the memory there.) Suddenly, 3000 looks like a small number; the actual number of distinct pieces of information that kanji forces you to memorize is much, much higher. Is there a similar manner in which the complexity of Korean grammar might be determined? - Kef Edited by furrykef on 09 May 2007 at 3:58am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6562 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 16 of 57 09 May 2007 at 6:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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Learning kanji is hard, but you have to learn all those words anyway. I don't think learning kanji when you learn a word is much harder than just learning the word; it even gives you an extra mnemonic hook. There are very few words I know for which I don't know the kanji — at least well enough to read, if not write.
In other words, in my opinion, learning 10,000 Japanese words and how to write them (with kanji) is only a little harder than learning (say) 10,000 English words and how to spell them, or 10,000 Korean words (with their essential hanja).
For every word in any language you learn, you must remember its spelling, its pronunciation, and its meaning, and sometimes none of these have anything to do with each other. ;) By the way, here is an article on the very topic everyone's discussing here. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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