한국어 Korean Language

Does anyone knows what this means? Thanks 예비역 영관장교들, 盧대통령에 해명.사과 요구

Edited by sg_han, 02 January 2007 - 05:45 AM.

우리나라 우리民族 우리말 우리글 우리文化 우리歷史

This is cool.

우리나라 우리民族 우리말 우리글 우리文化 우리歷史

This is cool.

우리나라 Our country 우리말 Our language 우리글 Our writing I think the next one means, our culture and the last one means our history.

yes you are right.... i invenetd this after seeing woori mal woori geul on a korean tv channel and added country ethnic group 民族 culture and history .=)

Please tell me, is it difficult learning Korean language? To any folks here who have learning experience in Korean language, do share your experience here? Thanks.

Please tell me, is it difficult learning Korean language? To any folks here who have learning experience in Korean language, do share your experience here? Thanks.

if you are refering to the written script invented by king sejong-hangeul, there isnt much difficulty since it was invented with the intention of educating the non yangbans to read and write.

vocabulary wise, many vocabulary come from chinese thus it isnt too hard for thos ewith prior knowledge in the chinese language.

however, the sentence structure and grammar of korean might be a challenge.

if you are refering to the written script invented by king sejong-hangeul, there isnt much difficulty since it was invented with the intention of educating the non yangbans to read and write.

vocabulary wise, many vocabulary come from chinese thus it isnt too hard for thos ewith prior knowledge in the chinese language.

however, the sentence structure and grammar of korean might be a challenge.

Zunjing de Sg_Han,

Thanks for sharing some new information with me; I really appreciate it! I have been interested in the Korean language after watching two Korean historical dramas. I personally believe the Chinese/Korean/Japanese characters look way better than the alphabetic languages! Of course, this is only my own opinion. Heheheh!

May I ask how many forms of the Korean Language are there? I am only familiar with the written scripture of Hangul invented by King Sejong in 1444. This invention was by no means an easy task since there was much opposition from various conservative ministers still in favor of Hanja. However, being the wonderful king that he was, King Sejong was successful in convincing these ministers of the great benefits of the new language.

This is pretty much all I know regarding the history of Hangul. If it was not for you, then I would have never known the purpose of this invention was to create a more vernacular language for the non-Yangban, which would make it easier for them to read and write. I surmise it would not be that difficult to learn then. I hope I would be as smart as commoners back then. Heheheh!

Koreans have been under Chinese influences for a very long time; hence, of course, the Chinese and Korean Languages would share some vocabulary words. I surmise since Japanese/Chinese/Korean all belong in the same family of language, learning one would already make learning the other easier.

Since grammar and sentence structure rely heavily on people’s usages, no languages can be really similar in this aspect.

Xie Xie,

Koreans have been under Chinese influences for a very long time; hence, of course, the Chinese and Korean Languages would share some vocabulary words. I surmise since Japanese/Chinese/Korean all belong in the same family of language, learning one would already make learning the other easier.

Since grammar and sentence structure rely heavily on people’s usages, no languages can be really similar in this aspect.

Xie Xie,

I doubt that they all belong in the same language family, since the sentence structure of Korean and Japanese is different than Chinese. Korean is subject-object-verb (SOV) while Chinese is subject-verb-object (SVO). Also, with Korean you need to put markers after the words to indicate which word is the subject, topic, or object in the sentence.

vocabulary wise, many vocabulary come from chinese thus it isnt too hard for thos ewith prior knowledge in the chinese language.

however, the sentence structure and grammar of korean might be a challenge.

Well, even aside from grammar, much of the basic Korean words are native, and gives no advantage to Chinese speakers.

I personally believe the Chinese/Korean/Japanese characters look way better than the alphabetic languages!

There's no such thing as "alphabetic language". It's just the writing script. And in fact you can write a language with another script.
And btw, Hangul itself is actually alphabetic.

I doubt that they all belong in the same language family, since the sentence structure of Korean and Japanese is different than Chinese. Korean is subject-object-verb (SOV) while Chinese is subject-verb-object (SVO). Also, with Korean you need to put markers after the words to indicate which word is the subject, topic, or object in the sentence.

SOV - SVO difference do not actually indicate whether they are from different language family. Chinese and Karen are SVO but Burmese and Tibetan are SOV, for example.
Putting markers on the words is a common practice. If I'm not wrong, in Russian, you can rearrange the words as you like, and there will be no confusion because there are the markers.
This does not make English or Russian belong to different language family, though

Korean and Japanese are not in the same language family as Chinese. Many of their loan words come from China, but then again, many of their loan words come from English too. This doesn't mean that English and Korean are in the same language family. A huge amount of English words are of French origin but that does not mean French and English are in the same language family either.
Nobody really knows where Japanese came from, but what is certain is that it is next to Korea and they share the same grammatical structure. Of course, English shares a similar grammatical structure to Mandarin too, so similar grammar isn't neccessarily proof of Korean and Japanese being in the same language family. I'm a native english speaker who learned Japanese in college and then learned Korean in Korea. I can tell you from my own experience that virtually everything about the way they are spoken is the same. The subject is almost always ommited from a sentence. A verb is all you need to make a correct sentence. They are both agglutinative languages. Both use several levels of honorific speech. And the list goes on.
Is learning Korean difficult? I suppose it depends on the person. I couldn't learn Spanish or French when I was in Highschool, but I had an easier time learning Japanese. Then learning Korean was a breeze. So, I guess it depends on the person.

Koreans have been under Chinese influences for a very long time; hence, of course, the Chinese and Korean Languages would share some vocabulary words

I read that about 50% of words in the Korean vocabulary are derived from Chinese. An example is the title of the Korean drama 해신, which is pronounced "hae shin", and means "Sea God". Sounds similar to the pronunciation of 海神.

Korean and Japanese are not in the same language family as Chinese. Many of their loan words come from China, but then again, many of their loan words come from English too. This doesn't mean that English and Korean are in the same language family. A huge amount of English words are of French origin but that does not mean French and English are in the same language family either.
Nobody really knows where Japanese came from, but what is certain is that it is next to Korea and they share the same grammatical structure. Of course, English shares a similar grammatical structure to Mandarin too, so similar grammar isn't neccessarily proof of Korean and Japanese being in the same language family. I'm a native english speaker who learned Japanese in college and then learned Korean in Korea. I can tell you from my own experience that virtually everything about the way they are spoken is the same. The subject is almost always ommited from a sentence. A verb is all you need to make a correct sentence. They are both agglutinative languages. Both use several levels of honorific speech. And the list goes on.
Is learning Korean difficult? I suppose it depends on the person. I couldn't learn Spanish or French when I was in Highschool, but I had an easier time learning Japanese. Then learning Korean was a breeze. So, I guess it depends on the person.

japanese and korean similar? well, in a way, especially grammatically, i know no other languages yet that has the introductory particle (japanese -wa and korean -un ) , altaic languages, which are sometimes linked to them apparently do not have them (at least manchu and mongol does not)

but other than that, i dun see much similarity, korean s phonology is definitely much more complex than japanese,,, i see very few shared native vocabulary (i only know "ijime" ), so learning korean is definitely not a breeze for me

A huge amount of English words are of French origin but that does not mean French and English are in the same language family either.

Yes, but they both are in Indo-European.

Of course, English shares a similar grammatical structure to Mandarin too

Only similar in very few things... like "normal way" of saying active voice is SVO and modifier usually precedes head... but other than that I find they are very different...
Try to translate "... which is..." to Chinese and you will reverse word order.. and also passive voice.

I read that about 50% of words in the Korean vocabulary are derived from Chinese. An example is the title of the Korean drama 해신, which is pronounced "hae shin", and means "Sea God". Sounds similar to the pronunciation of 海神.

50% in quantity does not mean that in regular speech there will be that much. Abstract and advanced terms get used less.
I heard there are about 1 million English words... but that even for native speaker, there are only 24000 functional words....

korean s phonology is definitely much more complex than japanese,,, i see very few shared native vocabulary (i only know "ijime" ), so learning korean is definitely not a breeze for me

Yes, native vocab and phonology are very different.

Yes, but they both are in Indo-European.

French & English both are influenced by Latin. (writing & language wise)
Indo-European language groups would also include groups such as Farsi (Persian) and Hindi.

So I suppose the relationship of Chinese characters to Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese is like the relationship of characters to English/French/etc

Edited by Intranetusa, 31 March 2007 - 04:13 PM.

So I suppose the relationship of Chinese characters to Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese is like the relationship of characters to English/French/etc

Well, there are many examples of non-Indo-European languages now written using Latin letters, e.g. Finnish, Indonesian.
Indonesian also imported lots of abstract words from European languages.