Hello everyone. I would like to welcome all of you to the lecture on the Korean language. First step Korean. My name is Seung Hae Kang and I'm a professor currently in charge of Korean Education as a Foreign Language in the graduate school of education at Yonsei University. It is my pleasure to have the opportunity to meet all of you. Before we start this lecture I would like to briefly talk about the Korean language. Currently there are 77 million native Korean speakers and 5.6 million that consider Korean as their heritage language. Out of over 3,000 languages that exist on this planet, Korean is considered to be the 10th most commonly used language. Among these various languages, languages without their own letters and characters have vanished one after another. Korean is a language that has its own letters and characters. There isn't a precedent in which a King has created letters and characters for his subjects. You may already know, but Sejong the Great created the Korean alphabet Hangul. The original purpose was to devise a writing and reading system that would allow the common people to read and write the Korean language. As opposed to only the nobles, who at the time were only ones educated in reading and writing Chinese characters. If any of you have experience studying Japanese or Chinese, you will understand how easy it is to learn the Korean alphabet, Hangul, compared to other alphabets. And for those who have already studied Japanese, mastering Korean will be an easy and simple task. This is because the Japanese language and the Korean language are quite alike in terms of their grammar structure. Though many Korean words originate from Chinese characters, Korean is quite different from Chinese in terms of its grammar. The Korean vocabulary is comprised of 35% native words, 60% Sino-Korean words, and 5% Loanwords, mostly from the English language. Loanwords are pronounced differently depending on the sounds patterns in Korean. For instance, the word computer is pronounced computer in Korean. First a unique characteristic of the Korean language lies in its syntax. The sentence structure or the word order in Korean is different from that of English. Korean is a language in which the verb or the predicate comes at the end, thus a sentence ends in a verb or an adjective. In English a sentence is constructed in the order of S, V, O, which is subject, verb, and object. But in Korean, it is in the order of S, O, V. For example the sentence Jane studies Korean, in Korean becomes Jane Korean studies. Korean is also a language free from word order. As long as there is a verb or an adjective at the end, the sentence would make grammatical sense. For example, if you want to say Bob and Jane study Korean at school. In Korean, you can say Bob and Jane at school Korean study, or, Bob and Jane Korean study at school. Another characteristic of the Korean language is that a situation-oriented language. This means that in specific contexts or situations, certain components such as the subject of a sentence can be omitted. For example, going home means are you going home? In Korean, when you ask, did you meet the friend? You can skip you, and simply say, met the friend? Lastly, Korean is a language with honorifics. In using honorifics, there can be different speech levels of respect according to the person you are speaking with. The way you would talk to your father is different from the way you would talk to your friends or colleagues. For example, in English you and your father would say good morning in the same way. However, in Korean, there is a distinction between the way a father speaks to his son and the way a son speaks to his father. If you pay close attention, you will be able to notice that the two ways are very different. You can use honorific words or you can use expressions that differentiate speech levels. Well, understanding such characteristics about the language will be beneficial before starting to study Korean. And regarding the structure of this course, it consists of five individual modules, and each module is made up of four units. The fourth unit in every module is a review session, to go over all the things learned in the previous three units. Each module covers topics including Korean Alphabet, Hangul. Greetings. Family. Daily Life. Time and Date and, so on. Let me explain the composition of the units. We provide the learning objectives of the according unit, and listen to a conversation. After listening to the conversation, we repeat what was said. We then practice pronunciations of keywords in the conversation. We will explain the words and sentence structures in the conversation. And ,using more vocabulary, practice the sentences. You will mostly practice making sentences by substituting words that you learn in the unit. We will also provide additional vocabulary for you to practice on your own. After studying each unit, a quiz will be given to test your abilities and to review the contents. I hope through this lecture in Korean you will be even more drawn to Korea and the Korean language, and I hope you enjoy studying and have a wonderful experience throughout this course. Thank you so much and see you soon.
