The ‘I don't Hate Korean’ Thread

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Sayonaroo
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Re: The ‘I don't Hate Korean’ Thread

Postby Sayonaroo » Thu Oct 19, 2017 2:52 pm

leosmith wrote:
Sayonaroo wrote:I think it's easier to look up words in Japanese because unlike Korean they don't have multiple ways to spell words since they don't use an alphabet. For Japanese i could just look up the hiragana

Because I studied pronunciation from the beginning, I almost always spell Korean words correctly. When I do make a mistake, I find I'm able to correct it easily. With Japanese, hiragana often wasn't enough with the dictionaries I used. Maybe due to old tools though.

I found Japanese to be much easier to learn than Korean precisely because the Japanese language uses chinese characters

I find the opposite to be true, as I think most westerners would, no offense.

Can you imagine learning Korean without having first learned some Japanese?

Yes, it would have been harder than learning it after for sure. And I might have told people I thought it was the hardest language in the world, up until the time I learned either Japanese or Chinese that is.

I think that would be super inefficient because of all the sinowords

Knowing Chinese characters is helpful for vocabulary acquisition in Korean, but certainly not a necessity. Thanks for posting that thread, by the way.


Japanese doesn't have spelling like Korean because it's not an alphabet. For Japanese if I want to look up a word I just type the hiragana and I find it but for Korean sometimes there's just multiple ways to spell a certain sound and the only way to figure it out is to type all the sounds. You won't know until you look it up until you look it up because you don't know the word. Example 괴변 meaning sophistry and just from hearing it you'll probably go 개변 계변 괴변 while for Japanese you type きべん and find the appropriate entry quickly because of the kanji. This is just one example. There's so many spellings for the same sound. There's also words with crazy bacchim (crazy as in you wouldn't be able to guess the spelling just from hearing the word 읊다 if it's conjugated in a way that they don't voice the consonant explicitly ) that you don't know how to spell just based off hearing it if the verb or adjective isn't conjugated in an obvious way. Also sometimes Korean people say stuff with the double consonant pronounciation when it's not so you might waste time looking up the word with the single consonant versus the double consonant ie ㄱㄲ.

I'm just saying Japanese is just easier to look up because they don't have spelling. I say this as a person who has learned both languages to a high level. I always dread it when I have to look up words in Korean because it sometimes takes extra time/effort than Japanese because of multiple possibilities of spelling ( I love how in Japanese that you type in hiragana and hate how in Korean you gotta try different spelling variations) or I just cannot spell the word just from hearing it from double bacchim or whatever reason. Depending on the word looking up words in Korean can be just as quick and efficient as looking up words in Japanese but sometimes the words are tricky and a pain in the ass to look up. I use the offline dictionary lingoes and Japanese google and Korean Japanese naver dictionary and Korean naver dictionary for Korean so the lingoes helps me save time with the spelling issue usually since there's no lag whatsoever since it's offline and it looks up stuff as you type it

Actually my biggest pet peeve with Korean is I come across of the issue of the word not being in the damn Japanese Korean dictionary ( if it ain't in that one it sure as hell ain't in the English Korean dicitonary) . I almost never have to do this with Japanese but for Korean it feels like it happens all the time so then I have to go to Japanese google or Korean naver dictionary (sometimes this doesn't even have it yet everyone on some Korean tv show seems to know the word) or ask on chiebukuro. One example of This is when Korean speakers say a variation of a word instead of the actual word because they feel like it. I gotta post an example but nothing comes to mind now since my focus on Korean is comprehension and not output


I don't know what Japanese dictionary you use but the ones online are really good and they give you so many ways to look up stuff hiragana or kanji or starts with or ends with or contains and Japanese has rikaismaa and yomichan while Korean has a crappy pop up dictionary that doesn't know how to unconjugate lol. That's one of the main reasons why the kanji is so helpful because that allowed the existence of rikaisama and whatnot.
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Re: The ‘I don't Hate Korean’ Thread

Postby qeadz » Thu Oct 19, 2017 8:26 pm

The big issue with Korean vocabulary is much more than just the foreign phonemes for an English speaker (IMHO). Its that the words themselves are composed so differently.

Its hard to explain but if I were to make up a word, it would probably sound (to some degree) like an English word. This would be due to more than just sharing phonemes with my native tongue. It would incorporate guidelines my brain has figured out about word construction.

For the longest time Korean words just sounded like random sounds, and as such I recall the earlier days of my study being very frustrating - I could barely remember anything.

Now it is improving because I am recognizing some of the 'roots', but is still very demanding.
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Re: The ‘I don't Hate Korean’ Thread

Postby leosmith » Fri Oct 20, 2017 6:15 am

Sayonaroo wrote:Actually my biggest pet peeve with Korean is I come across of the issue of the word not being in the damn Japanese Korean dictionary

Oh, now I think I understand why this is so important to you and doesn't impact me. You're laddering, and I'm guessing that Japanese transcripts aren't available for the Korean material you're listening to. No answer key. Or you're trying to transcribe/understand stuff that you don't have a transcript for maybe? I don't do those things, so I almost never have to look up a word that I hear which I don't have the spelling for. Occasionally a word keeps popping up in conversation that I don't know and want to look up, but even then I usually ask my partner what it is.

So writing with kana isn't called spelling? Thanks, I didn't know that, so I'll try to be careful not to say it anymore. Back when I first started learning Japanese I was using paper dictionaries. Later on I was using online dictionaries, but homonyms gave me some trouble when trying to transcribe and such. Now I almost never have problems because I don't look up words that I hear which I don't have the spelling for. When I'm typing, my kanji-fu is pretty good, so I can pretty much always select the correct character, but I still think this is pretty hard for a beginner.
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Re: The ‘I don't Hate Korean’ Thread

Postby Sayonaroo » Fri Oct 27, 2017 12:09 am

leosmith wrote:
Sayonaroo wrote:Actually my biggest pet peeve with Korean is I come across of the issue of the word not being in the damn Japanese Korean dictionary

Oh, now I think I understand why this is so important to you and doesn't impact me. You're laddering, and I'm guessing that Japanese transcripts aren't available for the Korean material you're listening to. No answer key. Or you're trying to transcribe/understand stuff that you don't have a transcript for maybe? I don't do those things, so I almost never have to look up a word that I hear which I don't have the spelling for. Occasionally a word keeps popping up in conversation that I don't know and want to look up, but even then I usually ask my partner what it is.


No I mean words I come across while consuming native korean material ie talk variety shows, song lyrics, korean internet, korean articles, short stories, etc etc which usually is transcribed in Korean (ie text on the screen on korean talk/variety shows). when it's not in to the j-k dic, I gotta go to japanese google or ask on chiebukuro or the k-k dictionary (even this fails me sometimes). I don't need Japanese transcripts for korean material i'm listening to because I"m at a level where I just need to look up the unknown words to understand stuff. It's just frustrating and you will experience it too once you dive into native materials. for some reason korean dictionary on naver at least doesn't include grammar and of course japanese dictionaries do which is a damn shame and i noticed this the time i looked up 이자 (from unpretty rapstars) which means "and" or maybe it's more like "cum." for japanese I also have instances where words aren't in the dictionary but it just happens way more often with Korean and I have to spend extra time to find out what a word means which is a pain in the ass and absolutely insufferable if I was learning Korean using English.

If I come across a word in a korean that I can't catch that I want to know I ask on chiebukuro and usually the person even translates the sentence for me.
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Re: The ‘I don't Hate Korean’ Thread

Postby lichtrausch » Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:28 am

I think the issue with homophonous morphemes is one of the hardest parts about Korean. Imagine what vocabulary acquisition in English would be like if hundreds of morphemes like "geo", "logy", "govern", and "ment" had 3 to 5 distinct meanings a piece.
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Re: The ‘I don't Hate Korean’ Thread

Postby leosmith » Fri Oct 27, 2017 5:15 am

Sayonaroo wrote:you will experience it too once you dive into native materials

I've worked quite a bit with native material, dramas and news, but I always use material that has Korean transcripts, so this doesn't impact me.

Transcripted news:
KBS 뉴스

Transcripted dramas:
미생
도깨비
힐러
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Re: The ‘I don't Hate Korean’ Thread

Postby Sayonaroo » Fri Oct 27, 2017 1:47 pm

leosmith wrote:
Sayonaroo wrote:you will experience it too once you dive into native materials

I've worked quite a bit with native material, dramas and news, but I always use material that has Korean transcripts, so this doesn't impact me.

Transcripted news:
KBS 뉴스

Transcripted dramas:
미생
도깨비
힐러


I mean you will come across instances where the words aren't in the dictionary so it does impact you. I see how it's unclear. I'm saying it's a pain in the butt to look up words because of spelling and that even if i have the transcript (ie text on the screen on talk/variety shows, articles) provided and thus have the correct spelling when I look up unknown words in the dictinoary they arent' there. i'm not saying words aren't in the dictinoary because i'm trying to look up words i don't know how to spell; that would be ludicrous. for example I'll watch a talk/variety shows and all the people on the show (old and young etc etc) understand the word i don't know and laughs or whatever and then when i go to the dictionary it's not there and then i have to go google or chiebukuro. it's damn frustrating. thanks for sharing resources but i have no interest in the news and Korean dramas are unwatchable
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Re: The ‘I don't Hate Korean’ Thread

Postby leosmith » Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:45 pm

Sayonaroo wrote:I mean you will come across instances where the words aren't in the dictionary so it does impact you.

Yes, but this is pretty rare, and doesn't bother me much. Slower than a dictionary, but I have plenty of Korean contacts that will give me a definition if it really bugs me. I'll take your word that it happens more often in Korean than Japanese, but it's happened to me in Japanese too.

In my defense, I posted the resources because you said I wasn't using native materials. And others, maybe not you, were saying it was really hard to look up words because of multiple possible spellings. No offense intended.
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Re: The ‘I don't Hate Korean’ Thread

Postby lichtrausch » Fri Oct 27, 2017 4:42 pm

Sayonaroo wrote:and Korean dramas are unwatchable

You have clearly never watched 이름없는 여자 ;)
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Re: The ‘I don't Hate Korean’ Thread

Postby Sayonaroo » Fri Oct 27, 2017 5:15 pm

lichtrausch wrote:
Sayonaroo wrote:and Korean dramas are unwatchable

You have clearly never watched 이름없는 여자 ;)


I just find korean dramas unwatchable but I do have a very short list of dramas I wanted to check out (just in case it's watchable) so i'll add that on there. (Uh never mind checked out ep 1 on YouTube it's unwatchable to me lol. It sounds super annoying and it reminds me of a soap opera) most popular korean dramas are unwatchable to me. all this talk about spelling reminded me funny clips I saw of Gangnam's twitter mishaps. he's a talk/variety/kpop singer who grew up in Japan and never formally learned how to write Korean properly so the mishaps were very funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odXtWEZeHRY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whUdyfNdV0A
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