Learning Korean: 3 Important Differences Between English and Korean Grammar

Korean and English have very different grammar structures, which can make learning Korean challenging for native English speakers. How should you overcome this challenge? The best way is to tackle the problem head on, by directly comparing Korean and English sentence structures. This article will give a very brief review of basic grammar concepts and then discuss the three main grammatical differences between Korean and English.

Quick and Easy Grammar Refresher

To get the most out of this article, you must understand some basic grammatical concepts. Most importantly, you need to understand subjects, objects and verbs. Simply put, a verb is a word that expresses action or being, words like eat, walk, and tell. The subject of a sentence, on the other hand, is the word that takes the action of the verb. Finally, the object in a sentence is the "thing" involved in the action. It often answers the "who," "when," or "where" kinds of questions.

For example, in the sentence "Ryan wrote a letter," the verb is "wrote." Ryan is the one who did the writing, so he is the subject, and the letter is what Ryan wrote, so it is the object. Do you notice the order in which those words were placed?

Word Order: Korean vs. English

The order of the words in the sentence above is subject + verb + object. In Korean, the order of the words in a sentence is subject + object + verb. So, in this case, using Korean grammar, the sentence would read like this:

"Ryan letter wrote." Or, in Romanized Korean, laieon eun pyeonji leul sseoss-eoyo.

Laieon = Ryan (there is no "R" sound in Korean)

pyeonji = letter

sseoss-eoyo = write

This is the most important part of Korean grammar that you need to know. You'll have to fight all of your natural instincts, but you must place the verb at the end of the sentence when speaking Korean.

Korean Subject and object Markers

This is an easy comparison. In English, there are no subject and object markers. In Korean, there are. Take a look at the example sentence I wrote above. Did you notice that there are 5 words in the Korean sentence but that I only translated three of them? The two words I didn't translate are "eun" and "leul." I didn't translate them because there is no direct translation.

Notice that the word "eun" follows the word "Laieon" (Ryan). Laieon is the subject of the sentence; therefore, it is marked with the subject marker "eun."

The word "pyeonji" (letter), on the other hand, is the object, so it is marked with the object marker "leul." These markers can be confusing at first, but don't worry. They come naturally once you begin to use them regularly.

Articles

Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of nouns. In English they are the words "a/an" and "the." Look at the sample sentence above one more time. You may have thought that I made a typo when I wrote the sentence, "Ryan letter wrote?" Actually, however, the sentence is correct when written in the Korean form because in the Korean language there is no use of articles at all.

Summary

Korean and English have very different grammar structures, which can make learning Korean a bit difficult for native English speakers. You can make the process much easier, however, if you understand the difference in word order, the difference in the use of subject and object markers, and the difference in the use of articles.

Best of luck in this and all of your learning endeavors.

Want to learn Korean online? Check out my Rocket Korean Review.

Also, be sure to grab a copy of my FREE (for the time being) new book called "Ordinary Ways to Learn a Language Extraordinarily Fast" at http://www.liveinasiablog.com/learning-a-new-language/

Have a great day.

Ryan Wiley
Founder
The Live in Asia Blog

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The Relationship Between French And English And It's Overall Effect On French Translations

While French is known as a somewhat insulated language these days in the past it was deeply influenced by surrounding languages, and the language itself influenced many others. For example despite the fact that they come from different language families French still exerted a fairly powerful influence over the development of modern English. This is due to fact that French was introduced to the British Isles in the eleventh century by the invasion of the Normans. While French is a romance language that overall has more in common with Italian and Spanish than with English, the two languages still contain a significant amount of common ground due to this connection. This connection then has quite a positive effect on French-English or English to French translations.

At a base level French and English share a common language of the same twenty six letters. The main difference in the written languages of French and English revolve around the dozen or so specific accent marks unique to the French language. These differences in accents and emphasis carry over into spoken variations of the languages, causing a number of problems due to differences in pronunciation between the two. These different pronunciations cause many of the problems for English and French speakers attempting to understand each other's speech. For example a major point of content for French speakers attempting to learn English revolves around the latter's seemingly chaotic patterns of stressing elements of words, as French incorporates more predictable and normalized patterns of stress and inflection.

Grammatically speaking French and English have a lot in common, and this aspect of the languages usually doesn't present either speaker with many problems. A few persistent areas of difficulty between the two revolve around differences in tense and the framing of questions, often leading to awkward statements of timing and phrasing of questions on both ends. This can normally explain why generic French translations sound a little forced. It is essential that you work with a competent French translation agency to avoid such issues arising.

Finally vocabulary between the two languages benefits from similar roots in the Latin language, making it relatively easy for speakers of either language to pick up large quantities of words in a relatively short time within the other language. While the two languages do feature their share of confusing interpretations of the same root word, overall their similarities in vocabulary outweigh many of their differences, especially in technical and specialized speech.

While French is known as a fairly particular language, overall it is far from impenetrable and far from the most difficult European language to understand or translate to and from.

Charlene Lacandazo is a marketing executive for Rosetta Translation, a leading full-service translation agency in London, UK.

Rosetta Translation specialises in French translation, as well as interpreting services worldwide.

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