
The differences between English and Korean - curtis
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/korean.htm
======
ddoolin
I learned Korean the fun way, while living in Korea (Seoul) over a number of
years and starting a family with a Korean woman. The language itself seems
very technical and lacks the many "exceptions" you find in, say, English,
which to me makes it a tad less frustrating to learn in the beginning,
although the myriad of verb stems and when to use them may just drive you
insane in the end.

In any case, if you are even remotely interested, I'd also definitely
recommend just starting with the alphabet to see how you like it. I recall it
being referred to as "the morning language (alphabet?)" in school since you
can learn to read in a morning if you're devoted enough. In my experience,
this is mostly true but you will need more time to grasp the rules (e.g.
sounds change when placed next to each other) and some of the finer points of
the pronunciation (어 vs 오, etc).

There are many good resources out there but the Korean subreddit is a great
place to start -- [https://reddit.com/r/korean](https://reddit.com/r/korean)

------
no_one_ever
Having studied Korean for a couple years in college, this is a fairly
comprehensive 'technical' introduction to Korean for English speakers. If
anybody is interested in learning Korean, I encourage you to try learning how
to read Korean/Hangul. It should take no more than an afternoon as the
language was engineered to be accessible and easy to pick up.

~~~
moufestaphio
Yeah, Hangul is pretty easy to learn. The sounds were a little trickier for
me. Grammar is basically the same as Japanese.

I believe Duolingo released their intro course for Korean recently too if
anyone wants to learn some basics.

------
jdmichal
For anyone learning a language and who likes this style of thing, I highly
recommend the series "English Grammar for Students of <language>". Each
section has two parts. The first walks though the subtleties of the English
grammar, which for native speakers without a lot of formal knowledge is often
necessary to understand when translating. The second section walks though the
constructions in the other language, of which there are often more than one
depending on what exactly the English version is accomplishing.

Here's an Amazon search to get started:

[https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-
alias%3...](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-
alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=English+grammar+for+students+of)

You're looking for the ones with colorful covers, and the black band on the
right side with the name of the target language. Though, it looks like there's
not one for Korean.

------
schoen
Part of a series:
[http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/](http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/)

Interesting stuff -- I wish each one were treated in more detail!

~~~
yorwba
Interestingly, the divergence between spelling and pronunciation of English
words is frequently mentioned as a special difficulty for speakers of
languages that are written phonetically, but it seems like this would be a
problem for everyone. Probably, those who are already used to non-phonetic
scripts don't expect English to be any easier and therefore that particular
point isn't as salient.

It would also be interesting to have a comparison in the opposite direction:
things that English speakers frequently struggle with when learning the
respective language.

~~~
gumby
Interestingly, the divergence between spelling and pronunciation of English
words if frequently mentioned as a special difficulty for speakers of
languages that are written phonetically, but it seems like this would be a
problem for everyone.

I am glad that English doesn't try to accomplish this (French is even more
extreme in this regard). In English words are roughly spelled in terms of
their root meaning, which makes it easier for a native speaker to figure out
the meaning of an unfamiliar word. In fact the fashion for "phonics" (trying
to learn English starting with phonetic structures) has screwed up reading and
spelling for two generations of American kids.

A phonetic approach has a couple of problems. The first is the choice of whose
phonemes to use. Any language with many speakers will have several dialects,
so one single dialect must be chosen as authoritative. The second is that
pronunciation inherently shifts over time so you must continually tinker with
spelling or end up with a written language full of head-scratchers (it's no
surprise that spelling bees have been prime time TV fodder in France). German
is a good example: offical spelling and grammar corresponds with Hochdeutch
(which is not used at home by a majority of people, though perhaps recently a
plurality?) and which was offically adjusted twice in the 20th century alone
to account for pronunciation shifts.

I don't know Korean but with 80 million speakers I'd think that it suffers
from the same issues, although perhaps hangul's structure manages to exert a
conservative force on pronunciation.

~~~
ajuc
> In English words are roughly spelled in terms of their root meaning, which
> makes it easier for a native speaker to figure out the meaning of an
> unfamiliar word.

Polish doesn't do this, almost everything is phonetic, and I don't have any
problems decoding meaning of borrowed words. We have lots of loan words from
Latin, German, French, Italian, and it's usually straightforward, because the
polonization of spelling works with simple rules (English does this as well
BTW).

    
    
        transposition = transpozycja
        position = pozycja
        opposition = opozycja
        conjugation = koniugacja
        computer = komputer
        battery = bateria
        accumulator = akumulator
        engineer = inżynier
        logic = logika
        mathematics = matematyka
        algebra = algebra
    

I don't see how English version is any easier.

> The second is that pronunciation inherently shifts over time so you must
> continually tinker with spelling

Not really? Last spelling change was before WW2, and it was very minor. Polish
texts from renaissance are readably by middle school students with no
preparation. Sound a bit archaic, but perfectly understandable. Having smaller
country with common media helps I guess.

~~~
yebyen
> > The second is that pronunciation inherently shifts over time so you must
> continually tinker with spelling

> Not really? Last spelling change was before WW2

I am not an expert but I've taken a class called language variation and
identity, and I can tell you at least that this is a generally accepted
principle of language evolution, that one of the most common ways that
languages change is by shifting pronunciation over long periods of time.

There is also always a counter-example to every rule such as this one; this is
not a hard science like chemistry or physics where the results will be the
same every time, but the general principals are definitely reoccurring all the
time in all languages.

Consonants that are difficult to say will be "elided," or omitted in
colloquial pronunciations, and sometimes this will result in a spelling
change. Phonemes will be "assimilated" into the other sounds that they are
nearby so that the combinations are easier to say, or easier to distinguish
from one another, and sometimes this will also result in a spelling change.

Or you can imagine sometimes language might change for no other reason than
because a new large migrant population finds a word is confusingly similar to
a swear/curse expression from their native language, and it makes them
uncomfortable to pronounce it in the native way... or more predictably because
the migrant population does not agree on the pronunciation of a vowel, the
regional dialect may change over time to favor their native pronunciation. Or
other reasons we won't have thought of, but these changes are often gradual
and not noticeable by a person within their lifetime. That the last spelling
change in Poland was before WW2 does not sound like strong evidence that it
does not undergo the same transformations over time.

Some languages with stricter phonetic rules about how spelling of words maps
directly to pronunciation may shift less. Some changes are harder to detect
from written records of the language (especially vowel shifts.) Sometimes a
linguistic authority will intervene, with varying degrees of success, to
prevent (or instigate) a change. Even in Polish, if you go back far enough you
might be surprised: this poster on Stack Exchange[1] seems to be saying that
there was a big vowel shift in Polish, but it was more than 400 years ago.

[1]:
[https://english.stackexchange.com/a/127564](https://english.stackexchange.com/a/127564)

~~~
ajuc
Well, yes, but one minor change a century doesn't seem to be a problem. Texts
from 1545 are still more readable in Polish than in English, so abandoning
phoneticity doesn't seem to matter that much.

~~~
yebyen
Yeah, "phoneticity" is a new word for me, but I'm assuming you mean retaining
the (sometimes bizarre) original spelling of loan words so that it's clearer
where they came from.

In a language like Polish where rules are rules, I think you will be able to
see fewer shifts in texts. I think where you would notice a real difference is
if you could get a recording of a Polish speaker from 1545. (That is, if you
could somehow get a recording from 1545 without somehow also making it
available to most of the people since 1545. It's going to be interesting to
see 1000 years from now how the availability of recorded media at scale is
going to change the basis of new language evolution.)

~~~
ajuc
Sorry, by "abandoning phoneticity" I just meant "script becoming non-
phonetic". Like what happened in English. So you're essentially right.

------
titanix2
If you know either Mandarin or Japanese, a northern variety could probably
picked a bit more easily as the initial of Sino-Korean words are more
consistent with what you already know.

Example (English North/South ; Chinese Chinese Japanese):

\- work rodong/nodong láodòng 勞動 rōdō

\- history ryôksa/yôksha lìshǐ 歷史 rekishi

\- woman nyôja/yôja nǚzǐ 女子 joshi

------
baldfat
> Alphabet: The Korean alphabet is called hangul.

This is the best alphabet I have learned so far.

"Many linguists consider Hangul to be the most logical writing system in the
world, partly because the shapes of its consonants mimic the shapes of the
speaker's mouth when pronouncing each consonant."
[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4684-1068-6_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4684-1068-6_5)

~~~
stingrae
This comment reminds me of this hangul tutorial, which makes it pretty easy to
learn: [https://9gag.com/gag/3968335/learn-to-read-korean-
in-15-minu...](https://9gag.com/gag/3968335/learn-to-read-korean-
in-15-minutes)

------
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
Learning to speak basic Korean as a native English speaker the things that
stuck out to me:

It took a lot of practice to actually get all of the syllables of a
complicated verb ending, especially some of the nuanced ways of saying maybe,
there are so many common ways to hedge your predictions of the future. The
double consonants really were difficult to get down.

I spent most of my time speaking in the wrong honorific, even at a basic level
you are taught at least 3, and they are applied to every sentence. Thankfully
where I was foreigners weren't super common and were always given a large
amount of leeway in mistakes with the language/culture.

I still think some phrases or concepts are funny, i.e. to say something tastes
bad you say there is no taste. To say you are hungry you say that your stomach
is empty, to say you are thirsty you say your throat is dry.

~~~
kafkaesque
> To say you are hungry you say that your stomach is empty, to say you are
> thirsty you say your throat is dry.

That's interesting.

It's the same in Japanese.

I wonder if it's the same in Chinese.

~~~
darkhorn
Probably not. Chinase is not Uralic-Altaic language. May be more similar one
exist in Mongolian.

------
peterjlee
I've been wondering why Korean and English is so different and one obvious
reason is geographical. If humans originated from Africa and spread East and
West, Korea is pretty much at the Eastern end of the spectrum and England is
pretty close to the Western end of the spectrum.

------
foobaw
As a native Korean speaker, learning Russian was probably the most difficult
experience. I still can't figure out the proper accents. I also don't know
enough about linguistics to understand why it's so difficult.

In contrast, learning English and Spanish were trivial in comparison.

~~~
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
I am a native English speaker and at different times could get by (albeit with
plenty of confusion on both sides) in korean and spanish. I thought the
phonemes for spanish and korean were really quite similar, I even kept on
mixing the two.

------
darkhorn
Interesting. Most of these rules in Korean also apply in Turkish and
Hungarian. So, not an allien language like English. It looks easy to learn.

------
half-kh-hacker
It still surprises me that the US' FSI rates Korean as one of the hardest
languages to learn.

~~~
malloryerik
Why? In my experience English-speaking learners of Chinese do better than
learners of Korean, and learners of Japanese do about the same if not better.

I speak four and have studied several languages, including Korean and
Japanese, Korean in a hardcore way, and found it about as hard as they come
despite some things like hangul. Indeed hangul doesn't always help because
reading Chinese words in Korean (meaning the majority), the sounds are clear
but the information in the characters is lost. Since characters usually come
in pairs or triples, knowing at least one will give insight to the others, and
they commonly carry hints about pronunciation, whereas in Korean the purely
phonetic approach of modern hangul relies on context. If you can't see what a
sentence is about and don't instantly recognize some important words, you'll
have a hard way in. That said, the Japanese multiple pronunciations for
Chinese characters (native words using Chinese characters plus regular loan
words) is maddening.

Korean grammar gets confusing quickly, it's "backwards" or kind of inside out
to English-speakers, kind of like the Lisp of natural languages. Written
sentences grow into complex labyrinths.

Japanese is another natural language Lisp but more streamlined in grammar and
far simpler on pronunciation if outlandish in writing systems.

Listening and pronunciation is also sometimes perilous. I'm not talking about
the way that vowels can drift, but actually hearing what someone has said.
This problem doesn't really come up you when people learn their hotel and taxi
Korean and then claim to speak it.

Anyway of course Korean can be learned but to engage in true discussion about
a complex and subtle issue takes several years of focused study and practical
experience, and I mean for most people more than five years, though experience
in Chinese or Japanese will help almost as much as studying/practicing Korean
itself. A year at the foreign service institute is just like a coat of priming
paint when it comes to the more difficult languages.

