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But Koreans are still required to learn Kanjis right? Even with many shared/loan words through history, learning several thousands characters still doesn't feel

But Koreans are still required to learn Kanjis right? Even with many shared/loan words through history, learning several thousands characters still doesn't feel easy enough to me. While in many countries, people start learning English when they are in elementary schools. Upon until getting out of college, that is some decent years spent on English alone. While the language itself is significantly different, more reading and extension of vocabulary should the few pending items to master English from that point on.

ezoe 7y ago
You still have to learn a lot of irregular spellings in English or any other natural languages anyway. Even if the spelling is perfectly regular, you still have to learn a lot of words. At that sense, it's no harder than any other languages.
barry-cotter 7y ago
Koreans learn the hanja, which are basically identical to traditional Chinese characters (hanzi) in secondary school. Kanji are more divergent from hanzi than kanji and if you want to be able to read a newspaper or textbook you’d probably need to add about 700 characters to the 1800 generally taught in Korea but that is a massive leg up. Japanese and Korean have very similar morphemes and grammar. And English education in Korea is historically dire though improving. They are not going to be mastering English after secondary school, on average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja > South Korean primary schools abandoned the teaching of Hanja in 1971, although they are still taught as part of the mandatory curriculum in grade 6. They are taught in separate courses in South Korean high schools, separately from the normal Korean-language curriculum. Formal Hanja education begins in grade 7 (junior high school) and continues until graduation from senior high school in grade 12. A total of 1,800 Hanja are taught: 900 for junior high, and 900 for senior high (starting in grade 10). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Japanese_and_Korean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Japanese_and_Kor... > Japanese and Korean both have an agglutinative morphology in which verbs may function as prefixes[13] and a subject–object–verb (SOV) typology.[14][15][16] They are both topic-prominent, null-subject languages. Both languages rely heavily on turning nouns into verbs utilizing "to do" (する and 하다). > Modern Korean and Japanese share a similar system of demonstrative pronouns: i- (이), ku- (그) and ce- (저) for Korean corresponding to the Japanese ko- (こ), so- (そ) and a- (あ)(“this”, “that” and “that over there”). They both lack a compulsory distinction of plurality (for example "an apple" vs "apples" is usually not specifically distinguished).
- tanilama 7y ago
  From my interaction with Korean people here in US, since the modern Korean language has moved on to its indigenous Hangul system, their ability to understand Hanja is limited, nor do they need such ability in daily life.
  - lifthrasiir 7y ago
    It is correct that Hanja is no longer used in daily life, but most people do know enough Hanja to start with. It is still mandatory to learn Hanja in middle schools (AFAIK), and since Hangul is pervasive now the use of Hanja ironically adds a good visual cue---many newspapers frequently use 美 or 英 in place of USA or UK and people is fine with that.

ezoe 7y ago

You still have to learn a lot of irregular spellings in English or any other natural languages anyway. Even if the spelling is perfectly regular, you still have to learn a lot of words. At that sense, it's no harder than any other languages.

barry-cotter 7y ago

Koreans learn the hanja, which are basically identical to traditional Chinese characters (hanzi) in secondary school. Kanji are more divergent from hanzi than kanji and if you want to be able to read a newspaper or textbook you’d probably need to add about 700 characters to the 1800 generally taught in Korea but that is a massive leg up. Japanese and Korean have very similar morphemes and grammar. And English education in Korea is historically dire though improving. They are not going to be mastering English after secondary school, on average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja > South Korean primary schools abandoned the teaching of Hanja in 1971, although they are still taught as part of the mandatory curriculum in grade 6. They are taught in separate courses in South Korean high schools, separately from the normal Korean-language curriculum. Formal Hanja education begins in grade 7 (junior high school) and continues until graduation from senior high school in grade 12. A total of 1,800 Hanja are taught: 900 for junior high, and 900 for senior high (starting in grade 10). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Japanese_and_Korean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Japanese_and_Kor... > Japanese and Korean both have an agglutinative morphology in which verbs may function as prefixes[13] and a subject–object–verb (SOV) typology.[14][15][16] They are both topic-prominent, null-subject languages. Both languages rely heavily on turning nouns into verbs utilizing "to do" (する and 하다). > Modern Korean and Japanese share a similar system of demonstrative pronouns: i- (이), ku- (그) and ce- (저) for Korean corresponding to the Japanese ko- (こ), so- (そ) and a- (あ)(“this”, “that” and “that over there”). They both lack a compulsory distinction of plurality (for example "an apple" vs "apples" is usually not specifically distinguished).

tanilama 7y ago
From my interaction with Korean people here in US, since the modern Korean language has moved on to its indigenous Hangul system, their ability to understand Hanja is limited, nor do they need such ability in daily life.
- lifthrasiir 7y ago
  It is correct that Hanja is no longer used in daily life, but most people do know enough Hanja to start with. It is still mandatory to learn Hanja in middle schools (AFAIK), and since Hangul is pervasive now the use of Hanja ironically adds a good visual cue---many newspapers frequently use 美 or 英 in place of USA or UK and people is fine with that.