Comparison of Japanese and Korean grammar

Per request, I'll be doing a bit of a comparison of Japanese and Korean in this post. Actually it might take a few posts to write all that I want to write on the subject, but I'll see what I can do in a single post today.

First of all, the two languages are eerily similar to each other to the extent that when I first started studying Korean through Japanese in 2001 I thought that they were historically related as languages like Italian and French are, because at that time I didn't know how a Sprachbund works, that is, how languages that aren't originally that related can converge to a certain extent and end up being a lot more similar to each other than they originally were.

But then again, Korean and Japanese are based on two dialects from areas that actually were quite different from each other - Seoul and Tokyo. Way back when there was no such thing as Japan and Korea, there were smaller countries such as Goguryeo, Shilla, Gaya, Wa, and so on. I'm quite rusty on my Japanese history but I think it was Wa that was originally based around Kyushu and had a good relationship with Gaya, which was located in the southeast part of Korea. Kyushu, of course, is right across the strait from that area, and also a place that I lived in for a year. Baekje (백제) was also quite friendly with Wa and I think it was around the year 667 or so that Wa sent troops and ships to try to save it from collapsing, but to no avail.

Anyhow, I won't try to get into all the details of this but suffice to say that if the two countries had been unified around Busan in Korea, and Fukuoka in Japan, the situation today probably would have been quite different. It's analogous to how standard German is quite different from English and Dutch in terms of the consonant shift and the three genders, whereas if German had been unified around Low German instead it would be a lot more similar to Dutch and English.

If you don't know what I'm talking about here's a chart from Wikipedia:

Proto-Germanic	High German	Low German	Dutch	English	German	Frisian
k	ch	maken, moaken, maaken	maken	to make	machen	meitsje
k	kch	Karl, Korl	Karel	Carl, Ceorl, Churl	Karl	Kirl, Tsjirl
d	t	Dag, Dach	dag	day	Tag	Dei
t	ss	eten, äten	eten	eat	essen	ite
t	z (/ts/)	teihn, tian	tien	ten	zehn	tsien
t	tz, z (/ts/)	sitten	zitten	sit	sitzen	sitte
p	f, ff	Schipp, Schepp	schip	ship, skiff	Schiff	skip
p	pf	Peper, Päpa	peper	pepper	Pfeffer	peper
β	b	Wief, Wiewer	wijf, wijven *	wife, wives	Weib, Weiber *	wyf, wyven

The difference of course is that English and German were originally quite similar whereas for Japanese and Korean it doesn't seem to be the case. But the fact that they ended up being unified around languages originally spoken by enemy countries instead of allies, and used different writing systems as well, didn't really help either.

I think I remember reading before that the Korean mul (물) for water (Japanese mizu) was called mi way back in Baekje, and that's why a lot of Japanese words that have to do with water end have mi：
umi　海
migiwa 水際・汀・渚
minamoto 源
mizo 溝

and so on. I don't know if that's true but you can read about these theories quite a bit in Korean and Japanese books, and they're the most interesting because if they are true then they're proof of actual similarities between the languages outside of the huge Chinese influence, which adds to their similarity but doesn't provide any proof of the two languages originally being similar or the same.

So, to sum this up I think the best analogy to compare the two languages would be English and Greek. It's not quite the same thing since English and Greek are both definitely Indo-European, but from a language learning point of view it's mostly accurate, since there are definite grammatical similarities and knowing one really helps with the other, but since they use different writing systems there's no way to learn it without a bit of work.

Now let's get into the grammar and word order.

Word order is generally the same (alternating between bold and non-bold to make it easier to see):

• 2008年3月28日、ウィキペディア全言語版合計の記事数が1000万項目を超えました
• 2008년3월28일, 위키피디아 모든 언어판 합계 기사수가 1000만항목을 초과했습니다.
• 2008 year 3 month 28 day, Wikipedia all language edition total article number 10 million item exceeded.
  

Translation: On the 28th of March 2008, the total number of articles for all languages in Wikipedia exceeded 10 million.

Because of this it's much easier to translate between the two languages than into or out of a language like English, because it generally just involves substituting individual words and keeping the same word order.

Here is a good way to summarize the difference between the two languages:

• Korean has more consonants and vowels. That means that it's generally more compressed; it takes less time to say something. That also makes it harder for students of the language to pick it up as well.
• Korean grammar is more complex. A relative clause for example (the man who drank the coffee for example) in Japanese just uses the infinitive of the verb: コーヒーを飲む男 (lit. coffee + particle + to drink + man) whereas in Korean you can't just use the infinitive, but instead have to take off the da ending and replace it with 는: 커피를 마시는 남자. (lit. coffee + particle + to drink (minus the da infinitive) + neun + man). In this sense it's similar to Turkish which does the same thing: kahve(yi) içen adam, where drink (içmek) has the infinitive (mek) removed, and then adds on the -en which fixes it to the following noun. Sometimes Turkish is eerily similar to Korean as well.
• Japanese grammar is more logical to an English speaker. It uses the passive voice a lot like we do in English, but it doesn't happen quite as much in Korean (you don't say things like this letter was written, this food was eaten by X nearly as much). I prefer that in Japanese whereas in Korean you always have a bit of a more casual feel when saying something. That might be my English bias speaking though.
  
• Korean doesn't use Chinese characters (hanja) anymore so sometimes when translating something you'll get confused by homonyms like 이의, which can mean 'different meaning', 'different opinion' or 'objection' depending on whether it's 異義, 異意, or 異議. With homonyms with really clear differences it's no problem, but when you have homonyms that are could also conceivably be used in the same situation, it can be quite annoying. With Japanese you always have the kanji (Chinese characters) to reference.

I'll probably write some more on the subject in the next few days, but hopefully this should serve as a good introduction to the two.