As I mentioned before, Korean is really different from English. In order to translate Korean to English better, it is also important to learn the characteristics of Korean in detail. English is a subject-verb-object (SVO) language (e.g., Andrew-studies Korean). However, Korean is a subject-object-verb (SOV) language (e.g.,앤드류 한국어 공부“Andrew-Korean-studies”). In Korean, verbs, and adjectives appear at the end of the sentence. All other elements such as nouns (e.g., subject and/or object), adverbs, and numbers, appear before verbs and/or adjectives. In addition, modifiers (e.g., adverbs, demonstratives, and relative clauses) appear before the modified words. There is another example in English, “Peter studies history at the library in the afternoon.” We know that “Peter” is the subject since it comes before the verb “studies,” and “history” is the object as it appears after the verb. Notice that extra elements such as “at the library” and “in the afternoon” are placed after the object. In addition, English prepositions always appear before nouns, as in “at the library.”However, the word order of Korean would be 피터가 도서관에서 역사를 공부합니다.”( “Peter library-at history studies.”) Instead of English prepositions, Korean has particles that always come after the noun. For instance, we know 피터 is the subject since it is marked by the subject particle 가. 도서관is the location since it is marked by the locative particle 에서.
In Korean, the most important elements tend to cluster to the end of the sentence. The further the word is from the end of the sentence, the less important the element is and more likely it is to be dropped. In other words, what appears at the very end of the sentence (e.g., verbs) is most important. Consequently, Korean sentences that have no subject or object but just a verb or an adjective, such as in 먹어요 “eat,” are grammatically correct and natural in conversation. For example, 안녕하십니카? (How are you?); 캄사한니다(Thank you).
On the other hand, Korean is a “general-to-specific” or “big-to-small” language. In other words, Koreans write or say general, or bigger, units before the specific, or smaller, units. For instance, Koreans say or write the last name before the given name. (e.g: 권순영:Kwon Soonyoung) which is the same as Chinese. Also, Korean is an honorific language in that it has grammatical elements that are used to indicate social meanings involved in contexts such as speakers’ attitudes (e.g., respect, humility, formality) toward who they are talking to or talking about. For instance, Koreans use hierarchical address-reference terms of titles as well as various speech levels to indicate politeness, intimacy, and the formality level of discourse during the interaction. In addition, they use humble person pronoun forms such as 저 “first person singular” and 저희 “first-person plural” to indicate humility. Moreover, Koreans use honorific suffix -(으)시 and euphemistic words to indicate respect toward a subject of higher social status. I think it is really important to learn such things so that I will start to learn how to speak Korean naturally instead of always translating English into Korean.
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