I will explain what do you need to be prepared for and what you need to know about the Korean language as a whole. It doesn't matter if you've watched kdrama for 2 years or 12 years, I hope some information would be helpful. Let's face it, you are here because you've fallen in love with kdramas although you don't eat kimchi nor speak Korean on a daily basis. You want to know a little sumthin' sumthin' about the language, more than the sarangheyo and anyonghaseyo, am I right? You don't really want to speak it, although that would be cool (and if you ever have the chance to visit Korea - that would be very helpful), you just want to understand and grasp kdrama in a deeper fashion, rather than just relying on subtitles.
Firstly, I find the need to explain the common mistakes people do when they want to accomplish the above.
1. They rush into learning words and phrases. We will see later that while this is not totally wrong, its not ideal. Memorization is good but it doesn't give you a deeper understanding of why sentences are said the way they are said. A simple phrase can be said at least 5 different ways in Korean, depending on the speech level and degree of softness (soft what??!). Yep, there will be something about that later.
2. They continue to just learn 'by watching'. While this may work for some people, and especially it doesn't work well with age, there are a lot more about the grammar that gets lost without ever learning about them. Now, a lot of people think they can speak Korean by just watching those hours of drama but if you're not careful, you can end up offending people (if you happen to meet a Korean) (See point no. 2 below) or if not, you will be confused when the sentence change tone the next time.
Now, pause a moment. If you want to learn a NEW language, you DO need to understand what are nouns, verbs, adjective, adverbs and all this language lingos. I know many people said, "I don't know all of that because I say what sounds right to me". Of course! All of us do that with our primary language, don't we? But we are going to learn a NEW language which WILL challenge you mentally. Bare with me, if you still don't know what are nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs (at the least) go and google them up and learn them. It won't take long. Go. Now.
Lets look into the facts about the Korean language and this is coming from an primarily English speaking person. These facts are basic about the language you need to learn before going even further.
*Trust me when I say learning Hangul, the Korean writing is the easiest part.
8 things you need to know about the Korean language before beginning lessons
1. Korean is a hard language
There is such thing as a 'hard language' and 'easy language' depending on your own native language. Korean language is rated among the four hardest language to learn by English speakers. The other three are Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. The average time to pick up Spanish is half a year while Korean is a year and a half. I am going to warn you, it only depends on how much you want to learn. If you already love kdramas, it means you do have a inkling for the language as well. To understand half of a daily conversation took me 6 months but after 2 years, I could make up most the story in a mundane kind of episode (not twisty plots or something too politics or technical). I studied every other day (and still do) as a housewife so that is just something for you to estimate for your kind of schedule.
2. Different speech levels
There are a total of 7 speech levels in Korean, if we include old and prayer language but in common daily speech there are 3 ways people speak today, which are intimate, polite and polite formal. If you have been listening to kdramas longer, you will notice the sound of the speech changes from time to time. Also, you will find interactions between characters asking like, "Why are you not speaking politely?".or "Shall we lower our speech?". In many languages, this kind of issue doesn't arise and it does seem strange for us. I will write about this in another post as its a very interesting subject. Learning root words for verbs and adjectives will help to understand how those words transform into the different endings.
Example, learning 'saranghada' you will later why it can sound saranghe/sarangheyo/saranghanda/saranghamnida and all mean the same.
On top of that, there is honorific speech and you will hear this a lot, especially with older people or of higher position. There will be different words to represent normal polite speech with honorifics speech.
3. Sentence structure
While English is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language, Korean is a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). I eat apple would sound I apple eat. This is confusing and will take some time to grasp but its part of learning. A simple statement sentence to make sense it has all SOV.
simple example:
Na kimchi mogda. (I eat kimchi).
Na-Subject, kimchi-object, mogda (verb).
Often it is ALWAYS advisable to listen to a person finish talking to get the whole gist of the sentence because the verb is at the very end. My teacher told me to imagine, the way Western family is formed is the father holds the mother's hand and only then followed by the children while a Korean family when they hold hands, the father and mother on the outer side while the children are all in the middle. You can get the picture that in a Korean sentence, the little ones are in the middle while the big (important) ones are the first and the last words.
Also if you are like me that gets confused, you need to keep in mind what is SUBJECT and OBJECT because you will need to fully understand this to master subject and object particles later.
If let's say if we switch the subject and the object, the sentence becomes:
Kimchi na mogda - which translates "Kimchi eat me", which doesn't make sense. A subject always does something to the object. Remember.
4. Object/subject/pronoun may be dropped from sentences.
Continuation from no. 3. A subject may be missing from a sentence because in certain situations, the subject (e.g. I or you) is already obvious. Korean culture is to not be blunt at the obvious as its considered disrespectful. The polite pronoun for 'you' i.e 'dangsin' is normally used sparingly and only to stress a point.
Example,
- A speaker may always drop the 'na' (I for intimate level) and say, "Kimchi mogda" - in this case 'na' is obviously the speaker.
- A speaker also can another person, "Kimchi mogda?" carrying the meaning "You ate kimchi?" without saying 'no' (you for intimate level).
5. Past, present and future tense
Verbs and adjectives are marked with different tenses and they can get pretty complicated but with practise and listening, you can get the gist of a sentence in terms of where it happened in point of time.
6. Abundance of suffixes
Korean language works differently from English or most languages because of the MIND BOGGLING amount of particles, conjugations and verb endings in stand for what simply be mere words in English. It may take a while to remember all of them but there are basic ones. Therefore if you try to look in dictionary for the word 'because' to translate "I adore him because he is handsome", you will not find it there because its a grammar lesson by itself. No kidding. Baby steps. We'll get there.
7. Two numeric system
The only other language that I come to know have such thing is Mandarin but what I heard is the two system only varies very little in sound and pronounciation. Korean use two numeric system that is the native Korean and Sino-Korean for different purposes like time, price, date, age and counting. Double whammy. Prepare your brain.
8. Multiple words for one thing, used regularly and interchangeably
Having said that, the Korean language is actually made up of both native and Sino-Korean words. With the history with China, for the most of the existence of Korean people, Hanja i.e. the Sino-Korean manuscript has been used far longer than the modern Korean manuscript, Hangul. Historical documents are mostly in Hanja which is pretty much Chinese writing but read in different sound in Korean. Therefore, even today, there are multiple words to describe one thing because they would have words from both sources. Most written Korean use the Sino-Korean words probably because those words were the ones got written in old documents instead of native Korean due to the absence of Hanja character to represent them. Therefore, today, written and spoken Korean sound very different and for drama purposes, learning mostly the spoken form is sufficient. It would be helpful though to know written Korean because they are used in formal setting such as news, journalism and ceremonies. You may find a few scenes with this kind of setting, so it will be helpful to know them but having said that, you can leave it if you have not much time.
However, even in normal conversations, words to represent one thing can be brought up depending on the purpose.
Example, the words for sun, moon and sea are at least double. A word for a live fish still swimming is also different than that already dead for food purposes. The act of swimming have different words depending on the case also. The list goes on.
*I will write about Hanja and how learning it can help to remember vocabularies when I have the chance.
Even so, with all the reasons of why its a difficult language, it is so much FUN to learn because its like one discovery after another, every time you learn something new. Meanwhile, there are elements that make it easier for you to learn Korean faster like: -
- You know, speak and/read a Chinese dialect. A lot of words in Korean are the same words in Chinese, with just a slight sound or intonation difference.
- You know Japanese because Japanese use the same sentence structure and similar speech level rule.
- You live/work in Korea and you listen to it everyday.
I know too little Chinese to be an advantage but I have been living in Korea for the past two and a half years. Don't feel disadvantage though because although it may seem like an advantage, a Chinese person still have to learn the grammar as something totally new, so its not all that easy.
I wanted to add another point that is, the younger you are the faster you learn and speak Korean but I can't prove this for sure. I just feel that a lot of the fluent speakers are below 30 years old and I was already 34 when I started but I was not getting intensive formal lessons similar to the university students. Age does play a role but its amazing how language can be grasped from mere willpower, practice and persistence.
I wanted to add another point that is, the younger you are the faster you learn and speak Korean but I can't prove this for sure. I just feel that a lot of the fluent speakers are below 30 years old and I was already 34 when I started but I was not getting intensive formal lessons similar to the university students. Age does play a role but its amazing how language can be grasped from mere willpower, practice and persistence.
Now if you're not all of the above, don't fret. You and I know we learn it because heck yeah I wanna wrap my brain and heart to what that drama is really saying, I wanna enjoy kdramas on a different level and like decoding a treasure map riddle, I want to discover how would that feel! I wanted to give up MANY TIMES but what I did was take a break and then I picked it up again. So, don't give up!
I conclude this and start lesson!
