Just wondering, are the word endings in Korean mentioned comparative to the endings in Latin? For example, in Latin the first things in grammar you learn are the five main cases of nouns (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and ablative) and the 6 main parts of verbs. These affect the ending of the word, and what it means.
For example, in the word servus (servant, slave) serv-us is the nominative and is the subject. However, if you changed the ending to serv-o, then (depending on the context) you would make it "to or for the slave."
Is this somewhat like what's in Korean? My literature teacher said that the further you go back into the Indo-European languages (such as Latin and Greek, or even further), the more structured and logical of a language you would find. Considering the rather ancient and isolated nature of Oriental culture, I wouldn't be surprised if Korean (and other languages related to Chinese) had a logical case system (and, according to the OP) still have it today.
I was interested in picking up Korean a while ago but i soon found out that the amount of Korean classes in Sweden were pretty limited, maybe in the future.
Also, i'm curious about those government classifications that says that Korean is a category 4 language, is there a site somewhere that lists all these different classifications?
While your post wasn't that enlightning or illuminating for me Arrian, it's a great idea to have one of these threads. What I would like to see is people writing their own experience in learning korean and hopefully hear some stories about closing the cultural gap once you're in Korea.
I've been debating hard which east asian language I should attempt to learn. I think the language which would help me most in almost any career would be mandarin, because of Chinas growing economy and the increase in exported goods. Knowing how to speak mandarin on your resume is very impressive as well.
Then again if I know Korean I can watch korean SC2 games as they are happening.
On June 30 2010 13:48 Belegorm wrote:Just wondering, are the word endings in Korean mentioned comparative to the endings in Latin? For example, in Latin the first things in grammar you learn are the five main cases of nouns (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and ablative) and the 6 main parts of verbs. These affect the ending of the word, and what it means
Yes, essentially. However, one important difference is that the Latin declensions (like conjugations, but for nouns) are inflected (that is, they are somewhat more dependent on the base word), while Korean (and for that matter, a bit moreso, Japanese) case particles are more isolated (structures independent of the base word). Admittedly, Korean particles do consider whether the base word ends in a vowel or a consonant, but otherwise they remain the same for each case no matter the base word.
Another difference is that Korean has more cases than Latin. A quick wiki check on Korean and Latin grammar gives 7 cases for Latin and about 12 particle groups (pairs for each case, 1 post-consonant, 1 post-vowel) for Korean. For the most part it matches up, but Korean (and, as a side note, Japanese) has a topic particle, which doesn't quite match up to Latin subject case, as it can define something broader than a sentence subject (I can't think of examples at the moment). It also has a subject particle, but I believe that may be more limited than the Latin subject case.
Note: I may be wrong about this, I've done some research on Korean, but most of my knowledge about it comes from mapping it to what resembles Japanese (my third language, though a bit iffy from lack of practice), which is a fair amount, at least in the detached and non-conversational sense. Conversationally, Japanese seems to allow for more information to be dropped while preserving a comprehensible sentence than Korean, but that may be wrong.
I thought Korean was really similar to Japanese. Unless.... it's those two languages that are isolated from the rest of the other languages. If you know Japanese, you can learn Korean really quickly (faster than those who don't know Japanese, at least).
Some of the vocabulary words sound like Chinese as well.
I'd always considered learning one of Korean or Japanese at some point, not becoming a fluent speaker or anything but knowing the language at a college level, and I always figured that with my chinese background both of those languages would be fairly similar. Never knew Korean wasn't really based on chinese syntax or anything at all other than some etymology.
Cool thread, munching a lot of popcorn to all the language info bits being passed here
I was surprised at Korean being a language isolate. But I guess for a non-asian like me it's easy to hear some Chinese words and going "ah, it's like Chinese but with a dialect". (Or well, not that naive of a conclusion maybe, but you catch my drift.)
Anyway, what I was wondering is, for a language isolate, umm....how isolated is it? I mean for example as compared to Finnish. For a Swede like me, Norwegian and Danish are both handily understandable, but in Finland which is just as close a neighbor, they speak a language which is just completely unintelligible to me. Hardly a single word has anything to do with Swedish/Norwegian/Danish. And the same would go for the rest of the world, aside from Hungarian of all languages (which I've always found very odd since Hungary is so far from Scandinavia), and some minor languages spoken by natives, like the Sami. Finnish is just from outer space compared to all other languages.
So maybe I'll ask this: for you Chinese and Japanese reading this, how different is Korean to your languages? I mean, can you understand anything at all? Can you "get by" on using your language in Korea at all?
I've tried learning Korean 3 times, I have given up because I have just lost motivation to continue to learn... I would love to speak Korean or any language other then English but I just do not have the self determination to learn a language.
On June 30 2010 18:55 AlgeriaT wrote: So maybe I'll ask this: for you Chinese and Japanese reading this, how different is Korean to your languages? I mean, can you understand anything at all? Can you "get by" on using your language in Korea at all?
All three spoken languages are completely different, at least in the terms you stated. Even most Chinese dialects are mutually unintelligible.
i am a Chinses and choose english as my major in universty. and nowadays i try to learn Japenese as my third language.(i really want to learn Korean but unfortunately there are no such a choice in undergraduate in my university).but i have a friend who is a Korean Chinese(you know in north-east China, there are still a lot of Korean people but they are Chinese indeed.) .he told me something about Korean and Japenese that the grammar structure are almost the same but much different compared to Chinese.and because i can speak Chinese ,English and Japenese(a little), I have to say, all of those three asian language ie,Chinese, japenese and korean, Chinses is most difficult(even i am a Chinese), and korean are much easy to learn.
On June 30 2010 20:34 Comet702 wrote: korean are much easy to learn.
I hope no one thinks I'm a prick for doing this (just trying to help):
You want to say "Korean is much easier to learn."; always use "is" for one thing (Korean language) and "are" for more than one thing (a bunch of Koreans). And "easier", well, I can't define the rule so you can use it with other words, but there's three "levels" of the word "easy": "easy" is a broad term, representing something that isn't difficult, but there is nothing to compare it to. "easier" is saying there are two things and one is less difficult than the other. "easiest" means there are 3 or more things that can be compared, of which 1 choice is the least difficult.
Anyway, getting the drive to learn Korean is really, really hard. I would like to be semi-fluent before I get there -- I want to be an English teacher that isn't a douchey like the ones mentioned in this thread that spend several years there without having a clue as to the language around them. Seems like they're missing out on a vast culture, and perhaps women.
^ Well in my opinion you can be that arrogant if you can rival his english ability with your korean ability. Most people don't like to be corrected (myself included) so better OWN UP OR GET THROWN DOWN!
On June 30 2010 21:23 HeIios wrote: ^ Well in my opinion you can be that arrogant if you can rival his english ability with your korean ability. Most people don't like to be corrected (myself included) so better OWN UP OR GET THROWN DOWN!
I don't understand this. I still will openly ask what a word in English means, even in a large group setting, and it's my native language. One can never truly perfect their first language, but I will give it my best effort.
My opinion on language learning is that you absolutely have to have solid grammar before trying to immerse yourself in it. A couple of months getting used to the grammar makes you progress a huge amount faster.
EPT
