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victor
Tetraglot
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United States
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| Message 9 of 26 18 August 2007 at 8:15pm | IP Logged |
Ah, my mistake for flying over that section. Thanks for pointing it out.
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| nhk9
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 6597 days ago
290 posts - 319 votes
Speaks: English*
| Message 10 of 26 24 August 2007 at 10:58pm | IP Logged |
Jiwon wrote:
The administrator has given me a permission to make possible adjustments to the language profile in this collaborative writing section. So here I go. :-)
USEFULNESS
Korean is the official language of two countries only, and this may not make it particularly appealing. However, if you ever decide to visit Korean, and want to get around and meet people, I'd say Korean is definitely a must. Korea is a highly monolingual country where the majority of the population cannot speak fluent English. Of course, nearly everyone below 60 has had some school English, and there is a very high and increasing number of students in English classes. Yet the majory will either try to avoid speaking English since they are scared of making mistakes, or speak heavily accented Korean which is nowhere near fluency. With exception of a few young Seoul-dwellers, 99% of the time, you'll struggle to find someone who is willing to speak English.
Learning Korean may also bring discounts with Japanese, but you shouldn't think of Korean or Japanese as a "bridge" language from English to the other. Also, learning Japanese as a Korean is said to be harder than learning French as an English speaker.
CHIC FACTOR
Among Westerners, the fact that you speak, or even study, such an exotic, distant and difficult language will be seen as "chic". The ability to read Korean script, Hangul, is seen highly fashionable, since it appears like some complex coded message to non-speakers.
A good command of Korean is also highly valued among Koreans. They'll be astonished yet pleased to see that a foreigner is learning their own language. The better your Korean, the warmer they will receive you. Plus, they are quite generous and will forgive your mistakes easily, although they may smile at your pronunciation.
COUNTRIES
Korean has the official language status in two countries: North Korea and South Korea. It is also the official language of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China.
SPEAKERS
According to the census in 2005, there are 49 million speakers in South Korea, and 23 million speakers in North Korea. There are also around 4 to 5.5 million expatriates and ethnic Koreans outside Korea who speak the language. Many of them are in Mainland China, Japan, the former Soviet Union, the United States and Brazil.
VARIATIONS
Largely, Korean language can be divided into North Korean and South Korean, which are getting more and more different in orthograph and acquisition of new vocabulary. There is also a different dialect used in Yanbian in China. However, since contact with North Koreans is quite limited, I will concentrate on South Korean for now.
South Korean is again divided into several dialects. The standard is the Seoul Dialect, which is taught to all Korean students and understood by almost all Koreans throughout the world. However, some of the dialects, such as Jeju Dialect, are almost unintelligible for Seoul speakers due to their unique grammatical features and vocabulary.
Students of Korean should study the Standard Seoul Dialect. Regional variations are fun to speak and listen to, but they must remain towards the end of your studies.
DIFFICULTIES
DIFFICULTY
Korean is a quite difficult language to tackle for anyone (with possible exception of Japanese speakers), and more so for Westerners. For English speakers, I'd give Korean 5 cacti: extremely difficult to learn. Some learners may find it impossible to learn, but any language is possible. It just takes more time and dedication.
PRONUNCIATION
Good news: Korean has no tones nor accentuation rules. :-)
However, it has sets of consonants that sound very similar to Western ears. e.g. G, GG and K (ㄱ, ㄲ and ㅋ). It does take a long time to distinguish them and produce them. The best way to do this is thinking that none of these sounds exist in your native language and learn with an open-mind
There are also vowels that are pronounced similarly by Seoul-dwellers. e.g. Ö, WAE and WEH (ㅚ, ㅙ and ㅞ). This may cause a slight problem for learners.
Koreans also speak fast, with a distinctive rhythm that is hard to get in the beginning. The majority of them are not used to speaking slowly and clearly for non-natives, which may hinder your listening abilities.
GRAMMAR
Korean is an agglutinative language, and shows many non-Indo-European features. An example is the famous SOV word order. There are also particles/postpositions and classifiers that take a while to get used to. Verbs may take any of +600 endings, and so can adjectives take any of around 500 endings. Korean also has honorifics in both nouns and verbs, with 7 speech levels for different uses. In addition, Korean has two sets of numbers for different occasions.
But it is not all that horrible. There is no case system, no adjective-noun agreement and no verb-subject agreement in Korean. There are no noun/adjective declensions, and there is only one way of forming plurals. You don't need to worry about gettin articles or gender right, because there aren't any in Korean.
VOCABULARY
Vocabulary is quite difficult to acquire for Westerners since there are very few, if any, cognates. There are some loan words, however, and these are quite easy to figure out. e.g. television, juice, bus, etc.
The rest of the vocabular consists of Sino-Korean words, formed out of Chinese characters pronounced in Korean way, and "pure" Korean words. As a result, many common words often have more than one way of saying it.
e.g. Mother/Mum- 엄마(um-ma), 어머니(uh-muh-nee) and 모친 (mo-chin).
This could make improving vocabulary difficult.
TRANSPARENCY
Luckily for foreign learners, Seoul-dwellers tend to use English loan words heavily in conversations (if not OVER-USED). However, most of the language is not transparent to Westerners.
Due to a large number of Sino-Korean words, Chinese and Japanese speakers will find Korean more transparent. Hence, it could be argued that learning traditional Chinese characters (Hanja) helps your Korean as Latin does your English.
SPELLING
As there are at least 3 different Romanisation methods which make Korean more confusing, it is best to learn the Korean script, Hangul, from the beginning, and it can be mastered withing a week. The orthograph is rather user-friendly, though the written language is not 100% phonetic, contrary to many Korean's claims. However, after learning rules of assimilation, you'll be able to read all written materials correctly. However, writing down what your have heard is a bit more difficult as many consonants sound the same when the are final sounds of each syllable.
Korean if full of Sino-Korean words, so it is definitely advantageous to learn traditional Chinese characters Hanja. However, it is NOT a must. You'll only come across them in classical literature, anceint scripts and very rarely in popular novels, non-fictions and newspapers. I feel you don't need Hanja to reach fluency - but this depends on your definition of fluency. What I'm saying is, to be fully functional in Korean society, hold lengthy conversations and read novels and newspapers. I mean, you don't need Latin to be fluent in English or Romance languages: it's the same with Korean and Hanja.
TIME NEEDED
In one year, at one hour a day, you'll be well into intermediate level. Unlike Japanese and Chinese, spoken Korean is as hard as written Korean. Around two and a half years of study will put you at basic fluency. After this, the progress will get really steady. Learning numerous Sino-Korean homonyms and synonyms, recognising and using different speech levels and getting used to different verb and adjective endings take a lot of time. Of course, if you study in Korea, the time taken will reduce considerably.
Now, I'm aware that this is not the most accurate review of Korean, if anyone has anything else to add, please write a replying post. I also want your opinions on the TIME NEEDED, as this is quite subjective. |
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I have highlighted the parts that I think may warrant some discussion in bold above
The "ㄱ" is more like a g/k. The "kim" in "kim jong-il" sounds different from the "gim" as in "gimme". I think it does sound like a g sound when it is used in the middle of a word, but not in the beginning. It took me quite a while to figure this out.
As for the +600 verb endings and 7 honorific speech level figures, I think we should add a point that states that it is not necessary to learn them all in order to survive in modern day Korea. I surmise that one can live functionally well only knowing a fraction of those figures.
For the sentence: "However, after learning rules of assimilation, you'll be able to read all written materials correctly.", I think that it is too much of a generalization, as there are some frequent exceptions. For example, words written like "sageon" or "hanja" are quite often pronounced "saggeon" or "hanjja". I onced pronounced "sageon" as is and it took my language partner quite a while to figure out what that meant.
I think the paragraph: "Korean if full of Sino-Korean words, so it is definitely advantageous to learn traditional Chinese characters Hanja. However, it is NOT a must. You'll only come across them in classical literature, anceint scripts and very rarely in popular novels, non-fictions and newspapers. I feel you don't need Hanja to reach fluency - but this depends on your definition of fluency. What I'm saying is, to be fully functional in Korean society, hold lengthy conversations and read novels and newspapers. I mean, you don't need Latin to be fluent in English or Romance languages: it's the same with Korean and Hanja." needs to be revised. The tone and grammar is a bit odd and incoherent. The article thus far was written in a 3-rd person point of view, but the addition of words like "I" in this paragraph throws the article a bit off. It seems to me more like a verbatim(?) copy and paste from a post.
For the Time Needed section, we may want to consider what is considered as "intermediate". Some Japanese students of Korean may find reading to be a breeze, but while westerners may find reading to be impenetrable and find speaking/listening to be easier.
Also, I am not too sure of what "Unlike Japanese and Chinese, spoken Korean is as hard as written Korean" means. The article stated that Hangul can be "mastered" within a week, so would the above sentence imply that spoken Korean is of the same difficulty?
It's a very useful summary overall. The use of generalization for such a summary article cannot be prevented, but I feel that for those who have no exposure to Korean prior to reading this article should find this information rather reflective of the knowledge of the community we have here.
Edited by nhk9 on 24 August 2007 at 11:10pm
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Jiwon
Triglot
Moderator
Korea, South
Joined 6229 days ago
1417 posts - 1500 votes
Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1
Studies: Hindi, Spanish
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| Message 11 of 26 25 August 2007 at 6:19am | IP Logged |
nhk9 wrote:
The "ㄱ" is more like a g/k. The "kim" in "kim jong-il" sounds different from the "gim" as in "gimme". I think it does sound like a g sound when it is used in the middle of a word, but not in the beginning. It took me quite a while to figure this out.
As for the +600 verb endings and 7 honorific speech level figures, I think we should add a point that states that it is not necessary to learn them all in order to survive in modern day Korea. I surmise that one can live functionally well only knowing a fraction of those figures.
For the sentence: "However, after learning rules of assimilation, you'll be able to read all written materials correctly.", I think that it is too much of a generalization, as there are some frequent exceptions. For example, words written like "sageon" or "hanja" are quite often pronounced "saggeon" or "hanjja". I onced pronounced "sageon" as is and it took my language partner quite a while to figure out what that meant.
I think the paragraph: "Korean if full of Sino-Korean words, so it is definitely advantageous to learn traditional Chinese characters Hanja. However, it is NOT a must. You'll only come across them in classical literature, anceint scripts and very rarely in popular novels, non-fictions and newspapers. I feel you don't need Hanja to reach fluency - but this depends on your definition of fluency. What I'm saying is, to be fully functional in Korean society, hold lengthy conversations and read novels and newspapers. I mean, you don't need Latin to be fluent in English or Romance languages: it's the same with Korean and Hanja." needs to be revised. The tone and grammar is a bit odd and incoherent. The article thus far was written in a 3-rd person point of view, but the addition of words like "I" in this paragraph throws the article a bit off. It seems to me more like a verbatim(?) copy and paste from a post.
For the Time Needed section, we may want to consider what is considered as "intermediate". Some Japanese students of Korean may find reading to be a breeze, but while westerners may find reading to be impenetrable and find speaking/listening to be easier.
Also, I am not too sure of what "Unlike Japanese and Chinese, spoken Korean is as hard as written Korean" means. The article stated that Hangul can be "mastered" within a week, so would the above sentence imply that spoken Korean is of the same difficulty?
It's a very useful summary overall. The use of generalization for such a summary article cannot be prevented, but I feel that for those who have no exposure to Korean prior to reading this article should find this information rather reflective of the knowledge of the community we have here. |
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I had no other way to romanise ㄱ and still show it is different from ㄲ and ㅋ to people who do not know the language. I do know that ㄱ has a bit more plosive feeling to it than English G. If I romanised it as G/K, the potential learners would have been more confused: G/K, GG and K (ㄱ, ㄲ, ㅋ). Or wouldn't they?
As for your points about the grammatical elements, I think they are quite valid, and so I made adjustments in the profile.
For spelling section, I changed "all written materials" to "most written materials". I guess there is less generalisation in the new sentence.
Erm, the paragraph about Sino-Korean words.. Well, I DID write it myself, contrary to your suspicion. I guess I just lost it, and just expressed myself in a less fashionable style. It happens occassionally when I write lengthy essays or articles. I've re-written the entire paragraph, so see whether you like it.
Again, contrary to what you have said, many Westerners in fact find the written language easier than spoken Korean, largely due to the fact that many Koreans don't speak clearly and slowly. This is also what I meant by "Unlike Japanese and Chinese, spoken Korean is as hard as written Korean". In the other languages like Japanese and Chinese, it is much easier to reach fluency in spoken language due to their complex writing systems, so it takes less time to reach oral fluency. However, in Korean, even the spoken language is so hard that their will be no real point of only trying to reach oral fluency. In any case, I have edited the section so see if it is clearer than the previous one.
In addition, I have left "No text yet" under the sections that I do not plan to change. Here is the original Korean language profile, so if anyone wants to make changes to the original one, please leave a replying post.
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Jiwon
Triglot
Moderator
Korea, South
Joined 6229 days ago
1417 posts - 1500 votes
Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1
Studies: Hindi, Spanish
Personal Language Map
| Message 12 of 26 01 September 2007 at 5:44am | IP Logged |
Are there any more bits and pieces I should add to the profile?
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Jiwon
Triglot
Moderator
Korea, South
Joined 6229 days ago
1417 posts - 1500 votes
Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1
Studies: Hindi, Spanish
Personal Language Map
| Message 13 of 26 16 September 2007 at 3:58am | IP Logged |
This is the last call. Does anyone see any other things that I ought to add? For the sections that I have not filled in, I'll just put the articles from the original profile, unless I have a burning desire to add some more movies and books, or if anyone would like to edit anything.
If there aren't any replies for a month (ie until 16th October 2007), I'll send this version to the administrator.
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| nhk9
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 6597 days ago
290 posts - 319 votes
Speaks: English*
| Message 14 of 26 24 September 2007 at 1:12am | IP Logged |
Jiwon wrote:
The administrator has given me a permission to make possible adjustments to the language profile in this collaborative writing section. So here I go. :-)
INTRODUCTION
No text yet.
USEFULNESS
Korean is the official language of two countries only, and this may not make it particularly appealing. However, if you ever decide to visit Korean, and want to get around and meet people, I'd say Korean is definitely a must. Korea is a highly monolingual country where the majority of the population cannot speak fluent English. Of course, nearly everyone below 60 has had some school English, and there is a very high and increasing number of students in English classes. Yet the majority will either try to avoid speaking English since they are scared of making mistakes, or speak heavily Korean-accented English which is nowhere near fluency. With exception of a few young Seoul-dwellers, 99% of the time, you'll struggle to find someone who is willing to speak English.
Learning Korean may also bring discounts with Japanese, but you shouldn't think of Korean or Japanese as a "bridge" language from English to the other. Also, learning Japanese as a Korean is said to be harder than learning French as an English speaker.
CHIC FACTOR
Among Westerners, the fact that you speak, or even study, such an exotic, distant and difficult language will be seen as "chic". The ability to read Korean script, Hangul, is seen highly fashionable, since it appears like some complex coded message to non-speakers.
A good command of Korean is also highly valued among Koreans. They'll be astonished yet pleased to see that a foreigner is learning their own language. The better your Korean, the warmer they will receive you. Plus, they are quite generous and will forgive your mistakes easily, although they may smile at your pronunciation.
ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE
No text yet
TRAVEL OPPORTUNITIES
No text yet
COUNTRIES
Korean has the official language status in two countries: North Korea and South Korea. It is also the official language of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China.
SPEAKERS
According to the census in 2005, there are 49 million speakers in South Korea, and 23 million speakers in North Korea. There are also around 4 to 5.5 million expatriates and ethnic Koreans outside Korea who speak the language. Many of them are in Mainland China, Japan, the former Soviet Union, the United States and Brazil.
VARIATIONS
Largely, Korean language can be divided into North Korean and South Korean, which are getting more and more different in orthograph and acquisition of new vocabulary. There is also a different dialect used in Yanbian in China. However, since contact with North Koreans is quite limited, I will concentrate on South Korean for now.
South Korean is again divided into several dialects. The standard is the Seoul Dialect, which is taught to all Korean students and understood by almost all Koreans throughout the world. However, some of the dialects, such as Jeju Dialect, are almost unintelligible for Seoul speakers due to their unique grammatical features and vocabulary.
Students of Korean should study the Standard Seoul Dialect. Regional variations are fun to speak and listen to, but they must remain towards the end of your studies.
CULTURE
No text yet.
DIFFICULTIES: *****
DIFFICULTY
Korean is a quite difficult language to tackle for anyone (with possible exception of Japanese speakers), and more so for Westerners. For English speakers, I'd give Korean 5 cacti: extremely difficult to learn. Some learners may find it impossible to learn, but any language is possible. It just takes more time and dedication.
PRONUNCIATION
Good news: Korean has no tones nor accentuation rules. :-)
However, it has sets of consonants that sound very similar to Western ears. e.g. G, GG and K (ㄱ, ㄲ and ㅋ). It does take a long time to distinguish them and produce them. The best way to do this is thinking that none of these sounds exist in your native language and learn with an open-mind
There are also vowels that are pronounced similarly by Seoul-dwellers. e.g. Ö, WAE and WEH (ㅚ, ㅙ and ㅞ). This may cause a slight problem for learners.
Koreans also speak fast, with a distinctive rhythm that is hard to get in the beginning. The majority of them are not used to speaking slowly and clearly for non-natives, which may hinder your listening abilities.
GRAMMAR
Korean is an agglutinative language, and shows many non-Indo-European features. An example is the famous SOV word order. There are also particles/postpositions and classifiers that take a while to get used to. Verbs may take any of +600 endings, and so can adjectives take any of around 500 endings. Korean also has honorifics in both nouns and verbs, with 7 speech levels for different uses. In addition, Korean has two sets of numbers for different occasions.
But it is not all that horrible. There is no case system, no adjective-noun agreement and no verb-subject agreement in Korean. There are no noun/adjective declensions, and there is only one way of forming plurals. You don't need to worry about gettin articles or gender right, because there aren't any in Korean. Plus, it is not necessary to know all verb endings and speech levels. In fact, one or two of the most polite speech levels are not in use nowadays.
VOCABULARY
Vocabulary is quite difficult to acquire for Westerners since there are very few, if any, cognates. There are some loan words, however, and these are quite easy to figure out. e.g. television, juice, bus, etc.
The rest of the vocabulary consists of Sino-Korean words, formed out of Chinese characters pronounced in Korean way, and "pure" Korean words. As a result, many common words often have more than one way of saying it.
e.g. Mother/Mum- 엄마(um-ma), 어머니(uh-muh-nee) and 모친 (mo-chin).
This could make improving vocabulary difficult.
TRANSPARENCY
Luckily for foreign learners, Seoul-dwellers tend to use English loan words heavily in conversations (if not OVER-USED). However, most of the language is not transparent to Westerners.
Due to a large number of Sino-Korean words, Chinese and Japanese speakers will find Korean more transparent. Hence, it could be argued that learning traditional Chinese characters (Hanja) helps your Korean as Latin does your English.
SPELLING
As there are at least 3 different Romanisation methods which make Korean more confusing, it is best to learn the Korean script, Hangul, from the beginning, and it can be mastered within a week. The orthograph is rather user-friendly, though the written language is not 100% phonetic, contrary to many Korean's claims. However, after learning rules of assimilation, you'll be able to read most written materials correctly. However, writing down what your have heard is a bit more difficult as many consonants sound the same when the are final sounds of each syllable.
Korean if full of Sino-Korean words, and therefore, it is definitely advantageous to know Chinese characters/Hanja. However, Hanja-Korean relationship is like French-Latin relationship. You'll only come across them in classical literature, ancient scripts and very rarely in newspapers and popular modern novels. Learning Hanja is not a must even to reach fluency in Korean, although this depends on your definition of fluency. But learning Hanja won't hurt you: they will help you in Sino-Korean vocabulary acquisition.
TIME NEEDED
In one year, at one hour a day, you'll be well into intermediate level, and be able to deal with everyday situations such as going to a shop, buying food, etc. Unlike Japanese and Chinese, spoken Korean is as hard as written Korean, so I will not give a separate time needed to reach oral fluency. Around two and a half years of study will put you at basic fluency. After this, the progress will get really steady. Learning numerous Sino-Korean homonyms and synonyms, recognising and using different speech levels and getting used to different verb and adjective endings take a lot of time. Of course, if you study in Korea, the time taken will reduce considerably.
BOOKS
No text yet.
SCHOOLS
No text yet.
LINKS
No text yet
Now, I'm aware that this is not the most accurate review of Korean, if anyone has anything else to add, please write a replying post. I also want your opinions on the TIME NEEDED, as this is quite subjective. |
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I have highlighted the parts that I think we should pay some attention to. I am trying to help with the editing, and hopefully others can contribute on further editing or perhaps proofreading for minor (syntactic) errors.
>>"Yet the majority will either try to avoid speaking English since they are scared of making mistakes, or speak heavily Korean-accented English which is nowhere near fluency."
I don't think there's a correlation between one's accent and one's proficiency in the language. One can speak with a strong accent and still speak fluently. Most Koreans though, associate native-like English as the style used in the USA, namely by characters in shows like "Friends", "Desperate Housewives", "CSI", or "Prison Break". From what I've found, Koreans are afraid that they are not understood, so they try to refrain from speaking in English. Indeed, some words, when spoken with a heavy Korean accent, can be difficult to understand, for example, the word "Language" (which they usually pronounce as something like lang-geh-ji).
Also, did you mean "learning Korean as a Japanese"? Afterall, this is a topic about learning Korean, isn't it? :)
>>Students of Korean should study the Standard Seoul Dialect. Regional variations are fun to speak and listen to, but they must remain towards the end of your studies.
This sentence sounds very strong and a little bit out of sync with the rest of the article. I think instead of commanding others to do something, we can persuade, or just simply tell the reader why Seoul Dialect is so much more superior than the others. Afterall, for someone who will be stationed in Jeju Island, will learning the Jeju dialect be not useful right from the beginning?
I think the best book for beginners that I have came across is:
"Elementary Korean (Tuttle Language Library) (Hardcover)
by Ross King (Author), Jae-Hoon Yeon"
http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Korean-Tuttle-Language-Libr ary/dp/0804836140/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-9612367-5483256?ie=UTF 8&s=books&qid=1190611662&sr=8-1
I still feel that the romanization for (ㄱ, ㄲ and ㅋ) should be (k, kk, k') for the sole purpose of giving a generalized introduction. We have to remind ourselves that the use of the "g" alphabet is somewhat controversial. Although currently this usage is supported by the ROK government, the government has been changing its systems frequently lately.
As far as Ö, WAE and WEH (ㅚ, ㅙ and ㅞ). is concerned, I think it should be left out completely in this general introduction. This is because it is quite an advanced topic (not to mention that it would confuse the beginner), not to mention that it is still controversial. Ö, WAE and WEH may not be the best romanization for ㅚ, ㅙ and ㅞ, unless we can can find references for them (which may not be feasible for a general introduction). The worse thing we could do though, is to give inaccurate information (note that I am not claiming that Ö, WAE and WEH are accurate/inaccurate, just that I haven't seen the literature substantiating them and there's always the possibly of someone coming forward stating otherwise). Thus, I think if there really is the necessity of introducing the phonological patterns in the Seoul dialect, we can just introduce the difference (or lack thereof) between "e, and ae".
>>"Unlike Japanese and Chinese, spoken Korean is as hard as written Korean, so I will not give a separate time needed to reach oral fluency. Around two and a half years of study will put you at basic fluency. After this, the progress will get really steady. " in "TIME NEEDED" section
I think this sentence here assumes the reader already knows something about Japanese/Chinese (which may not always be the case). The section is quite confusing since from reading it, one may develop the idea that spoken Korean is as easy as written Korean, since it had been mentioned that Hangul can be "mastered in a week".
Also, I've read from some members here (including Ardaschir, our Korean authority) that Korean is easy to learn at the beginning, but difficult to achieve near-native fluency. If I remember correctly it was stated in one of the US government's language institute that 1200hrs are needed to achieve any reasonable proficiency for an English speaking native. I think putting this figure down will be more objective instead of the "1-year" and "2 1/2 years" as stated. Trust me, I've met quite a few people who have been learning the language for several years and still who are not anywhere near basically fluent.
Just my 2 cents.
Edited by nhk9 on 24 September 2007 at 1:37am
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Jiwon
Triglot
Moderator
Korea, South
Joined 6229 days ago
1417 posts - 1500 votes
Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1
Studies: Hindi, Spanish
Personal Language Map
| Message 15 of 26 02 October 2007 at 9:07am | IP Logged |
"I don't think there's a correlation between one's accent and one's proficiency in the language."
What I tried to say in the statement was that some Koreans have heavily accented AND non-fluent English. I've edited the sentence to make the meaning more clear.
"Also, did you mean "learning Korean as a Japanese"? Afterall, this is a topic about learning Korean, isn't it? :)"
Again, I was only trying to illustrate my point and warn people not to learn Korean to bridge the gap between European languages and Japanese. I've added a bit of explanation at the end, so see whether it makes more sense.
"This sentence sounds very strong and a little bit out of sync with the rest of the article. I think instead of commanding others to do something, we can persuade, or just simply tell the reader why Seoul Dialect is so much more superior than the others. Afterall, for someone who will be stationed in Jeju Island, will learning the Jeju dialect be not useful right from the beginning? "
Thanks for pointing that out. ;-) Re-reading the sentence, I clearly see your point. I've edited it to make it sound less aggressive but assertive.
"As far as Ö, WAE and WEH (ㅚ, ㅙ and ㅞ). is concerned, I think it should be left out completely in this general introduction. This is because it is quite an advanced topic (not to mention that it would confuse the beginner), not to mention that it is still controversial. Ö, WAE and WEH may not be the best romanization for ㅚ, ㅙ and ㅞ, unless we can can find references for them (which may not be feasible for a general introduction). The worse thing we could do though, is to give inaccurate information (note that I am not claiming that Ö, WAE and WEH are accurate/inaccurate, just that I haven't seen the literature substantiating them and there's always the possibly of someone coming forward stating otherwise). Thus, I think if there really is the necessity of introducing the phonological patterns in the Seoul dialect, we can just introduce the difference (or lack thereof) between "e, and ae". "
Point taken.
">>"Unlike Japanese and Chinese, spoken Korean is as hard as written Korean, so I will not give a separate time needed to reach oral fluency. Around two and a half years of study will put you at basic fluency. After this, the progress will get really steady. ""
Well, I only wanted to make my native language sound more "possible" to the potential learners! But, I've also come across that web site, and I cannot deny the +1200 hours part. So I've included it in the profile, as you suggested
As for the G, GG and K, I thought it would be better to keep them as they were, because, well, as you yourself said, it is the accepted official romanisation method used by the South Korean government. I am aware that G in English and ㄱ in Korean represent quite different sounds, so I'll give the issue another thought, and inform you about my final decision, but it is likely that I won't change it, because:
a) it is, after all, the "official" romanisation
b) most Koreans use this romanisation form, when they are transliterating the sounds. Although last names like Kim and Kang are written with K, that is largely because it has almost become the "proper noun" for 김 and 강.
I shall add the book to the list, later this week.
Thanks again for your contributions. Please do re-read my edited version, and see whether there are any other sections that could be improved. If you have any other counter-arguments regarding ㄱ, ㄲ and ㅋ please do let me know. :-)
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| Nea Vanille
Diglot
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Speaks: German*, EnglishC1
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| Message 16 of 26 05 March 2008 at 5:38am | IP Logged |
Ah, too bad I'm too late for this! I would've added that Sogang University seems to currently be the best University at which to study Korean, and I was going to highly recommend both the Sogang Korean and the Ganada Korean books.
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Language Learning Forum : Collaborative writing
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