It's recommended that you spend an hour a day studying the Korean language to become fluent. However, keep in mind that each individual will have a different learning experience. Depending on your circumstances, it may take you less time or more time.
Try to adjust your schedule as you go, and if things get difficult or you're too busy, focus on getting at least 15 to 20 minutes every day. If you're learning Korean full-time, aim for 4–7 hours a day.
The FSI puts Korean as a Category V language. Which means, it's one of the hardest languages to master. They estimate 2200 hours of study before you can reach fluency in Korean. Or 88 weeks of extremely intense study.
For most people, around 30 minutes of active study and 1 hour of language exposure a day is a schedule that will give you great results. It's a model that's sustainable over a long period to help you reach fluency.
After learning the alphabet, it is entirely possible to get your vocabulary up to around 200-300 words in less than a week. Again, this is if you keep up with consistently studying for several hours on a daily basis.
How long does it take to learn Korean fluently? It will take about 1200 hours to reach a high intermediate level. You'll need additional practice, so you may want to double that number to 2400 hours to get towards fluency. That would be about 23 hours of study per week for two years.
Which language is easier to learn– Korean or Japanese? Korean is considered to be much easier than Japanese. There are more letters in the Japanese alphabet than in Korean. Japanese also contains more complicated Chinese characters and difficult grammar.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
The short answer is as much as possible.
Realistically, however, at least 20 minutes per day should be dedicated to learning a new language. The ideal amount of time to spend on daily study, if you can find the time, is an hour, but you don't need to cram it all in at once.
True language fluency requires consistent effort and time, and while 500 – 1,000 hours may seem like a lot, a typical person could probably invest that level of time over 12 – 18 months, with the right study schedule.
Apart from its very different grammar style from other languages, it also uses extremely foreign vocabulary. Plus, there are honorifics and delicate nuances to its conjugation. As a result, this makes it more confusing. All this takes effort, a lot of time, and patience to grasp.
Unlike other East-Asian languages, Korean isn't a tonal language. This means, that the meaning of the word doesn't change, regardless of what your accent is like. This makes learning Korean much easier than Japanese.
High schools in South Korea teach students for three years, from first grade (age 15–16) to third grade (age 17–18), and students commonly graduate at age 17 or 18.
Teachers typically move from room to room, while students stay in one place. Students return to the school library to study or attend private schools or tutoring sessions until between 10:00 P.M. and midnight. They return home where they may have a snack, listen to music, or watch television before going to bed.
Learning a language has a lot of similarities to learning to play an instrument, and many music teachers advise practicing for about 30 minutes per day. Shorter periods of learning have the added bonus of making you more likely to stick with it and keep up a consistent schedule.
Generally speaking, we might assert that Korean is easier for an English speaker to learn than Mandarin Chinese. But this is very relative. In fact, the US Foreign Service Institute assigns Mandarin Chinese and Korean the same level of difficulty. Both languages are in “Category Four”.
Relatively, Korean would be an easier language to learn. Thanks to its phonetic alphabet and more simplistic grammar rules, Korean is not the most challenging Asian language to learn. Chinese on the other hand is much more widely spoken. This means that finding study materials and practice partners would be easier.
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