Learning Korean

[yuriyuri]

I have looked a little into Korean before and found this site:
Luke Park's Guide to Korean Grammar: Welcome to my blog!

I'm not sure how good it really is but it seems like it could be very helpful (Much like Tae Kim's Japanese grammar site)

[Miyavifan]

This is a forum I'm using.
Learn Korean Now-Index page

[November]

Post by NanteNa
Hey folks, hopefully some of you people know about this.

I will be studying Korean at university in about two years (hopefully) for about 5 years+. I was wondering if any of you had some suggestions on books or programmes that will be useful for pre-studying? Meaning for studying before going to uni, so that I won't be all brainless to begin with.

Thanks.
:'D

I've been using Rosetta Stone a lot for it lately--was a great help in getting the pronunciation down, and it has you repeat things a lot too, which helped me. I have some textbooks that I will probably get back to soon, but they were hard to start off with... Although, they had pages and pages of detailed explanations of how the different letters sounded, that didn't come close to actually being able to hear it on the Rosetta Stone.

I've found it to be a really good starting place.

한글을 읽어요?

Post by KyleGoetz
I'm curious if anyone here has studied Korean after learning Japanese to a pretty high level of proviciency. If so, was Korean easier to learn, having already gained a mastery of Japanese?

I've recently started studying Korean after several years of Japanese, and yes, I have found that knowledge of Japanese helps. The grammar is very similar.

A lot of the vocabulary is similar too.
Here is how you say the days "Wednesday, Thursday, Friday," for example:

Japanese: Suiyoubi, Mokuyoubi, Kinyoubi
Korean: Suyo'il, Mogyo'il, Keumyo'il

See the resemblance?

They have common Chinese roots... Knowing the Chinese characters from studying Japanese helps you recognize this. (水曜日、木曜日、金曜日）

"Airplane" in Japanese is hikouki. In Korean, it's pihaeng'gi. At first, it might not sound like there's much resemblance, but if you think of each of the syllables being a Chinese character...

飛 hi/pi
行 kou/haeng
機 ki/gi

So I've found knowledge of Chinese characters and Japanese words to actually be helpful in learning Korean words.

Here's an interesting one... Pan means bread in both languages. The Japanese word comes from Portuguese (Back from the 1500's I believe). A Korean friend tells me that the Korean "pan" actually came to Korean from Japanese.

[Miyavifan]

I'm not getting how it's like Chinese.

Right now I'm using books for this.

[komitsuki]

Originally Posted by Miyavifan

I'm not getting how it's like Chinese.

70% of words in Korean are Chinese-character-based in origin. If you couldn't understand Chinese characters at all, it'll be VERY hard to reach Korean fluency in a higher level.

[komitsuki]

Originally Posted by November

I've recently started studying Korean after several years of Japanese, and yes, I have found that knowledge of Japanese helps. The grammar is very similar.

In a historical sense, a lot of Japanese kanji words transmitted to Korea around the early part of the 20th century. I guess you already know the reasons behind this.

It's interesting to say, there is a growing movement in South Korea to remove a lot of Chinese-character-based words with native Korean words.

[Miyavifan]

Originally Posted by komitsuki

70% of words in Korean are Chinese-character-based in origin. If you couldn't understand Chinese characters at all, it'll be VERY hard to reach Korean fluency in a higher level.

There is also Hangul. which is different.

[komitsuki]

Originally Posted by Miyavifan

There is also Hangul. which is different.

Hangeul is a "cover-up material" for those Chinese-character-words.

[Miyavifan]

It's not cover up material.

[lself]

I'm going to start taking Korean, but I've only taken one year of Japanese. However, Korean seems a heck of a lot harder to pronounce to me.... I didn't know that about chinese-characters. But if you learn hangul...i mean, they only have one alphabet right?