Through my research about the Korean language structure, I found that Korean sentences consist of either a “subject + verb” or a “subject + object + verb.” And because the verb comes at the end of the sentence, there is a saying of “you need to listen until the end of the sentence” to understanding its meaning, which is very different from English. Korean sentence cannot be translated word from word to English, therefore, in order to comprehend the Hangul translations of the sentences, I should break down the sentences and familiarize with the words first. I would keep this language structure in mind when trying to understand and translate a sentence in Korean.
In “How to Investigate Language Structure” by David Crystal, the author mentioned one language might only use small part of sound we could produce. And the study of phonology, which is the pronunciation system of a language, is important in understanding the language. Korean has 19 consonant phonemes and it has eight vowel phonemes at varies length. I also found the North Korean dialect use the vowels differently from the South Korean dialect. I consider speaking to be the most aspect in learning a new language, therefore, understanding phonetics and phonology of the language would be helpful in providing a guideline in learning Korean.
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