A few years ago, I made a determination to demystify the language behind the funny-looking ㄴ ㅇ ㄹ ㅎ ㅗ ㅓ ㅏ ㅣscript once and for all. And I did not regret my decision even though I spent over RM 600 in self-help books, hours and hours of poring over pages and surfing online, day over day of watching K-dramas, and possibly in future year over year of socializing with native Koreans. The learning process never stops and this is what I find so fun about learning a new language. ;)
During my self-help with the Korean language I compared it with English several times and found some wacky observations between the two.
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For one thing, I'm sure my readers, you know that English sentences typically have a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) order. As in
"Ali buys a book."
Ali = subject
buys = verb
book = object
Sometimes the object can be in front of the sentence as in
"A book Ali buys."in which case the order is OSV. But this kind of sentence sounds very awkward so we don't hear it very often unless you're watching Yoda in Star Wars. :P
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However, in Korean, any and all sentences MUST end in a verb. The subject and object can change positions or even be obsolete, but the sentence must have a verb. Yeah you read that right. A sentence can be grammatically complete with just one verb and nothing else, not even pronouns like "I, We, You". The whole sentence can be very beautiful but if it lacks an ending verb, it hangs and sounds stupid instead. Here's some examples.
Pro: to pronounce
Lit: literal meaning
진영이야.
Pro: Chin-yong-i-ya.
Lit: Jinyong it is.
빨리 오세요.
Pro: Ppal-li O-se-yo.
Lit: Quickly please come.
먹었다.
Pro: Mo-go-tta.
Lit: Ate.
English: (I/You/He/She/They/We) ate.
Isn't this surprising? Korean considers the above sentence to be complete even though there's absolutely no reference to the subject or object whatsoever. This sentence would definitely be given an X in English homework.
Here's something longer.
시내에 나갈 때마다, 비가 옵니다.
Pro: Shi-nae-e Na-gal Ttae-ma-da, Pi-ga Om-ni-da.
Lit: To city center go out everytime, rain comes.
English: It rains everytime I go downtown.
This very rigid restriction has produced some of the most wacky sentences I've ever heard in my life. Of course to Koreans and Korean speakers it is just a normal thing, but I can guarantee you that if or when you learn it you'll laugh a lot when you write the sentence out literally. Like
네 맘 바꿀 길은 없는 것 같아.
Pro: Ne Mam Pa-kkul Ki-reun Om-neun Go Ga-tha.
Lit: (Your mind) (to-change) (way) (does-not-exist) (thing be like)
Did you by any chance understand the literal translation of the sentence? Hehe. So next time if you meet Koreans who struggle to learn English please don't laugh at them, because their language functions very differently from English. :D
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As you can also see above, if Korean considers only the verb to be essential, English on the other hand places importance on the verb and the subject/object. Two parts have to exist in an English sentence to be complete, but only one in Korean.
Another distinction is that Korean does emphasize the tenses but not as rigidly as English. English demands every single verb to reflect the tense in the sentence, which causes a lot of difficulties to learners especially as English verbs do not have a uniform system of tense inflection. Often in Korean, the early half of the sentence can be in present tense only for the verb to end in past/future tense, in which case the tense is determined by the ending verb. Again the supreme importance placed on the verb in Korean.
밥 많이 먹고 그냥 잤어요.
Pro: Pap Ma-ni Mok-ko Keu-nyang Ja-sso-yo.
Lit: Rice many eat and just slept.
English: I ate a lot of rice and then just went to sleep
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It is interesting to know that Korean is flexible about subject-verb agreement, ie if the subject is singular/plural, the verb follows suit. In fact there is no such distinction in Korean - you could write entire paragraphs and not know whether the subjects are singular or plural. However, if there is a need to indicate plurality clearly, Korean supplies the plural particle 들 (pro: deul) which can be suffixed to almost any part of the sentence (except the ending verb).
오서 오세요.
Pro: O-so O-se-yo.
English: Welcome. (There is one or more guests)
오서들 오세요.
Pro: O-so-deul O-se-yo.
English: Welcome. (There are a number of guests)
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As a final remark, Korean unlike English is heavily inflected - verb forms can change easily according to the sentence style, tenses, modifiers, etc., all of which are too much to handle in a blog post. In this aspect English may be simpler giving less headache. However if you ask me, English is so irregular I'm not surprised why a lot of Malaysians even find it so hard to learn English. Seriously Malay and Korean have a much more organized language structure.
In Malay we have the "imbuhan" (prefixes and suffixes) that we can play around with so easily if we want a certain kind of sentence. A lot of foreigners have remarked that Malay is so easy to learn. If not for the fact that English is the international language due to centuries of political circumstances, Malay could actually take over as the lingua franca just as it did during the Malacca Sultanate era.
And in Korean there's the script (which is amazingly scientific and easy to learn), a greater flexibility in terms of subject, object, tense, plural/singular, vocabulary, etc compared to English. In the next post, I'll do another different type of comparison and you'll see that Korean vocab is even simpler than English. :P
BTW this sentence
Means "It seems I cannot change your mind."
In Malay we have the "imbuhan" (prefixes and suffixes) that we can play around with so easily if we want a certain kind of sentence. A lot of foreigners have remarked that Malay is so easy to learn. If not for the fact that English is the international language due to centuries of political circumstances, Malay could actually take over as the lingua franca just as it did during the Malacca Sultanate era.
And in Korean there's the script (which is amazingly scientific and easy to learn), a greater flexibility in terms of subject, object, tense, plural/singular, vocabulary, etc compared to English. In the next post, I'll do another different type of comparison and you'll see that Korean vocab is even simpler than English. :P
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BTW this sentence
네 맘 바꿀 길은 없는 것 같아.
Pro: Ne Mam Pa-kkul Ki-reun Om-neun Go Ga-tha.
Lit: (Your mind) (to-change) (way) (does-not-exist) (thing be like)
Means "It seems I cannot change your mind."
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Hey, this lady gets a pretty heavy dose of Korean too! Drop by for a visit k? :D
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