I am a fan of Kdrama and TWdrama. I also speak both Mandarin and Taiwanese at home. After watching the series in Korean and Chinese, I have found a few words that sound very similar. What do you guys think?
korean is actually much closer to cantonese than mandarin mostly because of interactions between the two civilizations back in the day, so they basically borrowed words and such. mandarin at the time was mostly a language for officials, so it wasn't as widespread. cantonese was originally restricted to the south, but as china went through numerous upheavals, people moved from the north (where the wars were happening) to the south, and so cantonese kept evolving as a result. as most of the upheavals occured during the imperial era (when dynasties did their thing), cantonese is much closer to old/middle chinese than mandarin is. it wasn't until the yuan/ming/qing era that mandarin was no longer restricted to the officials and became more widespread. which, again is why korean is closer to cantonese than mandarin.
Korean words,if similar to chinese words, normally have 'y' sound...the one i remember is the korean food jajangmyun, which is actually 'za jiang mian' in mandarin, and ginseng chicken soup koreans call it sam gee tang where as chinese call it 'xin ji tang'
cantonese = sam gai tong korean = sam gee tang see how it's more similar to cantonese? same with numbers. il = yi (mandarin) yat (cantonese) - mandarin wins on this one ee = yee - cantonese sam = sam - cantonese sa = si (mandarin) sei (cantonese) - equal o = wu / ng - equal yuk = luk - cantonese chil = qi / chat - mandarin pal = ba / bat - mandarin ku = gau - cantonese sip = sap - cantonese "mister" korean = seon saeng cantonese = seen saang mandarin = xian sheng mathematics korean = su hak cantonese = so hok mandarin = shu xue
But if you were actually writting the words, it would be Japanese that is closer. Saying it is Korean but closer to Chinese by writting it would have to be Japan.
I meant as a spoken language. furthermore, there are sino-korean words in their vocabulary for a reason. no, I don't mean hanja (kr)/kanji (jp). the korean gov't is gradually phasing those out. but over half of the words in the korean language are modified from their original chinese roots. scriptwise, sure it's close to japanese; like the japanese, koreans go syllable by syllable. except not really, because unlike japanese, korean has final consonants. as for the language itself, I've already explained it; sorry, but this honour goes to the chinese, not the japanese.
does anyone know any good websites for learning Korean? or even those teach yourself things?? I'm soooo addicted to korean drama!!!
um. i think that korean is closer to Jaanese than Chinese. but all three have very close similarities. But both korean and Jaanese people use the systems of wa, e, wo, etc. like, using 'wa' to identify the subject in Japanese, korean people do that too example: anata ga hana desu cheh ga hana eh yoh but there are certain words in Japanese that are the same as korean and chinese too. princess: koongju-korean and chinese bag kahbang-korean and jaanese promise yahksohk-korean and japanese etc.
well of course korean would be similar to japanese in some fashion, considering the proximity (and the fact that japanese people probably visit korea, and vice versa). that doesn't take away from the fact that both japanese and korean are heavily influenced by old chinese. the hangul system was developed by around the chinese song dynasty, when the languages would have deviated enough to have a noticeable difference (by then it was middle chinese). same with japanese: by that time, the meiji restoration had only started, which was the precedent for a more widespread usage of the japanese language. meanwhile, imperial china was already 1000 or so years ahead, counting back to the han dynasty.
they were all derived from chinese werent they? they used old chinese characters to write everything...but spoke slightly differently. and as time went by, they made it more original and something more appropriate/assimilated to their lifestyle.
