Korean

1. Korean Is Useful

There are more than 75 million people who speak Korean. And it ranks as 18th in the most used languages in the world. This makes the language useful for travel, or business. 

If you plan on doing any sort of business in the country, you will need to know Korean. It’s a sign of respect your business partners will appreciate. And thanks to Korea’s large economy, the country is also a great vacation destination. When you visit, knowing Korean will put you at an advantage. Not only can you communicate and navigate successfully, but you can also discover hidden spots that tourists don’t usually know about.

2. The Korean Alphabet Is Simple

You may think that Korean is hard to learn because it has a different writing system. But learning Hangul, the Korean alphabet, is very easy. The Korean language is considered to have the most logical system of writing in the world. Hangul didn’t slowly evolve. Instead, it was purposefully crafted to fit the speech of the language perfectly. King Sejong, who ruled during the Joseon dynasty, is the mastermind current system. Before it was introduced, people would substitute Chinese characters for Korean.

Hangul has 24 letters (2 less than English), and are all spelled phonetically. Languages with words that are spelled phonetically are much easier to grasp. For example, ㄴ, pronounced “ni-eun”, resembles the English letter N, and looks exactly the way your tongue would look forming the sound. The simplicity of the alphabet is just one of the reasons why you should learn Korean. 

3. Speaking Korean Is Easy!

As we mentioned before, the Korean alphabet is built on the sounds of the language. Thanks to the phonetic letters, Korean pronunciation is very logical. You pronounce everything that’s written. Whenever you think that speaking Korean is difficult, think of how much worse other languages have it.

There are no guttural sounds in Korean, like in Arabic or Hebrew. And there are also no consonant clusters, like in Polish or Georgian. But most importantly, Korean is not a tonal language, unlike other East Asian languages. This makes speaking Korean a lot easier.

4. Korean Has No Verb Conjugations

Korean grammar isn’t complicated. For instance, you don’t have to worry about conjugating verb forms in Korean. No matter if the verb is plural or singular, it uses the same form.

Many other languages conjugate verbs, which can be very difficult to learn. The difficulties of verb conjugation of leave learners frustrated enough to quit. Since you do not have to worry about verb forms in Korean, you can sail right past that roadblock and wave “bye-bye” to those annoying verb conjugation charts.

5. There Are No Noun Genders in Korean

One difficult hurdle many people struggle with when learning a second language like French or Spanish is the gender of nouns. It can be very difficult to determine what nouns are masculine and which are feminine. This isn’t an issue with Korean since there are no noun genders in the language.

6. Konglish Makes Speaking Easier

Korean has also incorporated certain English words and phrases into the language. People call this hybrid between English and Korean, “Konglish”. And mastering it can help you learn to speak Korean faster.

For example, when a Korean says 디카 (“dika”), that’s actually the shortened English word for “digital camera.” Another example is 셀카 (“selka”) which means selfie. Remember, Koreans truly make an effort to adapt to the culture of other languages. Returning the same curtesy is a great reason why it’s worth to learn Korean.

7. Korea Is a Leader In World Affairs

Korea has been making headlines lately in world politics. And not just because of North Korea. For example, eighth UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon co-initiated The Paris Accords, vowing to reduce future carbon emissions.

Korea is also an important US ally, despite the tense and ever-evolving developments between North and South Korean relations. The country continues to invest its own economic clout in the United States, making it a promising country to learn more about. If you’re interested in politics, why not learn Korean?

8. Korean Culture Is Unique

Korean culture is rich in customs and traditions. Beyond the modern popular culture that is taking the world by storm, there is a vast Korean history waiting for you to discover it. Art, holidays, and superstitions are unique to the peninsula.

The Korean cultural mindset is based on respect. Concepts such as honor, face, and pride have long been associated with the society. Yet, how this heritage effects modern-day Korea is a fascinating study. And you can only discover it if you speak the language. Those doors will remain locked to you until you develop your Korean language abilities.

9. Understand Popular Kpop Songs

Most Westerners instantly associate Korea with its Kpop phenomena. However, the country’s increasing export of movies, fashion, and cosmetics have put it more securely on the map. There’s even a word for it: “Hallyu,” or “The Korean Wave.” And many of Korea’s top celebrities have made the crossover into Western entertainment and advertisements. You’ve likely already seen some of their endorsements for your favorite products.

No one wants to be left out of the pop culture relevance loop. And with The Korean Wave coming stronger than ever, you’ll definitely experience it better by speaking the language. Wanting to understand the lyrics of popular foreign songs is a great reason why it’s beneficial to learn Korean.

10. Enjoy Korean Dramas

Korean cinema and TV culture are especially fascinating. And the quality is very high. Boong Joon Ho’s Parasite won 4 Academy Awards as proof of that. If you want to experience Korean films and Korean dramas to their full extent, speaking Korean is a must.

You’ll be able to read the subtitles and understand the characters. In fact, if you enjoy Korean entertainment, you can also substitute your language classes. Why learn Korean with boring grammar drills, when you can immerse yourself with exciting K-Dramas!?

11. Discover Better Career Prospects

Bilingual employees are more valued in a company. If you learn a second language you may also earn more money. So, why learn Korean? Because Korean business relationships are an asset. Korea has the 12th largest economy in the world. Companies such as Samsung, Hyundai, and LG are constantly expanding. If and when your company decides to join Korean investors and markets, your Korean knowledge could put you to the front.

12. Make More Korean Friends

Koreans are very welcoming people. You learning their language is a great sign of respect. They will appreciate your efforts, and even help you to progress to fluency. Sometimes even for free. Out of pride for their country, many Koreans offer complimentary language lessons or insights into the culture.

They won’t judge you or call you out for your mistakes. Instead, you can practice your pronunciation with ease, and develop your fluency comfortably.

If you know and love someone who speaks Korean, learning the language for them is the ultimate sign of effort. They will be excited about your progress, and help you reach Korean proficiency. This personal touch is a great reason why people learn Korean.

How hard the Korean alphabet is:

Let’s start with the good news… Korean is easy to read (and write, but I’m not focusing on that).

In fact, you could definitely learn to read it in an hour or two, and get good at it with just a few days of practice.

Korean is written in its own alphabet, called Hangul (sometimes written Hangeul). At first blush, if you have no idea how Hangul works, it looks like Chinese — like characters.

On closer inspection, you’ll see far more common traits than Chinese characters have. 

Korean is written in little parcels of letters. Every one is a consonant block. They usually are standalone, but some of them are pronounced together, similar to French liaison.

Each consonant block in Korean is made of two to five elements, usually two or three. It’s usually as simple as a consonant and a vowel, or maybe two consonants sandwiching a vowel. These are combined into one consonant element, and then those consonant elements are grouped into words.

Some examples:

• 가 – combination of a ㄱ(G) and a ㅏ(A) to become GA

• 바 – combination of ㅂ(B) and ㅏ(A) to become BA

• 보 – combination of ㅂ(B) and ㅗ(O) to become BO. Note these stack vertically

Some slightly more complex examples:

• 밥 – combination of ㅂ(B) and ㅏ(A) and another ㅂ(B) to become BAB

• 랑 – combination of ㄹ(R), ㅏ(A), and ㅇ(NG) to become RANG

• 없 – combination of ㅇ(silent before a vowel), ㅓ(EO), ㅂ(B), and ㅅ(S) to become EOBS

There is a discrete number of combinations possible (it’s not infinite), and not that many letters to learn.

Korean is written left to right. The writing system is standardised with few exceptions (a few words are slurred for ease of use, but who’s going to complain about that). Generally, the Korean writing system a walk in the park as far as new writing systems go.

How to learn reading/writing: An app is a good start for Hangul, like Memrise or Duolingo. (Learning to read is the only thing I like apps for.)

How hard Korean grammar is: Korean grammar is not bad, but there are a few things that make it not terribly easy.

Things that are easy in Korean grammar:

• Korean Verbs don’t conjugate much. It’s even more simple than in English. You just say “I eat, you eat, she eat” etc. Past and future tenses are easy to construct. For past tense, you add the particles “~았/었다” to the end of a word. For future tense, you add “~겠다” to the end of a word. You also don’t have to worry about gender or number when conjugating, as I mention below.

• Passive and causative verbs are easy to form. Like “It has been written” vs “I wrote it”. These get pretty hard in some languages, like Arabic or Hebrew.

• Plurals are easy…ish. You only have to add one particle, “들”, to make a noun a plural. You can actually omit it and be understood. The only complication with plurals is that you have to use a “counter” word, similar to Chinese.

• There’s no grammatical gender, unlike most languages (but similar to English or Chinese)

• There’s no “case”: You don’t have to use a different verb or noun form depending on where in the sentence it is (like if it’s a subject or object). This is common in German (for verbs) or Russian (for nouns), for example.

Hard things

• Sentence structure is backwards: The basic sentence structure is “subject-object-verb”. This takes a little re-thinking, if you’re not used to it from another language. It’s like speaking like Yoda. To indicate whether a noun is an object or a subject, you have to use the right particle… this takes getting used to. It gets harder the more elements there are in a sentence, for example “I put the bag on the table” becomes “I on the table the bag put”.

  • One tip I heard on how to make it easy is to imagine you’re speaking like Yoda. “On the table, the bag I put!”

  • Another tip I use personally in most languages: use extremely simple sentences. “The bag, on the table, I put it.” (avoiding the “it”, which always makes things harder)

• Adjectives are descriptive verbs: There’s a distinct verb that means “to be big” or “to be interesting”. If you say “the dog is big”, you use it in that way. However, when you say “the big dog”, you rearrange the adjective to just use the particle. It’s a weird concept, so you have to get used to it.

• Particles: Korean is called an “agglutinative” language. This means you stick things onto words (at the end, for Korean) to modify the way the word is used. You use a different particle to determine whether it’s a subject or object noun. You use a different particle to make a verb future, present or past tense, or to modify formality. Korean is a very simple agglutinative language.

• Formality levels: There are three distinct formality levels. One teacher described them as “very informal, informal and formal”. A lot of basic resources (like Duolingo or Memrise) don’t distinguish and just teach you formal, which is too formal for most situations. They’re not hard to learn, requiring mostly to stick things on the end of words, but you have to get used to the idea and to hearing them.

On formality levels: a simple way of understanding it is that you change the ending of a verb depending on who you’re speaking to and the tone you want to convey.

The formality ending of a sentence changes depending on

• The person’s age — even if they’re jsut one year older or younger than you (this is different to Spanish or French, where you often think “am I old enough to be their child/parent” before choosing a formal or informal form)

• The person’s seniority — for example if they’re your parent in law, or your boss, or a government official; or conversely someone’s kid, or an intern

• The person’s familiarity — how well you know them

The rules are complicated and quite hard to explain succinctly. Frankly, I learned a lot about formality rules from watching just a few Korean Dramas. There’s always some conversation like “Hey, why are you addressing me so informally? I’m older than you!”. In every single drama. It’s that common.

How hard Korean pronunciation is: 

On the one hand, the majority of Korean is easy to pronounce. This is helped by the fact that the writing system is basically entirely phonetic.

Think of pronouncing Korean — mostly — like pronouncing Spanish. The vowels are predictable (even though most are slightly different to what you’re used to), and most consonants are familiar.

However, it’s not a walk in the park. I definitely had a few lessons where my teacher only got me to pronounce words and she made sure I got them (mostly) right!

Things that are easy to pronounce in Korean

• Most vowels and consonants are easy, and there are few surprises. There are no strange aspirated sounds like you might find in French or Arabic, and there is no tonality.

• There are also no consonant clusters – they avoid them, spacing words with vowels, like in Italian.

• There are no tones (e.g. unlike Chinese languages)

Here’s what’s hard to pronounce in Korean consonants:

• All the double/aspirated letters. There is a double G sound (ㄲ), double P sound (ㅃ), double J sound (ㅉ) and double K sound (ㅋ). These are pronounced kind of as a hard letter and while it’s not hard to do when just making the letter sound, it’s hard to blend it into a sentence.

• L/R (ㄹ): This letter is variably pronounced as either an L or an R. The L sound is similar to the english L, but the R sound is a rounder R, closer to an L. You can either learn the rules, or get used to where it sounds like either depending on the word. 

Here’s what’s hard to pronounce in Korean vowels:

• Double vowels: Pronouncing sounds like ‘eu’ is a little unintuitive. You might be familiar with this sound from French or other languages, but of course, it’s slightly different in Korean.

• Tripthongs: Sometimes an unusual vowel is combined with another one, like “eui” (in 의사, “Doctor”). I never got these quite right, and my teacher made me drill them.

One other thing — like in every language, some words are “slurred”, especially those that are in extremely common use. This is actually formalised in pronunciation, too, it’s not just the “slangy” way of speaking. This is easy to learn — it’s for the most common words — and one of the first things you’ll pick up.

How hard Korean vocabulary is: Difficulty 5/5, “Very hard”

I’ve revised this part of this article on “How hard is Korean” after really trying to learn a lot of Korean vocabulary and realising how hard it is!

The vocab is where the rubber hits the road for learning Korean.

For the beginning learner, most words sound unfamiliar. There are almost no words common with English, apart from a few loan words like “computer” or “television”.

If you speak Chinese or Japanese, you have a 25% advantage over your average English speaker. Korean has a lot of loan words from Chinese, and they’re often the same ones that Japanese has.

But the major roadblock to learning Korean words is that so many of them sound so similar to each other. And since there are no characters, it’s harder to build mnemonic building blocks in your mind. I always have a tough time differentiating similar sounding words.

What’s easy about Korean vocabulary:

• The words are fundamentally not hard say. This puts you ahead of Chinese or Arabic, where you have to learn new phonetics just to learn a new word. Case in point: “bread” in Korean is pronounced ppang, which isn’t hard to say (you kind of pause on the ‘p’ for longer), vs in Egyptian Arabic where it is pronounced 3aysh (requiring a whole new consonant, the ayn represented by the 3), or Mandarin where it is pronounced miànbāo, requiring you to know tones.

• Words are built up out of smaller word elements. This is conceptually similar to Chinese, where “computer” is “electric brain”. In Korean, you assemble related words out of shared building blocks. For example, early in the piece I learned the word for school was 학교 (hak-kyo), and the word for student was 학생 (hak-seng). Notice anything in common?

What’s harder about Korean vocabulary:

• The words are unfamiliar. Unless you speak Chinese or Japanese, nearly every word is going to seem new to you (and even those only give you a partial advantage). You have very few mnemonics to build.

• There are very few loanwords. Yes, there’s “Konglish”, but nowhere near as much as in informal languages like Egyptian Arabic.

• The words can get quite long. Chinese words are usually (and on average) two characters long. Korean words, when fully expressed with formality, can get much longer, and it gets worse when particles are thrown on them so they can be used in sentences. This makes it harder to assimilate and remember them at first.

Korean is spoken by more than 75 million people worldwide. The majority of the speakers live in South and North Korea, where it is the official language.

Outside of the Korean peninsula, the cities with the most Koreans in them are Beijing, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Osaka, Atlanta, and Sydney. The United States, China, and Japan have the largest total number of Korean speakers.

Korean has nine different dialects. Both South and North Korea have their own standard Korean dialects, which are used in an official setting. In the South, it is Seoul’s dialect. In the North, it is Seoul’s dialect mixed with Pyeongyang’s region’s dialect.

Additionally, there are two more dialects in use in North Korea and five more dialects in use in South Korea. Of these regional dialects, the most different from standard Korean is the dialect used on Jeju Island. Because of all of the time apart after the Korean War, the dialect used in North Korea has become quite different from the dialect used in South Korea. This is because both regional dialects were influenced by the other countries involved in the Korean War.

Dialect Influences

South Korea’s version of the language was influenced by English and North Korea’s version of the language was influenced by Russian. Not only have their vocabularies changed but pronunciation as well.

Besides the Korean peninsula, there are many native Korean speakers living abroad. The regions with the biggest Korean populations are the United States, China, Japan, Canada, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Russia, Australia, and Kazakhstan.

While there are not many good things to talk about North Korea, South Korea remained one of Asia’s most productive economies and is ranked the 7th largest export economy globally.

Through extensive technology development and the advent of the internet, globalization has resulted in the integration of world economies.

As a result, the economic cooperation between India and South Korea is vast and keeps growing.

Many South Korean multinationals are finding their way into the equally substantial Indian market.

With the influx of Korean businesses and services, the knowledge of Korean as an Indian will increase your economic prospect should you decide to invest or deal with such companies.

India is an exclusive strategic partner of Modern Korea.

The strengthening of economic, business and bilateral relations between the two nations has led to a significant surge in investments across different industries.

No surprise, the Indian market is under siege by Korean multinational companies.

Among Korean companies with Indian footprints, LG Group, Hyundai Motor Group, and Samsung Electronics have been the leaders. They have already made substantial investments in India.

Currently, they are also undertaking expansion activities.

According to the ministry of external affairs, over 600 large and small Korean firms operate in India.

Companies like Hyundai, Samsung, LG, Posco, Kia, Lotto, Ssangyong Motors, and more are actively present in the Indian automobile, electrical, electronic engineering, IT, gaming, and more sectors.

Several more Korean firms plan on entering as well as exploring and expanding their presence in India.

For example, Kia Motors announced an investment of USD 1.1 billion to set up a manufacturing unit in Andhra Pradesh.

Many South Korean companies have expressed willingness to invest in various sectors, including IT, infrastructure, power generation & transmission, transportation, steel, and many more.

The operations of the CEPA have resulted in many Indian firms investing in the South Korean companies or markets.

Corporations like M&M and Tata Motors have acquired Ssangyong Motors and Daewoo Commercial Vehicles, respectively.

Apart from this, other Indian companies like Wipro, Infosys, TCS, etc., have branches in South Korea.

Korean is an excellent choice if you are looking to make a career in MNC as a language learner.

It can offer many incentives and truly make you a more competitive candidate in the international job market.

Your ability to speak Korean will help you understand Korean movies, K-Drama, and K-pop songs and interviews of your choice.

Hallyu has swept India for the past few years. Many Korean celebrities, singers, and groups like BTS, Wanna One, EXO, TWICE, SHINee, AoA, Blue Velvet, Big Bang, Girls Generation are quickly gaining popularity.

The country has got a lot more to offer in food dressing, architects, and technology.

Also with the increase trend of KPOP and KDRAMA there are new requirements on a regular basis to translate the show or manage the media.

TOPIK has three different testing categories: beginners, intermediate, and advanced levels. Thus, there are a total of 6 levels.

TOPIK I is the elementary level test containing two sublevels grades (Level 1 and Level 2).

On the other hand, TOPIK II is the combined intermediate/advanced level with four sub levels (Level 3, Level 4, Level 5, and Level 6).

TOPIK, Test of Proficiency in Korean, is a written test designed to measure the ability of non-native speakers for expression and comprehension in the Korean language.

National Institute for International Education (NIIED), which operates directly under the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, is responsible for the general management of the test, such as supervising institutions administering the test in domestic and overseas locations.

TOPIK test measures proficiency in reading, writing, and listening comprehension in the Korean language.  The test has three different levels: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced.  Further accuracy is expressed through six grades, two matched to each level to evaluate proficiency.

Purpose of Exam

• To propagate and set direction for learning Korean for non-native Korean speakers and overseas Koreans.
• To measure and evaluate their Korean language skills and utilize the results for admission to Korean colleges and job-seeking.

The test consists of mostly multiple-choice questions; however, the TOPIK II level writing examination will require a short-answer. TOPIK I consists of multiple-choice questions for listening (40 minutes long with 30 questions) and reading (60 minutes long with 40 questions). Both examination areas are worth a score of 100 with a combining score of 200. TOPIK II has two slots. The first slot is the listening examination (60 minutes long with 50 questions) and writing (50 minutes long with 4 short-answer questions). The second slot is for the reading examination (70 minutes long with 50 questions). All three examinations of TOPIK II are worth a score of 100 with a combining score of 300.

Our courses last from 4 weeks upwards and you can tailor them to fit in a number of hours to suit you. Not everyone can spend a month or longer studying in Korea so we also offer an online and offline course  in Navi Mumbai.