Korean for the Japanese Learner
I have jokingly said in the past:
The best way to learn Korean is to learn Japanese first.
If you know Japanese, you already have a huge advantage when it comes to learning Korean.
Most of this information you can find on the Wikipedia website for Korean, but I’m approaching it from the perspective of someone who understands Japanese. Bear in mind that I have been learning for less than a year so some of the analyses I make may be incorrect.
First off the bat, if you have any experience in learning European languages, you will notice how similar they are to English. In the same way, Korean and Japanese share extremely similar grammatical rules, and some vocabulary too.
Vocabulary
Before delving into grammar, it’s best I explain how similar the two languages really are simply in terms of vocabulary.
Korean has a different system of writing to Japanese called Hangul. It is a completely phonetic system similar to hiragana and katakana, but differs in the way individual characters are formed. I will not go into the full details of it, but simply show an example of how a word is formed.
Newspaper in Korean is “shin mun” (신문). The individual parts of a word are broken down into single consonants and vowels, which are written as separate parts.
ㅅ=s ㅣ=i ㄴ=n
ㅁ=m ㅜ=u ㄴ=n
These pieces are then arranged to fit in a single square following some simple rules about their shape.
ㅅ ㅣ ㄴ = 신 Notice the first two ‘letters’ are on the top line together, followed by the ‘n’ on the bottom line.
ㅁ ㅜ ㄴ = 문 In comparison, the wide ‘u’ character means that the 3 pieces must be arranged vertically.
In the same way that Japanese has both hiragana and Kanji, Korean has hangul and Hanja (Chinese characters). However in comparison to Japanese, hanja are not mixed in with the phonetic words.
私は新聞を読みました。
This example sentence contains a mixture of Chinese characters and Japanese phonetic hiragana, a style which does not appear in modern Korean. Instead, Korean is now written entirely in phonetic Hangul.
As a learner of Japanese, this can seem harder to read at first. It is possible to read Japanese at high speed by glancing at the Kanji that have tightly-packed information and using the hiragana sections as markers to identify the breaks between words. Using the example above, Kanji rarely come after a word has begun, but instead mark the start of words, and may be followed by particles or verb endings. To break up words in Korean it seems common to use spaces, as with European languages.
Returning to the issue of hangul and Chinese characters, written Korean does not mix the two, but the concept of kanji are still present under the surface even if they are not written explicitly. This can be illustrated with an example:
日曜日に 日本人の 学生は 大学に 行きました。
일요일에 일본인의 학생은 대학에 갔습니다.
il yo il e il bon in ui hak seng un de hak e kas sum ni da
On Sunday the Japanese student went to university.
For now ignore the way that the two languages are pronounced and simply match up the Kanji to the hangul below. The grammar in the two languages is similar enough to transliterate in the example.
日=일 (il) as in 일요일
学=학 (hak) as in 대학
Notice that in Japanese, the 日 character is read as both にち, び and にっ whereas its reading is consistent in Korean. In Japanese there are multiple 音読み (used in Kanji compounds) and 訓読み (used when the word is alone) for each character, which must be learnt as well as in which situations each one is used. In Korean most characters have a single 音読み and a single 訓読み. This combined with your knowledge of Kanji from Japanese means it is possible to ‘create’ words that you know in Japanese from your knowledge of the way to read those words in Korean. To start with a trivial example:
학생 = 学生
대학 = 大学
Can be used to create 大学 生=대학생
An example that I have used myself in the past: I know 학생 = 学生, and 일본=日本, so I know that in Kanji compounds 生=생 and 일=日. I want to make the word 誕生日 in Korean. So it’s likely to be “_생일” and it is in fact just “생일”.
A final point regarding vocabulary worth pointing out is that there are a number of words and Kanji that have similar pronunciation. For example:
かばん = 가방 (ka bang) = bag
新聞 = 신문 (shin mun) = newspaper
As shown here, it’s possible to understand new words from a mixture of knowledge of how Kanji are pronounced in Korean and Japanese vocabulary.
Grammar
Korean and Japanese share the same particle system that confuses so many western learners at first. As someone with experience in Japanese though this works to your advantage. I would strongly recommend anyone learning Korean to use a Japanese-based textbook, as it skips all the explanation of what a particle is and how to use them, and simply gives you a chart similar to the following:
は＝은/는
が＝이/가
を＝을/를
の＝의
に＝에/에게
etc.
While there are other rules that affect how particles are used in Korean, the overall grammatical structure is similar enough to allow transliteration when first learning. I still construct sentences in Japanese in my head and then translate them word-for-word into Korean. This takes more time and I expect to grow out of it eventually, but it produces gramatically-correct sentences so it has its uses.
私は 韓国語を 勉強 して います
저는 한국어를 공부 하고 있어요
Conclusion
That about wraps it up for an introduction. There’s still issues of pronunciation, which is more complex in Korean than Japanese but seems to be relatively easy for English-speakers to learn with a bit of practice. If you know Japanese and are thinking about learning another language, I would recommend Korean as it’s simple to get into and can actually improve your knowledge of Japanese kanji as you learn more to help you create Korean words.
