Korean is difficult for English speakers. A lot of the sounds are just strange. There are aspirated sounds, which are the sounds we make when we are angry. These sounds are quite common in all Korean language, and tend to make Koreans sounds angrier than they are. Additionally, as a laid back English speaker, this means I mispronounce them most of the time. There are plenty of sounds they don’t have, like “Th”, “St”, “R”, “V”, “X”, “Z”, and their “s” sound is often a “sh” sound. They get revenge by adding a sound which is basically the noise you make when someone punches you in the stomach (“uh” 으), which is made by expelling air with your teeth mashed together. This is similar to Japanese, in that they add the “uh” sound to the end of many loan words (for example, my friend Jared’s name in Korean is phonetically “Jay-lu-duh”, with an undeniable “uh” at the end.) because they don’t have a way to deal with more than a certain number of sounds in a syllable block, or with blocks that don’t have vowels. There are seemingly infinitely many hidden pronunciation rules which take the otherwise straight forward alphabet system and make it as confusing as English.
The grammar is definitely confusing. It is based on Subject, Object, Verb (as opposed to English’s Subject, Verb, Object). Of course, it’s not that simple. English is only sometimes SVO, and Korean is only sometimes SOV. The Subject and Object are positionally variable. There is a particle that goes at the end of a word to make it an object, and one to make it a subject, and their order doesn’t matter beyond that. Additionally, Verbs, Adverbs and Adjectives are all the same thing: verbs. This is largely because they don’t deal with “be” verbs (a small mercy). Many times words like “I”, “She”, “Me” can be omitted, making for some very short, legitimate sentences. Because this is good and simple, they rectify this by having many, many levels of language, which require, at minimum, verbs to be conjugated differently. Basically, you can’t talk to you pastor using the same verbs as your friend, or your teacher, or someone younger than you. There are also particles of respect for the equivalent of “to”, and situations where you can’t use the respectful particles without being vaguely insulting.
That’s not to say that I’m not learning. I’ve hit a point where I feel like I’ve learned more in the last few weeks than the prior weeks combined. It’s simply that the gulf between our languages is imposing. It makes me respect those Koreans who can speak English. It’s not exactly apples to apples, because Koreans study English from middle school, and I’ve been studying Korean for a few months academically. But still, make no mistake, English is messed up, too.
Our system of vowels is confusing. Koreans have explicit vowels, and while they are occasionally unwieldy (you need 2 syllables to make the Hard “I” sound), they are much better for specifically showing what vowel sound to make. So much so that I regularly mess up the “Ah” and “Uh” sounds because there isn’t that much difference, functionally, in English. Our Ph’s make a “F” sound. We use French words, which is a major pain to explain (Why is Buffet spelled with a “t”? Why is coquette spelled with an “e”?). Our Latin and Greek Prefixes and Suffixes are confusing, because why is something that is inflammable on fire, but I can’t convince of something inconceivable? Why can’t something be in/dis-delicious? Why do we share some letters when we pronounce some syllables and not others (and if you don’t know what I mean, try to pay attention to how you really pronounce words. Many syllables have joint custody of some, but not all, consonants). How do you explain the vocabulary for a language that borrows from Spanish, Greek, Latin, French, German, Native American and anything else it can get it’s hands on. How do you explain English grammar when most English speakers never consciously and certainly don’t consistently apply it in day to day life? I’ve got few arguably correct (and undoubtedly many clearly incorrect) grammatical errors in this post, alone. But you can still understand (most of) it.
That said, my time so far in Korea is still the most rewarding time of my life, and I hope to continue it. I also hope I can learn more Korean. They do an outstanding job of meeting me more than half way, and I feel bad for not being any better than I am.
