Korean spoken and Written form?

I am confused!
What is the difference between Korean spoken and written form???

As far as I know, there isn’t a significant difference between spokenn and written Korean.
Did you hear from somewhere that there was a difference?

I was under the impression that Korean borrows a lot more Chinese words in written form, particularly in academic works and the like, whereas the spoken language tends to draw on native Korean words. I don’t speak a WORD of Korean myself, so this comes from second-hand sources, but I regularly hear that Hanja are a crucial element to true mastery of Korean. It would be interesting to hear what those more knowledgeable than myself have to say.

From what I understand, Chinese words are almost never written in Hanja in Korean except for particularly formal situations. However, those words are still used in the language very heavily. They seem to simply be transcribed into Hangul and still spoken.

“Sino-Korean words today make up about 60% of the Korean vocabulary.”

Yes, that mirrors what I’ve read. I notice Wikipedia does include hanja (albeit sparingly), but as with newspapers the word tends to be given first in hangul, then provided as hanja in parentheses.

I’m fairly sure that the reason you see the hanja in parentheses is because certain words have multiple definitions behind them (the Chinese words are different, but they are written the same in the Korean alphabet). In this way, it serves as clarification as to which definition they are wanting to use.
If you actually look up most words in a dictionary, you’ll find that a vast majority of them have Chinese roots. Virtually every verb that ends with ~하다 is a Sino-Korean word, for example.

In learning Korean, you certainly don’t have to know hanja, but it doesn’t hurt :wink:

But as far as a difference between spoken and written Korean, there’s probably a slight difference, but I don’t think it’s anything all that major (compare it to English, for example, where there is casual speak and “academic speak”).

From what I understand, Alex, is that many people get to a rather good level with Korean and only then decide to learn Hanja (if at all).

Yeah, that sounds about right. That being said, any Chinese or Japanese-speaking person has a huge advantage in learning the Sino-Korean words, since many of them have a similar pronunciation. I’m reminded of this video: Cognates: Japanese + Korean + Chinese - YouTube

Yeah, I’m going with Mandarin first. Not because it’s the biggest haha but I found some terrible martial arts tv series that I got addicted to… :slight_smile: In any case, I thought that it would be a big benefit towards Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese (which has perhaps 75% sinitic words, I’ve read). Perhaps other languages in the region too, I’d guess.

Edmond,

We’ll korean is korean whether written or spoken =) ITs all the same words in both cases…Nothing to do with hanja not being used in spoken korean because a large percentage of korean words has hanja roots. You certainly dont need to learn hanja to learn korean though but as alex pointed out, it doesnt hurt to learn some…

HOWEVER People certainly don’t speak the way they write. Especially how korean news , novels, internet slang ect… are written. I think theres alot of things that are different about written korean and spoken korean. I dont plan to point any of it out but you’ll notice it the more you read/ interact with koreans but generally speaking its all the same vocab. Its just that, in written korean there are some grammar points you need to use to be grammatically correct that you probably dont use to speak naturally like a native… Much like other languages… SO I wouldnt worry about it too much…

“ITs all the same words in both cases”

vs

“I think theres alot of things that are different about written korean and spoken korean.”

Um, I’m guessing that you simply didn’t express that properly, because that’s completely contradictory. :stuck_out_tongue:

But you’re right, all language have some difference between written and spoken languages. Check Tamil out - the difference there is quite large.

No I mean EXACTLY what I wrote…

Its all the same WORDS/VOCAB HOWEVER yes I think there are alot of things ( grammar, word order, adding of extra bits that just arent needed in spoken korean ect…) different about written and spoken korean. Spoken korean is just alot more flexible than written korean… that is, to be “grammatically” correct… Koreans say ALOT of things that arent grammatically correct that would never be written the same way BUT its totally fine because thats how natives speak…

speaking of korean!!! I need to get back to studying… It’s been a week since I’ve Lingqed anything… =(