Talk:Korean/Lesson I1

Korean/Conversation lessons plan
Attention contributors: please review or contribute to Korean/Conversation lessons plan before making significant changes to the lessons in conversation lessons. Rodasmith 01:33, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Recommended changes
This page needs some changes....
 * 반말 shouldn't be in lesson 1. Most textbooks start with very formal language (eg 안녕하십니까?), but I think 안녕하세요 is probably better to start with. We can make a brief note of the different levels of politeness, but introduce them in more detail in a later level.
 * Lesson 1 should include self-introduction, which is currently in Lesson 2.
 * The grammar note about the infinitive should be in a later lesson, and actually it's a bit mixed up anyway.
 * Joseph might not be the best choice of names, since the Korean form is usually 요셉 (from Latin?), not 조세프.

I'll work on it when I have time. --Chamdarae 17:00, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

About Chinese characters
I saw unnecessary chinese characters written in dialogue section. It is weird to write both Korean and Chinese for common used words like 안녕. What would it be like if I wrote English sentence like "Hello (Hola), Joseph?". It is only used if it may be confused without it, though it is seldom used even under the circumstances, nowadays. I left them in vocabulary section to help learners, but deleted them in dialog section. I deleted chinese characters of dialogue, vocabulary so on. I left it for preposition 조사(助詞) not to be confused with another such as investigation 조사(調査). --Only2sea 15:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

The obvious difference is that "Hola" is not part of the English language. 漢字 are a part of the Korean language. There is no comparison. Just teaching 한글 would be like just teaching かな in Japanese: i.e. useless for the serious learner. If you can't read Chinese characters, you are in a difficult position as a learner. I find that unleass you can read hanja, learning Korean is actually more difficult, simply because there are too many words that sound the same, and can easily be mixed up. The words "Hello" and "Hola" are not interchangable; whereas 안녕 and 安寧 are the same word, written in two ways. I found it extremely annoying as a learner of Korean that there are almost no books that teach Korean and hanja to whitey-type foreigners at the same time, and would like this project to be an exception. Why should you have to trawl though a stupid 한자사전 to find a word that could just as easily be in the bloody textbook? --Ce garcon 11:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure, hanja are a part of the Korean language, but they are pretty archaic, and there is much discussion in Korea itself about whether or not they should still be used. North Korea has already gone the whole hog and fully disbanded them. So, a full third of native Korean speakers don't know any hanja anyway. Also, if you've been in Korea lately, you'll probably notice that there is barely any hanja around these days. It is only used sparingly in newspapers, books, and in some brand names.

One can very easily write essays, articles, or even books in Korean; and read/comprehend those written by others without having to know a single hanja. Saying that a serious learner must learn hanja is just stupid. Most young Koreans these days barely even know the 500 that they are supposed to learn. Saying that a serious learner of Korean must learn them is like saying serious learners of English must learn Beowulf; or what about Anglo-Saxon runes?. It just doesn't hold water.

With a bit of extra time spent, it isn't really that difficult to gain a meaning from context anyway, and in spoken form, one has no choice.

Japanese is completely different, where kanji are still used very extensively (and it's necessary to know them). But the case is not the same in modern Korea at all. --Naya2005 (talk) 09:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


 * As a compromise between the needs of hard-core linguistic researchers and casual learners, I've begun to link new hangeul vocabulary items to their corresponding Wiktionary entries. We can leave only the hangeul here and allow the reader to click through to see the various nuances of each new vocabulary word, including its hanja for Sino-Korean words. Rodasmith 01:12, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Naya, so far, none of your argument has made any progress as to why Hanja should not be learned. You also attacked your own argument by saying "It is used in newspapers, books, and in some brand names". If it's used, even though not common, why shouldn't they learn it? If you want to gain only basic fluency, then don't learn Hanja. If you want to gain mastery, then learn it. It's as simple as that.

And nowadays, certain universities accept people based on Hanja proficiency certificate. And I don't know if you lived in Korea before but certain students in law or other field have said some professors teach using Hanja and without knowing them, your study becomes intensely harder. Some of those younger generation can stay stupid if they want, there are PLENTY of younger people, which I am of one, that know Hanja.

It is part of our language which is used along with Korean language, Anglo-Saxon and Beowulf evolved to be what forms the current English. They're not quite the same comparison.

"Hanja is not necessary to learn" is merely an excuse made by lazy Korean native who is not as intelligent in our language or lazy non-native Korean learners who think basic fluency is all they need. I made my case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.107.78.200 (discuss • contribs) 2008-06-01T04:58:42


 * On an English website for learners of Korean I can't help but think that the reason for including Chinese characters is because white people think they are cool. I, personally, being a speaker of Japanese and Korean can't help but be in awe and captivated by Chinese characters. However, when I speak to Koreans about them they tend to make a clear distinction (though perhaps a blunt one) between words that are written with hanja and words that are "우리나라말". This frustrates me to no end, and I argue the point with them until all parties are equally frustrated: these people are not scholars of Korean and are in no position to say with authority what IS or IS NOT Korean, but they are the people and they (ultimately and despite the efforts of scholars) decide where the language is going. Very few of my friends under the age of 20 can write as many Hanja as me, and even in University it is not required that students learn hanja unless they are studying 국어 (though as mentioned above, they might be necessary in some field (actually, in science or law I can't imagine how one could get by without them)). I even met a young man who couldn't write the hanja for his name (he thought he could, then tried and failed and was all "oh, I'll get back to you on that" ^.^). Koreans in my experience speak English far better than they write hanja.


 * So I think that calling it "an excuse made by lazy Koreans" is not correct: not learning hanja is what realistic Koreans with no need for hanja in their daily lives do. Learning hanja is something that is done by people who have a special interest in hanja or who have an overly nostalgic regard for what is essentially now a part of Korea's history. If people who do learn hanja want to call people who don't "lazy", this is probably motivated by pride more than anything else. I can imagine a similar scenario in which a young and prideful calligrapher might say "'shodo is not necessary to learn' is an excuse made by lazy Japanese." Similarly, I'm sure, some Korean's might have the balls to say go out and say "'English is not necessary to learn' is an excuse made by lazy Koreans." Ultimately though I think that these kinds of arguments are themselves laze.


 * In the end, and regretably, I agree that hanja hasn't much of a place in a beginner's guide to Korean (and besides, if you don't already know hanja having some Chinese scribbles beside your Korean vocab isn't going to help you: perhaps there should be a second article dedicated to helping learners who want to learn sino-korean characters?).

저도요
Is 저도요 appropriate for lesson 1? My Korean proficiency is poor, but 저도요 seems to be 저 ("I") + 도 ("also") + 요 (sentence ending for 해요체 speech level). So, 저도요 appears to be in the 해요체 speech level but the rest of the lesson uses 합쇼체. Is there a better form (e.g. *저돕니다?) or is 저도요 unrelated to speech level? Rodasmith 03:08, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 저도요를 굳이 영어로 번역하면 Me too이고 해요체가 맞습니다. 합쇼체는 -해 주십시요. -하십다가 붙은 것을 말합니다. --Pakman (talk) 04:25, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

는/은 vs 이/가
Are there plans to include a discussion and explanation of this? I find it an extremely challenging topic and even native koreans have difficulty in trying to explain when one should be used over another. If there already is one in here somewhere, I wouldn't mind being pointed towards it.--Crossmr (talk) 06:23, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Korean/Particles is a good place to contrast the subject particles 이/가 with the object particles 을/를 and to explain how the topic particles 는/은 are used instead when the noun is the focal point of the sentence (so long as it's clear from context whether it's the verb's subject or object). I know there are more nuances involved (e.g. whether the sentence has multiple topics or whether a contrasting topic was already introduced), but I'm not an expert speaker of Korean, so I expect I don't fully understand the distinction.  Do you have any thoughts about how to explain those particles?  If so, try in Korean/Particles.  Rodasmith (talk) 18:16, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I don't, I'm still having two or three koreans try to explain it to me, which is why I was hoping it would be here. The moment I do fully understand it, you can be sure I'll be here to write something about it.--Crossmr (talk) 06:59, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

한국어 vs 한국말
since I'm just having a look around, I've noticed a few places where there is a reference being made to korean language and the former is being used, yet everything I've read and the Koreans I've spoken to indicate I you should be using the latter to refer to the Korean language as 말 is the suffix which denotes its a language, is there a reason the former has been used here?--Crossmr (talk) 07:02, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * In the "language" sense, 어 and 말 are synonyms, but 어 is from the Chinese word 語, so 한국어 has a more formal feel to it, whereas the slightly more casual word 한국말 uses the native Korean word 말. Rodasmith (talk) 18:35, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * 어는 한자어고, 말은 순우리말... 한국어는 한자어 + 순우리말의 합성어 입니다. 그리고 한국어를 한글이라고도 하는데 세 말은 모두 같습니다. 한국어를 유창하게 작성하시는 분이니 굳이 영어로 쓰지 않았습니다. --Pakman (talk) 04:23, 30 August 2009 (UTC)