Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Will Wiggle]

What info do you wish you knew before you came to Korea? What would you tell people who are about to make the jump to S. Korea?

[Cacille]

Don't bring more than two pairs of shoes. You won't be wearing your nice quality professional shoes in school as you will need to buy school sandals. Just bring your daily wear shoes like tennis shoes, and maybe a pair of summer sandals.

And yes, if you are a woman, feet are size 8 or above, it's harder to find shoes but gmarket does have a good selection.

Also, if you need inserts - BRING PLENTY. Cause the only inserts here are hard foam for flat feet. Or at least, where I am there is only that.

[young_clinton]

Bring as many casual pants and blue jeans as possible. Bring as many pairs of the kind of shoes that you like as you can. All in all shop at the second hand stores for these items and bring them over. Korea has no viable second hand stores whatsoever. Koreans think there is something wrong with that. Also buy MP4 and other small devices in the US before hand.

[Deja]

Bring bed sheets - plenty of!

[MiXX]

That even living outside on Seoul but on the subway line sucks elephant balls.

I need to live close to the action. Sucks having to stay out all night and getting home at 8am due to the subway being closed and not wanting to get an expensive taxi home.

[newb]

[Drew345]

I guess I wish I had known that Korean language was so freakin hard. It probably wouldn't have effected my choice on countries, but after many years studying it and getting nowhere, sometimes I wish I had just gone to Taiwan and could be studying Chinese instead. But I feel I have so much time invested in learning Korean, it's too late to change countries.
If a newbe is thinking about studying Korean a while and learning to speak, they might want to know the language is really hard.
On the other hand, since Koreans have the same difficulty learning English, this relative difficulty works out well for English teaching careers.

[World Traveler]

Drew, like many, you probably heard before you came that Korean is the world's most logical and scientific language- an extremely easy language to learn. It is a matter of national pride. I was looking at some NEAT test prep questions. One was some writing about how Korean is such an easy language for foreigners to learn. What propagandistic garbage.

I agree with everything you say EXCEPT the assumption that difficulties in Korean mean equal difficulties to the Korean learning English.

What specifically makes Korean an inherently difficult language to learn is the loads of honorifics, the objectively large number of sounds used, and the convoluted (and inefficient) gramatical system.

It takes longer (more syllables) to express a thought in Korean than English. This blows. (That and the honorifics get old after a while.)

Here are some sentences with the English and Korean syllable count:

Thank someone (3)
누군가에게 고마워하다 (10)

The man is thin. (4)
남자는 말랐습니다. (8 )

Let's talk on Skype. (4)
스카이프로 말하자. (8 )

What is today's date? (5)
오늘은 몇 월 며칠이에요? (10)

Who published this book? (5)
누가 이 책을 출판했습니까? (11)

Giraffes have long necks. (5)
기린은 긴 목을 가지고 있습니다. (13)

The man is showering. (6)
남자가 샤워를 하고 있습니다. (12)

Language learning is fun. (6)
언어를 배우는 것이 재미있어요. (13)

At that corner, turn left. (6)
모퉁이에서 왼쪽으로 돌아주세요. (14)

I love watching soccer. (6)
저는 축구 보는 것을 아주 좋아합니다. (15)

The man has a headache. (6)
남자는 두통 증세를 가지고 있습니다. (15)

Jeans are made from denim. (6)
청바지는 데님으로 만들어졌습니다. (15)

The man is returning home. (7)
남자가 집으로 돌아오고 있습니다. (14)

The gloves did not fit his hands. (7)
장갑은 그의 손에 맞지 않았습니다. (14)

The athlete sprained his ankle. (7)
운동선수는 그의 발목을 삐었습니다. (15)

Underline all verbs in this text. (8 )
이 글에서 모든 동사에 밑줄을 그으세요. (16)

The swans are swimming in the lake. (8 )
백조들이 호수에서 수영하고 있습니다. (16)

April showers bring May flowers. (8 )
사월의 소나기는 오월의 꽃을 몰고 옵니다. (17)

The man is rolling up his sleeves. (8 )
남자는 소매를 돌돌 말아 올리고 있습니다. (17)

The young boy wears a small size shirt. (8 )
어린 남자 아이는 소 사이즈의 셔츠를 입는다. (18 )

She never speaks ill of others. (8 )
그녀는 절대 남에 대해 나쁜 말을 하지 않습니다. (19)

To feel love is to feel alive. (8 )
사랑을 느끼는 것은 살아있다는 것은 느끼는 것입니다. (22)

He has two cars and a motorcycle. (10)
그는 차 두 대와 오토바이 한 대를 가지고 있습니다. (20)

The man is baking a cake for his wife. (10)
남자는 그의 아내를 위해 케이크를 굽고 있습니다. (20)

Most people don't look good in mini-skirts. (10)
대부분의 사람들은 미니 스커트가 어울리지 않습니다. (22)

I just bought a 40 inch flat screen TV. (11)
저는 사십 인치 평면 스크린 텔레비전을 방금 샀습니다. (22)

My mother was the woman in the blue dress. (11)
제 어머니는 파란 드레스를 입고 있던 여자분이셨습니다. (23)

You drink red wine with meat, and white wine with fish. (11)
당신은 고기와 적포도주를, 생선과 백포도주를 마시는군요. (24)

Clams, salmon, shrimp, lobsters, and squid are all seafood. (12)
조개, 연어, 새우, 랍스터, 그리고 오징어는 모두 해산물입니다. (24)

Facebook and Myspace are social networking sites. (12)
페이스북과 마이스페이스는 친목 네트워크 사이트이에요. (24)

He wants Chinese food, but she wants Italian. (12)
그는 중국 음식을 원하지만, 그녀는 이탈리아 음식을 원합니다. (25)

My mother makes the best apple pie in the world. (12)
우리 어머니는 세상에서 제일 맛있는 사과 파이를 만드십니다. (25)

The man returns home from work. His family welcomes him. (12)
남자가 직장에서 집으로 돌아옵니다. 가족들이 그를 맞이합니다. (26)

I prefer to grill steaks instead of frying them. (12)
저는 스테아크를 기름에 굽는 것 보다 그릴에 굽는 것을 선호합니다. (27)

A TV station must balance entertainment and news to keep its viewers watching. (21)
텔레비전 방송국은 청취자의 지속적인 관심을 유지하려면 오락 프로그램과 뉴스의 균형을 맞취야 합니다. (43)
__________________________________________________________

I met a woman who learned English to a high level without leaving the country. I asked her what inspired her to study hard in middle school.

She said what attracted her to the English language is English is more efficient and doesn't have honorifics.

[Fox]

Does more syllables really equate to more difficult? It never seemed that way to me. The biggest challenges in Korean always seemed to me to be alien vocabulary (even loan words) & phonology, huge number of verb endings with sometimes hard to discern nuances, and idiomatic characteristics like subject dropping (despite not having Romance-language-style verb/subject agreement which maintains clarity). "More syllables" never really struck me as much of a problem.

By contrast, it bears mentioning that Korean is actually a highly regular language. This is why, for example, we can learn every noun and almost every verb as just its dictionary form, whereas an ardent student of English is going to have to remember irregular plurals for some nouns and, more importantly, three principal parts for every verb. The English root system is also relatively opaque compared to the Korean root system, English phonology is probably as hard (if not harder) for Koreans as Korean phonology is for us, and learning where to put the stress one each word, so as to avoid sounding like a robot, is no trivial task. Let's not understate the challenge Koreans face in learning English.

[World Traveler]

[Waygeek]

[Kimchieluver]

Do the right thing and break up with your 7/10 girlfriend now because a 7/10 Korean is like a 9/10 Western... minus the high beams.

[young_clinton]

[young_clinton]

[young_clinton]