I WANT to learn Japanese and I already have some familiarity with it. I know all hiragana, katakana, No kanji, I have great pronunciation, I know alot of vocabulary, but basically I am a beginner.

I know ZERO Korean, but I will probably be teaching English for 1 year in Korea. I really have no interest in Korea or the Korean language, but I want to save money. I am thinking maybe that if I use these 6 remaining months to learn decent Korean that it might really help me to get more money by the time I do start my 1 year in Korea.

I don't want to give up on Japanese, I have a serious girl over there, friends, and longing for that country. Right now I won't be going to Japan though (I mean, a side-trip of course, but I won't be living there for the foreseeable future.

This complex situation makes me come to the conclusion that i should learn both simultaneously, but how?

I am in New York, so I can find conversation partners pretty easily, and I have good knowledge of online resources, but I am seeking advice. How can I balance these languages.

My ultimate goal when its all said and done would be to be fluent in Japanese. As far as Korean, I just need to be good enough in Korean (as good as I can get) for 1 year and after that I can forget it all for all I care (I don't mean to be rude, but I just don't see me really needing Korean in my future).

What should I do?

Maybe I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure knowing Korean isn't going to help you make more money in Korea teaching English, especially not the amount of Korean you'll learn in just 6 months. 99.9999% of English teachers in Korea know zero Korean so if you have no interest in it then the answer is simple......don't learn it, and keep focusing on what you do enjoy.

If I were you, I'd at least familiarize myself with Hangul - it's easier to learn than kana. And after that, some simple phrases, numbers, names of foods, and so on.

Korea is a wonderful country, and historically being the closest nation to Japan culturally and geographically, it has contributed a lot to Japan. Learning something about Korea will teach you much about Japan as well. Korea introduced various technologies and cultural practices to Japan, and for their contributions, ancient Korean immigrants to Japan were highly favored, and some of the aristocratic families of Japan are descended from Koreans. Economic ties and cultural interchange remain strong to this day.

activeaero Wrote:Maybe I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure knowing Korean isn't going to help you make more money in Korea teaching English, especially not the amount of Korean you'll learn in just 6 months. 99.9999% of English teachers in Korea know zero Korean so if you have no interest in it then the answer is simple......don't learn it, and keep focusing on what you do enjoy.

I believe this is true as well, but I meant for the sake of making side money and saving money. You know, paying half for goods (paying the Korean prices) rather than paying what the Westerner pays because its all we know.

Maybe, the Korean knowledge won't be so important. Any more theories?

InTransition Wrote:I believe this is true as well, but I meant for the sake of making side money and saving money. You know, paying half for goods (paying the Korean prices) rather than paying what the Westerner pays because its all we know.

This is true, actually. I used to travel to Korea often on business, and in the hotels, food was expensive, of course. But Korea actually tends to have lots of small restaurants with really good food. Korean BBQ especially, as you might imagine. I tried using English in one of those little shops, and that didn't work, so on a hunch, I tried Japanese, and interestingly enough, they understood a few words and phrases! Many of the older folk know Japanese, from the occupation. A smaller number of younger people know Japanese as well, due to the mutual curiosity the two nations have of each other.

The simple fact is that you really can't learn a language you have no interest in. Your motivation is that you're going to Korea, which is good motivation, but you have no interest and you're doing it for money, and not a lot of money. Those 6 months will just be boring and annoying for you and will probably not lead to significant knowledge.

It would take around 1000 hours for you to acquire basic Korean skills like asking directions and ordering food. If you are not interested in Korean at all, I don't think it's worth it. I would just learn Hangul, and basic korean pronunciations, and how to read numbers. It should only take several dozen hours, and will be highly practical.

I think you guys might be right. I guess I was able to survive in Japan without needing to know Japanese, but I guess for South Korea I just need to get "enough" skill. I hope I know how much is "enough". Any odds I can convince myself to like the Korean language? Or should I just realize that if my heart isn't in it, then my heart isn't in it.

InTransition Wrote:Or should I just realize that if my heart isn't in it, then my heart isn't in it.

Yes. And continue to study Japanese in Korea. I've met quite a few Koreans who speak really good Japanese- one guy especially who I thought sounded flawless. I told him that and he humbly said, no it's not that good because after 30 minutes or so Japanese people can tell he's not Japanese. I was like- 30 minutes! They can tell I'm not Japanese just by looking at me!

I'm told that a lot of Japanese girls go over to Korea as well- so you should be able to find people to use Japanese with.

If I were you, I would at least do the pimsleur Korean audio course, because it's easy and will be practical right off the bat. Hangul is definately worth learning too, because again it won't take very long and will open up a lot of incidental (effortless) learning as you'll see the same words written on signs, menus etc and inevitably learn them. Doing a course like pimsleur will give you some basic korean grammar which will be useful for you later when learning Japanese. If you can learn just a little korean, it will blossom if you spend a year there and anytime spent practicing speaking and listening to korean will ultimately help you learn japanese and improve your language learning ability. If you just learn japanese in your spare time while living in an English bubble I believe you may start to miss the point and study ineffectively from lack of feedback on your progress, as well as becoming frustrated with korean society. Try to enjoy your time in Korea and learn a little korean. If you can't do that, what makes you think living in Japan would be any easier?

I would put Japanese on hold and just study Korean for half a year or whatever time you have left. Even if it's similar to Japanese your average Korean person doesn't understand Japanese nor can read (very much) Kanji.

Learning Korean will also benefit your Japanese, grammatically at least, to a degree. And vocabwise too. (all those jukugo.. Koreans use them too. We just say them differently.)

Wait wait wait. Why are you going to Korea to teach English instead of Japan? Seems like you'd be better off just going to Japan.

I've been to Japan before, and I just want to go close to Japan, but not so close, plus, I can make better money in Korea than I can make in Japan.

How much more though? You'll need 1000 hours to get the basic skills down. 3000 for business level skills. Even with the minimum wage, you are spending equivalent of $7000 to $21000 on that. If you are interested in Korea, that may be worth it. But if you aren't interested in it at all, I dunno...

Where are you getting this idea that it takes 1000 hours to learn BASIC Korean?

Womacks23 Wrote:Where are you getting this idea that it takes 1000 hours to learn BASIC Korean?

I think he's exaggerating... slightly. Personally, I think Korean is lot harder in the realm listening and pronunciation. With Japanese I may miss the meaning of a word, but I a least hear it. With Korean... not so much.

Womacks23 Wrote:Where are you getting this idea that it takes 1000 hours to learn BASIC Korean?

I can't find the exact links right now but FSI is saying that.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:L...h_Speakers
http://www.govtilr.org/

You need 1000 hours (classes and homework) to be at level 1 (or level 1+, I forgot) in a category 3 language like Korean and Japanese.

My own experience of learning English (My native language is Japanese. Sorry if you've heard this 100 times already. Just in case.) concords with that too, and the dozens of East Asian people I know followed pretty much the same path.

I'm talking about being at that level in all 4 skills, Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing, so If you concentrate on speaking only, you would probably need a lot less than 1000 hours but still several hundred hours I assume.

I find it very hard to believe that it takes 1000 hours to learn BASIC Korean. I guess it depends on what you consider BASIC to be.

That's close to four hours a day Monday through Friday for a whole year.

Womacks23 Wrote:I find it very hard to believe that it takes 1000 hours to learn BASIC Korean. I guess it depends on what you consider BASIC to be.
That's close to four hours a day Monday through Friday for a whole year.

Have you been to Japan?

edit: Oh, you ARE in Japan. Then you know.

Actually most every Japanese spend almost 1000 hours studying English in school. Provided, they only do reading comprehension, but still. Not many of them can even order food in a restaurant in English. You know how bad they are right?

Yeah, it's not hard to learn how to order bul-go-gee, I can learn how to order how to order a burrito in Spanish in 5 minutes too, but learning a well rounded 'basic' skills is a different story.

Let's assume that the language learner is actually interested in learning the language. Japanese kids interested in English and do a little practice outside of class make it to a quite advanced level of English by the time they graduate High School.

And I would guess they study English for about 600-700 hours worth of classes in the 6 years of JHS and HS. About three 50 minute classes a week. Not adding JUKU hours which might add on another 50 or so.


And I don't really think you have any idea about English education in Japan if you think the kids here are only learning how to 'read' English

Womacks23 Wrote:Let's assume that the language learner is actually interested in learning the language. Japanese kids interested in English and do a little practice outside of class make it to a quite advanced level of English by the time they graduate High School.

And I would guess they study English for about 600-700 hours worth of classes in the 6 years of JHS and HS. About three 50 minute classes a week. Not adding JUKU hours which might add on another 50 or so.

And I don't really think you have any idea about English education in Japan if you think the kids here are only learning how to 'read' English

Sure, It could be like 700 hours, and FSI's standard of 'basic' is really high. But I don't think these kid can talk about their take on the current Democratic party's defeat. They are still at the 'basic' level. YOU can, however, somewhat talk about politics in Spanish if you spend 700 hours.

And oh yeah, I know the English education in Japan. I went through 6 years of it It's probably getting better thanks to you guys, but that's still like an hour a week. Not enough to make a huge difference.

Perhaps its the manner in which they go about studying, and not how many hours they study, that counts.

It is very possible to study for 1000s of hours and not go anywhere. This is especially true if you forget everything you learned when you go on break, study on only the night before tests, and/or, god forbid, simply fail.

@Womacks23

Using a student who truly WANTS to learn English as an example does not prove the statistic wrong. The kid who WANT to learn English is the exception, not the norm.

Actually, a lot of people bash Japanese English education because after 700 or 1000 hours of study, they can't even order a BigMac. But I disagree Japanese English Education is bad for many students can actually read really advanced stuff like an article from the Economist.

It's just they focus mainly on reading comprehension. So their reading ability is usually really good, but their speaking, writing and listening abilities lag behind.

If you want to have 'basic' skills in all 4 skills in Japanese or Korean, you will need something like 1000 hours. But yeah that's FSI's idea of 'basic'. So I'll leave the definition of basic(elementary) to them.

http://www.govtilr.org/

I like FSI or ILR's scale because it is very detailed and practical, and doesn't leave any question like "what is basic".

I've only worked in Junior High Schools so I don't really know what students are doing after that, but you are mistaken if you think English education focuses on reading. It may have been different when you were a kid, and maybe that's one reason your English is great. The truth is, I wish my students were given more reading material, graded readers and so on. The biggest problem as I see it (in junior high schools at least) is that the students are basically just told to memorize pairs of supposedly equivelent English and Japanese sentences. Students have little actual understanding of sentence structure and that is why they can't string together coherent sentences or understand anything except the sentences they have learned. Half the time, when they learn a simple sentence like "Do you play tennis?", they aren't even told the meaning of the word "do". Students can't speak because they never practice substituting pronouns and verbs etc to make original sentences. Japanese English education basically follows the model of 'communicative' languange teaching, in which most classroom activity is focused on reading from scripts and answering set questions with set replies which the students promptly forget after class. Many of the teachers are unqualified to adequately explain the structure of English sentences and don't know how to answer grammar questions (one reason being, Japanese students for the most part don't ask questions). This may all have some connection to Japan's shift to yutori kyouiku (of which I've heard plenty of criticism) but I'm not sure. At any rate, the stereotype of Japanese students only learning grammar and reading is far from the truth. In fact they are sorely lacking in these areas in my opinion.

Completely disagree nadiatims (respectfully). A real "communicative lesson" would involve no writing and an absolute minimum of reading. The Japanese English education system is terrible and is still very much geared towards the grammar translation method.

An "advanced" student who passed 2kyuu level (barely) after 6 years of JHS and HS English education, still had a very difficult time having the most basic of conversations with me. She often complained that her education provided little to no opportunities to practice real conversation. She's studying abroad now but she'll come back for her seijinshiki ceremony next year. I'm interested to see how much her conversation skill has improved.