Learning Japanese\Korean

hey peeps i really help with my japanese\korean i hope you can help me please make a forum for it!!!!THANKS

<PEACE DAWG>

I can help you with Japanese, so feel free to post questions. I don't know a lot of Korean, but I can help you with the basics there too.

well can u just give me lessons?

Well, we can give it a go...

For Japanese, I usually recommend learning kana first, along with simple grammar. You can learn kana here. There are 46 symbols of both hiragana (ひらがな) and katakana (カタカナ), and they make up a huge part of the language. They are also extremely useful.

And surround yourself with resources - there are great books you can pick up, lots of websites, and lots of forums you can join so you can connect with other students or fluent speakers. The internet also has tons of free places to practice Japanese, and this is all invaluable. If you're really serious about learning the language, make sure you devote just a little time each day to studying. Half an hour, an hour, whatever works. If you're diligent, you'll make progress.

So... I don't know what you might already know in the language, but we can start with the very basic grammar everyone starts with:

A は B　です。　A wa B desu = A is B.

"desu" (です) is a copula that, in its simplest use, equates two things to each other. It generally means "is." You'll notice that it comes at the end of the sentence... for the most part, Japanese sentence order goes subject - object - verb. This is different than English's [i]subject - verb - object[i]. (Actually, Japanese grammar is a lot more flexible than English, but we'll get into that later.)

"wa" (は) is a particle. Its basic use is to mark the subject of the sentence. It always follows a noun.

So, with this pattern, we can make sentences like:

私　は　女の子　です。
Watashi wa onnanoko desu.
I am a girl.

(watashi = me; onnanoko = girl)

猫　は　デブ　です。
Neko wa debu desu.
The cat is fat.

(neko = cat; debu = fat)

As you can see, you can use two nouns this way, or a noun and an adjective. Just remember, wa (は) will always follow the subject here. In the first sentence, I am the subject. We could flip it around to say:

女の子　は　私　です。
Onnanoko wa watashi desu.
The girl is me.

This only works because we used two nouns. The second sentence cannot be flipped because it wouldn't make sense.

If you haven't, look up some words in a Jap-Eng dictionary (like here) and try making your own sentences like this.

One final note: desu (です) is the polite form of the word. It can also be replaced with "da" (だ), which is the informal version. All kinds of words in Japanese have different levels of politeness - you'd want to use the polite form with strangers or people older than you, while you'd use the informal words with friends and family, or those younger than you.

I find Korean to be harder than Japanese, although knowing Japanese made Korean a bit easier to learn. I can start telling you about Korean, but I would suggest focusing on only one of these languages at a time.

Again, I always suggest starting with the alphabet (hangul). I just find that even a little knowledge of foreign alphabets goes a long way. You can see it here. (Unlike the kana chart website, you can't hear the pronounciation of hangul on that page, and that is also very important.)

Both Korean and Japanese are phonetic languages, meaning they're broken up into distinct sounds, like "han-gul" and "hi-ra-ga-na." It's a lot more consistent than English, for example. But if you look at the kana chart website, you'll notice that each kana in Japanese represents an entire syllable. With Korean, each symbol generally only represents a letter, and 2-4 of these must be put together to make a syllable.

I find hangul a pain in the boot because the letters morph a little depending on their position in the syllable. Also, Korean pronounciation has many exceptions to remember, so it's a bit frustrating for beginners (and for me. especially me).

When it comes to grammar, Korean has a lot of similarities to Japanese: it also generally uses the order of subject - object - verb. There are also levels of politeness in speech, and it uses particles too - like the Japanese wa (は), these are just little words that mark parts of speech in a sentence. We'll get to that a lot more later. A lot more.

Let's start with the same thing we did in Japanese:

A B 이에요/에요 A B-ieyo/eyo = A is B.

-ieyo/eyo is the copula that means "is." (I keep saying 'copula' because it's different than a verb.) It attaches to the second word in the sentence here. -ieyo (이에요) is used when the word ends in a consonant; -eyo (에요) is used when the word ends in a vowel.

You'll notice that there's nothing separating A and B in this sentence. This construction is just used to equate two things - it can't be used to describe things with adjectives, or show their location. It can be used in this way:

나 선생님 이에요.
Na sǒnsaengnim-ieyo.
I am a teacher.

(na = I/me; sǒnsaengnim = teacher)

이 고양이 에요.
I-koyangi-eyo.
This is a cat.

(i = this; koyangi = cat)

In any case, I never got far in my Korean studies and I can't really teach you a lot because I don't want to teach you the wrong things, but I hope that gets you started.

I also forgot to mention, both Japanese and Korean use Chinese characters in their writing. In Japan they're called kanji, and in Korean they're called hanja. Korean doesn't use them as frequently as Japanese, but enough to throw a wrench in there for you.

I'm interested in learn japanese too I've already know kana I have a couple of books of kana and a book of the jōyō kanji and also a book of the NHK wich is called I love Japan and it has 100 useful phrases of Japanese anyway I'll keep reading the book and maybe we can practice later

well! I want to learn Korean, can some tell me about the best website where i have found the helpful content to learn easily.

Originally Posted by Smithjhon77

well! I want to learn Korean, can some tell me about the best website where i have found the helpful content to learn easily.

try THIS