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Japanese is Harder than Korean | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6496 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 33 of 57 07 February 2011 at 5:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Why is French considered the hardest of all Romance languages? Though it has most of the grammatical quirks of its siblings, it also has those relentless liaisons and the silent letters that appear only at certain times. Korean has that as well, IMO edging out Japanese because of it.
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| Segata Triglot Groupie Germany Joined 4965 days ago 64 posts - 125 votes Speaks: German*, Japanese, English Studies: Korean, Esperanto | Message 34 of 57 07 February 2011 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Obviously, I can only speak from my own experience, but Japanese seems a lot more straightforward to me. Japanese does get harder once you reach a higher advanced level, but overall, from what I've experienced so far, Japanee is much easier to acquire than Korean.
1. Pronounciation. With the exception of pitch accent (which takes some getting used to), Japanese pronounciation is very straightforward. 2. Grammar. Although the structure is very similar, there are more exceptions in Korean etc. Classical Japanese on the other hand can be fairly mind-boggling at times. I expect classical Korean to be even worse. ;) Maybe someone can elaborate. 3. Reading. Yes, you read that right. Once you get past a certain point (maybe about 2000 Kanji), Chinese characters will make reading Japanese texts a lot easier. You can easily skim Japanese texts and figure out the meaning of new compounds. I really miss that now that I'm learning Korean. Edit: Whoops, typo. Edited by Segata on 14 February 2011 at 10:25am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5698 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 35 of 57 13 February 2011 at 9:46am | IP Logged | ||
Honestly, these arguments around Hanja or no Hanja... if learning and knowing hanja is a necessity to get true fluency, then there is an entire generation of Koreans who don't speak their own language fluent (plus the majority of north koreans)... On the side: so many are quoting Ardaschir... I accept that he is very knowledgeable, but he lived in Korea years ago and a lot has changed, languages do... On the other side, I do believe the Korean pronunciation to be harder than japanese... trying out both, I still struggle with Korean pronunciation as opposed to Japanese... Dunno about grammar 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6743 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 36 of 57 14 February 2011 at 4:13am | IP Logged | ||
Come on now, one's saying that Koreans are less fluent in their own native tongue because they don't use hanja... Just that the lack of hanja makes it more difficult for learners of the language to figure out and remember unfamiliar words. I'm not sure what's so controversial about this statement. I have never studied Korean, but in Japanese I am sure that the kanji makes reading really smooth for me even if I haven't studied many words on the page before. On the occasions that I've had to read something in hiragana/romaji, it was a real struggle to figure out unfamiliar words based on context alone and tell apart all those homonyms (e.g. my dictionary shows over 20 possibilities for the pronunciation 「しょうこう」.) As a few before me have said, learning kanji is a big hurdle that, once you clear it, pays dividends in the long-run. Korean seems to have less homonyms than Japanese in its Sinetic loanwords, due to a richer phoneme inventory. So I imagine that this would be less of a problem in Korean than in Japanese, and therefore learning the hanja would provide a smaller payoff for the learner's efforts . But posts on this thread by Korean learners suggest that homonyms are still is a great problem nonetheless. So that observation combined with my experience with kanji in Japanese makes me very ready to believe the Professor's assertion that the hanja are needed for a learner to gain a strong command of the vocabulary. Particularly, his report of hitting a brick wall with regard to vocabulary, and then his vocab acquisition "snowballing" after he learned the hanja immediately rang some bells with me as a Japanese learner and teacher. When Korean learners claim the hanja aren't necessary for a learner, and appear to be baffled by the Professor's statement, I wonder if it's because they simply have never tried. Of course, this is just speculation, and I'd be interested in hearing from a Korean learner who has learned at least a few hundred hanja, who doesn't feel satisfied that it was necessary. Those who are averse to learning the hanja in Korean usually say "Nobody uses them anymore", "You can get along just fine without them", "Even the native speakers hardly know them, and they seem to be speaking just fine". Again, I haven't studied Korean, but I think that the needs of an L2 learner are not quite the same as those of a native speaker. When Asians learn English, they often have to study Greek and Latin roots. What percent of (non-language geek) native English speakers can tell you that the root of "dictionary" and "contradict" has to do with speaking? Do we even need to know? But for a learner of English without a history in that tradition, they're a great help in acquiring new vocabulary. Edited by Lucky Charms on 14 February 2011 at 4:27am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| emkaos Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5074 days ago 9 posts - 19 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Korean | Message 37 of 57 08 September 2011 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my opinion, you can achieve true fluency without knowing hanja, but you'll need an (for foreign students) unrealistic amount of exposure. If a Korean native could, at one time in history, learn it in 20 years of full exposure while covering a wide range of topics at school, doesn't mean a foreign learner of the language can do the same. Even then, I can't imagine handling some professional topics without hanja knowledge.
I resisted learning hanja for a long time, even though I learned a lot of kanji when studying Japanese. I found it hard to learn something you never see. Hanja are always there, but hidden like behind a curtain of hangeul. So you don't have that automatic reinforcement you have when you read Japanese and reinforce the kanji. What got me study them in the end, was 1. those rare sinokorean words you only encounter once a year or so, they are often so much easier to remember if you know the hanja or know at least one of the hanja and 2. without hanja it's hard to distinguish between similar sinokorean words. There are so many words that somewhat mean the same but differ a little in connotation. Hanja helps to keep these words apart. I don't know if learning Korean is harder than learning Japanese. But in my case it was a lot more confusing and frustrating. So maybe it's not more difficult but for some people it feels like it is, because of the confusion and frustration. Edited by emkaos on 08 September 2011 at 12:15pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Leurre Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5219 days ago 219 posts - 372 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Korean, Haitian Creole, SpanishC2 Studies: Japanese | Message 38 of 57 03 October 2011 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I never understood how Hanja really help that much in the learning process.
When you get to a certain point in your studies where it becomes necessary to distinguish hard words/very similar words/ words with the same roots, then you're already in my experience at the point where you can tell what nuance the words in question have without knowing any separate system of writing. What is 한정, and how it is different from 제한, 제한 from 제약, etc? This is something you could learn by going through the 1800 or so hanja that some generations learn... Or you could simply go by what you already know based on everything you've seen that has the character 제 in it, and the same for 정, and 한, etc. Simply thinking about that has always given me whatever nuance or understanding was needed. Also I get a much more vivid picture of what something means when I base it on words I have already learnt, as opposed to on a whole new system I need to get used to. To what is the difference between 성립 and 확립? One can know it if they've learnt the Hanja, but one could understand it better, and how to use it, if they have heard of 구 성, 확정, etc You can do it just as well without learning the characters tied to each word honestly. That Korean learning generally does not include Hanja is probably something that counts towards it being easier (easier than if it did include Hanja, not easier that Japanese necessarily) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DNB Bilingual Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4680 days ago 47 posts - 80 votes Speaks: Finnish*, Estonian*, English | Message 39 of 57 03 October 2011 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | ||
That is certainly a valid point, and if it suits you then that's great, more time saved. It wouldn't work for me, since I have only studied 325 Hanja so far but I already know 7 사's (社, 事, 史, 使, 四, 死, 寫), 6 화's (化, 和, 話, 花, 畵, 火), 6 전's (全, 戰, 電, 前, 傳, 典) et cetera. For me, at least, having these Hanjas as visual clues to remember the different possible meanings for similar syllables has actually made it easier. You seem to be fluent in Korean though, which is great if you can understand the advanced vocab without Hanja. On the other hand, for learners like me, it is a useful tool. Edited by DNB on 04 October 2011 at 8:42am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5202 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 40 of 57 05 October 2011 at 8:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I think part of the disagreement here is due to mixing the idea of the "difficulty" of the languages and the "time" involved to learn.
I don't think Japanese is a difficult language at all really, but it takes an enormous amount of time due to the writing system. Korean might have a higher "difficulty" due to pronunciation and perhaps slightly due to grammar, but it could still take less time to learn than Japanese. Sure, the use of kanji can be a nice help in reading situations later on, but getting to that point in the first place requires a massive time investment. Edited by Sandman on 05 October 2011 at 8:18am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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