How "Difficult" is it to learn the language of South Korea?

Question

How is it compared to learning Spanish or French?

thank you :)

Answer 1

one of the hardest

its easier to learn a european language some words are the same or sound alike or are spelt alike. esspecially spanish french and german

if you were born there your more likely to pick it up easily.

if you were born in england and have no family just thought you would learn it it would be a big chaaallenege and i think there alphabets different as well

Answer 2

Learning Spanish and French are much easier because many words are similar (come from similar roots) and the general grammatical way of expressing yourself is similar.  Korean has a writing system that is very easy to learn (you can learn it in a week), but other than that it is difficult.  Certain consonants and vowels are very similar (get a Korean to pronounce the words "crab" and "dog" and see if you can tell the difference).  

The other difficult thing is that you have different levels of politeness.  If you want to say "she is eating lunch" you would use different words depending on whether it was a woman you didn't know, your little sister or your grandmother.  Normally foreigners can just blunder through because it is assumed that such subtleties are beyond you, but nonetheless you have to understand them.

Graham H is actually WRONG.  North Korea, a country closed to outside influence, uses native Korean-derived words for modern stuff (computer, internet).  South Korea, a country open to outside, particularly American, influence, uses phonetic English.  This makes the Northern dialect harder for foreigners.  Plus you never meet anyone from the North, because it's a closed totalitarian state.

Answer 3

First of all, the standard language of South Korea is nearly identical to that of North Korea - just some differences in the language due to different government and an extended period of isolation (including what they call the language).

If you're native to English, Spanish and French are definitely a lot easier to learn; grammar, writing system and phonology of Korean are a lot more complex for someone with an English background.

Korean is considered a category 3 language (on a scale of 1 to 3, with 1 being easiest for a native English speaker).

Category 3 languages are estimated to take 5 times the amount of time to learn than category 1, but for most of them, I don't think this is really the case, including Korean.

Answer 4

It is safe to say that it is no more difficult - or indeed, no easier - than the language of North Korea.....

Answer 5

Just as difficult as learning any other language.

=)

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Answer 6

Well, it's difficult like learning any other language. There are conjugations, yes, and the order is SOV (if I'm not mistaken), which is Subject-Object-Verb, unlike Spanish and French, which are SVO, or Subject-Verb-Oject.

For example, here are the differences:

SVO: I like apples.

SOV: I apples like.

The writing system is totally phonetic, just like Spanish, so it should be easy to pronounce words as they look. However, the vowels are grouped up in slightly different ways than Romance languages.

That's about as much as I can tell you. Oh, and by the way, North and South Korea speak the same language.

Good luck!