While the similarities between the two languages are noticeable, Chinese and Korean aren't mutually intelligible. Korean and Chinese people couldn't understand each other if they only used their native language in a conversation. That's because they're from different language families.
Korean and Chinese can't understand each other. They have a distinctive language family, Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan (also known as Trans-Himalayan family) while Korean is a Koreanic language (consisting of the modern Korean language collectively with extinct primeval relatives).
The Korean language is much more related to Chinese than one might think. Korean is also very closely related to Japanese, probably even more than Chinese, but Chinese words actually make up about 60% of the Korean vocabulary, though in actual speech (especially informally) native Korean words are more common.
More than 60% of Korean vocabulary comes from Chinese, and in everyday speech, there are even more common words, called hanja. Korean, like Chinese, consists of short and long vowels. Learning tones is easy because Korean is also a tonal language.
The Chinese Korean language (Korean: 중국조선말; Hanja: 中國朝鮮말; RR: Jungguk Joseonmal, lit. 'China Joseon language') is the variety of the Korean language spoken by Koreans in China, primarily located in Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning.
Korean and Japanese might be the easiest languages for a native Chinese speaker to learn. While Korean and Japanese belong to a different language family from Chinese, centuries of cultural exchange have filled Korean and Japanese with Chinese vocabulary, in fact, 60% of Korean vocabulary has Chinese roots.
Although the Korean and Chinese languages are not related in terms of grammatical structure, more than 50 percent of all Korean vocabulary is derived from Chinese loanwords, a reflection of the cultural dominance of China over 2 millennia.
Relatively, Korean would be an easier language to learn. Thanks to its phonetic alphabet and more simplistic grammar rules, Korean is not the most challenging Asian language to learn. Chinese on the other hand is much more widely spoken. This means that finding study materials and practice partners would be easier.
Japanese vs Korean vs Chinese // FAQ's
Korean and Japanese are at the top of the “most difficult” level – with Japanese having just a small edge on Korean for it's use of 2 alphabetic structures and use of kanji – Chinese characters (in total 3 alphabets essentially) instead of just one alphabet like in Korean.
A more detailed analysis using 65 alleles at 19 polymorphic loci was performed on six populations. Both analyses demonstrated genetic evidence of the origin of Koreans from the central Asian Mongolians. Further, the Koreans are more closely related to the Japanese and quite distant from the Chinese.
Overview of the Korean language
Linguistically, Korean isn't related to Chinese but is similar to, but still distinct from the Japanese language. One of the hardest aspects of Korean is that it is a hierarchical language which means different words are used depending on who you are communicating with.
Unlike other East-Asian languages, Korean isn't a tonal language. This means, that the meaning of the word doesn't change, regardless of what your accent is like. This makes learning Korean much easier than Japanese.
Chinese speakers can read Kanji to a certain extent, but understanding spoken Japanese requires additional effort. While the shared writing system between the two languages may provide an advantage, Chinese speakers still need to learn the grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation of Japanese to achieve fluency.
Japanese is slightly easier to learn. But, Chinese is much more widely spoken. Both languages have their pros and cons. Ultimately whichever language pulls on your heartstrings the most is the winner.
Japanese people do not understand Korean even though Japan and Korea are next to each other geographically and may share a few similar words. These two languages originate from two separate countries and are unrelated. One must learn or study the language to communicate in Korean and vice versa.
Indonesian or Malay is the easiest Asian language to learn. Moreover, with 77 million speakers, it's certainly worth considering learning as the easiest Asian Language! Thus, what makes the language so simple compared to other Asian Languages?
As we've already mentioned, Japanese is considered the fastest language in the world. It is always mentioned as the first on the list. So, here are 6 of the fastest spoken languages in the world, based on the average number of syllables spoken per second (SPS): Japanese - 7.84 SPS.
8. How long will it take to become fluent in Korean? In general, it will take about 1200 hours to reach a higher intermediate level of Korean skills. You will need additional practice, so you may want to double that number to 2400 hours to get towards fluency using this simple math.
Chinese isn't all bad news, it's near complete lack of tense, mood, gender, grammatical number and inflections means it is grammatically much simpler than Spanish for all but the more advanced nuances.
Because Japanese and Korean have Chinese roots, there's a lot of similar vocabulary between these three languages. Linguists believe that around 60% of Korean words and 50% of Japanese words come from Chinese. So if you know one of these languages, it gives you a massive head-start when learning the others.
In January 2005, the Seoul Metropolitan Government requested that the Chinese name of the city be changed to "Shǒu'ěr" (首爾/首尔; Korean: "Su-i"). This is a close transliteration of Seoul in Mandarin Chinese, where 首 (shǒu) can also mean "first" or "capital".
Korean language, language spoken by more than 75 million people, of whom 48 million live in South Korea and 24 million in North Korea. There are more than 2 million speakers in China, approximately 1 million in the United States, and about 500,000 in Japan.
Nearly two million ethnic Koreans reside in the People's Republic of China. This number places them as China's thirteenth largest out of 55 total minority groups. Ethnic Korean communities are mainly concentrated in northeastern China.