The FSI puts Korean as a Category V language. Which means, it's one of the hardest languages to master. They estimate 2200 hours of study before you can reach fluency in Korean. Or 88 weeks of extremely intense study.
If you compare both languages, you will notice that both of them are equally challenging. The Korean language's writing systems are hard to learn, whereas the Japanese alphabet is complex to understand. 40 Alphabets, which makes creating and understanding sentences easier. Easier as the writing system is more simple.
Is Korean hard to learn for English speakers? Learning a language that involves a new writing system and sentence structure (such as Korean) can be challenging for a native English speaker. However, if you set yourself up with the right materials with a learning method you enjoy, it becomes easy.
Apart from its very different grammar style from other languages, it also uses extremely foreign vocabulary. Plus, there are honorifics and delicate nuances to its conjugation. As a result, this makes it more confusing. All this takes effort, a lot of time, and patience to grasp.
FAQs. Which language is easier to learn– Korean or Japanese? Korean is considered to be much easier than Japanese. There are more letters in the Japanese alphabet than in Korean. Japanese also contains more complicated Chinese characters and difficult grammar.
Generally speaking, we might assert that Korean is easier for an English speaker to learn than Mandarin Chinese. But this is very relative. In fact, the US Foreign Service Institute assigns Mandarin Chinese and Korean the same level of difficulty. Both languages are in “Category Four”.
The FSI puts Korean as a Category V language. Which means, it's one of the hardest languages to master. They estimate 2200 hours of study before you can reach fluency in Korean. Or 88 weeks of extremely intense study.
Because the alphabet didn't naturally evolve but was explicitly created by King Sejong, it functions quite differently from many other languages. The ease and logic behind learning the basics of writing and reading make Korean a language worth learning.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Gateway to Korean and Japanese - it would be easier for you to learn Korean and Japanese once you learned Chinese. These three languages all share sino-vocabulary. In Korean its about 60% of the vocabulary.
Contrary to common belief, mastering this language is entirely possible if only you know the best resources and ways to do it. You can even learn Korean from the comfort of your home!
According to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the agency in charge of training US diplomats, it takes a native English speaker 2,200 hours of dedicated study – or 88 weeks – to reach professional working fluency in Korean.
How long does it take to learn Korean fluently? It will take about 1200 hours to reach a high intermediate level. You'll need additional practice, so you may want to double that number to 2400 hours to get towards fluency. That would be about 23 hours of study per week for two years.
Duolingo's Korean course covers a good amount of basic words, which is a good starting point. But this course fails to go beyond beginner level, so users shouldn't expect to achieve high level fluency by only using this app.
It is never too late to learn something! We hope to be of help in your achieving your language(Korean) goals.
Better Understanding of Korean Culture and Concepts
One of the main reasons people choose to study Korean is because they're already familiar with some Korean exports like songs, TV shows, and movies. Perhaps you watched Park Chan-wook's film “Oldboy,” and it sparked your interest in Korean cinema.
A large number of Koreans live in the United States.
Over 75 million people speak Korean, so you'll have plenty of opportunities to perfect your language skills. Korean culture has spread throughout Asia, with K-pop and Korean dramas gaining popularity and making Korean a more popular language to study.
This concluded that you're considered fluent if you learn around 3,000 words in Korean.
Michael: In many ways, Korean is actually similar to Japanese. These two languages are not mutually intelligible, meaning a speaker of one language is not able to automatically understand the other based on similarities between the languages alone.
It's recommended that you spend an hour a day studying the Korean language to become fluent. However, keep in mind that each individual will have a different learning experience. Depending on your circumstances, it may take you less time or more time.