Re: Learn Korean in 15 minutes
Korean is difficult not because of the simple writing system, but because they got rid of Chinese characters due to nationalism. Unfortunately, this nationalism came too late, and a huge portion of Korean vocabulary is actually Classical Chinese words. According to the wikipedia page on Korean Language, 65% of all Korean words are actually borrowed from Chinese. Since Korean doesn't have tones like Chinese, all these words which were taken from Chinese sound alike. It is not uncommon for a single Hangul cluster to map to a dozen or more Chinese characters or what are essentially words in Korean. The other way around is confusing too: many Chinese characters also have several ways to read them in Korean, which adds to the confusion.
Last edited by blastfromthepast; 3rd January 2013 at 07:48 AM..
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