I recently started studying Korean. Properly, I mean. I tried to study on my own, but I'm a terrible self-starter and I really enjoy collaborative environments so I knew taking a class would be a better option for me. It is definitely the right choice.
First, I want to introduce a little bit about Korean to you guys because I know you're reading this and feeling pretty impressed with my mad memorization talent and language skills. First thing first the Korean alphabet is actually called Hangul (Korean's don't even actually call themselve korean or the country korea... it's a bit weird if you think about it). It was invent by Sejong the Great a Korean king. He invented a phonetic alphabet because most common people did not have access to the education of the rich. Before this Korea used Chinese characters. Chinese is still used in Korea today, but to a smaller degree than in Japan. It's mostly just used for news papers and when they wanted to save space. Lots of Korean words are derived from Chinese words because of this. Anyway Sejong the Great is on all Korean money and they even have a holiday to celebrate the alphabet. To say the least Korean's are pretty proud of their alphabet.
Okay, so I know some of you are going wow isn't Korean like really really hard? You must have to remember so many characters, it is an asian language after all. Not the case at all. Korean is phonetic which means all it's characters combine to make different sounds, thus making different meanings, pretty similar to English. And no there are not thousands of characters like in Chinese there are only 29 letters which can be broken down a number of ways. They have consonants and vowels just like English as well. Of course, also like English vowels and consonants can combine and make new sounds which makes even more characters, but I won't get into that. In their more basic form there are 29 characters.
The reason Korean looks sort of similar to Chinese with the block-y looking 'characters' is because you write Korean in block form rather than in a row. You also read Korean left to right like English. But Terri, what about these block things? What's that about? So basically each block is a syllable. It's easiest to illustrate using a word. I'll use the word love today because it's pretty easy with only two syllables. Love in Korea is salang or sarang: 사랑 so the separate syllables are 사 (sa) 랑 (rang/lang) if you write it out without the blocks it looks like this: ㅅ ㅏ ㄹ ㅏ ㅇ so you can see where the blocks are. Pretty neat huh? Also, when you type in Korean the computer knows when you're trying to make a block and automatically puts the characters into the correct block as you type.
So there are some rules about blocks... it's a bit confusing and I haven't learned everything yet but basically you cannot start a word with just a vowel you must put either a placeholder or a consonant. The place holder is: ㅇ. You may have noticed I also used it in the word 사랑 in this instance it is at the end of the word. How do I know it's at the end? It's at the bottom of the block. When it's at the end it makes a ng sound, but at the beginning it is silent. For example you cannot write ㅏ (a) you must write 아 (which just means 'oh' in English) but it's pronounced 'a' not 'nga'.
Another thing you may have noticed about 사랑 is I romanized it too ways. In Korean there is no 'l' sound or 'r' sound (actually most Korean letters only sound vaguely like there romanized counterparts, but this one is special). ㄹ is the character in Korean and it can make different sounds depending what is beside it etc. It doesn't make a sound I know how to describe, sometimes you hear it and think L then in a different place it sounds more like R, but often it doesn't sound like either. It is tricky trying to romanize any Korean words or sounds because even though a lot of the sounds in Korean seem similar to the English counter part they will have more than one sound depending what characters they are combined with or depending where they are in the word. For example there is a city in Korea called Busan (부산) which used to be romanized as Pusan simple because the 'ㅂ' sound is somewhere between a 'b' and a 'p' sound, I think it also depends where it falls in the word. Sometimes you also see kimchi romanized as gimchi because 'ㄱ' falls in between the 'k' and 'g' sound, but sound different at the end of words. It gets even more confusing when you add double consonants to the mix.
Hopefully this isn't a confusing explanation. I want to write this simply without overwhelming everyone, but there are many differences in Korean and English so it takes a little explanation.
Okay, enough Korean lessons. I want to talk about some of the differences in mean which I think gives interesting insight into Korean culture. First hello in Korean is annyeonghaseyo (언녕하세요) which if you translate it in google is literally hello, but actually in Korean it means (roughly) are you at peace. When you say goodbye there are two ways one for the person staying and one for the person going they both start with annyong, but end differently. Their rough translation is 'go in peace' and 'stay in peace' (there are various other ways to say goodbye and hello as well, but these are the most common).
I know some of you who are familiar with other Asian cultures or other Asian languages may be wondering about polite language and yes, Korean does have polite language. The the greetings in the last paragraph are all polite language. Polite language is used in various situations. Such as, talking to strangers, talking to people who are older than you, talking to superiors at work and etc. You can talk to your friends in informal language and there is a slightly different way to say things or different words to use. Mostly I've learned polite language because it is the safest to use. In certain situations where you are unsure which language to use you should always revert to polite language (I believe). I don't know much about it, but in some instances there is very polite language.
The very last thing I should mention, that you've probably heard about around the web is Konglish. Now from my understanding (but don't quote me on this) Konglish seems to refer to two things. 1) Badly or Koreanized English translations and 2) Koreanized English words used in Korean. And there are a lot of them. The most common one I hear all the time is 커피 romanized as keopi. Can you guess what it is? Try saying it out loud a couple times. It kinda sounds like copy, right? Well it's not copy... it's coffee! That's right! Korean's love their coffee. There is no 'f' sound in Korean so 'f' are changed to 'p'. Similarly with 'v' so if you say elevator it is 'ellibeiteo'. Another thing that happens in Korean is because you cannot put two consonants together at the beginning of words you have to add a sound in between and sounds often get added to the end of words as well. Bus because 'beosue', sunglasses -> seongeullaeseu. You get the idea. The last thing that happens is Koreans take English words and the meaning changes slightly. I learned that the word 'hunting' has a slightly different meaning in Korean. It means to pick up girls or guys. So I guess you're hunting for guys or girls, I asked my Korean friend about it and she said it isn't as common now, but it sure sounds funny to me!
So now you (hopefully) know something about Korean. I hope I didn't overwhelm you all with all this information! This is honestly just the tip of the iceberg. Please don't think this is a guide to learn Korean by, this is simply what I know and hopefully it can give people some knowledge about some differences in the languages which makes communication, interesting at times. I want to talk more about other things, but I honestly don't know enough about them to do them any justice! I don't speak Korean well at all. I can say a few words well (which is a great way to impress your coworkers apparently) and I can understand more than I can speak. Right this second I heard my coworker saying something I understood at least two words of. Reading and learning the alphabet is honestly the easiest part of learning Korean, but don't think for a second if you can read the sounds you are going to have any idea what it says. According to my friends who've learned Korean the grammar and verb conjugations are the trickiest parts (I've barely learned basic vocab).
Personally I think learning a language when you're living in a different country
(and teaching English) is a great way to connect with the people there, learn more about their culture and have a better understanding of how the kids feel learning English. Also, the kids love it when I can understand their Korean. I've surprised a few kids by answering them when they said 'teacher' in Korean (seonseangee) and I really surprised them today because one of them asked if I spoke Korean in Korean and I said no I don't speak Korean. The students were pretty confused by that one! Haha.
Okay, really wrapping this up now. I'm enjoying learning a little bit more about Korea by learning the language and plus language learning is fun and useful. I recommend trying to learn the language of the country you're living in if you ever live abroad. Seriously. Do it. Okay, really, that's it.
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