7 ms·

The differences between English and Korean

48 points by curtis 9y ago

schoen 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      > 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. I was under the impression that words are spelled according to their etymology, which only rarely helps with the meaning of unfamiliar words. > 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 learned Hochdeutsch at home and can't even do a credible impression of the local dialect, but I admit that the experience of others may differ. However, I'm quite sure that the German spelling reforms are not related to shifts in pronunciation, rather they were attempts to simplify the rule system.
      - eesmith 9y ago
        And fake etymology. "Island" is spelled with an 's' because people in the 1400s thought it was a cognate with 'isle' so changed the spelling from 'iland'. More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform#16th_and_17th_centuries_AD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo... : > From the 16th century AD onward, English writers who were scholars of Greek and Latin literature tried to link English words to their Graeco-Latin counterparts. They did this by adding silent letters to make the real or imagined links more obvious. Thus det became debt (to link it to Latin debitum), dout became doubt (to link it to Latin dubitare), sissors became scissors and sithe became scythe (as they were wrongly thought to come from Latin scindere), iland became island (as it was wrongly thought to come from Latin insula), ake became ache (as it was wrongly thought to come from Greek akhos), and so forth.[
    - wahern 9y ago
      > I am glad that English doesn't try to accomplish this AFAIU, English was phonetic, more or less. When English spelling was first formalized it closely reflected the pronunciation of Middle English. Events like the Great Vowel Shift systematically divorced the pronunciation of many syllables from their original spelling. British and American attempts to reform the spelling in response complicated things further. The spelling of diphthongs in English make much more sense after reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift The process continues. See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift
  - ajuc 9y ago
    It is very difficult, especially if you first learn from reading/writing. 25 years later and I still unconsciously pronounce some words like they would be pronounced in my language :(
no_one_ever 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
baldfat 9y ago
> 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_5 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4684-1068-6_...
- stingrae 9y ago
  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-minutes https://9gag.com/gag/3968335/learn-to-read-korean-in-15-minu...
ddoolin 9y ago
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
titanix2 9y ago
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
foobaw 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
half-kh-hacker 9y ago
It still surprises me that the US' FSI rates Korean as one of the hardest languages to learn.
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
  Growing up I was interested in learning a language that was very different than my native English, and ended up settling on Korean for a number of reasons, but the simple alphabet and lack of tonality really helped. Now I find myself wishing that I learned a tonal language, but it's much easier to say than to do.
- malloryerik 9y ago
  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.
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
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 9y ago
  > 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 9y ago
    Probably not. Chinase is not Uralic-Altaic language. May be more similar one exist in Mongolian.
peterjlee 9y ago
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.
jdmichal 9y ago
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%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=English+grammar+for+students+of https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3... 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.
darkhorn 9y ago
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.

48 points by curtis 9y ago

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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    > 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. I was under the impression that words are spelled according to their etymology, which only rarely helps with the meaning of unfamiliar words. > 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 learned Hochdeutsch at home and can't even do a credible impression of the local dialect, but I admit that the experience of others may differ. However, I'm quite sure that the German spelling reforms are not related to shifts in pronunciation, rather they were attempts to simplify the rule system.
    - eesmith 9y ago
      And fake etymology. "Island" is spelled with an 's' because people in the 1400s thought it was a cognate with 'isle' so changed the spelling from 'iland'. More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform#16th_and_17th_centuries_AD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo... : > From the 16th century AD onward, English writers who were scholars of Greek and Latin literature tried to link English words to their Graeco-Latin counterparts. They did this by adding silent letters to make the real or imagined links more obvious. Thus det became debt (to link it to Latin debitum), dout became doubt (to link it to Latin dubitare), sissors became scissors and sithe became scythe (as they were wrongly thought to come from Latin scindere), iland became island (as it was wrongly thought to come from Latin insula), ake became ache (as it was wrongly thought to come from Greek akhos), and so forth.[
  - wahern 9y ago
    > I am glad that English doesn't try to accomplish this AFAIU, English was phonetic, more or less. When English spelling was first formalized it closely reflected the pronunciation of Middle English. Events like the Great Vowel Shift systematically divorced the pronunciation of many syllables from their original spelling. British and American attempts to reform the spelling in response complicated things further. The spelling of diphthongs in English make much more sense after reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift The process continues. See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift
- ajuc 9y ago
  It is very difficult, especially if you first learn from reading/writing. 25 years later and I still unconsciously pronounce some words like they would be pronounced in my language :(

no_one_ever 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.

baldfat 9y ago

> 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_5 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4684-1068-6_...

stingrae 9y ago
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-minutes https://9gag.com/gag/3968335/learn-to-read-korean-in-15-minu...

ddoolin 9y ago

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

titanix2 9y ago

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

foobaw 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

half-kh-hacker 9y ago

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

XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
Growing up I was interested in learning a language that was very different than my native English, and ended up settling on Korean for a number of reasons, but the simple alphabet and lack of tonality really helped. Now I find myself wishing that I learned a tonal language, but it's much easier to say than to do.
malloryerik 9y ago
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.

XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago

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 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  Probably not. Chinase is not Uralic-Altaic language. May be more similar one exist in Mongolian.

peterjlee 9y ago

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.

jdmichal 9y ago

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

darkhorn 9y ago

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.