Korean Job Discussion Forums

Mashimaro · Joined: 31 Jan 2003 Location: location, location

Apologies if this chart has been talked about before. It is some old figures from The Defense Language Institute in Monterey about how many hours are required to learn several languages.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wbaxter/howhard.html

Korean along with japanese, chinese and arabic is in group 4 language meaning it takes 1320 hours of instruction to reach a 'level 2' proficiency.

Group 1 categories such as french, dutch, italian etc. require just 480 hours to reach the equivalent level.

this of course refers to native english speaking learners, and whilst the figures are from 1973, you wouldn't imagine a great deal of difference today.

d503 · Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Location: Daecheong, Seoul

Can I feel cool cause I can speak a level three language..cause i'm not gonna lie to you I do....and shit if I get this korean thing down a level four..I just need a level two and I will feel like the coolest kid on the block. Modern Greek here I come

Tiger Beer · Joined: 07 Feb 2003

List 3

rapier · Joined: 16 Feb 2003

I assume English is a level 4 language to Koreans, while Japanese is an easy level one to them?

komtengi · Joined: 30 Sep 2003 Location: Slummin it up in Haebangchon

that seems like a hell of a lot of instruction hours.... I don't believe I had near that much... but then again I suck at maths Wink

mithridates · Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2004 8:28 am Post subject:

That looks about right. I wonder what Turkish would be. Probably level three because the grammar's like Korean, level two to a Korean I assume.
Norwegian and other Scandinavian languages are ridiculously easy.

Oh what?! There's Turkish, level three. Why can't I see things that are right in front of my nose?

Anyway thanks for the link. That was interesting.

Tiger Beer · Joined: 07 Feb 2003

So if I were to study thoroughly an Asian language, supposedly Khmer, Lao, Tagalog, Thai or Vietnamese would be twice as easy as Chinese, Japanase or Korean.

Something strange about that though. Particularly Chinese, as generally Mandarin is well-known to have an easy grammar, and its only 4 tones as opposed to 5,6,8,9 or whatever of Khmer, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, etc.

fondasoape · Joined: 02 Dec 2004

The 'data' is 31 years old. Teaching methods have changed radically since then. The information (as well as the notion that any language is intrinsically harder to learn than any other) is fundamentally bogus.

mithridates · Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2004 10:33 am Post subject:

No it's not. It's not so much to do with difficulty as it is with the time it takes to learn.

Skal du ga til kanada? - shall / will you go to Canada?
ĳ��ٷ� ��ž�?

Which one's easier for the English speaker to pick up?

fondasoape · Joined: 02 Dec 2004

Go read some Gass, Bialystok, Ellis, Selinker, Pavlenko etc. and get back to me, or be content to stay ignorant. No skin off my back, dude.

mithridates · Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2004 12:10 pm Post subject:

Or you could take an example from my own experiences:

Japanese: 3 years
Korean: 1 1/2 years
Norwegian: six weeks for a good working knowledge

What are some of your personal experiences in learning languages?

little mixed girl · Joined: 11 Jun 2003 Location: shin hyesung's bed~

heh, i've got a "personal.umich.edu" site also Cool

ehh...learning any language in general is going to be hard.
while i love spanish, i struggled through it in high school (not too bad in middle school tho) because the conjugation was whack...among other things.

with japanese, i was able to catch on to a lot of things quickly cuz i watched a lot of anime, and read a lot of manga.
with korean, i just transferred my japanese grammar over.

i believe chinese is on the level 4 because of the characters and 4 tones.
i think (??) that arabic has a conjucation that 'wraps' around the verb, and doesn't just attach to the end.

i think korean pronunciation is kinda hard...in comparison to japanese.
and they've got some crazy grammar patterns that i'm sure the japanese knew were whack and dropped that fast...

but, ppl do have to admit, for a majority of english speakers, spanish, french, german, latin are more 'comfortable' than arabic, chinese, etc etc... Confused

Harin · Joined: 03 May 2004 Location: Garden of Eden

fondasoape · Joined: 02 Dec 2004

mithridates · Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2004 1:49 pm Post subject:

Let's clarify things before we argue: are you stating that according to your information all languages should take roughly the same time to learn for an English speaker? Or is your point something different?