Firstly, I found out that compared to English, it is really easy to find which word is for a subject, object, verb, etc. in Korean since prepositional particles follow most sentence components. However, there is common structural order that is frequently used, and one must be aware of the logical connection of components to place words in the right places.
Another factor that one should keep track of is tense. Ironically, I studied English grammar deeper than Korean grammar, which made me not care about precise grammar in Korean. For example, Korean sentences use progressive tense comparably less than English sentences do. Rather, many English sentences in progressive tense sound better in Korean if they are translated into the present tense, which is mainly responsible for the progressive context in Korean. If not, a sentence would be awkwardly and uselessly longer and thus less concise.
Also, when I get to teach someone Korean grammar, these will not be the main focus because there are a lot of preliminary concepts that would be a solid foundation for better speaking and writing. Along with learning from books and simply memorizing vocabulary, I thought it would be a lot more helpful to be exposed to much listening to learn Korean. That is, the Korean language has a number of variations of the same words (i.e. prepositional particles and tense) solely depending on which vowel or consonant is used in the very previous word. More listening experience would grow a natural sense that could make learning grammar rules less frustrating.
Replies
I did not know that the vowels and consonant use within words had such an effect on meaning within the Korean language and I honestly have no experience with the language myself, so your chronicling of your acquisition process has allowed me to more fully understand how the structures of words, and sentences work within the language, as well as some of the intricacies and differences from English.
Hi Jason!
If you think the lack of prepositional particles in English is difficult, I wonder if you would find Latin grammar difficult. Whether a word is the subject or the object is entirely dependent on its suffix, and there are no rules regarding word order in Latin. Learning Latin has actually helped me with my Korean studies, so I am curious if a native Korean speaker would also make these same connections.
It's interesting to see how tense in Korean reflects differences in grammar in both languages. I hope you can learn more about English grammar to catch up with me. Good luck and one other suggestion I give is using Grammarly for your writing which absolutely helps a lot.