Most people have embraced the 10,000-word vocabulary as the ideal word count for being fluent in Korean. With this level of language mastery, you will be able to read Korean web pages comfortably and effortlessly. Active memorization requires some effort and practice.
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.
You could define Korean fluency as roughly being at an intermediate level. However, it all depends on your goals and what kind of Korean language skills are most important to you.
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.
Like any language, Korean requires frequent exposure and lots of practice, so keeping up with your lessons on Duolingo is a great way to study. The Korean course has a special tab for learning Hangul where you can practice reading and forming Korean characters!
Korean is an incredibly versatile language that is spoken fluently by more than 75 million people. It's within the top 18 most useful languages in the world, making it a great language to learn regardless of whether you travel for business or pleasure. Plus, the Korean alphabet is super easy to learn.
Admissions Guidance
Applicants' TOEFL, IELTS, TOEIC, TEPS, Duolingo English Test results and so on are acceptable as additional documents. 2. Also, Newly accepted international students to Korean Program can turn in their Duolingo English and other Test results to waive required English courses for Freshmen.
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.
Especially for speakers of English and some European languages, the word order of Korean language can be really difficult to grasp. Verbs coming at the end with conjugations, particles instead of prepositions etc. can be tricky to understand.
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.
Korean is one of the easiest Asian languages to learn. Furthermore, the Korean alphabet is made up of 14 consonants and is known as Hangul. Likewise, Korean has ten vowels with symbols that you will combine into syllable blocks for usages. Similarly, another fun fact about Korean, it is an isolated language.
The truth is that Korean is one of the easiest Asian languages to learn for English speakers. Although Korean ranks as one of the most difficult languages by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), you'll feel incredible ease when it comes to learning Korean grammar compared to other “difficult” foreign languages.
If you're learning Korean full-time, aim for 4–7 hours a day. Regardless of the amount of time you spend studying the language, try to get in as much Korean as possible in your free time through movies, podcasts, and music.
The study showed that Koreans on average slept 6.3 hours per night, which was less than the Asia-Pacific average of 6.9 hours. However, Koreans actually want to sleep 7.5 hours every night.
If you compare both languages, you will notice that both of them are equally challenging. The Korean language's writing systems are hard to learn, whereas the Japanese alphabet is complex to understand. 40 Alphabets, which makes creating and understanding sentences easier. Easier as the writing system is more simple.
Is Korean hard to learn for English speakers? Learning a language that involves a new writing system and sentence structure (such as Korean) can be challenging for a native English speaker. However, if you set yourself up with the right materials with a learning method you enjoy, it becomes easy.
If your goal of learning a certain language is related with Japanese culture, then Japanese is the best choice. If your goal is Korean culture such as K-pop, K-drama, or some others, then Korean might be the best choice.
Although all Asian languages are relatively harder for English native speakers to learn, Vietnamese is one of the easier one compared to Korean, Chinese, Japanese and so on.
Mandarin
As mentioned before, Mandarin is unanimously considered the most difficult language to master in the world! Spoken by over a billion people in the world, the language can be extremely difficult for people whose native languages use the Latin writing system.
Duolingo is a convenient choice for many international students as anyone with a stable internet connection, camera, microphone and speaker can take the exam from anywhere. Like many other countries, universities in Australia accept the scores as well.
If international students would like to study in Korea for a regular degree course, it is generally required to submit TOPIK Level 3 or higher accompanied by the admission documents to the corresponding college or university and reach TOPIK Level 4 or higher to graduate.