Korean Job Discussion Forums

[rabidcake]

Have any of you studied Korean after learning or knowing Chinese? Care to tell me any thoughts of how knowing Chinese made it easier to learn Korean or was it indifferent?

I am also interested about the other way around too. Anyone study Chinese after learning Korean? How do you think it helped you with the language?

[tzechuk]

In my opinion, unless you are fluent in Chinese, learning Korean is likely going to be confusing.

I am fluent in Chinese (geebers, I AM Chinese.. LOL) and learning Korean hasn't been as confusing as I thought it would be.

But let me tell you about my experience learning French and German at school.

In the UK in my days (90s), most private schools required you to learn basic French and German at the same time until you started GCSEs, then you could choose either or/both. Everyone in my class was constantly getting confused over the vocab we had to learn for these languages. They are not similar languages on the micro-level, but as we were all beginners, they were like *double dutch* to us!

I opted to study German and spent the next 4 years doing it, so altogether I spent almost 7 years at it. Now I am *decent*, but still nowhere near fluent.

At university, I studied Italian at the urging of my singing teacher because she wanted me to start singing operas ^�*$%, so that was yet more confusion - I was remembering French words each time I had to think quick. It wasn't much fun learning it, to be honest.

As Chinese, learning Korean has been a breeze, but only in vocabulary because I've been told 80% (may be more) of all Korean nouns are based on Chinese. My grammar sucks though because I never studied it formally, it's what someone once called *natural language acquisition* by default - funnily enough, she was Taiwanese.

So to answer your question - no, I don't think knowing Chinese is necessarily going to help you. Besides, even if the words are the same, their usage may well be different... as I have come to find out.

[redaxe]

[Old Gil]

I studied Korean first before moving to Mandarin. The syntax and grammar of Mandarin are so similar to English compared to Korean/English that I kept saying "damn this is a lot easier" and it really motivated me to up my studies. It will help with a few hanja derived words but the usage is usually so different so as to not make a difference beyond a few vocab words here and there until you get to a real high level. I agree that Japanese is a better bet.

Actually just skip Korean and learn Mandarin and Japanese

[naturegirl321]

I knew a bit of Mandarin CHinese. My CHinese is WAY better than my Korean. I can say very little like, DOn't do that, thanks to my kids' moms.

It helped me with counting. But also confused me. I would slip into Chinese, like I could count to five in Korean, then start speaking in Chinese.

And Chinese grammar is simple. My CHiense teachers always told me that in the 5000 year history of China, the grammar hadn't changed much at all.

[Hightop]

I think unless you had a close to fluent knowledge of Chinese then it would not be terribly useful when studying Korean. There are words that have the same origin but the pronunciation is different. Of course there are English words that are used in Korean too. Knowing Chinese will def help you in the Hanja tests though. When I studied Chinese the Korean students always picked up the vocab quickly but struggled to make sentences.

[littlelisa]

For me, I spoke Chinese at a high beginner level, but it was slipping from not having studied it. Basically, I feel like a beginner now. I can communicate in only Chinese if I have to (if I don't have to I get lazy), and I can type and chat online with friends, but trying to say "at the pedestrian bridge" becomes something like "at the place where the people can go to the other side of the road". Actually it's not really bad, my Chinese SOUNDS good, and if I only have simple conversations people think I'm better than I am, but I know I'm not actually that good at it anymore.

When I started learning Korean, it was both confusing and a big help. It helped a lot for vocabulary in general, but it screwed up my Chinese numbers 1 and 2 for the longest time. 이 (2) sounds the same as 一 (1). One in Korean is 일, and that kept screwing me up for the first couple of months. Other than that, it was very helpful (for vocabulary), but especially when I started learning some hanja.

For grammar, it was NOT helpful at all. At first I kept wanting to add grammar particles in Chinese to fill the void of not knowing how to say things in Korean (especially conjunctions). But that confusion didn't last long, and overall I think that despite some confusion, Chinese has been a help.

I just went back to China on a short vacation to attempt to not forget my Chinese, and occasionally if a new word came up and I was learning it, it helped to know the Korean when it was similar.

Also: learning Korean is harder than learning Chinese was, because of the grammar.

[Bucky]

I was born in Hong Kong and my family's Chinese, so I knew Chinese before coming here.

It helps a LOT with vocab, but it won't do you much good for grammar. That's pretty much everything in a nutshell.

[mc_jc]

I was going to ask about that because during some time visiting China, I noticed that certain nouns in Chinese sounded similar to Korean nouns.

I was going to ask that, but it was already answered in the post before mine.


Anyway, I think if a person has a grasp of Chinese nouns and Japanese grammar, they should have no problem learning Korean.

[redaxe]

[mc_jc]

What helped me alot in learning word order and such was reading Shakespeare's Sonnets- you'd be surprise how similar Korean grammar is to Shakespearean English (object-subject-verb~ in its basic form).

Another thing that helped me was learning how to read and write in Korean- that enabled me to watch DVDs with Korean subtitles (the basic idea was to listen to what was said in English and then stopping the movie and reading/writing what was written in Korean). The more I did that, the faster I was able to read, write and my vocabulary increased to the point I could understand every 10th word in a Korean newspaper.

I believe that everyone has their own method to learn Korean- but the best way is simply to be here and socializing in the community.

[Dazed and Confused]

Like many others here I studied Chinese but am not fluent. My biggest problem after comming to Korea was getting Korean and Chinese mixed up. Often I'd throw in a random Chinese word when I tried asking for something. Now when I speak Chinese I'll often use Korean words.

[ashland]

[Privateer]

^ Think there's some deep significance in that, don't you, you ass.

I mean ass of the asinine variety, not the steatopygous kind.

[jomiro]

ive studied chinese for four years and was relatively fluent in it..
but let me tell ya.. korean is a whole new chapter.
chinese grammar is a joke, the only difficulty is to learn how to write the characters and memorize them.

korean grammar is aweful. luckily im not bad at learning grammar and once ive applied it, it sticks. but still.. theres hardly any comparison possible. some chinese words sound the same and have the same meaning in korean, but then again, the majority is totally different.

plus, the pronounciation of chinese relies on the letters q, x, z, y and c. korean pronounciation is much more complex. and not quite as easy to learn. they have letter combinations that my tongue cant grasp..

hehe...