On The fence...
Okay, this is a general question...and don't take it the wrong way please!
I notice that Korean is getting popular as a foreign language among East Asian language learners, sometimes preferable to Japanese or Chinese. Just curious, if you were on the fence about learning any of these three major languages in Asia, why did you choose Korean? Of if you've already studied the other two (namely Japanese and Chinese) why did you choose to study Korean?
I ask this because from my observations people are studying Korean more casually and notice more people are learning Korean after studying Japanese for a decent period of time.
I'm sure there are several factors here, but I just wanted to see what this board thought.
I've been learning Japanese for the past 3 years, and looked at Korean because of it's simply yet effective script. Hangul amazes me, it only took 3-4 hours to learn it! Japanese on the other hand took quite a bit of time...and I'm still not quite there yet with Japanese.
But yeah anyway, I'm just curious about everybody's background.
Edit: Wow, I didn't think there were going to be this many comments!
Interesting responses but there is a particular thing I would like to respond to and that is Korean as a language to disassociate themselves from the horde of otakus or Japanophiles. I have a feeling that is what a lot of non-heritage, non-Korean Korean language learners reason out in order to void the association from learning Japanese. Unfortunately Korean already suffers the same thing, but not as strong as Japanese...yet.
It's quite unfortunate actually that any language has to suffer that fate, but Japanese is probably at the top of this list of 'languages to avoid learning because of the foreigners' reputation for learning that language.' I think everybody would agree that Japanese would definitely take the cake because of anime, manga and the like. (Btw, I'm not an otaku nor am I obssessed with anime as you may think because of my icon, in fact I enjoyed anime AFTER I started learning (my second year of Japanese) but these days that fandom no longer exists for me.
Not that I blame people for those preconceived notions. But I also dislike culture elistists that do the opposite: anybody not interested in deep culture, history, customs etc. is perceived to be unworthy of their intellect. Those annoy me just as much as the 'shallow' otaku if not even more because they think they are the real deal.
Unfortunately for Korean, it suffers the same thing as Japanese does albeit in a much more subdue way. It's usually the fangirls/fan boys of K-pop that really REALLY annoy me. Has anybody ever been to soompi forums? Yeah. That should explain it all. I enjoy K-pop from time to time and moreso now than J-pop but I really dislike any sort of blatant annoying fan-ism of any sort.
I personally don't care whatever reason anybody learns a language, whether it's for culture-revival, language revival, finding yourself, pop culture reasons, 'deep intellectual' culture reasons etc.
Personally speaking, I am learning Korean based of an interest in pop culture (I'm generally interested in mostly pop culture), a potential for employment (in various sectors), academic purposes (Conversation analysis along with Japanese and Thai). In the end, I'd like my Korean to be as advanced as my Japanese sooner or later.
Anyway, before this gets even more off topic, I appreciate everybody's responses. Thanks!
I notice that Korean is getting popular as a foreign language among East Asian language learners, sometimes preferable to Japanese or Chinese. Just curious, if you were on the fence about learning any of these three major languages in Asia, why did you choose Korean? Of if you've already studied the other two (namely Japanese and Chinese) why did you choose to study Korean?
I ask this because from my observations people are studying Korean more casually and notice more people are learning Korean after studying Japanese for a decent period of time.
I'm sure there are several factors here, but I just wanted to see what this board thought.
I've been learning Japanese for the past 3 years, and looked at Korean because of it's simply yet effective script. Hangul amazes me, it only took 3-4 hours to learn it! Japanese on the other hand took quite a bit of time...and I'm still not quite there yet with Japanese.
But yeah anyway, I'm just curious about everybody's background.
Edit: Wow, I didn't think there were going to be this many comments!
Interesting responses but there is a particular thing I would like to respond to and that is Korean as a language to disassociate themselves from the horde of otakus or Japanophiles. I have a feeling that is what a lot of non-heritage, non-Korean Korean language learners reason out in order to void the association from learning Japanese. Unfortunately Korean already suffers the same thing, but not as strong as Japanese...yet.
It's quite unfortunate actually that any language has to suffer that fate, but Japanese is probably at the top of this list of 'languages to avoid learning because of the foreigners' reputation for learning that language.' I think everybody would agree that Japanese would definitely take the cake because of anime, manga and the like. (Btw, I'm not an otaku nor am I obssessed with anime as you may think because of my icon, in fact I enjoyed anime AFTER I started learning (my second year of Japanese) but these days that fandom no longer exists for me.
Not that I blame people for those preconceived notions. But I also dislike culture elistists that do the opposite: anybody not interested in deep culture, history, customs etc. is perceived to be unworthy of their intellect. Those annoy me just as much as the 'shallow' otaku if not even more because they think they are the real deal.
Unfortunately for Korean, it suffers the same thing as Japanese does albeit in a much more subdue way. It's usually the fangirls/fan boys of K-pop that really REALLY annoy me. Has anybody ever been to soompi forums? Yeah. That should explain it all. I enjoy K-pop from time to time and moreso now than J-pop but I really dislike any sort of blatant annoying fan-ism of any sort.
I personally don't care whatever reason anybody learns a language, whether it's for culture-revival, language revival, finding yourself, pop culture reasons, 'deep intellectual' culture reasons etc.
Personally speaking, I am learning Korean based of an interest in pop culture (I'm generally interested in mostly pop culture), a potential for employment (in various sectors), academic purposes (Conversation analysis along with Japanese and Thai). In the end, I'd like my Korean to be as advanced as my Japanese sooner or later.
Anyway, before this gets even more off topic, I appreciate everybody's responses. Thanks!