# Is it worth learning?



## übermönch

hello, I would really like to learn some East Asian language, however, as I have heared, Japanese and Chinese are far too diffucult and it would take an eternity to learn reading therefore Korean seems to be an alternative. So, is the grammar hard? Are there learning pages on it on the internet?


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## Pivra

I think so, since in Eastern Asia Korean fashion is going really well


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## Budz

Chinese is much easier than Korean.  The nature of Korean is that it's probably as hard to learn to read as Chinese.  

It's a very interesting language though with friendly people if you learn their language.  Interesting music in Korean too.

Robert


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## vince

As hard to learn to read???

Korean writing is completely phonetic, they don't have characters composed of funky symbols like Chinese. It's basically an alphabet


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## wsitiplaju

I thought that Korean was like English in that why a word should be spelled as it is is often not transparent.  
Remember that Chinese's "funky symbols" are in large part made up of common radicals.  Sometimes these are related to how the character sounds, sometimes to what it means.  You start to get a feel pretty quickly for how it works (i.e. some radicals usually give a hint as to sound, some are always meaning-related).  It helps some in memorizing characters.  But this does not make the language impossibly hard.  Just to give you an idea: I took a year of Mandarin Chinese in college and then lived in Shanghai for 10 months.  I was just getting to a level where I could stumble through junk magazines.  If I'd kept at it a couple more months, I would have been able to read the paper.  
Also, they sell these electronic dictionaries now, where you write the character on the pressure-sensitive screen and it tells you what it is.  Pretty nifty.  
Any of those three languages (Korean, Japanese, Chinese) is going to be a lot of work.  You should just pick whichever one you feel most attracted to.  Chinese's main advantage is the simplicity of the grammar.  From what I've been told, Korean is definitely much harder grammatically.  
Hope that helps.


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## Oogami

I would first have to ask yourself what do you deem as 'worthy' to do.

Example:
If you are interested in Chinese culture, learning Chinese is worth it.
If you are interested in Animation, learning Japanese is worth it.
If you are interested in Online Games, learning Korean is worth it.

It really depends on where you want to go with the language.
I am a student of Japanese myself, and I know some Chinese (Mandarin), which helps in acquiring the language.

Brief overview of the languages as I know them (comparative):
Mandarin - Simple grammar, tough writing, and tough pronounciation.
Korean - Simple writing, tough grammar, and tough pronounciation.
Japanese - Simple pronounciation, tough grammar, and tough writing.

Korean and Japanese have similar grammatical structure.
Japanese writing involves both their own system (Hiragana+Katakana) and Chinese characters (Kanji).


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## instantREILLY

As native English speaker, well versed in Korean and Japanese, my findings are as such.

Japanese:
Simple pronunciation - only 5 vowel sounds; every consonant appears in English (except the flapped "R" which is not used in modern English, but used in modern Spanish, Italian, Korean, etc...)
Simple grammar - extremely regular patterns, no irregular verbs
Simple/Moderately Difficult writing - 3 writing systems.  2 are nearly-identical syllablries (writing is ENTIRELY phonetic).  These 2 syllablries are used in conjunction with a 3rd system (Kanji) stemming from Chinese.  Kanji are incredibly easy once you get the hang of them.  They are the same characters used over and over.

Korean:
Simple pronunciation - only 7 vowel sounds, plus several dipthongs; consonants appear in English (except the flapped "R") pronunciation, but are not distinguished in English writing (so knowledge of linguistics helps to understand the difference between complex consonants)
Simple grammar - the same as Japanese, only with more layers and levels.  Very few irregular verbs (even the irregular ones are regular among themselves).
Extremely simple writing - a solid alphabet.  Phonetic and predictable pronunciation rules.  Easy-to-read, easy-to-spell.

Japanese and Korean are nearly identical languages in grammar and even vocabulary. Korean grammar, however, has much more to it (although it is all easy to learn). For example:

A single sentence can be said one way (or very few ways) in English.
The same sentence can be said several ways in Japanese.
The same sentence can be said several more ways in Korean.

My experience with Chinese has been: extremely simple grammar, extremely difficult pronunciation, moderately difficult writing (it is easier if you are familiar with Japanese or Korean)

Korean is totally worth learning, and it is (in my opinion) the coolest language of the 3. However, it is much easier to learn if you know Japanese first.


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## Pivra

How about Thai (if you count us as one of those real "East")lol, even more simple writting system than Korean, goes exactly (not exactly exactly) like English. No tense, but we're really fussy about words' castes and natural genders. No singular nor plural, but we have something close to El and La (definite articles) in Spanish. Our spelling is as logic as French is, first its hard (tripthongs, dipthongs, silent alphabets) but it has rules. We have 44 consonants and 10 simple vowels.


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## demoore

Korean it's more than 80 millions speakers.
The economy is great! And most of all their alphabet is so unique!
Worth learning!


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## Budz

Japanese and Korean are nearly identical languages in grammar and even vocabulary. Korean grammar, however, has much more to it (although it is all easy to learn). For example:

Hmmm, rather a strange statement.  The feel of some of the grammar is similar, but surely the vocab is nothing like each other.  Unless someone's using the word 'identical' in a rather strange way.  Certainly an extremely misleading statement.

But given that Korean and Japanese grammar feel similar with verbs at the end, adjectival verbs that change for negative and past etc. I'm surprised that there isn't even consensus as to whether Japanese and Korean are related languages.  Or am I wrong about this?  I just seem to remember that certainly with Korean, there's no certainty as to where it originated and what it's related to...

Budz


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## panjabigator

By saying they are identical in grammar and vocab, does that imply mutual intelligibility?


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## Budz

panjabigator said:
			
		

> By saying they are identical in grammar and vocab, does that imply mutual intelligibility?


 
In my post that was supposed to be a quote from someone else's post... and I was expressing extreme doubt.

No, absolutely no mutual intelligibility at all.  I seem to remember that linguists don't even put them in the same language family.

Budz


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## Flaminius

Mutual intelligibility between Japanese and Korean is so low that one can safely ignore such a thing.  As Budz has said #10 _supra_, vocabulary items of the two languages are quite distinct from each other.

I am a native speaker of Japanese.


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## Frank06

*Hi,

I closed this thread for various reasons:
- It was a very old thread and the original question was quite clear;
- We were getting off topic;

I did not delete any message; I simply moved the posts of the last few days to a more appropriate thread.

Groetjes,

Frank
Moderator OL
*


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