Korean Job Discussion Forums

[changwonteacher]

I worked in Japan before and learnt a little of the lanugage (although only to beginner level). I am working in Korea now and am trying to learn some of the language while I'm here. But if I resume my Japanese studies when I leave here, will having a limited grasp of both lanugages only lead to confusion? Any thoughts?

[normalcyispasse]

That depends on how good you are at code-switching. I don't find Korean to be that big a hindrance to my Japanese, but then again I don't speak Korean very well at all.

[HighTreason]

The last poster is absolutely right, and I have found that some people just have the code switching gene and others don't. If you have that ability like I do, go ahead and learn three or four languages at once, it's great fun! If you don't have it (like my wife) you'll take a little longer to learn languages and you should probably stick to one at a time, but it should not deter you from being multi-lingual if you have the determination.

It should also be noted, though, that the similarity of the two languages is a big factor as well. I don't really know how close Japanese is to Korean because I don't speak any Japanese and only a small amount of Korean since I have only been learning it for two weeks. Languages that are more different from each other are easier to learn simultaneously as you might imagine, so if Japanese is very similar to Korean, learning both at the same time may make it harder to become very good at either. The writing system is different so that's a good sign...

[Vancouver]

knowiing korean helped me out a bit when i was learning Japanese

[Jizzo T. Clown]

In my experience learning to read korean was hindered by my Japanese. Hangeul shares many similarities with katakana, so it took me longer than it should have to learn the characters.

[BuHaoChi]

....

[Zolt]

I went the other way round but my korean still sucks. I think it will help you a bit for vocabulary and grammar, as well as hanja if you know some. Just as long as you try not to have a korean accent when speaking japanese. Their lack of any distinction between T and D, as well as random addition of p', pp, t', tt etc.. where there should only be regular consonant can be extremely unnerving, maybe even more so that in English.

Japanese pronounciation is a lot easier than either english or korean, but there are plenty of opportunities for misunderstanding if you still mess it up.

[tigerbluekitty]

Hmm.. Not sure about Korean -> Japanese route but... as with learning any foreign language, things tend to mix if you don't study and practice each respective language well enough.

I went the Japanese -> Korean route. Things are going pretty smoothly except for the Japanese accent and intonation I can't seem to get rid of and the Korean 'soft' sounds. Koreans say my Korean sounds funny and "off", my Korean Canadian friend shakes his head and laughs at me whenever I attempt speaking in Korean, but miraculously they manage to understand everything I'm tryin' to say. . at least so far.

[Juregen]

[spliff]

Entirely depends on the size of your brain.