Korean Job Discussion Forums

[wormholes101]

[rapier]

Thanks canuck- i didn't think i was wrong either. This just confirms my observation: every expat teacher has is own peculiar version of "korean".

Korean definitely does have way more syllables. Just think of basic commonly used verbs. Inevitably the score is always something like English 1, korean 3. Its so unfair...
Work= "Il-ha-da"
Shout= "So-ri-chi-da"
live= "san-da"

[stalinsdad]

I laugh that a friend of mine says; that she speaks excellent Korean and my Korean girlfriend can't understand a word she says!!
Sure I'm touchy, my Korean is basic, I need to put in more effort but that's because I intend to stay here. Those who are here for a year(if they last that long) can learn if they want to, but they will not be given copius amounts of job offers in US/Oz/Britain if they can speak Korean. As for teaching, well my experience has told me that if you use even a small amount of Korean, the students expect and will automatically go into Korean speaking mode!! Funny that Koreans are the poorest speakers of English in asia, especially as they spend so much. I guess it must be all those English lessons in Korean.

[FierceInvalid]

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

canuck wrote:

[Canuck]

Oh no! I made a typo! Well shoot me now, great wall of bitch caught my typo.

[wormholes101]

[Gord]

[bignate]

Mike, the alphabet is easy to learn and Forest is right the vowel combinations can be a pain.

But, do yourself a favour if you do go to Korea, forget these yahoos and get yourself a real-Korean speaker, because these guys are just too interested in one uping each other.

"NO I speak better ("sh8ttier") korean than you!"
"NO I speak Better ("sh8ttier") Korean than you, and MY GIRLFREIND says so!)

In the words of the Good Bobster - Maaaaaae-Roeng!

[Gord]

[gang ah jee]

Canuck

Rapier was trying to show that Korean words have many more syllables than English ones. Glossing 'annyeong haseyo' as 'hi' may be correct, but IMO not as correct or even honest as 'hello' or 'good morning', 'good afternoon', etc. Also IMO 'annyeong' is a better approximation of 'Hi.'

Perhaps I should have been clearer. It wasn't that I thought rapier was wrong as such, just that his examples weren't completely representative. Take the word 'and' for example. you could gloss it as the compound word 'kurigo' in some cases (say, when starting a sentence.) In other cases 'mit,' '-wa/-gwa,' '-hago', '-go' would be appropriate depending on context, formality, type of word being modified etc. These words aren't hard to use because they're long. They're hard to use because the rules governing their usage are complex.

yeah, my asking him how long he'd been here was a bit juvenile, i agree with that.

Wormholes

i see your point that 'ga' is the root word and everything else is dependent prefix, infix and suffixes. I'm not sure how that makes it any less of a word than any other compound word. Take the so-called 'longest word in English' for example -'antidisestablishmentarianism'. only 'establish' is able to exist as an independent word and everything else is a dependent morpheme. My example is a word than can also be a sentence, but is a word nonetheless - apart from 'ga' (and possibly 'deuro') it can't be broken down into smaller segments of independent meaning.

[bignate]

[makushi]

Views of a rookie...

Korean language good points:

Hangul - Easy to learn

Pronunciation - Fairly easy (some stumbling stones like the "duril" sound, but at least no tones)

More information in less space than English -English translations always tend to be longer and even when I write it myself, I can't fit English into the same space as something in Korean - I guess it has to do with the way the Korean letters can be put together in syllabic units


Grammar - back asswords for an English speaker...but once learned fairly regular and loose IE...throw all the words in and get the verb on the end....congrats..you made a sentence!


Bad points:

To vague - Koreans are always asking each other for clarification of what they said and still getting it wrong half the time. This (IMHO) is partially the fault of the large number of homophones that were borrowed from the Chinese language. The Chinese can get away with it because they have the tones to differentiate between the words. Koreans just took the words without the tones...Japanese have the same problem. Secondly, it is considered impolite to be too direct, especially when asking questions. (this pisses me off to no end! but this post isn't about that)

Too many honorific forms - You can't just learn a word and use it. IE to eat (mokda/mokoyo/mokolay/mokossoyo/mokoshipsuminika/doosayo/chapsusayo, etc. etc.)

Word forms change depending where they are put in the sentence - verbs and adjectives especially, are always changing into what sounds like a completely different word depending where they appear in a sentence.

[The King of Kwangju]

Anyone who does Korean-to-English translation will tell you that the Korean always ends up longer than the English. What makes it longer are the verbs, the honorific forms, and the fact that Korean is less direct than English.

My colleagues and I have discussed this a few times. Korean is probably a more compact language than English - you can say more with less - but the roundabout way things need to be said - all cultural - make it seem longer.

[NearlyKorean]