Should you learn the Korean language?

A talk about learning Korean. Not a lesson! Just some of my experiences with learning the language and my perspective, for people who come to Korea for just a year or maybe longer.

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People & Blogs

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• stephenworldwide
• stephen
• worldwide
• gwangju
• kwangju
• south
• korea
• korean
• language
• learn
• learning
• hangul
• alphabet

[leihoa]

English native speakers, are SO ignorant ;) Try learning Russian or Polish, say - ANY slavic language and then come and we can talk what is hard to learn. Or Arabic. Or any tonal language. Korean is just different than most Indo_European languages, but still, this is not hard, compared to aforementioned above. Cmon.

[stephenworldwide]

@leihoa ignorant, all of us, huh? well, koreans tell us English is very hard, so I guess they are right. just read an article about the most difficult languages to learn for english speakers, and korean is ranked #9. arabic was first. russian or polish didn't make the list, but i respect your opinion.

[leihoa]

@stephenworldwide and if you have any doubts, please write "hub difficult language Polish" in Google, first link by a guy named "livelonger" or so. Read about... number 2 (17 words for this number in Polish, each different). I am Polish, and the fact that most people avoid learnng my language as a plague:) - it does NOT make me happy , but well... What can I do :)

[stephenworldwide]

@leihoa I heard about Polish, and glad I don't have to learn it! My friend is married to a Polish girl and he told me how difficult it is.

[hibafk]

i grow up learning arabic , french as my seconde languague , english as my third , i have learned japanese for a year and now Yeay korean... !

[stephenworldwide]

@hibafk Thanks for that, now which one was harder and which was easier for you?

[stephenworldwide]

@capitalix i can read 한글, but my pronunciation isn't great. at least i'm trying, and that's the message.

[melindadaniellec]

I remember My friend in Korea being so excited when she found out that I could spell the word 바보, ha.

But thanks for giving people great advice! I find it ridiculous that some people are willing to live in another country and culture and not even try to get involved with it!

[VanillaSnow23]

Dating advice for a Korean guy plz?

[PiroMunkie]

Linguists praise Korean because Hangul is so phonetic. The consonants are designed to basically tell you how to pronounce them if you know what the different strokes mean (which really isn't necessary to learn, but I found it to be extremely interesting).

I think I'd agree with others that Korean is a comparatively easy language to learn, especially as far as Eastern languages go. The main thing Westerners will struggle with is sentence structure like you said, and all those particles.

[PiroMunkie]

I definitely agree that the Korean alphabet is mega easy to learn and is the main thing that attracted me to the language. Just being able to sound out any word you see feels so rewarding, or watching a video of someone walking through a Korean market and seeing "Starbucks Coffee" written in Hangul.

[KoreanAspergel]

@leihoa I think Russian and Polish would be very hard

[thrainful]

For a person who knows greek,english,spanish.italian and norwegian will it be hard to learn korean???????????

[gogomaty]

We, Koreans, know you guys are having more difficulty learning Korean than other languages. If you don't speak Korean, that's Ok. As the video says, we can appreciate you guys just trying and showing willingness to learn because we know it's difficult for you. Sometimes we consider it adorable and funny for big, tall, hairy people like you guys to try to speak Korean softly and awkwardly.

[leihoa]

@stephenworldwide I was not referring to your video, I noticed few comments from, as it seems, English native spkrs. Korean IS difficult because it is so much different. Still, its grammar, vocabulary, tenses are nothing compared to 6-7 cases of EACH noun is declinated in any slavic language (most have over 5 cases or more, Russian 6, Polish 7, etc). Verbs are conjugated, not in 3 ways like in Spanish but in dozens of ways. Same with adjectives. Not to mention pronounciation. Which is hell.