The only things that might be easier for Korean people to learn Japanese is the grammar, since it’s SOV like Korean when discussing sentence structure, and the presence of honorific speech (敬語), there are some words that are similar in pronunciation here and there: i.e. 人間 (인간), 時間 (시간) & so on.
Although the biggest difference is that they have 漢字 (apart from カタカナ & ひらがな.) so for example, 霧 (안개) is a single word via Kanji while in Hangul that requires multiple characters to spell while it’s a single Kanji from Japanese, but the challenge will be with multiple readings even though you recognize it, i.e:
噴霧「ふんむ」(분무) 夜霧「よぎり」(밤안개)
The most common Kanji with multiple readings is: 生 (생명 / 재생), for example:
学生「がくせい」(학생) 生まれる「うまれる」(태어나다) 誕生「たんじょう」(탄생) 生かす「いかす」(살리다) 生じる「しょうじる」(발생) 生意気「なまいき」(건방진) 生える「はえる」(성장하다) 生う「おう」(스프링업)
I mean, would it be hard for Koreans to learn since their own language is Alphabetical (i.e. Hangul) while Japanese is Logographic (Kanji) even though they’ve already learnt kana from the get go? The thing is that when encountering Kanji – you’re looking at an entire word rather than a single “letter” or “hangul”, for instance ㄲ means nothing by itself while 霊 actually has a definition on it’s own.
So that is the striking contrast as to why speakers of any “Alphabetical language” have a hard time wrapping their head around 漢字 since they’re not accustomed to looking at an “image” (logograph) to deduce the meaning and decipher the pronunciation, as their way of formulating words are through phonetics (as in using letters) rather than semantics (via images and illustrations).
Put it like this: you’re given images of 2500 faces depicting complete strangers in which you must memorize their appearance and remember their name. When drawing / sketching their faces, do you remember what they all look like? When jotting down who they are, do you recall their full names? So that is how Kanji is formulated, it’s rote memorization and continous exposure rather than spelling out words that involve letters.
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