Hold on.

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Hello everyone, welcome to the Lang Focus channel.

My name is Paul.

How similar are Japanese and Korean,

That is the question of the day.

Japan and Korea are geographically very close to each other,

and, at first glance,

they look like similar countries with similar cultures

in a way,

But just how similar are the Japanese and Korean languages?

Well, the short answer is

They're closer to each other than they are

to any other languages,

and they are remarkably similar in some ways,

but in other ways they're also very different

and they are certainly not mutually intelligible.

I don't speak very much Korean

but I do speak Japanese

and I am aware of the differences and similarities between them.

Let's look at the similarities in terms of grammar,

vocabulary, pronunciation and the writing systems.

When it comes to syntax and grammar,

Japanese and Korean are very similar.

Japanese and Korean sentences can often be translated word by word,

with each word in one sentence having an equivalent in the other.

Let's look at a couple of Korean and Japanese sentences

side by side

and we can see the similarities.

Again, I don't really speak much Korean

so if my pronunciation is terrible,

Koreans please forgive me.

In English, "I am a student".

In Korean, "na neun haksaeng-ida".

In Japanese, "watashi wa gakusei desu".

You can see these sentences are translatable word by word

Each word in the first sentence has an equivalent in the second sentence

in the exact same position.

So they are directly translatable.

One thing I want to point out is the topic marker.

That's the 2nd word in each of these sentences,

the topic marker is something kinda unique to Japanese and Korean,

topic marker points out the topic of a sentence

that's different from the grammatical subject

the overarching focus or topic of the sentence.

Another thing I want to point out is the last word in each sentence,

In Korean it's "ida" and in Japanese it's "desu".

In both cases that's like a copula,

Like the word "is" in English.

So in both Japanese and Korean this is a standalone word

That is usually placed at the end of a sentence.

Example 2: "I drink water"

In Korean, "na neun mul eul masinda".

In Japanese, "watashi wa mizu wo nomimasu".

So again we see the topic marker is the 2nd word in each sentence

But a more important thing I want to point out here

is the SOV word order,

Subject-Object-Verb.

So, we can see the subject is "watashi"

or it's "na" in Korean,

and then we have the object next.

So the object is water,

In Korean it's "mul" in Japanese it's "mizu".

and then we have the verb at the end

So in Korean, "masinda" and Japanese, "nomimasu".

But before the verb, there is an interesting little word

that we don't have in English

and that is an object marker.

That's another unique thing we find in both Japanese and Korean,

Used in exactly the same way in exactly the same position

in the sentence.

Even though the grammar and sentence structure of the two languages

is remarkably similar, the vocabulary is remarkably different.

If a Japanese speaker heard Korean without any prior exposure,

they probably wouldn't understand any of the words at all

or maybe just a word here and there.

But that doesn't mean those words aren't related.

Korean and Japanese both inherited a large number of loan words from Chinese

Approx 60% of the vocabulary in either language

comes from Chinese.

If there are so many Chinese loan words in both languages

then we are they not mutually comprehensible?

Well it's important to note that for both languages,

in daily conversation, informal speech

The Chinese loan words are not used nearly as much as they are in writing.

Also, the Chinese loan words are different in either language

they entered the language in the form of Chinese characters

but the pronunciation of those characters

became adapted to fit the phonological system

of either language.

So let's look at some examples,

The 1st example is just the names of those Chinese characters thenselves.

In Chinese, "hànzì".

In Korean, "hanja".

In Japanese, "kanji".

So you can see that the pronunciation started as "hànzì"

But it diverged and became different in Korean and Japanese

even though it's the same two characters

Some other examples, in Korean "sajin"

In Japanese, "shashin".

Photograph.

The word for singer.

In Korean, "kasu".

In Japanese, "kashu".

The word for "promise".

In Korean, "yagso(g)".

In Japanese, "yakusoku".

Those examples sound quite similar but sometimes they sound

really quite different

But if we look at the Romanised words sometimes we can see the similarities.

This is the word for "telephone".

In Korean, "jeonhwa"

In Japanese, "denwa"

So, those come from the same characters but again

they're rendered differently in pronunciation.

The next word is "school".

In Korean, "haggyou".

In Japanese, "gakkou".

Another example is "university"

In Korean "daeha(g)"

In Japanese "daigaku"

"Tofu" in Korean, "dubu".

In Japanese, "toufu".

The word for spa or hot spring in Korean, "oncheon"

In Japanese "onsen"

So you can see that sometimes the words are clearly related

But when you're listening to the language being spoken

You probably wouldn't be able to catch those words.

Chinese loan words aside, there are also some Japanese loan words

That have entered the Korean language.

The word for "cheers" when you're having a drink

In Korean, "geongbae"

In Japanese, "kanpai"

The Japanese word for bag

In Korean it's "gabang"

In Japanese it's "kaban"

There are also words that are native to both

Korean and Japanese that might be related to each other

The word for "island" in Korean, "seom".

In Japanese, "shima".

The word for village in Korean, "maeul".

In Japanese, "mura"

There are lots of words like that that I don't really think are connected

But linguists think might be connected

Interestingly though some of the grammatical particles have

Very similar pronounciations in the two languages

For example, the word for "above" in Korean, "wiei"

In Japanese, "ue".

Question particle "kka" in Korean"

With a double consonant, a double "k"

and in Japanese it's "ka"

The word for "to" or "towards"

In Korean it's "e" and it's Japanese it's "e".

The subject marker so this is different from the topic marker

The subject marker is, in Korean, "ga" or "i"

In Japanese it's just "ga"

So basically Korean and Japanese have a lot of vocabulary that are related

but not the same

It's probably enough to help you remember that word if you study it

But not necessary enough to pick up that word

when you're hearing it in conversation

And of course, most of the spoken vocabulary

Seems to be unrelated, or they're words that have

very ancient connections to each other

Now let's look at the different pronounciation of the two languages.

In some ways they're similar

The basic phonetic sounds of the 2 languages

are quite similar

But the way those phonetic sounds are arranged to

create syllables is different in the 2 languages

In Japanese basically every syllable has to end in a vowel

You cannot have a word that ends in a solid consonant like "cut"

It has to be something like "カット" "kutto"

With a vowel added to the end

But in Korean you can have a consonant at the end of a syllable

That's why in one of the words we compared before

The word for "promise"

In Japanese it's "yakusoku"

You need those vowels after the consonants

But in Korean it's "yagsog"

Another difference is that in Japanese

The pronounciation of consonants doesn't change

Depending on their position in the word

They just are always the same, but in Korean

There are consonants that can change depending on

Whether they're in the beginning, middle or end of a word.

Korean also has a greater variety of vowels and dipthongs.

So in general Korean pronunciation is just more complex than Japanese pronounciation

One thing that is completely different between the two languages is their writing systems.

Japanese is written using a combination of Chinese characters

and two syllaberies

Those syllabaries consist of characters that represent

entire syllables rather than just individual phonetic sounds

The Japanese writing system is quite complex

and since you need to learn more than 2000 kanji

To be able to read at an adult level

It can take quite a lot of time and effort to learn

Korean, on the other hand, is written in the Hangul alphabet

Which is one of the simplest writing systems in the world

Korean used to use hanja or Chinese characters

in the same way Japanese uses kanji in combination with hiragana and katakana

But they've done away with that, now they're just using simplified writing system of Hangul.

The Hangul alphabet consists of individual phonetic symbols

That are arranged together to create syllables

In this example for "hanja"

This is the sound for "ha" like an H

This is the sound for "A"

This is the sound for N, like an N

This is the sound for J or CH

And this is A

So whereas Japanese requires you to learn 92 syllabary symbols

and 2000 kanji

In Korean you just have to learn 24

phonetic symbols and you can use those to represent any new words that you learn.

So to summarise, Korean and Japanese are very similar in terms of grammar and sentence structure

and they both have a large number of Chinese loan words

But the native vocabularies are quite different as is the pronounciation

Which makes these 2 languages mutually unintelligible.

On top of that, the 2 writing systems are now completely different

With the modern Korean system completely avoiding Chinese characters these days.

My feeling is that Japanese and Korean

did originate from the same language

a very long time ago but they've been diverging for a long time

perhaps about 2000 years

so that now they're very different

even though structurally they're quite similar

Thank you for watching the Lang Focus channel

leave comments down below

especially if you've studied Japanese or Korean

and you can let us know about some other similarities

or differences that you have discovered

Thank you for watching and have a nice day.

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