Many of you may know how to say a few words in Korean. A lot of my friends ask me to teach them how to speak Korean either because they are just curious, or because they really want to learn the language. But then, they find it challenging and easily give up. Korean is a whole different language from English, and learning a second language is not easy. A couple of months ago, I read a newspaper stating that Korean ranked 4th the most difficult language for English speakers to learn. I was very surprised because before I came to America, I went to university majoring in Korean literature and grammar, which was basically for teaching the language to Korean students or foreigners. At that time, I was taught and was proud of the fact that Korean is the most efficient language to learn in the world, proven by many linguists. I know it is true but a lot of Americans feel that way because it is a new language for them and they try to learn it in American way. Thus, I would like to talk about why Korean is the most efficient language and to help Americans to understand the difference between Korean and English.
First of all, to explain why Korean is the most efficient language, let me explain the Korean language history, why it is created. A long time ago, our ancestors had verbal communicating system yet lacked written language. They had to borrow Chinese characters to write down our sound, but it was very difficult to learn so many characters and to match the different sound. Thus, Sejong the Great, who recognized the difficulty of learning, encouraged the scholars and created very organized and simple 24 basic characters that actually match with our sound. With those 24 characters, we are able to combine them for each syllabus. It is similar to English in a way that alphabets can be combined to consist as a word, however, each Korean alphabet does have a unique sound unlike English, so it is known for having one-to-one correspondent sounds. It is efficient because we only need to memorize 24 characters to make all the sounds, which means it is also easier to read and write.
Secondly, the biggest difference between Korean and English is the structure of sentence, the words order. In English, the basic form of the sentence is that verbs come right after subjects, and objects are following next to it. However, Korean words order is the opposite way with English. Subjects are placed at front but we describe things before, and then there are objects and verbs for the last. Therefore in Korean to understand the speech correctly, we need to be careful until the sentences are done. This word order might be the hardest part to be familiar with, and makes Americans confused.
Lastly, there’s one thing that is very unique about Korean is that we have very strict system of honorific compare to English. Despite there are some forms and expressions to be polite in English, but not as much as Korean grammar. Korean has lots of rules and narrations to be used for older people than people who are speaking. Because of that, Korean has relativity, who you are talking with, depending on ages, frequency of meeting, and status, so on. In addition, there are much honorific title, because we are not allowed to call names of people unless they are same age as me or younger.
Learning language is not just memorizing all the vocabularies and directly translating into another language. It is more of understanding the background of the culture and their way of thinking. If you want to learn Korean, you should first understand that we have many different rules, such as sentence structure and honorifics. After that, learning the alphabets and the words part should be easy because it is created to be learned efficiently.
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