The difference between Korean and Japanese

The difference between Korean and Japanese

 There is a linguistic prejudice about the Asian languages. Most people has considered the Korean and Japanese as same Asian languages, thus they believe that many Korean can speak Japanese. I have been to Tainan with my friends last year. The one of my friends came from Hainan province of mainland China. He has various indulgences such as smoking, chewing betel nut and drinking Alcohol. And he is also interested in Japanese culture, but he can neither speak Japanese nor Korean. Before touring around the heritages of Tainan, We had to find an accommodation to stay, and we found the hotel nearby the train station. After checking in the hotel, we went to the room and then started watching the TV. The Japanese comedy program was being broadcast and there is no Chinese subtitle. At that time, he asked me to translate the Japanese into Chinese, however, I couldn’t understand the Japanese and I was so embarrassed, because my mother tongue is Korean, anything but the Japanese. Maybe, he thought most Korean can speak and understand Japanese since Korean is similar to Japanese.

 The Korean is however, different from the Japanese, and Japanese is the one of the foreign languages to Korean, even though they have same grammar. So, what on earth is the difference between Korean and Japanese?

The first, we’re going to talk about the something common between Korean and Japanese. The common features between Korean and Japanese are word order (SOV), grammatical particles etc. For instance, the Korean and the Japanese have the almost same word order, just like that: S+O+V

나는 아침을 먹는다.

私は朝ご飯を食べます。

나는(Subject) 아침을(Object) 먹는다(Verb).

私は(Subject)朝ご飯を(Object)食べます(Verb)。

in the Korean, the words가(이), 는(은) are subject particles, their roles are similar to Japanese subject particles は(wa)、が. Therefore it is easy to translate Korean into Japanese, furthermore, it is easy for many Korean people to learn Japanese.

However, there are many mistakes whenever Korean people study or translate Japanese, despite these common features. Because Korean and Japanese have their own codes of languages. There are many differences between Korean and Japanese. 

First, the Korean pronunciation is different from Japanese and some Japanese pronunciation can scarcely written in Korean letters. The most Korean has thought of the hiragana が、ざ as Korean letter "가"or "자", but が's pronunciation not at all the Korean letter "가". The pronunciation of ざ sounds like the alphabet letter "z", not a "ㅈ"(j). But most Korean read this letter as "J", so many Japanese friend said the gratitude word "ありがとうございます”(A ri ga to- go za i ma su) Korean tourists said sounds like that "ありがとうごじゃいます”（A ri ga to- go ja i ma su).

Second, How to say these sentences in Korean or Japanese? For example, there is an English sentence:

"I dreamed a dream yesterday"

Korean(한국어): "어제 난 꿈을 꾸었다"
Japanese(日本語）：”昨日私は夢を見た”

as you see, "꿈(Kkum)" means "dream"(noun), and the verb "dream" is "꾸다", which is originated from the Korean noun "꿈". On the other hand, the Japanese of the verb "dream" is 見る which also means "see". If the Japanese sentence was directly translated into English, then it will be "I saw a dream yesterday".

 Third, there are two sentences written in two kinds of languages below.

"저희 가족은 4 명입니다. 집사람과 아이들 2 명이나 있습니다. 아이들은 남자애와 여자애 입니다. 남자애는 7살입니다. 매일 학교에서 공부합니다. 여자에는 지금 4살입니다. 우리는 인도 델리에서 살고 있습니다. 저는 델리의 자동차 회사에서 일하고 있습니다. 모두 1500여명의 사람들이 일하고 있습니다. 제품의 95%를 인도에서 구매합니다. 전 작년에 회사 차를 샀습니다. 작지만 아주 좋은 자동차입니다."

"私の家族は４人です。家内と子供が2人います。子供は男の子と女のこです。男の子は7歳です。毎日学校で勉強しています。女のこは今4歳です。私達はインドのデリーに住んでいます。私はデリーの自動車の会社で働いています。全部で１,５００人ぐらい人が働いています。製品の９５％をインドで売っています。私は去年会社の車を買いました。小さいですが、とてもいい車です。"

The biggest difference between Korean and Japanese is the quantity of preposition "of" in the paragraph. In the Japanese paragraph, there are many の(of), but Korean sentence has a few 의(of). 

나는 돈이 없다.
私は金がない

나는 사람이 아니다.
私は人じゃない。

The Japanese word ない has two meanings, if you have no money, you can say this in Japanese by using ”ない”. Besides, you can also deny yourself by using the same word-ない. But Korean word "없다" has only a meaning: I don't have.