Koreanspeakers KoreansPeakers the meaning of a sentenceare completelyforeign to the l(orean learner, breaking up a text may be mistaken for paragraphing,which is only and require concentratedattention to be perceivedor produced. usedin uery formal documentsin conventionalKorean' To the Korean ear,the English native speakerspeaking his or her own language sounds histrionic. Conversely,the Korean learner speaking English often sounds monotonous, bored, and therefore boring, to the Grammar Englishear. This can make KoreanEnglish difficult to understan-J. Korean intonation does share sorne characteristicswith English Sentencestructure intonation, however, in that it is conditioned by grammar,with falling intonation being characteristically used for statementsand questions unlike the subject-verb-objectword order pattern of many languages, other than yes/no questions,and rising intonation for yes/noquestions including English, Korean word order (along with Japanese,Turkish, and requests.It can also add an emotionaldimension - thoughit does Persianind Jth"rs; is subject-object-verb.However, this order should so far lessoften than in English. not be taken too strictlY. Becauseof the agglutinativestructure of the language,the pauseis as important in defininggrammatical structure to facilitate comprehension 4 Orthographyand writing -r( of ipoken Koreanas the spaceis in written Korean' Korean letters are phoneric symbols, nor ideograms. The individual letter has an independentform and phonetic valueswhich dependupon Verbs its position in a word, its associationwith other letters,and whether or not it is doubled.Two or more lettersare written togetheras syllables, There are no auxiliary verbs in Korean. The I(orean verb is always but forming clusters,rather than rows, on the page. expressedby one (See'Questions and answers',below') Further- Korean is transliteratedinto the Latin alphabetby meansof the so- more, the verb is -ori.a more indepindent entity than in English,and as in every verb calledMcCune-Reischauer system. This is not usedin Koreanpublica- Japanese,because of the complex system of suffixation, tions (except those written for foreigners),but is seenall over South lo.pt for the verbto exist canbe a sentencein itself' Korea on signs and advertisingbillboards, so the Latin alphabetis Korean verbs are divided into Action verbs, which usually have an familiar to Koreans, and they have little or no difficulty in b..o-,ng equivalent English verb, and Adjectivat (Descriptive) verbs, which accustomedto its use in English. obviously children need to be taught describethe s-tateor characteristicsof things, and sometimes the English handwriting, but this comes relatively easily to them, though speaker'sor iistener's feelings, and have no English equivalent. For variations on the style that ail south Koreansare taught rnight initialy exampre: presentcomprehension difficulties - a point of which teachersshould be aware. Punctuation A studentis going to school. Studentto schoolgoing-be. learning-be The Koreancharacter cannot be capitalised. I am learningEnglish. English The use of question marks, exclamation marks, full stops and quotationmarks is more or lessthe sameas in English.The useof the Adjectivalverbs comma, semi-colon and colon can present difficulties, however: English although the comma exists in Korean, it is rarely used. Generallythe spacesbetween words fulfil all of thesefunctions in Korean. There are There are a lot of flowers here. Hereflower many-be' no possessiveapostrophes in Korean, the equivalentbeing a noun suffix. This roseis beautiful. Thisrose beautiful-be. potteryremarkable? Koreanpottery be-remarkable? _ Brevity is favoured in writing, and the Korean writer is encouragedto Don't you findKorean have no more than two consecutivelines of characters.This wav of 328 Koreanspeakers Koreanspeakers It will be observedthat Korean learners often omit the verb to be when French,and du and Siein German), but also by different lexical verbs using adjectivesin English. This is becausethe copula rrrrr.iio' of the and different verb endings,so Koreansmay be pleasantlysurprised by verb to be doesnot exisr in Korean. The adjectivai uerb is in effect an thecomparative simplicity of the Englishverb system. adjectivewith the senseof to be incorporated into it. For this reasonit is The suffix may, like that of an Englishverb, indicatetense or aspect, impossibleto form a verb {rom an adiective in I(orean. The transforma_ and show whether the subject is singular or plural, but it does not tion of weak into the English verb weaker, fo, ,r^^lti-i, ,urpririrrg conjugateaccording to person,resulting in frequentKorean omissionin onefor I(oreans.(See ,Sulfixes'.) " Englishof the third person -s. It can, however,nominalise the verb, fulfilling comparablefunctions to verb stem + -ing, -ation, -al, -ageor -mentit English. To be; there is and it is The other senseof to be in.Fngrish- to exist- is found in Korean,bur Tenseand aspect there is no form corresponding"to there is/are,or to the empty rr subject as in It will be hot tomorro*, to that the Korean learner *iil proa".. Bothtense and the progressiveaspect are conveyedby meansof suffixes. sentencessuch as " Many foreignersexist in Seoul. "Tomorrow will hot. Aspect there anything frr,.i: corresponding to the anticipatory it as in the There is no perfect aspect in Korean, and Korean learnersshare the n1s]r9n It's a pleasuri to do businesiwith you. Th"'K;;J"; equivarenr difficultiesother nationalities experiencein learning to use this form. of this corresponds to.something rike with'you at u"rl)"*- i prrorurr. Thus, whiie the narrative use of the past simple in English, especially of.wlth you is giu.r' pro-ine,rc. by being with a past time indicator (last summer,in 1997)presents no problems placed):::rt*,,.:l:-,.:yqt.nt tn tnttial position with an emphasis-markrngsuffix, rather than for Koreans,difficulties arise in distinguishingbetween the use of the at the end of the ientenceas in English. past perfect and presentperfect, and betweenthe presentperfect and Th: verb correspondingto the English verbto exist arsoperforms simplepast and presentforms. tunction. the of to haue: The progressiveaspect is conveyedin Korean by a combinationof the " In my bousedog exist. (for I hauea dog.) progressivesuffix (which differs in the present,past and future tenses) with the word for exist, andcan oniy be usedwith action (asopposed to adjectival)verbs. (See above.) In Korean this form is also usedin the Complex verbs presentto indicate repetitive actions or habits - where the present simpleis usedin English.In contrast,the useof the progressiveform in Complex Englishto indicate,for example that an action is rather than verbs are by.combininqtyo verbs.These ,porrman_ , temporary teau' verbs, which !:y9 active permanent,or (in combination with a future time reference)to refer to ,b. or ad'jectival,sometime, irpr.r, u meaningwhich i' English-1I theplanned future is alien to a Korean. wourd requireseverar *orar, ror"e*ample,1 goL,up. in English, 1'd, ' ' ' is expressedin onesuch verb in Korearr,as rs to be blackand blue. It hasbeen raining sinceyesterday. From yesterdayto now rain coming, Conjugation of verbs Tense Koreany:rb:, like regularEnglish ,verb verbs,consist of a srem,and a Koreanthus has six tense/aspectforms: future simple and progressive, 'verbending', and the ,t.-,t"y, th" ,"-., while the enJig."r;rg"r.r. presentsimple and progressive,past simple and piogressive,but they The two levels of formality and politen"r, i.r Kor""n Eirri.rguished arenot necessarilyused in the sameway as in English. not only by different forms of "r. aidr.s, (comparableto tu anduous tn If used with adverbs associatedwith a future time reference,the 330 all I{orean speakers I(oreansPeakers many present form in l(orean often indicates a future evenr(alrhough the modalverbs must be assimilated.Korean learnersthus sharewith future form may also be used). othernationalities the problems of distinguishingamong the full range of Englishmodal verbs. I am going to Pusan tomorrow. Tomorrow [I] to Pusango. Tomorrow is my birthday. Tomorrow my birthday exists. Passives passivein I(orean is expressedby a suffix, tather than by an Note that both of the above sentencestranslate with little alterationinto The auxiliary verb + past participl" in English. HlvinS grasped this English, thus facilitating a Korean learner'sunderstanding of the useof -learnirs "t principle, Korean have little difficulty with_ simple passives, presentverb forms for the scbeduledfuture. All the orhei-forms o{ the are inclined to use tathet than by, for example' future in English are expressedin Korean by the use of the samefuture from "lrtroughtth.y Dr Brown. suffix, and the reacherwill find that I(oreans, like orher narionalities, "I am taughtfrom casesdo presentproblems, however'. have difficulty in distinguishing rhe useso{ the various structuresthai Thefollowing form doesnot exist in Korean, leading Englishdeploys ro refer ro the future, and usethem indiscriminately. 1. The to hauesomething doni to sucherrors as: "Haueyou cut your hair? (fot Haueyow had your hair.cut?) found Conditionals 2. A verb + preposititn' as comparedwith a transitive verb, is difficult to manage,producing errors such as: oTbesecbopsticks difficuh to eat' There are only two conditional forms in Korean, expressingunrealiry sincethe perfectiveaspect does not exist in Korean, it is not and possibility respectively,so l(oreans have the customarypioblems in 3. Also, 'view that passivesemploying