English vs Korean By Dayne Collins - Academia ESL
K-pop is pretty huge right now, and many of us have had some exposure to the Korean language. Personally, I like to able to politely thank the kind lady at the Korean grocer for giving me free candy when I buy a big bag of Kimchi. (I tried making my own… wow, it was really bad.)
What is it that makes Korean and English different? What do we have in common?
Korean is a particularly interesting language, and one of my personal favorites. Some might place Korean next to Japanese as an Altaic language. Meanwhile, others tend to place it in a class of its own. The Korean language can trace some of its roots back to a Chinese influence, and originally used a Chinese script called Hanja.
English is a non-tonal language, and for the most part, Korean is too. However, I believe that there are some tonal dialects. Unlike the stress timed rhythm of English, the Korean language uses a syllable timed rhythm. Speakers of syllable timed languages often face some extra hurdles when learning a stress timed language. Korean speakers learning English may add an unnecessary syllable in the form of a vowel to the end of a word. This is due to the syllable timed structure of the language, and the fact that a consonant sound is not released in Korean unless it is followed by a vowel sound within that syllable. Unfortunately, this often gets blamed on accents or pronunciation.
There are plenty of pronunciation differences between English and Korean too. Trust me, these different phonemes are just as challenging for English speakers learning Korean, as they are for Koreans learning English. Korean speakers learning English may want to pay extra attention to some voiced friction sounds like z, v, and the voiced th (in then). Followed by the unvoiced friction sounds f, and the unvoiced th (in thin).
When it comes to writing, the Korean language uses an alphabet called Hangul. Hangul is extremely practical, and replaced Hanja in the 15th century. Much like English, Hangul is most commonly written horizontally from left to right. Perhaps not as common, but twice as badass, Hangul can also be written vertically. Sadly, I can’t understand it either way.
Etiquette and honorifics are extremely important in the Korean language. Many Korean honorifics are even strictly required in informal settings. According to Wikipedia – “Korean grammar as a whole tends to function on hierarchy — honorific stems are appended to verbs and some nouns, and in many cases, one word may be exchanged for another word entirely with the same verb- or noun-meaning, but with different honorific connotations.” This can be rather daunting for English speakers learning Korean, but doesn’t seem to be a huge problem for Koreans studying English. I find that honorifics become less important when I tell my Korean students that my title is ‘Captain Awesome.’
If you can think of any other interesting comparisons between Korean and English, Let me know in the comment section below!
Comments
Lady Anne - Thanks for commenting! I will attempt to tackle Tagalog soon. Is that your dialect?
Sewar - As always, thanks for reading. Thank you so much for your kind and encouraging comments. It's always a pleasure to hear from you.
Kanna - Annyeong! I have been thinking of you, my fingers are crossed. Best of luck with your exams! I'm sure your Kimchi was better than mine. I will try again. Until then, I'll stick to the store bought stuff.
Annyeonghaseyo teacher Dayne, :)
I'm learning Korean just for fun. I felt like to learn Korean 2 weeks ago, just because I'd watched a video teaching how to make kimchi. :)
Like you, I tried to make Kimchi and it seemed like Kimchi made-by-me, and eaten by me. :P
However, as you may know, I'm in my hard time, fighting with my exam ^^, so I stop learning Korean after learning the Alphabet and some common sentences. The Korean alphabet has 40 characters, concluding 21 vowels and 19 consonants. I like the way to write Korean, it's well organized. I'll try to learn it more when I have free time.
Anyways, hope your work keeps going well.
Best wishes,
Kanna
My friend, I agree with each single word that is mentioned at Lady Anne comment. Furthermore, do you know what makes you special???? Wherever you go, you go with all your heart. That's why you always be thirsty to the knowledge. So, you work hard to irrigate yourself from the knowledge in hope to satisfy it. Lucky you my friend for having such adoration to learn more and more. And lucky us for having a friend like you. God bless you.
Noas, perhaps Mickey can help. It seems she has been paying a lot of attention. :P
When I had to live in South Korea for three months a few years back, I tried to learn the Korean language. Though I can pronounced certain words, but my Korean teacher told me that I pronounced those words too hard. I need to say those Korean words in softer tones, which you can imagined, I failed miserably.
Korean sounds nice! Especially when their girls speak it, I like to hear them. giggling. ;-)