Difficulty of the Various Asian Languages

[Lucas88]

Nope, very little difficulty at all. Because I speak, read, write Korean at home and speak both Korean and English at my workplace.
Takes very little effort to switch between both languages.

What I was getting at with the relative clause thing is whether I find placing the relative clauses before nouns in Japanese cumbersome simply because I'm an Indo-European speaker and therefore typically organize my own thoughts in an Indo-European manner or whether the Japanese (and Korean) way of structuring relative clauses (i.e., embedding them BEFORE the noun that they modify) is inherently cumbersome and therefore reduces the versatility of speech.

This is what I mean:

Q: How are Korean relative clauses different?
A: Well, the first thing you need to know is that in Korean, the relative clause appears BEFORE the noun it modifies, not after. Consider Korean translations for sentences 1-3 above:
1. 수미가 읽는 책
"The book [that Sumi reads]"
2. 교실에 있는 학생
"The students [who are in the classroom]"
3. 박선생님이 일하시는 대학교
"The university [where Mr. Park works]"

(Taken from: https://languagecanvas.com/free/kor1/ko ... lclaus.htm)

This works exactly the same way in both Korean and Japanese. Obviously this kind of sentence structure which is inverted from the perspective of Indo-European languages can be learned by a foreign learner through clear instruction and practice (indeed, I myself mastered it quite quickly when I was learning Japanese), but at the same time I've for a while considered that the structure in question might be inherently less wieldy than the Indo-European way (i.e., with the relative clause placed AFTER the noun) since it prevents the speaker from introducing new information mid-sentence and on the fly. To me, it seems like a far more convoluted way of doing things and I always hated that part of Japanese.

I just wondered what your thoughts were on this particular feature since you grew up speaking both Korean and English.

What about you? I know you prefer Spanish rather than English, but those Spaniards still consider you "Anglo" because of your UK nationality.

I've been speaking Spanish since I was 17 and find it really easy to express myself in the language. My knowledge of grammar is almost perfect and I have good pronunciation (I don't speak like a typical gringo with that horrid Anglophone accent).

It is not apparent to Spaniards that I'm from an Anglo country at first glance. Since I don't have an Anglophone accent and instead speak Spanish with a marked Latin American pronunciation, I am usually taken for a non-Anglophone European foreigner (I've been asked whether I'm Bulgarian, Romanian, French, etc.) or sometimes even a light-skinned Latino. Lol!

Unlike most Americans and Brits, I'm actually good at languages!

My thoughts on Koreans as a Korean American misfit? The same as yours towards your own countrymen, my friend.
Neutral to bad. I never had any deep and lasting connection with Koreans because most of them are conformist, cold, soulless, conniving, backstabbing, selfish, narrow minded, rigid little c*nts. I never hang out with them as they can't be trusted. Just like you, I like Latinos more.

I meant your thoughts on the Korean language as a Korean American misfit. I already knew that you hated most Korean people. Lol!

Do you like Korean? Do you think that it is a good language? Or do you dislike some aspects of it?

As you already know, I'm a native English speaker with a predilection for Spanish. I don't think that English is particularly illogical (it's quite easy to use in various ways); I simply think that it is ugly and also of inferior quality since it lacks many of the complexities of Spanish and other Romance languages which allow for greater precision and expressivity. For me, English is just a low-quality piece of junk which happens to be popular and useful and to which I am bound by accident of fate. However, whenever I speak Spanish with my Hispanic friends or am immersed in a Hispanophone environment, I always feel much happier and more at home.

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

What I was getting at with the relative clause thing is whether I find placing the relative clauses before nouns in Japanese cumbersome simply because I'm an Indo-European speaker and therefore typically organize my own thoughts in an Indo-European manner or whether the Japanese (and Korean) way of structuring relative clauses (i.e., embedding them BEFORE the noun that they modify) is inherently cumbersome and therefore reduces the versatility of speech.

I am not a linguistics expert.. It's just the way it is. When you translate Korean to English or English to Korean, the grammatical structure tends to get inverted. The relative clause before nouns is just the way the Koreans and Japanese has been using their language for the past hundreds of years. Sounds rigid and unnecessary for Western speakers, but that's just a way it is..
I am sorry, I can't give you more satisfying answer on that one.

I meant your thoughts on the Korean language as a Korean American misfit. I already knew that you hated most Korean people. Lol!

Do you like Korean? Do you think that it is a good language? Or do you dislike some aspects of it?

As you already know, I'm a native English speaker with a predilection for Spanish. I don't think that English is particularly illogical (it's quite easy to use in various ways); I simply think that it is ugly and also of inferior quality since it lacks many of the complexities of Spanish and other Romance languages which allow for greater precision and expressivity. For me, English is just a low-quality piece of junk which happens to be popular and useful and to which I am bound by accident of fate. However, whenever I speak Spanish with my Hispanic friends or am immersed in a Hispanophone environment, I always feel much happier and more at home.

I must've misunderstood your question, sorry.

Korean as a language system is not bad and it's quite decent. It only has one alphabet, writes like it sounds and it's much easier than Japanese and Chinese. It doesn't have masculine and feminine conjugations and all those unnecessary tonal accent marks, 4 to 6 different articles similar to German or Russian and crazy grammatical structures. Korean is quite utilitarian and general purpose language similar to American English. However, like you said, it doesn't carry any subtle and deeper aspect of human emotion to it's words.

What I don't like about Korean is how it sounds. When Koreans speak their language, It sounds all angry, whiny and rigid. Also I don't like how you have to use honorifics and have to be careful with people's titles or else they get offended. Korean doesn't have the flowery, flowy sound as Spanish and Japanese. Korean can sounds bit jarring and punchy similar to Chinese.

So in my opinion, Korean has a feel similar to English.
And English, in my opinion, is the "Microsoft Office" of Languages meaning that it is the "Lingua Franca" of the Business world and between people from different cultures. Every body can speak it, but it doesn't convey any deeper emotion and human bond between it's users.

[Lucas88]

Korean as a language system is not bad and it's quite decent. It only has one alphabet, writes like it sounds and it's much easier than Japanese and Chinese. It doesn't have masculine and feminine conjugations and all those unnecessary tonal accent marks, 4 to 6 different articles similar to German or Russian and crazy grammatical structures. Korean is quite utilitarian and general purpose language similar to American English. However, like you said, it doesn't carry any subtle and deeper aspect of human emotion to it's words.

To a Westerner, Korean and Japanese grammatical structures are definitely crazy. Lol!

I've actually had this same discussion a few times with various language enthusiasts. Non-Indo-European languages such as Korean, Japanese, Turkish and Hungarian might seem easier at first with their lack of gender and almost completely regular and logical assortment of agglutinative suffixes which attach to the basic forms of words so seamlessly, but then as the language study progresses, the learner begins to encounter very foreign/alien non-Indo-European grammatical structures and learning subsequently becomes a lot more difficult (things like relative clauses preceding the noun in Korean, Japanese and Turkish and having to organize your thoughts in an inverted manner are a good example of this). Generally speaking, I would say that a non-Indo-European language is going to pose more difficulty and a greater challenge for the Western learner than an Indo-European language. I think that German, Russian and other Slavic languages are easier to master for Westerners than Korean and Japanese despite the three genders and 4 to 7 noun cases.

Obviously you find Korean easy because you spoke it from a young age and are already used to the non-Indo-European grammatical structures. But for Westerners who have to learn the language from scratch, Korean is more difficult than most languages.

What I don't like about Korean is how it sounds. When Koreans speak their language, It sounds all angry, whiny and rigid. Also I don't like how you have to use honorifics and have to be careful with people's titles or else they get offended. Korean doesn't have the flowery, flowy sound as Spanish and Japanese. Korean can sounds bit jarring and punchy similar to Chinese.

Yes, whenever I heard Koreans speaking in Japan or saw Korean movies or dramas, the language either sounded angry or whiny as hell as though two teenage girls were complaining to each other about something. Even ChatGPT agrees with this. I asked the AI which languages represent the "Rasas" (aesthetic essences) of Indian philosophy and the AI named Korean as one of the languages characterized by karuna. That's because Korean is inherently melodramatic. Lol!

Spanish on the other hand sounds lively, joyful and poetic. Indeed, ChatGPT associates it with the Rasa of Hasya (i.e., that which produces a sensation of joy and laughter). Que orgullo de ser hispanohablante, ¿verdad?

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=48920&p=401517#p401517

So in my opinion, Korean has a feel similar to English.
And English, in my opinion, is the "Microsoft Office" of Languages meaning that it is the "Lingua Franca" of the Business world and between people from different cultures. Every body can speak it, but it doesn't convey any deeper emotion and human bond between it's users.

Yes, English is the "Microsoft Office" of languages and I happen to prefer Apache's OpenOffice, both literally in terms of my preference for word-processing programs and metaphorically in terms of my allegiance to world languages. Lol! Many people have asked me why I'm not satisfied with being a native English speaker and why I overwhelmingly prefer Spanish and have told me that being a native English speaker in the globalized modern world is supposed to be a blessing, but I simply regard Spanish as far more beautiful, more emotive, better designed and closer to my heart. Spanish is to English what a Ferrari is to a Mini Cooper. Besides, why would I care about being able to communicate with a billion people from all different cultures? Most people are assholes anyway!