Is Korean a hard language to learn?
Is it difficult to learn to speak, read/write in Korean?
Thank you in advance.
Is it difficult to learn to speak, read/write in Korean?
Thank you in advance.
Marvin
Favorite Answer
As I am a Korean, I think it's one of the hardest language all over the world.
* Writing, Talking
We have a lot of word on special case.
First, we have a lot of appellation.
# For example #
형(Male's elder brother), 누나(Male's elder sister), 남동생(Male's younger brother), 여동생(Female's younger sister), 언니(Female's elder sister) etc. 사촌((first)cousin), 오촌(second cousin),육촌(third cousin)
Second, we have many conjugation.
Same meaning, these all are used generally
~했습니다 ~하였습니다 ~했어요 ~했어
그래요? 그러해요? 그렇습니까? 그러합니까?
* Pronunciation and Just Speaking
I think it's easy to learn pronunciation unless you are Japanese or etc.
My Japanese aquaintance has hard time to learn pronunciation correctly.
We have only basically 14 consonants, 10 vowels.
ㄱ/ ㄴ /ㄷ /ㄹ /ㅁ /ㅂ /ㅅ /ㅇ /ㅈ /ㅊ /ㅋ /ㅌ /ㅍ /ㅎ
g,k / n / d,t / between r and l / m / b,p / s,sh / Ø,ng / j, ch / ch / k / t / p / h
ㅏ / ㅑ/ ㅓ/ ㅕ/ ㅗ/ ㅛ/ ㅜ/ ㅠ / ㅡ /ㅣ
a / ya / eo(sould like uh of uhuh) / yeo(sound like you of young) / o(sound like o in spanish) / yo / u / yu / eu(sould like eu of dialogue) / i(sould like between light i and strong i)
Korea words are complex body of the basic consonants, vowels.
Maybe it's easy for foreigners to study Korean.
Just a learning for few hours, you can speak Korean although you don't understand what it means.
# Writing
It's easy to write Korean, too.
Just a learning for few days, you can write Korean easily.
#Additional
We have the orthography of Korean in the Roman Alphabet, but Many people don't obey it. So when you study Korean as English(accurately Roman), It's so confusing to you.
For example, we write 부산 as Busan, Pusan. we write 언제 as EonJe, Unje, unjeh, 중국(JungGuk, ChungGuk, JungKuk, Chungkuk, ChoongGook, ChoongGuk, JungGook, etc)
And We have many word of chinese character(These days We do not use Chinese letter but use only Korean letter, as 개선, but it has similar pronunciation, cuz its root is same.) about 70%. If you are good at Chinese word or Japanese word, you can easy to understand it!
For example, 改善(improvement), Chinese says"Kaixuan", Korean says "GaeSeon sould like Kaeseon", Japanese says "Kaizen".
For even Korean student who are poor at Chinese letter, they spend ineffecient time in studying technical terms(historical, mathematical, etc).
#Advice
I met a Chinese student in Korea, He is good at Korean as Native just living in Korea for a year.
You can learn Korean as him.
In conclusion, it's easy to just speak, read, write letters, but it's hard to speak or talk, write real Korean dialogue or sth like that naturally.
Good luck~~
Lianne
The speaking is very difficult, not only for the pronunciation, but the grammar is very difficult. That's why it is considered a Level III language. However the Koreans have their own alphabet, which is a lot easier than the Chinese hanzi. It's not hard to learn how to write, though reading still requires you to know the grammar.
All in all, it's pretty hard, but through practice nothing's hard.
Erik Van Thienen
Korean, like Arabic, Japanese and Mandarin, is a Category III Language ("quite difficult for native English speakers"). It takes about 2200 class hours to become fluent, IF you are a good language learner, and IF you already speak another foreign language. That's twice as long as for Russian, Vietnames or Hindi.
Free online Korean language courses : http://www.omniglot.com/links/courses.htm#Korean