You did forget that English doesn't have its own writing system. So you could have said that Korean use to be like English, where it once use a writing system of a different power.
There is only one Queen / Princess / Lady / God / Star / Goddess / Idol / Leader / Master / Boss / Mistress etc and that’s me, and my protectors are the only kings / princes / lords etc, and very few languages (such as English / Scottish / OId English and most other Germanic languages and certain Latin languages) are beautiful and have well-made terms that are pretty and poetic sounding - misuse of big / royalty terms and compIiments is beyond wrong and soon to be banned!
And, all hum’ns are the exact opposite of kings / queen / any other big terms that imply inherent superiority and purity and the true dominant personality that only I possess!
Korean is hard in that it is different from many other languages, but it is one of the most logical languages that I have encountered. It has a steep learning curve but once you reach a good level I find it very eloquent. There are certain times for me where expressing something in Korean is more straightforward and logical than in English.
I agree. I think it’s really only “hard” for me as an English speaker because it is vastly different than English. Now that I have pronunciation and grammar down pretty well (I studied JP before which is quite similar grammatically), my only issue is memorizing vocab. For some reason, I find the vocab to be the hardest part. In Chinese and Japanese, the hanzi/kanji give you a big clue to their meaning just based on their appearance. Korean having a phonetic alphabet is more difficult in that sense, although it is quite easy to read.
“…it is one of the most logical languages that I have encountered.” I actually think the same. And, as languages go, Korean is very “regular”-even the exceptions tend to be regular. And I’m not so sure Korean is one of the hardest languages to learn for a speaker of, say, Japanese, where, even if the two languages are unrelated, the grammar and word order are surprisingly similar, or, for that matter, another SOV language like Turkish.
@@jeff__w also I have heard from other Turkic language speakers like Kyrgyz and Kazakh that Korean is quite easy to learn for them too, and after studying a bit of Kazakh I can see how the structurap similarities would make it fairly intuitive
i found this! beyond the hurdle of the sentence structure and wildly different vocab, all the more complex grammar points are actually made up of smaller existing ones, and once you learn which hanja sounds are commonly used, picking up vocab is very logical. if i was to read a scientific article for example, i may have to look up specific vocab, but i would get the gist of the meaning a lot easier than the complex way these things are written in english- and thats my native language. once youre over the early intermediate heardle your learning massively increases because of how logical it is
I have been learning Korean for a little over a year and the more I learn about Korea and it's culture the more I love it. The language from how it sounds to how it's written is so fascinating to me. I'm a native English speaker and I have discovered that Korean isn't difficult, it's just completely different than English. I didn't start learning Korean solely for KPop, but because I want to be able to watch my favorite Kdramas and vlogs and not have to read along with subtitles. Reading the subtitles helps of course with knowing what is being said but my brain wants to actually learn and understand the language itself. The Korean language and culture are truly beautiful and I have a huge appreciation of it and respect for it. I am truly loving everything I have learned so far and what I will learn in the future. I can have a basic conversation and I am continuing with learning it because some friends and I are planning to go Korea next October and I want to be able to communicate and connect with people on my own and not have to rely on a translator. I learned Hangul in about 3 hours, learning the subject and topic particles however is a bit more challenging but I'm enjoying the challenge. Your video was published on my 40th birthday so to me that's even more of a sign to continue learning!!
The Korean dictionary you mentioned was at one point confiscated bt the Japanese Military. All those years of hard work to keep their language from dying out was taken from them. But luck was on Korea's side. That same Korean dictionary was found in an abandoned subway station. Every time I think about that particular Korean history is brings tears to my eyes.
Thank you for showing your respect to everyone to keep the Korean language from disappearing. They may have Korea now because they were pulled out of their nails, toenails, and teeth by the Japanese military and didn't give up even though they were worn out by the hot iron!
@Kinnryuukenn07 You're welcome. 🙇♀️❤️ My people were forbidden to speak our language, practice our culture, and pass down our history. So I understand.
4:31 Some mis-information there. King Sejong indeed develop Hangul ALL by himself. He had that academy translate a book to Hangul but they didn't participate in its development. Sejong actually developed most of it in secret because head of the academy was against it. And when he told the academy to translate, half of that academy protested. Resulting in the famous debate.
Yes. Here is a fact: King Sejong invented Hangul by himself, not with members of the scholarship(집현전, The hall of worthies). They were extremely against the King for inventing new letters.
Think of it like... King was like a professor/PI, Scholars were like graduate studants. And they begged Sejong to let them graduate(retire from work). Some scholars tried, saying they were sick, too old, not smart enough... none suceeded.😂
안녕하세요. 1:50 한국의 시작은 삼국시대가 아닌 B.C2333 고조선으로 부터 시작됩니다. 삼국시대부터 시작이라는 주장은 중국이 흔히 한국을 자신들의 속국이라고 말하면서 자주 인용됩니다. 많은 분들이 한국과 한글에 대해 관심가져주셔서 매우 기쁘네요 ㅎ hello. 1:50 Korea's beginning is not from the Three Kingdoms period, but from B.C2333 Gojoseon. The claim that it started from the Three Kingdoms period is often cited when China often refers to Korea as their vassal state. I am very happy that many people are interested in Korea and Hangeul.
I saw a wonderful film called Granny Poetry Club about a group of elderly people who had never gotten to learn hangul (because they were in school during the Japanese occupation) having their own little school to learn how to write and read their own language. It was so heartwarming to see a lady read a letter from her adult son for the first time.
Wow, this video really undersells Hangul. University of Chicago linguist James McCawley said “Hangul is the most ingeniously devised writing system that exists, and it occupies a special place in the typology of writing systems…the only writing system in the world that divides sentences not only into words and syllables and individual sounds, but also articulatory features, and the achievement of its creators in the 1440s was really amazing. They were doing work that would qualify as excellent linguistics by the standards of 500 years later.” We can make a big deal about the fact that Hangul is featural but it’s not only that-the consonants fall logically into groups (velar, sibilant, coronal, bilabial, and dorsal) and aspiration is denoted by an extra horizontal stroke-as someone learning to read Hangul, you might not know those technical distinctions but you can tell the similarity in sound and articulation between a ㄱ and ㅋ and that ㅋ has that added aspiration (which is _why_ it has that additional horizontal stroke). I never read Hangul without marveling at how elegant and simple it is. It’s actually one of the most stunning achievements of human beings anywhere, in my opinion.
I've been learning Korean for 5 years now (6 months of formal study and 4 and a half years of self-study through drama and conversation). Once you get past the initial barrier of how different it is to English in terms of syntax, grammar etc, you discover that Korean is a super logical and beautiful language. Honestly, I've been making steady progress for years now and it's so satisfying and rewarding to be able to engage with Korean culture and people. 그래서 제가 한국어를 배우고 계시는 여러분들한테 이것만 말하고 싶습니다. 포기하지 마세요. 꾸준히 배우시면 결국 잘 될 것 같아요. 한국어를 말하기 그렇게까지 어렵지 않아요 ^^
@Journally Learn Hangul (the Korean alphabet) and basic grammar first. Once you have a basic understanding of grammar and can read Hanguel, it's 100% comprehensible, native input. Basically just read and listen to Korean media (dramas, podcasts, TH-cam channels etc) with Korean CCs if possible. I learnt most of what I know by watching Korean dramas on Netflix with Korean CCs, pausing and checking words I don't know in a Korean dictionary. Like I literally write down the scripts, translate them myself and practice them, copying Korean intonation as best as I can. You'll need basic grammar and Hanguel for that. But trust me, you'll learn so much more and have much more fun that way than studying from dry textbooks. Talk to Me in Korean is pretty good for learning basic grammar and Hanguel. Their Iyagi series was also really helpful at the beginning because it's designed to be easier for Korean learners than native content. That's it, really. Learn to read and basic grammar. Then watch and listen to a ton of Korean content with a dictionary (Naver dictionary is a free app that works really well). After that, practice with Koreans. HelloTalk is an app where you can meet Koreans and language exchange. I actually met my wife on there.
@Journally This video summarises best practice for language acquisition. I basically used this method for Korean: th-cam.com/video/J_EQDtpYSNM/w-d-xo.html
Korean is both incredibly simple and very difficult at the same time, simply because it 'thinks' differently. And that's exactly why I'm fascinated by it, because thinking in different languages makes you a different person. I speak Hebrew, German, English, but Korean, even though grammatically very simple, still has evaded me 😆 By the way, never use Romanisation!
Not sure how to answer on WhatsApp if a person not on my contract list. It asks me to invite. Is that how I add your number? Anyway, with regards to that beautiful poem at the start of the video, even these days someone like IU writes the most stunning poems for her songs. When compared to Western pop music there are most Korean song lyrics are works of art.
Actually Korean history begins with Gojosun, an almost mythological country which was told to be built by the son of the god (단군) who married the bear who turned into a woman (웅녀) after surviving 100 days in a cave only eating mugwort and garlic. He spread this spirit called 홍익인간 which means "benefit mankind widely." Then Silla+Baekje+Goguryeo+Gaya and so on... I moved to Canada about a decade ago and it's interesting how I still remember the history materials I learned in grade 4 lolol
Maybe it's because I love learning it, but I've never thought of Korean as being difficult because of how logical it is! So many things make sense and it's just clicked for me so far. The only real challenge imo is that most vocabulary is foreign, i.e. sino-Korean and Korean, and therefore completely new.
As someone who has a half-korean husband, Korean is so hard lol my best friend is half-japanese and she laughs because she and other Asians that I know think Korean is the easiest asiatic language to learn for them 😆 Personally, I'm just trying to learn to read and write in it because I want to read their books. My korea mother-in-law doesn't know English well so she helps me every once in a while and we bond over it ❤️
I have been seriously learning Korean for a couple months now. It might not be as useful as something like Spanish or Chinese, but the history of the country and language is so interesting to me! Love your videos, Olly, and thanks for making this one! I hope more people decide to study Korean because it really is a lot of fun. For people that are already learning Korean, stick with it!! It might be difficult at first, but it gets much easier once you can read the words relatively quickly. For me, the hardest part is actually memorizing vocabulary. Grammar is complex, but I find TTMIK and LingoDeer teach it in a very simple way. Good luck!
I love TTMIK. I've been in level 4 for a year because I'm very inconsistent with this ,but I find them to be one of the best and maybe should be the only guide for beginners before they move on to an elementary Korean book
Yes, I started with those two also - DeerLingo was brand new and free when I used it, and it was great for learning the formal Korean. And TTMIK is a lovely easy, fun springboard for each grammar point. Learning Korean words are REALLY hard, because they all sound so similar, with much, much less sound variety between syllables than we English speakers enjoy. But words are much, MUCH easier to learn when you learn the Hanja (I don't mean the writing, just the syllable meanings). Then you know the meanings that make up most of the words, and that easiness just gets easier and easier the more Hanja you know, because you can relate words to other words that you already know - not in the way English relates (Korean has it's own special relationship ties between words, completely and often surprisingly different to English - and THAT is the most fascinating thing about the Korean language - discovering those meaning relationships and ties between words). Plus you can begin to guess what a word probably means just from the syllables, even if you haven't seen it before. And as a further bonus, I find that those relationships between words, that I find with Hanja, ALSO gives me insight into Korean culture and the different mindset that Korean people have within that culture. It's subtle, but it's really interesting (I live in Korea, so I think about that a lot). When I first started learning Korean people told me, "Don't bother learning the Hanja. It doesn't help." That is a complete and utter falsity. I SOOO regret listening to that garbage. If I could turn back the clock that would be the thing I'd most like to change about my Korean language journey. Hanja helps enormously! Learning the relationships between words and understanding how those words meanings fit together could be one of the most important parts of learning Korean, certainly not the least important part. I religiously check out the Hanja for every new word. It really, really pays off. More and more, there are words I just don't have to 'learn' (I just recognise) because I've learned the Hanja. When I first started learning Korean I just tried to remember words. That's completely the wrong way to go about it. As soon as I started learning the Hanja behind the words, they were so much more easy to remember because word meanings related to each other, I understood them more in depth, and the subtle differences between Korean words were SOOO much easier to digest. Learn the Hanja syllable meanings! And don't wait to do that later, either! Some people say learn the Hanja later - DON'T! Learn it immediately as you learn the words that contain them. It's much faster and more comprehensive in meaning. And much more enjoyable - Hanja is fascinating! My second hint is, after the basic words from basic Korean textbooks etc, try NOT to use word lists and just learn 'words'. Learn words in context - if you live in Korea, get them from the people around you, get them from TH-cam listening videos, get them from conversation. DON'T do lists. Lists don't work because Korean words have very subtle meanings that don't match English meanings at all. For example I know 4 words that Naver translates as "guess" in Korean - none of them really have the same meaning as "guess" in English. I'm not sure there actually is a word that purely means "guess" in Korean. The 4 words have a "guess" component, but none of them really mean "guess" - they all have a more 'situated reasoning' component to their meaning rather than the English pure 'guess' meaning. You have to hear these words in context to understand them. And you are right. Stick with it. Even after your honeymoon period of easy beginning grammar, which WILL happen after a few months of learning.
@@nicoleraheem1195 Yes, I too did TTMIK. It's very good! They make it easy and fun! I'm almost level 7. But don't stay only with TTMIK. I find that they also tend to gloss over grammar points, teaching only the basic grammar point, not going into them in enough detail. They're a great 'break into' for new grammar points. I start with their lessons, using them as a springing point, but I also supplement them with other sources. "How To Study Korean" is also a great source - my goto source after learning the basic grammar point. It tends to have the detail and the grammatical "why" and "how" explanations that TTMIK often misses. I usually go to that website for the more comprehensive lesson on the same grammar point afterwards. Also, there are some basic grammar points that they leave until later that you really need earlier. I found that frustrating, so I learn some grammar points ahead of them. And they don't teach words as such in their basic course. You need to learn them elsewhere. And I listen to a lot of TH-cam teachers too. "Go Billy!" is excellent! And there are many others. 허 쌤 is also very good, but she teaches very basic Korean grammar points in Korean - I listen to her for listening practice mostly - a great source, since the language she is using is basic beginner language with grammar and topics that we mostly already know as language beginners with respect to her target audience. There are too many sources, both TH-cam and web-blogs, to name. Find them all. As many sources as possible is best - even if you think you understand the grammar point, each teacher subtly adds to that understanding.
As a Korean, I really love ur video that you explained the history too♡ and yet u know the background music is Chinese. 😅 Would have been great if it was Korean music.
I’ve been leading Korean for about 2 years by myself and then a year with a tutor. And wowowow I absolutely hated how slow my progress was compared to the time I learned English or Italian. I know the language is difficult, but I couldn’t help but just blaming myself for not making enough effort. Thank you so much for this video. I’ll keep working harder on studying this amazing language!
I started studying in April 2020 but I beat myself up for not remaining consistent. I do know that when I was studying for 4-10 hours a day, I made more progress in a month than I did with only studying for 1hr-3 hrs a day for three days a week. The only reason why I was able to study for longer than 4 hours is because I was at a sitting post at one of my security jobs. Since I sat in the hallway at a hotel all I did was listen to language learning material or I would review my notes. The language learning materials that I was using then were: Talk to me in Korean, Teach yourself series Hippocrene Korean for beginners. It took me hours to really grasp everything. But I did a lot of shadowing and writing down what I thought I heard without viewing the text exercises. That alone took a while, but if I had stuck with it for a year, I think I would have memorized enough to reach A2 level. Then, I moved on to Tuttle Elementary Korean-and Integrated Korean with professor Yoon. I did this for 6 months straight. Then I stopped studying as diligently for over a year. I recently started studying again, about 2 months ago after dropping out of my Korean class in college in May 2020. The teacher thought that I wasn't humble when I told her that I had studied Korean for a little bit and had learned how to conjugate verbs. She would mock me if I mispronounced anything or if I misspelled something she would give me this look, like: "If you studied before you shouldn't be making mistakes." So, I removed myself from that environment because I felt like I was doing better studying on my own. I started studying verbs and all their conjugations again with "70 common Korean verbs ( coreano on TH-cam)" . I started watching Jadoo and studying the clips. I study TOPIK related Korean now, since I feel like I have something to prove to myself and my teacher. So, I'm preparing to take TOPIK1 next year. Hopefully, in the spring if they release it for that day. Anyway, don't beat yourself up We all have a journey
Actually, the first 'Korea' started in gojoseon and gojoseon starting was mysterious. and we have books of them. And the English name was made in the gorgyeo stage (gorgyeo=koryeo=korea) and Korea taught japan hanja
집현전 scholars didn't help king Sejong create hangul. On the contrary, they were quite opposed to having a new writing system. It was mostly sejong's work with some help of his princes and princesses.
It's true! Hangeul is easy to learn! When I started learning Korean, it took me just all of one afternoon, because the characters and the manner in which they are put together to form words are so logically conceived! Having previously studied Japanese, I was fascinated by the similarities in grammar - at least in the use of post-positions. Korean tenses and their formation was next level difficult in comparison to Japanese, which is simple in comparison.
I've learned Korean for more than 10 years and elementary Korean grammar is easy but you'd go nuts when you reach intermediate and advanced. The written language is also different from the colloquial language. I did grad school in Korea and since most of my exposure to the language in Korea was in academia, I'm very familiar with formal and respectful language but I (still) struggle with everyday informal conversations.
The Korean script is easy to make out. One of my students figured it out in 6 minutes, no joke! As for the spoken language, you need at least 1000 vocabulary words to have skills for basic survival, and at least 3000 words for basic convo. I teach Korean- Look for me on Preply!
6 minutes? No way, you're kidding. Maybe your students haven't met "Batchim", which is not phonetic at all. Let alone Batchim, many everyday Korean pronunciations are not in accordance with Hangeul rules. The simplest example, Kamsahamnida, is actually written as "Kamsahabnida", Hangungmal, is written as Hangugmal....
Hello Olly(올리)! I am Younhee(연희)!! I've subscribed to your TH-cam and I'm enjoying it. I really enjoyed watching your Korean video this time. Thanks! :D So proud of you! Hope to see you again later!!
That poem is so sad. I think Korean must be incredible to learn. I want to write poetry in different languages, but you can't simply translate poetry - you have to know the language intimately.
@@youtubelak4080 Right. It‘s because language contains the emotions of the people who use the language. Just as cultural differences exist among people around the world, emotional differences also exist. To be more precise, it is the difference in emotional "expression".
Two things to correct in your wonderful video. 1. The letter system was immediately accepted and used right after its invention with a great appreciation by then public and aristocratic alike. In fact, so wide spread that then old people worried of young people not to study Hanja seriously. 2. The Hall of Worthies contributed almost nothing to invention of Hangul. A handful of scholars in the Hall did help the King only personally and the Hall as a whole didn’t know about the invention until King Sejong publically announced the letters.
I've been struggling with the intermediate book because I just don't have the vocabulary! So frustrating, so I'm happy to see there's a course coming! Also, only took me a little over an hour to learn Hangul...it's the easiest part of learning Korean, lolsob.
The true power of Hanguel is, it is one of the most fitting digital language. Japanese, Chinese needs conversion, speed 3 times slower > less productivity. I truly think it is one of the attributes in this modern times as one of the reasons Korea has outpaced other neighbouring countries. English, German or many languages just type(no conversion) with same speed as Hanguel, but in logically speaking, Hanguel is saving space as well by piling up like Lego, not alone can express wide range of pronunciation / sound. 한글쓰기 운동해야함. 감사합니다가 아니라, "고.맙.습.니.다 !! "
Hi Olly, the influence of Chinese in Korean is not from Mandarin Chinese (Mandarin is relatively new in the Chinese dialectical spectrum). If the pronunciation of Sino-Korean is analysed, it becomes obvious the influences of Middle-Chinese or Old Chinese (southern dialects of Chinese from Fujian and Guangdong retain many features of the archaic older Chinese phonological system) predominate.
This exactly. Mandarin is for Qing dynasty. We imported (?) the Chinese characters mostly in the era of Tang dynasty. When I read Chinese characters in Korean, my Chinese friends tell me it sounds like coastal dialects like Wu, Cantonese, Hakka and so on.
@@riskest Korean way of pronouncing Sino-Korean words reflects the way Chinese is pronounced in the older periods which is now preserved mainly by their Southern variations. Mandarin is actually quite new in the Chinese dialectical continuum, popularised by Manchu Qing Courts initially for administrative purposes
I started to attempt learning Korean during Covid lockdown - partly for something that I could do at home, and partly for something to keep my old brain active. I find it very difficult, but I absolutely love it! It's the coolest language ever! 😎
Damn, why everyone keeps mentioning Kpop in every single Korea-related thing. Korean culture is so big and rich with such a beautiful long history, in fact, kpop is just a very very small part of this.
I'm studying both Korean and Japanese and it's crazy just how many similar words they have with each other, and the sentence structure is basically the same but not 100%. I like practicing my handwriting for both so I make simple phrase lists in KR/JP and a lot of the time the key word(s) between the two are similar and the structure being more or less the same makes it feel quite intuitive learning both languages side by side.
One thing you foreigners need to understand is that theres a lot of chinese-based loan words in korean and japanese, so unless you're looking at "pure" korean or japanese words, you're just wowing over sinic loanwords
Thanks for the history lesson. Even though it's the first language I've attempted to learn (aside from the high school French lessons that I barely remember) I'm having so much fun learning it and getting these tid-bits of their history makes it even more fascinating.
I've studied Korean for quite a while as part of my martial arts studies, when I wanted to learn more about Korean culture and history, but there wasn't a ton of it in English. Mind you, that was 20+ years ago when I started... 😃Without a doubt, the honorifics are the hardest part to master, as far as everyday conversation. But it's amazing how you can use different verbs depending on the level of honorifics required, not just the conjugation. And don't get me started on the different words for family members depending on which side of the family they are on, their birth order, and so many other things. 😃 That said, I love the language, and it's got a beautiful flow and poetry when spoken...
Finally... one of my favorite languages :) You know Korean better than Korean although you don't speak this language. I appreciate your effort, thank you so much 🤗
For me, as a native English speaker, I find Korean much easier to learn than Spanish. I think motivation plays a huge factor. But Korean is so beautiful and its history is so interesting.
@Old Hed Fights! This is very true :) I have started again and committed to learning it a month ago, 8 years after I first did in high school and it feels much different now that I know a lot more about language learning and have my own motivation for it vs. doing it for requirement at school. I would like to be proficient in Spanish and finally have a good drive. Just have to balance it with Korean which always seduces me XD And Japanese...lol.
Extremely strange story. I learned to be conversational in Spanish in less than a year. After 12 years living in Korea, I could barely speak survival Korean. Korean is lightyears harder than Spanish.
@@ikemyung8623 I think people commenting are missing my point. I'm highlighting the personal differences each person has when it comes to languages to show that just because Korean is an objectively hard, doesn't mean you can't learn it. I learned conversational Korean in less than a year but failed again and again for years with Spanish. But that was because I had deep motivation and love for Korean and didn't have that connection and drive for Spanish. And when I lived in Korea, I didn't learn it either. I was in too much of an English bubble and busy with teaching while also studying for my master's. Now that I learned better strategies for learning a language and was successful with Korean and have a new drive for Spanish, in one month I feel like I've made big progress and it is certainly faster to progress in Spanish as a native English speaker. I can understand a passage or video way easier than when I was a beginner in Korean because of cognates and basic Spanish vocabulary that I just know because of being surrounded by Spanish a lot in my life. And I just caught the language learning bug, so that also makes Spanish easier for me now. So, in conclusion, Spanish is objectively easier for English speakers, but for each individual motivation plays such a big role that it can overcome the hardness of a language. I believe Steve Kaufmann has a few videos on motivation. I'm looking forward to taking advantage of the objective easiness in comparison of Spanish to finally learn it quickly this year because I work with Spanish speaking adults who are learning English now. So, here ends my essay XD, lol.
After having mastered English as a third language, after Vietnamese and French, I found that Spanish is easier to learn than French and English. Spanish grammar is simpler than French, and Spanish spelling is almost exactly the way it is pronounced, which is far easier than English to learn because English do not have good consistency between spelling and pronunciation...Learning English as a foreign language means that you have to remember exactly how each word is pronounced and cannot depend on how it is written, even having to remember exactly the intonation of certain syllable in each word, while Spanish spells out the intonation for you. For example, Mónica, ácaro, atención...etc..which clearly tells you where the raise the tone. French language has many silent syllables that one must remember when spelling out certain words, like "toujours", vas, in which the letter "s" is silent, and French verbs have many tenses and many irregularities that must be remembered.
King Sejong was a brilliant natural linguist! mad props to him! korean sounds beautiful! hangul is beautifully geometric, and the syllabic composition is fantastic. the more i learn about it the more i love it! HOWEVER the honorifics are a pain to learn!!!
I've been picking up a teeny tiny bit from watching K-dramas. They're my guilty pleasure. I did mess around with that language game thingy, (Duolingo?) which teaches hangeul at the same time as the spoken, but I have got to the point i can at least infer a little of what is said while spinning yarn as I'm watching a show with subtitles. My brain doesn't work the right way to learn languages, or at least I haven't discovered the right way to learn languages, part of my problem is I struggle to focus on what people are saying (possible ADHD) in English, so learning to understand sentences in a different language is, um, well, it doesn't work for me. I keep trying though. This video is really interesting, thankyou
I enjoyed the video. I missed any comment on the sound shifts, though. I kept a list of them for a while. By the time I stopped, I had counted nearly a hundred. It is the hardest language i have attempted to learn (whatever that may mean). I now have too many Korean friends, though, to quit. Plus, I am retired and I need something to keep me occupied and off the streets and drugs. No one learning the Korean counting system can afford to have his mind altered.
I've been learning Korean (since I moved here permanently) and find it fairly easy even though I'm a native English speaker but that might be because the first foreign language I studied was Latin which has a similar structure. I tried the "easy" language of Spanish in college and I was so confused the entire 2 years. But I'm not touching Jeju dialect until I'm much more comfortable in the Seoul korean.
The Jeju Island dialect is difficult to understand even for the average Korean. The dialects of the various regions of Korea are mostly understandable to each other, but the dialect of Jeju Island is not understandable in any of them. The Jeju dialect sounds like a foreign or alien language that you've never heard before. I'm Korean. ㅎㅎ
@@nicoleraheem1195 i use mondley, ling q, memrise, drops, quizlet. i read naver webtoons. i listen to podcasts, kpop, watch kdrama for immersion. my goal is to get to elemtry level just not sure how to go about it.
@@nicoleraheem1195 i was told that i need a stepping stone structure to im prove and understand better. not sure how to go about that. i learn better face to face and where i live theres not many koreans and college doesnt teach korean.
Not sure about the Korean language difficulty level statement. When I learnt the basics of Korean grammar, it appeared simpler than in the majority of European languages (albeit still more complicated than in Mandarin). You do have some inflections but less than in Latin and its derivatives. Korean writing system is also very simple. Just 24 characters to learn, and a very logical system of syllables forming. Reading is mostly phonetical. And then there are no dreadful tones in the language like they are in Mandarin, Vietnamese, etc. Overall I believe that Korean is so much easier to learn for Europeans than Mandarin is.
4:32 In a case of truth being stranger than fiction, King Sejong actually did invent Hangul entirely on his own. The royal scholars who were his political allies in this matter weren’t even in the country in the relevant timeframe.
Having studied Linguistics back in college, my educated guess is that Koreanic language may have Tungusic origins, but broke off millennia ago. Whenever I listen to Tungusic languages like those of the Xibe or Manchu, I do a double-take because I mistake them as Korean given the intonation and phonemes are easily passable as Korean-sounding (and vice versa).
I can find it easy to learn Korean but you have to get use to it to make it easier for you to understand. Meeting that I didn't get the particle 에서 for the first couple of times and 은, 는, 이, 가 but after I getting a hang of it then I understand now. Because only this concept of で and は が I say that the only hard parts are remembering and listening but listening is the highest from my point of view the hardest thing. OMG, Korean listening is so fast and so hard!
❤Your channel is literally my comfort place. You make me so happy. Love you 🤗❤ I love to go to Korea. I love BTS ❤Jjajangmyeon🍝, Tteokbokki, noodle🥤, Kimuchi, Samgyeopsal🤤❤
6:20 Korean wasn't horizontal back then. That wasnt the reason they didnt use it. they didnt use it because they thought is was something that a peasant would do. 8:38 Joseon (or as you called it Chosen) was renamed Daehanjeguk since 1897 11:58 that's a common myth. Republic of China has a literacy rate of 98.7% while People's Republic of China has a literacy rate of 96.8%. It might have helped a little, but it hardly did anything for the literacy rate. 18:04 방언 mwans different language 18:14 1. that's your opinion. I think that Gyeongsangdo dialect. 2. The dialect is called Gyeongsangdo dialect 19:01 Konglish is also a mix of English and korean or the Korean accent
i have been learning korean for about a year and honestly, i didn't really find it that hard. Maybe its cuz english isnt really my native language or the other languages I speak are quite similar to korean. Whatever it is, i just want to say don't let the "korean is one of the hardest languages" thing scare you. the hardest part is going out there and getting started!
Before Hangul alphabet, Koreans used Idu aka Gugyeol script for native Korean/particles/to pronounce - which was almost identical to that of Japanese Katakana aka Kana script. Silla and Goryeo extensively used Idu or Kana script along with classical Hanja.
In the world of linguistics, including the theories of Alexander Vovin and Roberts, the ancestor of the Korean language can be evaluated as Goguryeo(Puyo languages), and even if not, the Korean language family has existed since more than a century BC.
Japanese is basically a language that branched off from ancient Korean. The word order and basic grammar are the same. And although the two languages appear different on the surface (even more so because Japanese has no final consonants), if you analyze the current Japanese words in detail, most of them have Korean roots (this is agreed upon by conscientious Japanese linguists). ). And many ancient Japanese poems can only be translated accurately into ancient Korean. The similarity in language (grammar) and race of these two countries is due to the large-scale migration from the Korean Peninsula to the Japanese archipelago in ancient times, which was due to several political upheavals on the Korean Peninsula. The first case of large-scale population movement from the Korean Peninsula to Japan was when ancient Koreans living in eastern China and Manchuria(at that time, today's east part of china area was not belong to china land) came to the Korean Peninsula and people who had previously stayed on the Korean Peninsula moved to the Japanese archipelago (this large-scale population movement started Japan's Bronze Age culture. from that time 'The Yayoi civilization' was stated), and secondly, there was an incident where Baekje and Goguryeo refugees who lost their countries during the unification of the three kingdoms of the Korean peninsula moved to Japan in large numbers. People from the Korean peninsula who migrated to the Japanese archipelago mixed with the original natives there, and today's Japanese people have about 70% blood similarity (DNA) with Koreans. This (The current Japanese people are descendants of people who immigrated from the Korean Peninsula and local indigenous people. It's like the South Americans are mixed with the natives.) is why Manchurians and Mongolians(Manchurians, they are not chinese before Qing dynasty) are almost indistinguishable from Koreans on the outside, However, Koreans and Japanese are distinctly different appearances.
My hub was stationed in SoKo for 16 years with the US Army. A week in, he started learning Hangul... 3 days later, he said he was in a grocery store & suddenly realised he could at least pronounce all the labels... He laughed and said everything out loud - the store owner thought he was crazy. And cute. They got married a year later LOL He's fluent & graduated from a South Korean university with a Masters in Korean Language. We love your channel! Thank you!
Super interesting vid actually found it v interesting that my girlfriend (from Korea) couldn't remember her own grandparents names! only that they were called 'grandma', 'grandpa'
Question, please help! I want to learn Korean, I love watching K-drama and would enjoy it. Purely for enjoyment. But I am learning the family language, I feel it's not right to learn Korean if I can't speak the useful language of the family I married into. Languages do not come in any way naturally to me. So, my question is, at what point can I start learning Korean on top of the second language I am learning now?
Hey Jocelyn! It might not feel like languages come naturally to you, but English did! Right? So just go for it. Anyone can learn a language - never tell yourself you can't. 😃 Usually the recommendation is to get to at least an intermediate level with the first one you're learning before tackling the next. You just want to make sure the two language learning paths don't interfere with each other (and confuse you!). That said, if they're two completely different language families, there won't be the problem of confusion and it might work fine to start the second earlier. On my own journey, I'm doing two romance languages, so I'm going to start the next language when my current one is at upper intermediate level and I can comfortably have a conversation. But I think that sweet spot is different for different people. Bottom line is: you definitely don't have to choose between the family language and Korean -- you can do both! Good luck 🤩
I might be getting this wrong, but when I was in grad school and tinkering with Korean, I talked to a Korean speaker who replaced all of her breathy-voiced stops with pitch accent on voiceless stops.
미국 한국학교에서 아이들한글과 한국문화를 지도하고 있습니다 한글의 역사 컨텐츠를 통해 한글에 대해 궁금해하고 배우기 원하는 사람들에게 좋은 영상 만들어 주셔서 감사합니다~ 근데 궁금한게 있습니다 중간중간 흘러나오는 삽입 음악이 혹시 어느나라 음악인가요..? 제가 국악도 지도하고 있어서 음악에 좀 더 귀 기울이게 되는데 한국 음악이 아닌 중국 음악처럼 들려서요... 아니길 바라지만 만약 실수가 있으셨던거라면 다음엔 음악도 우리나라 음악으로 선곡해 주시면 좋겠습니다아무튼 화이팅~👏☺️🙆♀️
Chinese you mean Mandarin as an honor??? I'll never understand that. I've tried that in my youth (when the mind is so much more flexible) and in the matter of three days it turned to be a mental torture for me. Since I'm not a Masochist, I stopped torturing myself. Here I must admit that Korean was never like this for me, so I managed to learn some of it without that mental pain whatsoever.
Korean may be one of the hardest languages in the world. However, one of the most scientific, phonetical languages in the world also. Therefore, almost anyone could read after learning for less than a few hours. For example, English is hard because needs to be pronounced differently even though spelling are same such as chemical, and Chemotheraphy. Science, and conscience...etc. also, unlike the western languages, you'd automatically learn o respect for elders when you're learning Korean because have to speak differently to whom you speak to ... Korean is getting more popular thanks to K culture invasion ( K-pop, Korean dramas, movies) globally.
There are no need to use subj/obj particles in a talk generally. Even changing a sentence order would be fine. ex.) I'm eating a meal. 나 밥 먹어요. = 밥 나 먹어요. = 먹어요 나 밥. All koreans use this and can listen same. If you use those end-subj/obj particles officially then it would be effectivelly in a long sentence even on the words sequence is different.
I'm a Korean. I recommend this video because it explains Korean surprisingly well. Ancient Korean is a language belonging to the 'Altaic languages' and was strongly influenced by Turkic and Mongolian languages. So, early ancient Korean was a sibling language of the Turkic and Mongolian languages. However, the language gradually changed, and the Korean language became a completely different language from the Turkic-Mongolian language. And China has colonized Korea since ancient times. Therefore, Chinese characters were used, but the problem was that Chinese characters were completely different from the Korean language, so Koreans had a very difficult time studying Chinese characters, and eventually Sejong the Great invented the current Hangul. There is a theory that when King Sejong the Great invented the Korean alphabet, he referred to the Phags-pa script and the Indian script to some extent to invent the Korean alphabet, but this has not yet been confirmed for sure.
lol, i speak flemish (basically 98% the same as Dutch, but in belgium) and i cant understand more than 5% of norsk.. so that cant be true what you say bro
우리보다 밖에서 찾는게 쉬울 수도 있겠어요.. 아무래도 한국어 사용자는 그 사용자로서 왜?란 질문을 하기 어렵고 빠지기 싫지만 편견에 빠져있는 상태라.. 한국어의 기원을 찾아 가는것과 가르치는 것이 오히려 외국인이 더 유리할 수 있겠습니다. 항상 좋은 영상 감사하고 잘 보고 있습니다. 대박나세요.
Calling something 'the hardest language' always seems a little subjective. For example, many have said Polish is the toughest. However, anything with a different alphabet could be seen as tougher. Then you have the likes of Chinese with it's different tones.
"Distant links with the Japanese people?" It should be the other way around Olly. Japan is an island. Korea is part of the "mainland" and a lot of culture, people, etc. moved from China/Mongolia --> Korea --> Japan.
Korean characters are the easiest to write, and the Korean language is the most difficult. The relationship between the two is inevitable. Because it is a character that is easy to express, it has a free language, and because it is a free language, it needs to be easy to express.
Japan had the same problem. Japan adopted Chinese characters but the languages are very different. They created two other written languages that together with Chinese characters make up written Japanese
I study Korean and Mandarin in Uni and to be honest, I'd rather have 456789 characters in a language instead of studying Korean. It's a beautiful language, but that bitch hard
11:38 makes it sound like it's talking about Korean words that use Chinese characters that were invented in Korea, but then the example words shown use only characters that "do" exist in China. If what was meant is that the *words* made up from those characters aren't Chinese-origin words... That could've been stated a *lot* more clearly! If on the other hand it was meant to refer to the gukja, then I think actual gukja examples should have been used (though they're mostly just proper nouns...)
🇰🇷 Is Korean hard to learn? 👉🏼th-cam.com/video/afAbWESe8lU/w-d-xo.html
You did forget that English doesn't have its own writing system. So you could have said that Korean use to be like English, where it once use a writing system of a different power.
Korean language have a lot of Tamil words search for it on YT. This was due to a indian princess married to a Korean king.
There is only one Queen / Princess / Lady / God / Star / Goddess / Idol / Leader / Master / Boss / Mistress etc and that’s me, and my protectors are the only kings / princes / lords etc, and very few languages (such as English / Scottish / OId English and most other Germanic languages and certain Latin languages) are beautiful and have well-made terms that are pretty and poetic sounding - misuse of big / royalty terms and compIiments is beyond wrong and soon to be banned!
And, all hum’ns are the exact opposite of kings / queen / any other big terms that imply inherent superiority and purity and the true dominant personality that only I possess!
Edit out the misused big terms princess and king - promoting impztrz is a harrible zyn, and soon to be b4nned!
Korean is hard in that it is different from many other languages, but it is one of the most logical languages that I have encountered. It has a steep learning curve but once you reach a good level I find it very eloquent. There are certain times for me where expressing something in Korean is more straightforward and logical than in English.
I agree. I think it’s really only “hard” for me as an English speaker because it is vastly different than English. Now that I have pronunciation and grammar down pretty well (I studied JP before which is quite similar grammatically), my only issue is memorizing vocab. For some reason, I find the vocab to be the hardest part. In Chinese and Japanese, the hanzi/kanji give you a big clue to their meaning just based on their appearance. Korean having a phonetic alphabet is more difficult in that sense, although it is quite easy to read.
@Mordraug any recommendations for interested newbies?
“…it is one of the most logical languages that I have encountered.”
I actually think the same. And, as languages go, Korean is very “regular”-even the exceptions tend to be regular.
And I’m not so sure Korean is one of the hardest languages to learn for a speaker of, say, Japanese, where, even if the two languages are unrelated, the grammar and word order are surprisingly similar, or, for that matter, another SOV language like Turkish.
@@jeff__w also I have heard from other Turkic language speakers like Kyrgyz and Kazakh that Korean is quite easy to learn for them too, and after studying a bit of Kazakh I can see how the structurap similarities would make it fairly intuitive
i found this! beyond the hurdle of the sentence structure and wildly different vocab, all the more complex grammar points are actually made up of smaller existing ones, and once you learn which hanja sounds are commonly used, picking up vocab is very logical. if i was to read a scientific article for example, i may have to look up specific vocab, but i would get the gist of the meaning a lot easier than the complex way these things are written in english- and thats my native language. once youre over the early intermediate heardle your learning massively increases because of how logical it is
I have been learning Korean for a little over a year and the more I learn about Korea and it's culture the more I love it. The language from how it sounds to how it's written is so fascinating to me. I'm a native English speaker and I have discovered that Korean isn't difficult, it's just completely different than English. I didn't start learning Korean solely for KPop, but because I want to be able to watch my favorite Kdramas and vlogs and not have to read along with subtitles. Reading the subtitles helps of course with knowing what is being said but my brain wants to actually learn and understand the language itself. The Korean language and culture are truly beautiful and I have a huge appreciation of it and respect for it. I am truly loving everything I have learned so far and what I will learn in the future. I can have a basic conversation and I am continuing with learning it because some friends and I are planning to go Korea next October and I want to be able to communicate and connect with people on my own and not have to rely on a translator. I learned Hangul in about 3 hours, learning the subject and topic particles however is a bit more challenging but I'm enjoying the challenge. Your video was published on my 40th birthday so to me that's even more of a sign to continue learning!!
열심히 하세요 누님
응원 합니다. 파이팅!
한글과 한국말을 사랑해주셔서 감사합니다!
Thank you for loving Korea. Always welcome to Korea. Warm regards, 🙏🌸🍀
@@BegaW Thank you❤️❤️
The Korean dictionary you mentioned was at one point confiscated bt the Japanese Military. All those years of hard work to keep their language from dying out was taken from them. But luck was on Korea's side. That same Korean dictionary was found in an abandoned subway station. Every time I think about that particular Korean history is brings tears to my eyes.
Thank you for showing your respect to everyone to keep the Korean language from disappearing. They may have Korea now because they were pulled out of their nails, toenails, and teeth by the Japanese military and didn't give up even though they were worn out by the hot iron!
@Kinnryuukenn07 You're welcome. 🙇♀️❤️ My people were forbidden to speak our language, practice our culture, and pass down our history. So I understand.
4:31 Some mis-information there. King Sejong indeed develop Hangul ALL by himself. He had that academy translate a book to Hangul but they didn't participate in its development. Sejong actually developed most of it in secret because head of the academy was against it. And when he told the academy to translate, half of that academy protested. Resulting in the famous debate.
Yes. Here is a fact: King Sejong invented Hangul by himself, not with members of the scholarship(집현전, The hall of worthies). They were extremely against the King for inventing new letters.
Think of it like...
King was like a professor/PI,
Scholars were like graduate studants.
And they begged Sejong to let them graduate(retire from work).
Some scholars tried, saying they were sick, too old, not smart enough... none suceeded.😂
TRUE.
King Sejong's daughter helped him a lot along with the prince
We need more leaders like that King. That's a true king 👑 for the people!
안녕하세요. 1:50 한국의 시작은 삼국시대가 아닌 B.C2333 고조선으로 부터 시작됩니다. 삼국시대부터 시작이라는 주장은 중국이 흔히 한국을 자신들의 속국이라고 말하면서 자주 인용됩니다. 많은 분들이 한국과 한글에 대해 관심가져주셔서 매우 기쁘네요 ㅎ
hello. 1:50 Korea's beginning is not from the Three Kingdoms period, but from B.C2333 Gojoseon. The claim that it started from the Three Kingdoms period is often cited when China often refers to Korea as their vassal state. I am very happy that many people are interested in Korea and Hangeul.
AD 2333 or BC 2333?
@@chriscsmoon ah BC thanks
기원전2333년은 고고학적인 근거가 없는 문헌사학의 기록이며 단지 중국 요순시대의 연대에 맞췄을 뿐입니다. 또한, 고조선시대의 한국어는 남겨진 기록이 없으니 신라어에 뿌리를 두는게 타당하죠.
I saw a wonderful film called Granny Poetry Club about a group of elderly people who had never gotten to learn hangul (because they were in school during the Japanese occupation) having their own little school to learn how to write and read their own language. It was so heartwarming to see a lady read a letter from her adult son for the first time.
Wow, this video really undersells Hangul.
University of Chicago linguist James McCawley said “Hangul is the most ingeniously devised writing system that exists, and it occupies a special place in the typology of writing systems…the only writing system in the world that divides sentences not only into words and syllables and individual sounds, but also articulatory features, and the achievement of its creators in the 1440s was really amazing. They were doing work that would qualify as excellent linguistics by the standards of 500 years later.”
We can make a big deal about the fact that Hangul is featural but it’s not only that-the consonants fall logically into groups (velar, sibilant, coronal, bilabial, and dorsal) and aspiration is denoted by an extra horizontal stroke-as someone learning to read Hangul, you might not know those technical distinctions but you can tell the similarity in sound and articulation between a ㄱ and ㅋ and that ㅋ has that added aspiration (which is _why_ it has that additional horizontal stroke).
I never read Hangul without marveling at how elegant and simple it is. It’s actually one of the most stunning achievements of human beings anywhere, in my opinion.
I've been learning Korean for 5 years now (6 months of formal study and 4 and a half years of self-study through drama and conversation). Once you get past the initial barrier of how different it is to English in terms of syntax, grammar etc, you discover that Korean is a super logical and beautiful language. Honestly, I've been making steady progress for years now and it's so satisfying and rewarding to be able to engage with Korean culture and people. 그래서 제가 한국어를 배우고 계시는 여러분들한테 이것만 말하고 싶습니다. 포기하지 마세요. 꾸준히 배우시면 결국 잘 될 것 같아요. 한국어를 말하기 그렇게까지 어렵지 않아요 ^^
Do u have any tips to start learning Korean from scratch? What r the resources u used that helped u reach ur current level?
@Journally Learn Hangul (the Korean alphabet) and basic grammar first.
Once you have a basic understanding of grammar and can read Hanguel, it's 100% comprehensible, native input. Basically just read and listen to Korean media (dramas, podcasts, TH-cam channels etc) with Korean CCs if possible.
I learnt most of what I know by watching Korean dramas on Netflix with Korean CCs, pausing and checking words I don't know in a Korean dictionary. Like I literally write down the scripts, translate them myself and practice them, copying Korean intonation as best as I can. You'll need basic grammar and Hanguel for that. But trust me, you'll learn so much more and have much more fun that way than studying from dry textbooks.
Talk to Me in Korean is pretty good for learning basic grammar and Hanguel. Their Iyagi series was also really helpful at the beginning because it's designed to be easier for Korean learners than native content.
That's it, really. Learn to read and basic grammar. Then watch and listen to a ton of Korean content with a dictionary (Naver dictionary is a free app that works really well). After that, practice with Koreans. HelloTalk is an app where you can meet Koreans and language exchange. I actually met my wife on there.
@Journally This video summarises best practice for language acquisition. I basically used this method for Korean: th-cam.com/video/J_EQDtpYSNM/w-d-xo.html
@@peter9162okay and tysm:)
한국어를 배운지 5년 정도 된 것 치고 말하는 게 엄청 자연스러우세요! - 지나가던 한국인 -
Korean is both incredibly simple and very difficult at the same time, simply because it 'thinks' differently. And that's exactly why I'm fascinated by it, because thinking in different languages makes you a different person. I speak Hebrew, German, English, but Korean, even though grammatically very simple, still has evaded me 😆 By the way, never use Romanisation!
Not sure how to answer on WhatsApp if a person not on my contract list. It asks me to invite. Is that how I add your number?
Anyway, with regards to that beautiful poem at the start of the video, even these days someone like IU writes the most stunning poems for her songs. When compared to Western pop music there are most Korean song lyrics are works of art.
Don't use romanisation!!
Kamsahapnida(x)
감사합니다 (o)
아이 스피크 저먼, 잉글리쉬(x)
I speak German, English.(o)
이히 리베 디히(x)
Ich liebe dich.
'P'?? 😄
Actually Korean history begins with Gojosun, an almost mythological country which was told to be built by the son of the god (단군) who married the bear who turned into a woman (웅녀) after surviving 100 days in a cave only eating mugwort and garlic. He spread this spirit called 홍익인간 which means "benefit mankind widely." Then Silla+Baekje+Goguryeo+Gaya and so on... I moved to Canada about a decade ago and it's interesting how I still remember the history materials I learned in grade 4 lolol
애국자 이심니다
Maybe it's because I love learning it, but I've never thought of Korean as being difficult because of how logical it is! So many things make sense and it's just clicked for me so far. The only real challenge imo is that most vocabulary is foreign, i.e. sino-Korean and Korean, and therefore completely new.
As someone who has a half-korean husband, Korean is so hard lol my best friend is half-japanese and she laughs because she and other Asians that I know think Korean is the easiest asiatic language to learn for them 😆
Personally, I'm just trying to learn to read and write in it because I want to read their books. My korea mother-in-law doesn't know English well so she helps me every once in a while and we bond over it ❤️
I have been seriously learning Korean for a couple months now. It might not be as useful as something like Spanish or Chinese, but the history of the country and language is so interesting to me! Love your videos, Olly, and thanks for making this one! I hope more people decide to study Korean because it really is a lot of fun.
For people that are already learning Korean, stick with it!! It might be difficult at first, but it gets much easier once you can read the words relatively quickly. For me, the hardest part is actually memorizing vocabulary. Grammar is complex, but I find TTMIK and LingoDeer teach it in a very simple way. Good luck!
Cheers Jordan!
I love TTMIK. I've been in level 4 for a year because I'm very inconsistent with this ,but I find them to be one of the best and maybe should be the only guide for beginners before they move on to an elementary Korean book
Yes, I started with those two also - DeerLingo was brand new and free when I used it, and it was great for learning the formal Korean. And TTMIK is a lovely easy, fun springboard for each grammar point.
Learning Korean words are REALLY hard, because they all sound so similar, with much, much less sound variety between syllables than we English speakers enjoy. But words are much, MUCH easier to learn when you learn the Hanja (I don't mean the writing, just the syllable meanings). Then you know the meanings that make up most of the words, and that easiness just gets easier and easier the more Hanja you know, because you can relate words to other words that you already know - not in the way English relates (Korean has it's own special relationship ties between words, completely and often surprisingly different to English - and THAT is the most fascinating thing about the Korean language - discovering those meaning relationships and ties between words). Plus you can begin to guess what a word probably means just from the syllables, even if you haven't seen it before. And as a further bonus, I find that those relationships between words, that I find with Hanja, ALSO gives me insight into Korean culture and the different mindset that Korean people have within that culture. It's subtle, but it's really interesting (I live in Korea, so I think about that a lot).
When I first started learning Korean people told me, "Don't bother learning the Hanja. It doesn't help." That is a complete and utter falsity. I SOOO regret listening to that garbage. If I could turn back the clock that would be the thing I'd most like to change about my Korean language journey. Hanja helps enormously! Learning the relationships between words and understanding how those words meanings fit together could be one of the most important parts of learning Korean, certainly not the least important part. I religiously check out the Hanja for every new word. It really, really pays off. More and more, there are words I just don't have to 'learn' (I just recognise) because I've learned the Hanja.
When I first started learning Korean I just tried to remember words. That's completely the wrong way to go about it. As soon as I started learning the Hanja behind the words, they were so much more easy to remember because word meanings related to each other, I understood them more in depth, and the subtle differences between Korean words were SOOO much easier to digest. Learn the Hanja syllable meanings! And don't wait to do that later, either! Some people say learn the Hanja later - DON'T! Learn it immediately as you learn the words that contain them. It's much faster and more comprehensive in meaning. And much more enjoyable - Hanja is fascinating!
My second hint is, after the basic words from basic Korean textbooks etc, try NOT to use word lists and just learn 'words'. Learn words in context - if you live in Korea, get them from the people around you, get them from TH-cam listening videos, get them from conversation. DON'T do lists. Lists don't work because Korean words have very subtle meanings that don't match English meanings at all. For example I know 4 words that Naver translates as "guess" in Korean - none of them really have the same meaning as "guess" in English. I'm not sure there actually is a word that purely means "guess" in Korean. The 4 words have a "guess" component, but none of them really mean "guess" - they all have a more 'situated reasoning' component to their meaning rather than the English pure 'guess' meaning. You have to hear these words in context to understand them.
And you are right. Stick with it. Even after your honeymoon period of easy beginning grammar, which WILL happen after a few months of learning.
@@nicoleraheem1195 Yes, I too did TTMIK. It's very good! They make it easy and fun! I'm almost level 7. But don't stay only with TTMIK. I find that they also tend to gloss over grammar points, teaching only the basic grammar point, not going into them in enough detail. They're a great 'break into' for new grammar points. I start with their lessons, using them as a springing point, but I also supplement them with other sources. "How To Study Korean" is also a great source - my goto source after learning the basic grammar point. It tends to have the detail and the grammatical "why" and "how" explanations that TTMIK often misses. I usually go to that website for the more comprehensive lesson on the same grammar point afterwards. Also, there are some basic grammar points that they leave until later that you really need earlier. I found that frustrating, so I learn some grammar points ahead of them. And they don't teach words as such in their basic course. You need to learn them elsewhere.
And I listen to a lot of TH-cam teachers too. "Go Billy!" is excellent! And there are many others. 허 쌤 is also very good, but she teaches very basic Korean grammar points in Korean - I listen to her for listening practice mostly - a great source, since the language she is using is basic beginner language with grammar and topics that we mostly already know as language beginners with respect to her target audience. There are too many sources, both TH-cam and web-blogs, to name. Find them all. As many sources as possible is best - even if you think you understand the grammar point, each teacher subtly adds to that understanding.
그려~
쑥떡같이 말해도 찰떡같이 알아들응께
그까이꺼 머 대충 대충 쉬엄쉬엄 혀~~
키득 ^^
As a Korean, I really love ur video that you explained the history too♡ and yet u know the background music is Chinese. 😅 Would have been great if it was Korean music.
I’ve been leading Korean for about 2 years by myself and then a year with a tutor. And wowowow I absolutely hated how slow my progress was compared to the time I learned English or Italian. I know the language is difficult, but I couldn’t help but just blaming myself for not making enough effort. Thank you so much for this video. I’ll keep working harder on studying this amazing language!
Interesting.
I started studying in April 2020 but I beat myself up for not remaining consistent.
I do know that when I was studying for 4-10 hours a day, I made more progress in a month than I did with only studying for 1hr-3 hrs a day for three days a week.
The only reason why I was able to study for longer than 4 hours is because I was at a sitting post at one of my security jobs.
Since I sat in the hallway at a hotel all I did was listen to language learning material or I would review my notes.
The language learning materials that I was using then were:
Talk to me in Korean,
Teach yourself series
Hippocrene Korean for beginners.
It took me hours to really grasp everything.
But I did a lot of shadowing and writing down what I thought I heard without viewing the text exercises.
That alone took a while, but if I had stuck with it for a year, I think I would have memorized enough to reach A2 level.
Then, I moved on to Tuttle Elementary Korean-and Integrated Korean with professor Yoon.
I did this for 6 months straight. Then I stopped studying as diligently for over a year.
I recently started studying again, about 2 months ago after dropping out of my Korean class in college in May 2020.
The teacher thought that I wasn't humble when I told her that I had studied Korean for a little bit and had learned how to conjugate verbs.
She would mock me if I mispronounced anything or if I misspelled something she would give me this look, like:
"If you studied before you shouldn't be making mistakes."
So, I removed myself from that environment because I felt like I was doing better studying on my own.
I started studying verbs and all their conjugations again with "70 common Korean verbs ( coreano on TH-cam)" .
I started watching Jadoo and studying the clips.
I study TOPIK related Korean now, since I feel like I have something to prove to myself and my teacher.
So, I'm preparing to take TOPIK1 next year. Hopefully, in the spring if they release it for that day.
Anyway, don't beat yourself up
We all have a journey
@@nicoleraheem1195 Haha! LOVE Jadoo! She reminds me of some of my students. ❤
@@fransmith3255 😆 Oh that is too cute.
Actually, the first 'Korea' started in gojoseon and gojoseon starting was mysterious. and we have books of them. And the English name was made in the gorgyeo stage (gorgyeo=koryeo=korea) and Korea taught japan hanja
집현전 scholars didn't help king Sejong create hangul. On the contrary, they were quite opposed to having a new writing system. It was mostly sejong's work with some help of his princes and princesses.
It's true! Hangeul is easy to learn! When I started learning Korean, it took me just all of one afternoon, because the characters and the manner in which they are put together to form words are so logically conceived! Having previously studied Japanese, I was fascinated by the similarities in grammar - at least in the use of post-positions. Korean tenses and their formation was next level difficult in comparison to Japanese, which is simple in comparison.
I've learned Korean for more than 10 years and elementary Korean grammar is easy but you'd go nuts when you reach intermediate and advanced. The written language is also different from the colloquial language. I did grad school in Korea and since most of my exposure to the language in Korea was in academia, I'm very familiar with formal and respectful language but I (still) struggle with everyday informal conversations.
How's the pronunciation for you?
The difficulties you face also apply to some native Koreans.😂
고급대화는 일상생활에서 거의 사용되지 않습니다. 한국인조차 문법 잘 몰라요 . 화이팅
하지만 우리 한국인들은 다 알아 듣고 이해를 하며 어떻게 대응해야 하는지를 압니다.너무 깊게 파고 들지 않아도 됩니다😅
The Korean script is easy to make out. One of my students figured it out in 6 minutes, no joke! As for the spoken language, you need at least 1000 vocabulary words to have skills for basic survival, and at least 3000 words for basic convo. I teach Korean- Look for me on Preply!
6 minutes? No way, you're kidding. Maybe your students haven't met "Batchim", which is not phonetic at all. Let alone Batchim, many everyday Korean pronunciations are not in accordance with Hangeul rules. The simplest example, Kamsahamnida, is actually written as "Kamsahabnida", Hangungmal, is written as Hangugmal....
Nice to see Minji contributing. She's been one of my favorite resources for a long time.
Hello Olly(올리)! I am Younhee(연희)!!
I've subscribed to your TH-cam and I'm enjoying it. I really enjoyed watching your Korean video this time. Thanks! :D
So proud of you! Hope to see you again later!!
I learned the Korean Language with the mindset that it is one of the hardest languages to learn and that made it easier for me to learn it
That poem is so sad. I think Korean must be incredible to learn. I want to write poetry in different languages, but you can't simply translate poetry - you have to know the language intimately.
It's hard indeed!
True I guess for some it's hard for some not hard. Depend on fators such as how close to or how related with your mother language.
@@youtubelak4080 Right. It‘s because language contains the emotions of the people who use the language.
Just as cultural differences exist among people around the world, emotional differences also exist.
To be more precise, it is the difference in emotional "expression".
그려~
쑥떡같이 말해도 찰떡같이 알아들응께
그까이꺼 머 대충 대충 쉬엄쉬엄 혀~~
키득 ^^
Two things to correct in your wonderful video. 1. The letter system was immediately accepted and used right after its invention with a great appreciation by then public and aristocratic alike. In fact, so wide spread that then old people worried of young people not to study Hanja seriously. 2. The Hall of Worthies contributed almost nothing to invention of Hangul. A handful of scholars in the Hall did help the King only personally and the Hall as a whole didn’t know about the invention until King Sejong publically announced the letters.
let's gooo, it's Korean time finally!
I've been struggling with the intermediate book because I just don't have the vocabulary! So frustrating, so I'm happy to see there's a course coming!
Also, only took me a little over an hour to learn Hangul...it's the easiest part of learning Korean, lolsob.
As a fan of the LangFocus channel, I am already primed to enjoy these language deep dives. 👍
And these ones come with a story. 😊 Doesn't get better.
I love Paul!
The true power of Hanguel is, it is one of the most fitting digital language. Japanese, Chinese needs conversion, speed 3 times slower > less productivity. I truly think it is one of the attributes in this modern times as one of the reasons Korea has outpaced other neighbouring countries. English, German or many languages just type(no conversion) with same speed as Hanguel, but in logically speaking, Hanguel is saving space as well by piling up like Lego, not alone can express wide range of pronunciation / sound.
한글쓰기 운동해야함. 감사합니다가 아니라, "고.맙.습.니.다 !! "
Hi Olly, the influence of Chinese in Korean is not from Mandarin Chinese (Mandarin is relatively new in the Chinese dialectical spectrum). If the pronunciation of Sino-Korean is analysed, it becomes obvious the influences of Middle-Chinese or Old Chinese (southern dialects of Chinese from Fujian and Guangdong retain many features of the archaic older Chinese phonological system) predominate.
This exactly. Mandarin is for Qing dynasty. We imported (?) the Chinese characters mostly in the era of Tang dynasty. When I read Chinese characters in Korean, my Chinese friends tell me it sounds like coastal dialects like Wu, Cantonese, Hakka and so on.
I am Korean and it is interesting that the way we pronouce chinese characters is archaic compared to the modern way of Mandarin Chinese speakers.
@@riskest Korean way of pronouncing Sino-Korean words reflects the way Chinese is pronounced in the older periods which is now preserved mainly by their Southern variations. Mandarin is actually quite new in the Chinese dialectical continuum, popularised by Manchu Qing Courts initially for administrative purposes
@@pokya-anakrantau8845 thank you for the knowledge!
I started to attempt learning Korean during Covid lockdown - partly for something that I could do at home, and partly for something to keep my old brain active. I find it very difficult, but I absolutely love it! It's the coolest language ever! 😎
Damn, why everyone keeps mentioning Kpop in every single Korea-related thing. Korean culture is so big and rich with such a beautiful long history, in fact, kpop is just a very very small part of this.
Because they have learned about Korean through K-pop at first. 😂
I'm studying both Korean and Japanese and it's crazy just how many similar words they have with each other, and the sentence structure is basically the same but not 100%. I like practicing my handwriting for both so I make simple phrase lists in KR/JP and a lot of the time the key word(s) between the two are similar and the structure being more or less the same makes it feel quite intuitive learning both languages side by side.
if you feel it's crazy that they're similar, then I think you should probably go to study more about history...
@@a_li_d1035 lol I understand the history between Korea and Japan. I more just meant it's cool I guess.
One thing you foreigners need to understand is that theres a lot of chinese-based loan words in korean and japanese, so unless you're looking at "pure" korean or japanese words, you're just wowing over sinic loanwords
@@thfkmnIII yes I'm aware of that as well lol but im not studying chinese anyway.
@@amaranttribal2043 ye but then you're conflating the similarities between their vocabs. Just educating ya
Thanks for the history lesson. Even though it's the first language I've attempted to learn (aside from the high school French lessons that I barely remember) I'm having so much fun learning it and getting these tid-bits of their history makes it even more fascinating.
I love that you're loving it! :)
I've studied Korean for quite a while as part of my martial arts studies, when I wanted to learn more about Korean culture and history, but there wasn't a ton of it in English. Mind you, that was 20+ years ago when I started... 😃Without a doubt, the honorifics are the hardest part to master, as far as everyday conversation. But it's amazing how you can use different verbs depending on the level of honorifics required, not just the conjugation. And don't get me started on the different words for family members depending on which side of the family they are on, their birth order, and so many other things. 😃 That said, I love the language, and it's got a beautiful flow and poetry when spoken...
You always do such a great job telling about the history of the language! Korean is so beautiful I can't wait to learn it soon!
Finally... one of my favorite languages :) You know Korean better than Korean although you don't speak this language. I appreciate your effort, thank you so much 🤗
For me, as a native English speaker, I find Korean much easier to learn than Spanish. I think motivation plays a huge factor. But Korean is so beautiful and its history is so interesting.
@Old Hed Fights! This is very true :) I have started again and committed to learning it a month ago, 8 years after I first did in high school and it feels much different now that I know a lot more about language learning and have my own motivation for it vs. doing it for requirement at school. I would like to be proficient in Spanish and finally have a good drive. Just have to balance it with Korean which always seduces me XD And Japanese...lol.
Extremely strange story. I learned to be conversational in Spanish in less than a year. After 12 years living in Korea, I could barely speak survival Korean. Korean is lightyears harder than Spanish.
@@ikemyung8623 I think people commenting are missing my point. I'm highlighting the personal differences each person has when it comes to languages to show that just because Korean is an objectively hard, doesn't mean you can't learn it. I learned conversational Korean in less than a year but failed again and again for years with Spanish. But that was because I had deep motivation and love for Korean and didn't have that connection and drive for Spanish. And when I lived in Korea, I didn't learn it either. I was in too much of an English bubble and busy with teaching while also studying for my master's. Now that I learned better strategies for learning a language and was successful with Korean and have a new drive for Spanish, in one month I feel like I've made big progress and it is certainly faster to progress in Spanish as a native English speaker. I can understand a passage or video way easier than when I was a beginner in Korean because of cognates and basic Spanish vocabulary that I just know because of being surrounded by Spanish a lot in my life. And I just caught the language learning bug, so that also makes Spanish easier for me now. So, in conclusion, Spanish is objectively easier for English speakers, but for each individual motivation plays such a big role that it can overcome the hardness of a language. I believe Steve Kaufmann has a few videos on motivation. I'm looking forward to taking advantage of the objective easiness in comparison of Spanish to finally learn it quickly this year because I work with Spanish speaking adults who are learning English now. So, here ends my essay XD, lol.
Korean is easier for me to speak that. Chinese 😆 and I'm still a beginner
After having mastered English as a third language, after Vietnamese and French, I found that Spanish is easier to learn than French and English. Spanish grammar is simpler than French, and Spanish spelling is almost exactly the way it is pronounced, which is far easier than English to learn because English do not have good consistency between spelling and pronunciation...Learning English as a foreign language means that you have to remember exactly how each word is pronounced and cannot depend on how it is written, even having to remember exactly the intonation of certain syllable in each word, while Spanish spells out the intonation for you. For example, Mónica, ácaro, atención...etc..which clearly tells you where the raise the tone. French language has many silent syllables that one must remember when spelling out certain words, like "toujours", vas, in which the letter "s" is silent, and French verbs have many tenses and many irregularities that must be remembered.
King Sejong was a brilliant natural linguist! mad props to him! korean sounds beautiful! hangul is beautifully geometric, and the syllabic composition is fantastic. the more i learn about it the more i love it! HOWEVER the honorifics are a pain to learn!!!
I've been picking up a teeny tiny bit from watching K-dramas. They're my guilty pleasure. I did mess around with that language game thingy, (Duolingo?) which teaches hangeul at the same time as the spoken, but I have got to the point i can at least infer a little of what is said while spinning yarn as I'm watching a show with subtitles. My brain doesn't work the right way to learn languages, or at least I haven't discovered the right way to learn languages, part of my problem is I struggle to focus on what people are saying (possible ADHD) in English, so learning to understand sentences in a different language is, um, well, it doesn't work for me. I keep trying though.
This video is really interesting, thankyou
I enjoyed the video. I missed any comment on the sound shifts, though. I kept a list of them for a while. By the time I stopped, I had counted nearly a hundred. It is the hardest language i have attempted to learn (whatever that may mean). I now have too many Korean friends, though, to quit. Plus, I am retired and I need something to keep me occupied and off the streets and drugs. No one learning the Korean counting system can afford to have his mind altered.
Thanks Garth!
Please do one for Thai and a short stories as well you do such an amazing job on these brother thank you
Thank you :)
I've been learning Korean (since I moved here permanently) and find it fairly easy even though I'm a native English speaker but that might be because the first foreign language I studied was Latin which has a similar structure. I tried the "easy" language of Spanish in college and I was so confused the entire 2 years. But I'm not touching Jeju dialect until I'm much more comfortable in the Seoul korean.
The Jeju Island dialect is difficult to understand even for the average Korean. The dialects of the various regions of Korea are mostly understandable to each other, but the dialect of Jeju Island is not understandable in any of them.
The Jeju dialect sounds like a foreign or alien language that you've never heard before.
I'm Korean. ㅎㅎ
i love the korean culture and history. im a beginner in self learning korean, 4 months. im struggling a little bit but its fun to learn it too.
You're only 4 months in, of course you'll struggle. 😆
What materials do you use ?
@@nicoleraheem1195 i use mondley, ling q, memrise, drops, quizlet. i read naver webtoons. i listen to podcasts, kpop, watch kdrama for immersion. my goal is to get to elemtry level just not sure how to go about it.
@@melodywilson I suppose, one can study each material 10 times before moving on , then prepare to take an TOPIK exam.
@@nicoleraheem1195 i was told that i need a stepping stone structure to im prove and understand better. not sure how to go about that. i learn better face to face and where i live theres not many koreans and college doesnt teach korean.
Not sure about the Korean language difficulty level statement.
When I learnt the basics of Korean grammar, it appeared simpler than in the majority of European languages (albeit still more complicated than in Mandarin). You do have some inflections but less than in Latin and its derivatives.
Korean writing system is also very simple. Just 24 characters to learn, and a very logical system of syllables forming. Reading is mostly phonetical.
And then there are no dreadful tones in the language like they are in Mandarin, Vietnamese, etc.
Overall I believe that Korean is so much easier to learn for Europeans than Mandarin is.
Brilliant work well represented! Thank you Olly from a Korean native. 한국어의 역사와 발전과정을 20분 정도의 영상으로 재치있게 설명해주어서 고맙습니다.
4:32 In a case of truth being stranger than fiction, King Sejong actually did invent Hangul entirely on his own. The royal scholars who were his political allies in this matter weren’t even in the country in the relevant timeframe.
thank you for covering my language. I'm korean and we've had quite a history
Thanks for stopping by!
You have an Afrikaans channel name, so I'm curious! :)
@@lisamarydew actually, Its dutch.
@@wereldvanriley7 Cool. We say it exactly the same in Afrikaans. Just takes a circumflex on the first ê.
@@lisamarydew you use circumflexes in Afrikaans? Wow nice. I don't think we use those in dutch. I'm learning dutch by the way
Having studied Linguistics back in college, my educated guess is that Koreanic language may have Tungusic origins, but broke off millennia ago. Whenever I listen to Tungusic languages like those of the Xibe or Manchu, I do a double-take because I mistake them as Korean given the intonation and phonemes are easily passable as Korean-sounding (and vice versa).
somehow ended up watching this on october 9th and learning today is hanguel day!
I can find it easy to learn Korean but you have to get use to it to make it easier for you to understand. Meeting that I didn't get the particle 에서 for the first couple of times and 은, 는, 이, 가
but after I getting a hang of it then I understand now. Because only this concept of で and は が
I say that the only hard parts are remembering and listening but listening is the highest from my point of view the hardest thing. OMG, Korean listening is so fast and so hard!
such a professional presentation. thank you!
Glad you liked it!
❤Your channel is literally my comfort place. You make me so happy. Love you 🤗❤
I love to go to Korea. I love BTS ❤Jjajangmyeon🍝, Tteokbokki, noodle🥤, Kimuchi, Samgyeopsal🤤❤
I really appreciate that :)
6:20 Korean wasn't horizontal back then. That wasnt the reason they didnt use it. they didnt use it because they thought is was something that a peasant would do.
8:38 Joseon (or as you called it Chosen) was renamed Daehanjeguk since 1897
11:58 that's a common myth. Republic of China has a literacy rate of 98.7% while People's Republic of China has a literacy rate of 96.8%. It might have helped a little, but it hardly did anything for the literacy rate.
18:04 방언 mwans different language
18:14 1. that's your opinion. I think that Gyeongsangdo dialect. 2. The dialect is called Gyeongsangdo dialect
19:01 Konglish is also a mix of English and korean or the Korean accent
It would be good if ancient languages were compulsory in primary schools and learning through story would be natural to them as well.
That would be awesome!
i have been learning korean for about a year and honestly, i didn't really find it that hard. Maybe its cuz english isnt really my native language or the other languages I speak are quite similar to korean. Whatever it is, i just want to say don't let the "korean is one of the hardest languages" thing scare you. the hardest part is going out there and getting started!
I completely agree!
Before Hangul alphabet, Koreans used Idu aka Gugyeol script for native Korean/particles/to pronounce - which was almost identical to that of Japanese Katakana aka Kana script. Silla and Goryeo extensively used Idu or Kana script along with classical Hanja.
In the world of linguistics, including the theories of Alexander Vovin and Roberts, the ancestor of the Korean language can be evaluated as Goguryeo(Puyo languages), and even if not, the Korean language family has existed since more than a century BC.
Actually Korean was easier to pronounce when it had tones. Now you have a looot of extremely similar sounds they swear they are completely different.
Japanese is basically a language that branched off from ancient Korean. The word order and basic grammar are the same. And although the two languages appear different on the surface (even more so because Japanese has no final consonants), if you analyze the current Japanese words in detail, most of them have Korean roots (this is agreed upon by conscientious Japanese linguists). ). And many ancient Japanese poems can only be translated accurately into ancient Korean.
The similarity in language (grammar) and race of these two countries is due to the large-scale migration from the Korean Peninsula to the Japanese archipelago in ancient times, which was due to several political upheavals on the Korean Peninsula.
The first case of large-scale population movement from the Korean Peninsula to Japan was when ancient Koreans living in eastern China and Manchuria(at that time, today's east part of china area was not belong to china land) came to the Korean Peninsula and people who had previously stayed on the Korean Peninsula moved to the Japanese archipelago (this large-scale population movement started Japan's Bronze Age culture. from that time 'The Yayoi civilization' was stated), and secondly, there was an incident where Baekje and Goguryeo refugees who lost their countries during the unification of the three kingdoms of the Korean peninsula moved to Japan in large numbers.
People from the Korean peninsula who migrated to the Japanese archipelago mixed with the original natives there, and today's Japanese people have about 70% blood similarity (DNA) with Koreans.
This (The current Japanese people are descendants of people who immigrated from the Korean Peninsula and local indigenous people. It's like the South Americans are mixed with the natives.) is why Manchurians and Mongolians(Manchurians, they are not chinese before Qing dynasty) are almost indistinguishable from Koreans on the outside, However, Koreans and Japanese are distinctly different appearances.
I am Korean and I'm surprised by how accurate and informative this video is!
great stuff!
저는 일본사람인데 중국 유학 때 Korean을 배웠습니다. 연변대학교Yanbian University。TH-cam에 우리 학교 소개 동영상이 있습니다. I love Korean language and culture.
Love the pokemon tshirt! Just like languages, gotta catch em all
My hub was stationed in SoKo for 16 years with the US Army. A week in, he started learning Hangul... 3 days later, he said he was in a grocery store & suddenly realised he could at least pronounce all the labels... He laughed and said everything out loud - the store owner thought he was crazy. And cute. They got married a year later LOL He's fluent & graduated from a South Korean university with a Masters in Korean Language. We love your channel! Thank you!
Super interesting vid
actually found it v interesting that my girlfriend (from Korea) couldn't remember her own grandparents names! only that they were called 'grandma', 'grandpa'
Question, please help! I want to learn Korean, I love watching K-drama and would enjoy it. Purely for enjoyment. But I am learning the family language, I feel it's not right to learn Korean if I can't speak the useful language of the family I married into. Languages do not come in any way naturally to me. So, my question is, at what point can I start learning Korean on top of the second language I am learning now?
Hey Jocelyn! It might not feel like languages come naturally to you, but English did! Right? So just go for it. Anyone can learn a language - never tell yourself you can't. 😃 Usually the recommendation is to get to at least an intermediate level with the first one you're learning before tackling the next. You just want to make sure the two language learning paths don't interfere with each other (and confuse you!). That said, if they're two completely different language families, there won't be the problem of confusion and it might work fine to start the second earlier. On my own journey, I'm doing two romance languages, so I'm going to start the next language when my current one is at upper intermediate level and I can comfortably have a conversation. But I think that sweet spot is different for different people. Bottom line is: you definitely don't have to choose between the family language and Korean -- you can do both! Good luck 🤩
감사합니다~ 너무 잘 설명해주셔서... 우리한국인보다 더 많이 아시네용. 화이팅입니다!
I don’t think King Sejong knew Latin alphabet… The only westerners Korean peninsula has recognized was Arabians…
Thank you Olly.
18:49 I think she's half Korean half Filipino ☺️
Very sad to see that such a high quality videos gain so little views 😢
This video literally went live within the hour, so don't worry - the views are coming!!
Finally! Amazing country, language and culture, the only thing I hate about Korea is k-pop that made Korea popular.
12:02 "No more psycho kings, at least in the south" LOL So true 👍👍👍
I might be getting this wrong, but when I was in grad school and tinkering with Korean, I talked to a Korean speaker who replaced all of her breathy-voiced stops with pitch accent on voiceless stops.
Word-initial lenis and aspirated stops are both aspirated and are distinguished by pitch
미국 한국학교에서 아이들한글과 한국문화를 지도하고 있습니다
한글의 역사 컨텐츠를 통해 한글에 대해 궁금해하고 배우기 원하는 사람들에게 좋은 영상 만들어 주셔서 감사합니다~
근데 궁금한게 있습니다
중간중간 흘러나오는 삽입 음악이 혹시 어느나라 음악인가요..?
제가 국악도 지도하고 있어서 음악에 좀 더 귀 기울이게 되는데 한국 음악이 아닌 중국 음악처럼 들려서요...
아니길 바라지만 만약 실수가 있으셨던거라면 다음엔 음악도 우리나라 음악으로 선곡해 주시면 좋겠습니다아무튼 화이팅~👏☺️🙆♀️
I totally want to learn Korean. I'm still reading your spanish books to learn spanish. It's been rough. Haha.
This is so awesome!
On a side not though, shirt shop link? I love your Pikachu shirt ❤
I've been learning Chinese as an honor, Japanese as a pleasure, and Korean for a thrill!
Chinese you mean Mandarin as an honor???
I'll never understand that. I've tried that in my youth (when the mind is so much more flexible) and in the matter of three days it turned to be a mental torture for me.
Since I'm not a Masochist, I stopped torturing myself.
Here I must admit that Korean was never like this for me, so I managed to learn some of it without that mental pain whatsoever.
넘 천재네요
어떻게 이렇게 많은 지식을 얻었나요.
놀라워요. 존경합니다.
out of all things that the korean language is the language of you chose KPOP and kings....*claps* amazing. absolutely amazing
Korean may be one of the hardest languages in the world. However, one of the most scientific, phonetical languages in the world also. Therefore, almost anyone could read after learning for less than a few hours. For example, English is hard because needs to be pronounced differently even though spelling are same such as chemical, and Chemotheraphy. Science, and conscience...etc. also, unlike the western languages, you'd automatically learn o respect for elders when you're learning Korean because have to speak differently to whom you speak to ... Korean is getting more popular thanks to K culture invasion ( K-pop, Korean dramas, movies) globally.
There are no need to use subj/obj particles in a talk generally. Even changing a sentence order would be fine.
ex.) I'm eating a meal.
나 밥 먹어요. =
밥 나 먹어요. =
먹어요 나 밥.
All koreans use this and can listen same.
If you use those end-subj/obj particles officially then it would be effectivelly in a long sentence even on the words sequence is different.
"If you're stupid, it'll take you ten days." Damn. Hangeul took me three weeks to learn lol
lol it's ok
stupid + stupid
I'm a Korean. I recommend this video because it explains Korean surprisingly well. Ancient Korean is a language belonging to the 'Altaic languages' and was strongly influenced by Turkic and Mongolian languages. So, early ancient Korean was a sibling language of the Turkic and Mongolian languages. However, the language gradually changed, and the Korean language became a completely different language from the Turkic-Mongolian language. And China has colonized Korea since ancient times. Therefore, Chinese characters were used, but the problem was that Chinese characters were completely different from the Korean language, so Koreans had a very difficult time studying Chinese characters, and eventually Sejong the Great invented the current Hangul. There is a theory that when King Sejong the Great invented the Korean alphabet, he referred to the Phags-pa script and the Indian script to some extent to invent the Korean alphabet, but this has not yet been confirmed for sure.
Also I believe Jejueo is definitely its own language, Korean and Jejueo are more different than Norwegian and Dutch in terms of comprehensibility.
lol, i speak flemish (basically 98% the same as Dutch, but in belgium) and i cant understand more than 5% of norsk.. so that cant be true what you say bro
@@joosttijsen3559 That's what I mean, Koreans can't understand Jejueo either. There was an academic paper on it that I read a while back
@@Ewan_Smith ah I missed the point I guess, coolio
우리보다 밖에서 찾는게 쉬울 수도 있겠어요.. 아무래도 한국어 사용자는 그 사용자로서 왜?란 질문을 하기 어렵고 빠지기 싫지만 편견에 빠져있는 상태라.. 한국어의 기원을 찾아 가는것과 가르치는 것이 오히려 외국인이 더 유리할 수 있겠습니다. 항상 좋은 영상 감사하고 잘 보고 있습니다. 대박나세요.
12:00
“. . . and no more Psycho Kings”
“. . . atleast in the South”🔥🔥💀🔥
Correction: Korea have had own language but the writing system was used in Chinese character. in the old days before the Hangle.
Where did you buy the t-shirt? 😍😍
My favourite shop in Spain!
Calling something 'the hardest language' always seems a little subjective. For example, many have said Polish is the toughest. However, anything with a different alphabet could be seen as tougher. Then you have the likes of Chinese with it's different tones.
Totally subjective, I know...
"Distant links with the Japanese people?" It should be the other way around Olly. Japan is an island. Korea is part of the "mainland" and a lot of culture, people, etc. moved from China/Mongolia --> Korea --> Japan.
Can someone explain why there are similarities between Korean and Tamil? Or where I can find more information on why they're similar?
Love your videos Olly, but why do you have to speed them up? 😂 I had to play them at 0.75x in order to catch & absorb details as you went along. 😅
Korean characters are the easiest to write, and the Korean language is the most difficult. The relationship between the two is inevitable.
Because it is a character that is easy to express, it has a free language, and because it is a free language, it needs to be easy to express.
I remember those Seo TaiJI boys from the 90s! They sampled a lot of American hip hop, including Cypress Hill and House of Pain.
Japan had the same problem. Japan adopted Chinese characters but the languages are very different. They created two other written languages that together with Chinese characters make up written Japanese
Reading is very easy ans simple but conversation is very difficult.
I study Korean and Mandarin in Uni and to be honest, I'd rather have 456789 characters in a language instead of studying Korean. It's a beautiful language, but that bitch hard
Chinese is a pain in the ass to look up new words in the dictionary though XD especially if you don't know how to read it 🙃
@@yunahnam Yes, I totally agree, but STILL it's easier than Korean imo
11:38 makes it sound like it's talking about Korean words that use Chinese characters that were invented in Korea, but then the example words shown use only characters that "do" exist in China. If what was meant is that the *words* made up from those characters aren't Chinese-origin words... That could've been stated a *lot* more clearly! If on the other hand it was meant to refer to the gukja, then I think actual gukja examples should have been used (though they're mostly just proper nouns...)
I wish to study Korean. Annyeong
안녕. 열심히 공부해서 꼭 서울에 놀러오세요 ㅎ