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Korean language profile adjustments | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Collaborative writing |  | |
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6218 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes  Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 26 15 August 2007 at 12:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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The administrator has given me a permission to make possible adjustments to the language profile in this collaborative writing section. So here I go. :-)
INTRODUCTION No text yet. USEFULNESS Korean is the official language of only two countries, and this may not make it particularly appealing. However, if you ever decide to visit Korea, and want to get around and meet people, I'd say Korean is definitely a must. Korea is a highly monolingual country where the majority of the population cannot speak fluent English. Of course, nearly everyone below 60 has had some school English, and there is a very high and increasing number of students in English classes. Yet the majority will either try to avoid speaking English since they are scared of making mistakes, or speak heavily Korean-accented English which may also be nowhere near fluency. With exception of a few young Seoul-dwellers, 99% of the time, you'll struggle to find someone who is willing to speak English. Learning Korean may also bring discounts with Japanese, but you shouldn't think of Korean or Japanese as a "bridge" language from English to the other. Also, learning Japanese as a Korean is said to be harder than learning French as an English speaker - a definite indicator that Korean cannot be used to "bridge" the gap between European languages and Japanese. CHIC FACTOR Among Westerners, the fact that you speak, or even study, such an exotic, distant and difficult language will be seen as "chic". The ability to read Korean script, Hangul, is seen highly fashionable, since it appears like some complex coded message to non-speakers. A good command of Korean is also highly valued among Koreans. They'll be astonished yet pleased to see that a foreigner is learning their own language. The better your Korean, the warmer they will receive you. Plus, they are quite generous and will forgive your mistakes easily, although they may smile at your pronunciation. ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE No text yet TRAVEL OPPORTUNITIES No text yet COUNTRIES Korean has the official language status in two countries: North Korea and South Korea. It is also the official language of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China. SPEAKERS According to the census in 2005, there are 49 million speakers in South Korea, and 23 million speakers in North Korea. There are also around 4 to 5.5 million expatriates and ethnic Koreans outside Korea who speak the language. Many of them are in Mainland China, Japan, the former Soviet Union, the United States and Brazil. VARIATIONS Largely, Korean language can be divided into North Korean and South Korean, which are getting more and more different in orthograph and acquisition of new vocabulary. There is also a different dialect used in Yanbian in China. However, since contact with North Koreans is quite limited, I will concentrate on South Korean for now. South Korean is again divided into several dialects. The standard is the Seoul Dialect, which is taught to all Korean students and understood by almost all Koreans throughout the world. However, some of the dialects, such as Jeju Dialect, are almost unintelligible for Seoul speakers due to their unique grammatical features and vocabulary. For many potential learners, the Standard Seoul Dialect is highly recommended, since this dialect is understood by the majority of Koreans globally. If one decides to stay in Jeju Island, the Jeju Dialect could be a possibility, but not in terms of usefulness in the long run. CULTURE No text yet. --------------------------------------------- DIFFICULTIES: ***** DIFFICULTY Korean is a quite difficult language to tackle for anyone (with possible exception of Japanese speakers), and more so for Westerners. For English speakers, I'd give Korean 5 cacti: extremely difficult to learn. Some learners may find it impossible to learn, but any language is possible. It just takes more time and dedication. PRONUNCIATION Good news: Korean has no tones nor accentuation rules. :-) However, it has sets of consonants that sound very similar to Western ears. e.g. G, GG and K(ㄱ, ㄲ and ㅋ). It does take a long time to distinguish them and produce them. The best way to do this is thinking that none of these sounds exist in your native language and learn with an open-mind There are also vowels that are pronounced similarly by Seoul-dwellers. e.g. AE and E (ㅐ and ㅔ). This may cause a slight problem for learners. Koreans also speak fast, with a distinctive rhythm that is hard to get in the beginning. The majority of them are not used to speaking slowly and clearly for non-natives, which may hinder your listening abilities. GRAMMAR Korean is an agglutinative language, and shows many non-Indo-European features. An example is the famous SOV word order. There are also particles/postpositions and classifiers that take a while to get used to. Verbs may take any of +600 endings, and so can adjectives take any of around 500 endings. Korean also has honorifics in both nouns and verbs, with 7 speech levels for different uses. In addition, Korean has two sets of numbers for different occasions. But it is not all that horrible. There is no case system, no adjective-noun agreement and no verb-subject agreement in Korean. There are no noun/adjective declensions, and there is only one way of forming plurals. You don't need to worry about getting articles or gender right, because there aren't any in Korean. Plus, it is not necessary to know all verb endings and speech levels. In fact, one or two of the most polite speech levels are not in use nowadays. VOCABULARY Vocabulary is quite difficult to acquire for Westerners since there are very few, if any, cognates. There are some loan words, however, and these are quite easy to figure out. e.g. television, juice, bus, etc. The rest of the vocabulary consists of Sino-Korean words, formed out of Chinese characters pronounced in Korean way, and "pure" Korean words. As a result, many common words often have more than one way of saying it. e.g. Mother/Mum- 엄마(um-ma), 어머니(uh-muh-nee) and 모친 (mo-chin). This could make improving vocabulary difficult. TRANSPARENCY Luckily for foreign learners, Seoul-dwellers tend to use English loan words heavily in conversations (if not OVER-USED). However, most of the language is not transparent to Westerners. Due to a large number of Sino-Korean words, Chinese and Japanese speakers will find Korean more transparent. Hence, it could be argued that learning traditional Chinese characters (Hanja) helps your Korean as Latin does your English. SPELLING As there are at least 3 different Romanisation methods which make Korean more confusing, it is best to learn the Korean script, Hangul, from the beginning, and it can be mastered within a week. The orthograph is rather user-friendly, though the written language is not 100% phonetic, contrary to many Korean's claims. However, after learning rules of assimilation, you'll be able to read most written materials correctly. However, writing down what your have heard is a bit more difficult as many consonants sound the same when the are final sounds of each syllable. Korean if full of Sino-Korean words, and therefore, it is definitely advantageous to know Chinese characters/Hanja. However, Korean-Hanja relationship is like French-Latin relationship. You'll only come across them in classical literature, ancient scripts and very rarely in newspapers and popular modern novels. Learning Hanja is not a must even to reach fluency in Korean, although this depends on your definition of fluency. But learning Hanja won't hurt you: they will help you in Sino-Korean vocabulary acquisition. TIME NEEDED According to FSI, +1200 hours of studies are needed to reach proficiency in the language. However, if you are hoping just to deal with everyday situations or learn "traveller's" Korean, the time taken will be significantly less. After reaching basic fluency in the language, the progress will get really steady. Learning numerous Sino-Korean homonyms and synonyms, recognising and using different speech levels and getting used to different verb and adjective endings takes a lot of time. Of course, if you study in Korea, the time taken will reduce considerably. -------------------------------------- RESOURCES BOOKS There are a few good Korean text books available nowadays. I must confess I have not much experience with these materials since Korean is my native language, but these are what Korean learners told me. FSI Korean - This is available free on the internet, but its romanization is horrible. Major drawback is it never teaches you Hangul through out the course. The drills are useful for spoken Korean, though. Ganada - Good price, good detail, good audio (once the gaps are edited a little) - andee Handbook of Korean Vocabulary by Miho Choo & William O'Grady - an excellent source for systematically learning Korean vocabulary. Korean Grammar for International Learners - a decent reference book for Korean grammar. It has all sorts of grammatical features of Korean, English explanations of each grammar point, multiple examples of each grammar point (with English translations), and an index of all the grammar in the back. Consider it like a dictionary for Korean grammar. SCHOOLS There are good language programs offered by Korean universities. I think the most popular two are Yonsei University (http://www.yskli.com/) and Sogang University (http://klec.sogang.ac.kr/). LINKS There is an online course by Sogang University for foreigners which some learners found quite useful. Here is the link There are also podcasts for Korean learners such as: http://www.koreanclass101.com/ -------------------------------------------------------- Open to any criticisms and comments.. Help needed for sections with no text. Thanks in advance. :) Edited by Jiwon on 29 August 2009 at 5:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JasonChoi Diglot Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6141 days ago 274 posts - 298 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Latin | Message 2 of 26 15 August 2007 at 10:25am | IP Logged | |||||
Korean is also spoken in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province (mainland China) as roughly 40% of the population is ethnically Korean (i.e. josun-jok, 조선족). In Yanji, for example, it is possible to travel around without ever having to speak in Chinese (though Chinese is obviously much easier), likewise signs are generally written in both Korean and Chinese. Korean words are generally spelled with North Korean spelling (i.e. 이 is usually written as '리', 내명 is often written as 랭면). Additionally, they have a very different dialect, which is comprehensible, but not without some misunderstandings.
The chosunjok (조선족) in China have their own particular dialect which resembles the North Hamkyungdo dialect perhaps largely due to proximity. Unfortunately, I cannot explain how their dialect sounds. Additionally, the Pyongando dialect (i.e. the typical N. Korean dialect heard on N. Korean TV) is also quite distinct from the Hamkyungdo dialect. As expected, chosunjok vocabulary is also quite different in that they use Koreanized pronunciation of Chinese words rather than using the typical South Korean equivalent. For example, graduate is 졸업, but often, I've heard 빌업 (毕业) many times. Moreover, Konglish words aren't really used as they are in S. Korea. They would code-switch with Chinese words. For example, they wouldn't normally say, '아이스크림', they would just say 'bingqilin' (冰淇淋) in the middle of a Korean sentence. Interestingly, N. Koreans don't use either the Konglish or Chinese words as they try to maintain pure Korean words. For example, they say '어름보숭이' (which is something like 'ice fluffy thing' since I don't know how to translate 보숭이). One particular feature I've noticed with the chosunjok dialect is contractions. For example, "했습니다" would often sound like, "했슴다". Moreover, the verb endings generally do not end in '-아요 or -어요' form. The '-습니다' form seems to be much more common. The Korean spoken in the North also seems to use the '-습니다' form far more than in the South. Many beginner Korean textbooks which almost unanimously overemphasize this particular form seem to be far more applicable in the North and in Yanbian than in S. Korea. The chosunjok, by the way, refer to the Korean language as '조선말' (chosunmal) like in N. Korea, unlike 한국말 (hangukmal) in S. Korea. Alright, my thoughts are all over the place and I don't feel like reorganizing my thoughts. I hope this was interesting to read. -Jason Edited by JasonChoi on 15 August 2007 at 10:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6141 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 26 15 August 2007 at 10:41am | IP Logged | |||||
I would note that the language is perhaps most difficult for speakers of non-tonal Romance or Germanic languages, but is easy for Japanese speakers and quite manageable for speakers of Asian tonal languages in general. I feel the majority of languages in the guide are somewhat exaggerated in difficulty (even when written from the perspectives of English speakers), and it would be great if we could start to reverse this trend with languages added to the existing guide. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JasonChoi Diglot Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6141 days ago 274 posts - 298 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Latin | Message 4 of 26 15 August 2007 at 10:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hm.. I realize I've posted details which are way off on tangents. Feel free to ignore whatever doesn't fit.
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| LuckyNomad Groupie Korea, South Joined 6129 days ago 79 posts - 89 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 5 of 26 15 August 2007 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Besides talking about the difficulties, you could also mention that you can often ommit most of a sentence and just say the verb. There are no definite or indefinite articles to worry about, no feminine/masculines.
You can also mention the frequent use of "Uri," rather than my, I, me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6218 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 26 16 August 2007 at 5:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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@JasonChoi: I added COUNTRIES and SPEAKERS sections to reflect your contribution
@LuckyNomad: I edited the grammar section @FSI: "I would note that the language is perhaps most difficult for speakers of non-tonal Romance or Germanic languages, but is easy for Japanese speakers and quite manageable for speakers of Asian tonal languages in general." I don't really get what you mean by this statement. How is speaking tonal Asian languages supposed to help with Korean? Korean, although it has a certain rhythm, is not a tonal language. Also, I tried my best to make Korean sound more "possible" in the revised profile than in the original profile. Do you have any suggestions to make it sound easier? Also, any suggestions about CULTURE, TRAVEL and TIME NEEDED will be welcome. Those of you who have "learned" Korean (unlike me) could also tell me good learning materials to put in the profile. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7100 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 26 16 August 2007 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think you should be more explicit about exactly which two countries where Korean is the official language. Perhaps you could also mention that Korean is recognized as one of the minority nationalities in China and the sizable Korean communities around the world.
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| Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6218 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 26 17 August 2007 at 5:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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@ Victor: that's why I added COUNTRIES section as the ones that will be edited from the current profile. Edited by Jiwon on 17 August 2007 at 6:03am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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