im talking more about from peoples experiences.
Is there anything especially difficult about it?
Hangul is crazy shit. At least hiragana and katakana sound the same, no matter where you use them in a sentence.
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42008-01-14 9:56
>>5
The pronunciation is difficult as hell: if you mispronounce words in English people will still understand but not in Korean. Just work on your pronunciation by having CDs or mp3 files and by pronouncing the exact same thing at the same time you hear it, that way you will hear whenever you do not sound like the speaker. Read the posts in my link for more information.
>>9
why do you post if your not going to be of any help?
It a waste of time. oh and GTFO
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Anonymous2008-01-16 17:33
>>10
NO U LULZ
The pronunciation is clear, the only difficulty being 의.
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Anonymous2008-01-17 15:18
>>11
Do you know of any thumb rule to tell whether 김's g is a [g] or a [k]? Kim's Kim, but what about syllables in general with the g thing?
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Anonymous2008-01-17 17:05
I'd actually say the initial consonant in "Kim" is actually the "G" sound. That's actually not quite correct either though. As an initial sound, the G/K will be unaspirated, unvoiced. That means it'll sound like G in Game, without your vocal cords vibrating, and it'll sound like K in Kill without the puff of air from your mouth. It may be hard to hear the difference but pay attention and you'll hear it.
But generally, it'll be the "G" at the beginning of a syllable, and at the end of a syllable it'll be a... K, I guess. I think it'd be better described as a glottal stop.
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Anonymous2008-01-17 19:07
For Koreans there's hardly a difference.
But for us non-natives it's K at the beginning and G for the ending...
>>13 >>14
According to Wikipedia 민국 is pronounced [minguk], and not [minkuk], although the g's at the beginning of the syllable. By contrast, 애국가 seems to be pronounced aegukka, with 가's beginning g being [k].
Is there really some rule to grasp the thing, or is Korean just mind-bogglingly complicated?
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Anonymous2008-01-19 9:24
It's like "get" and "generation": the "g" isn't pronounced the same way, despite being at the beginning of the word and before an "e".
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Anonymous2008-01-19 11:23
I’m an American whose lived in several Asian countries, and I can tell you that you gooks are the worst people, the most racist people on earth. Chinese people are so humble and have so much more confidence thatn you ugly, barbaric, dogeating flat faced, ugly 588 layers of makeup wearing gooks. Japanese people are much kinder and open to foreigners than you dog-eating, flat-faced, garlic breathed barbarians. It makes me sick too the way you gooks pronounce foreign languages. Why the fvck can you large-headed gook monkeys can’t pronounce
the letter “z”? “Z” does not sound like “j” you ugly slitty eyed, other people’s regurgitated food-eating gooks!!! You gooks are so dirty and your country smells like shit. I used to live in gookland before I came to Japan, and I can tell you it was the worst 2 years of my life. Japan is so much like heaven here. The people here actually brush their teeth, and clean up after themselves..not like in your barbaric country. You guys prononce the number 0 as “jero.” It’s “zero” you subhuman shits. I guess you can’t do it because of your fucking 9 foot wide faces. Why do gooks have such large heads, but such small brains? That always
puzzled me.
Gooks are just so chock full of racist, arrogant, jingoistic terminology proclaiming Korea to be some “heavenly kingdom”! You call black people “kamddoongi” You always refer to Americans or Chinese, Vietnamese, Blacks,
Europeans Japanese as “nom” or attache “seki” to it. Equivalent of saying “bastard”
In fact, you always refer to foreigners as some country + seki! How rude and crude your culture is. Purely barbaric. Your people are just animals. You call white people “yang nom” Japanese as “jjokbaree” Chinese as “ddaenom”. In Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Japanese and Chinese, there is NO DERAGATORY word for you ugly gooks or other country. They just attach the suffix “jin”
(Japanese) or “ren” (Chinese) to the country name to indicate “person.” That is a sign of refineness and politeness..not your ugly shit dirty filthy language. Stop
feeding bullshit to everyone else you fucking weak sore insecure cocker spaniel eating gooks!
Personally, I wish that the US dropped the Atomic bombs on your ugly gookland rather than Japan, and I always wished that China would have sent in all her forces during the Korean Gook War and wiped out all of you shitheads
once and for all. Too bad it can’t happen anytime soon. I hate you gooks so much, it makes me puke. Get the hell out of LA and take your dog-soup restaurants, your liquor stores, and your laundromats with you.
>>1
Step 1: forget everything you know about grammar. Korean grammar is fucked beyond belief if you think of it from a Romance/Germanic language POV.
Step 2: Always learn the 'polite' form ("blah-blah-yo"); ignore any native-Korean-speaking friends who try to get you to use the informal/intimate. It's easy to them because they grew up speaking it. You'll fuck up, use the wrong form, and irritate someone, and it triples the amount you have to memorize.
Step 3: Realize that 90% of the trouble comes from verbs. Every single verb is about six smaller verbs strung together. Think about breaking them apart and figuring out patterns, but focus on rote memorization of useful phrases,
Step 4: Be prepared to spend two to three years of regular study to become able to communicate at all it, and six or seven to become fluent. You'll never sound like a native speaker.
Seriously, it's a shitload of work for a language that isn't widely-spoken.