What language is this?

Blonde   Wed May 16, 2007 11:49 pm GMT
Following text is from the advertisement of this website on the above.
What language is this?
And what does it say?
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잉글리시타운은 40년의 정통성을 보유한 외국계 교육사로서, 본사 전문 컨설턴트에 의한 컨설팅을 통하여 개인별
영어 니즈에 맞는 가장 효과적인 온라인 이러닝 국제 랭기지 스쿨 영어학습방법을 제안해 드리고자 합니다.
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Blonde   Thu May 17, 2007 1:56 am GMT
Hey Hey Ho Ho Rude Guests have got to go!

Seriously, what language is that?
Guest   Thu May 17, 2007 3:10 am GMT
For me the characters you'ved typed come up as question marks, so I can't help.
Guest   Thu May 17, 2007 3:14 am GMT
It's Korean. I can't tell you what it means.
furrykef   Thu May 17, 2007 5:08 am GMT
It's definitely Korean, but I don't know a single word of it. Hangul, Korean's writing system, has a very distinctive look that makes it easy to identify. (It looks vaguely like Chinese or Japanese writing, but the characters are relatively simple and have lots of little circles and things that the other writing systems don't have.)

I ran the text through Babelfish and got this:

"The English other fortune shakes off and as the foreign nation total education company which 40 years possesses an traditional characteristic, head office specialty khen opinion thu the consulting due to it leads and personal star English ni cu the head of a family effective on-line which hits the running international Raeng base su khwul proposes an English studying method and it gives and to sleep it does."

Then I ran it through Google Translate and got this:

"As the lineage of foreigner education company where 40 English towns possess a traditional characteristic, head office specialty [khen] opinion the consulting in compliance with the [thu] which it shakes off it leads and the head of a family effective on-line which hits to personal star English [ni] [cu] running international [layng] proposes a base school English studying method and it gives and to sleep it does."

The moral of the story is, of course, that online translators are horrible and you shouldn't rely on them ever. :)

- Kef
Guest   Thu May 17, 2007 11:20 am GMT
Well, those translators are usually good for getting a rough idea of what's being said but in this case, it's almost useless. Probaby because Korean is so different to English.
Native Korean   Thu May 17, 2007 1:13 pm GMT
Yes, that's Korean.
I think it is an advertisement of English Institute.
It says "English town has 40 years of history and knowhow blah blah, we can provide you with the most effective ways of learning English blah blah."

Online translator works pretty well when translating Korean into Japanese and vice versa. (almost perfect!)
However, Korean and European language are so different that the sentences do not make sense at all!
Alex Lee   Sat Jun 30, 2007 3:38 pm GMT
It's just an advertisement for a place called "English Town" in Korea and how wonderful their 40-year-history of knowledge is. Actually, I've heard of working conditions at the place, and the corporate heads are just downright criminal.
mike   Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:01 am GMT
To: Native Korean up:

I was watching TV two days agao, and thought of a program being japaness, but they told me it was korean. could you please tell a bit about the major difference between Korean, Japaness and Chinese langauge.

Thanks.
mike   Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:47 pm GMT
**They are completely different languages.

Its like to say 'What are the differences between English, Russian, and Swahili" **

let's hear from the korean native speaker first and see if I still have to comment on yours, or not.
furrykef   Thu Jul 05, 2007 4:27 pm GMT
Native Korean hasn't posted in a while, so you might not get a response from him (her?).

That said, I think Franco is right. Chinese and Korean are entirely unrelated, but Korean has borrowed many words from Chinese. Japanese is also completely unrelated to Chinese, but again, it has borrowed many words. It's kind of like how English has borrowed many words from Latin, but it isn't descended from Latin at all, and doesn't resemble Latin very much grammatically.

Some say that Korean and Japanese may be related to each other, but if so, the relationship is probably distant. They do share a surprisingly similar grammar... I don't know much about Korean grammar, but what little I do know is very similar to Japanese grammar. Chinese grammar is entirely different from either of them.

Both Japanese and Korean are agglutinating languages, with an elaborate system of verb conjugation. For instance, if you were to say "I will be able to do that", the phrase "will be able to do" will be all one word in Japanese (and probably Korean as well), and in addition the conjugation will also indicate how formal you're being toward the listener.

Both languages also have an extensive system of particles. For instance, to mark the subject in a Japanese sentence, you must follow the subject with the word "ga". If you ask a question, the sentence must end with the word "ka" (but this is often omitted in colloquial speech). Korean has the same sort of thing, though the words used are different. Chinese grammar has none of that, and is much more like English grammar.

The phonology of the three languages is also very different. All dialects of Chinese have the infamous tone system, where the meaning of a word can completely change depending on whether it's spoken with a high tone, a rising tone, a falling tone, etc. Korean and Japanese don't have this at all. Pitch can sometimes affect meaning in Korean and Japanese, but it's much more like stress in English than tones in Chinese.

The syllable structure of Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese are completely different. Cantonese might be closer to Korean, but I don't know how much. In Mandarin, syllables generally don't end on a consonant except for "n", "ng", and sometimes "r" (which is more of a vowel in Mandarin; "shi" is actually pronounced more like "shr"). Korean allows many more consonants at the end of a syllable: p, t, m, n, ng, l, and k. Japanese only allows "n", but the pronunciation of the "n" can change a bit depending on what precedes or follows it. Korean also seems to have the most complex vowel system... Korean is notoriously hard for English-speaking learners to pronounce and to hear correctly, whereas Japanese is pretty simple. Chinese is mostly simple in this regard except for its tones.

- Kef
m8   Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:55 am GMT
Korean is different from Chinese and Japanese, but there are heavy Japanese influences in Korean.

To save from very long and political story, Japan raided Korea several times in its history. Then from the late 1800's to the mid 1900's Japan ruled Korea officially.

As for the Korean writing system, it has a very interesting history. It is one of the few writing systems that did not develop naturally. Korea like Japan used Chinese characters at first and then developed their own system of writing. I recommend looking it up on the web sometime, it really is a neat story. Another interesting thing about it...is that some linguist argue that it may be one of the more efficient writing systems in the world.

For those who are not familiar with the writing system, those are not characters like you find in Chinese or Japanese. That is actually an alphabet no different than the one we are using. They developed a system of saying their letters into syllables. The reason why linguist like this system of writing is that it is near phonetic, and it easily breaks words down into syllables which make them easier to read. (Once you get the hang of it that is ;-)
Native Korean   Mon Jul 09, 2007 6:31 am GMT
I was on vacation for a while but I'm back!!

To mike:
<I was watching TV two days agao, and thought of a program being japaness, but they told me it was korean. could you please tell a bit about the major difference between Korean, Japaness and Chinese langauge. >

Wow, that's a big question and I'm not sure whether I can give you a satisfying answer.
Actually, what 'furrykef' wrote above is true.

Chinese, Korean and Japanese language are very different from each other although many Korean words and Japanese words came from classic Chinese.
Classic Chinese(Ancient Chinese) is like Latin or Ancient Greek in Western Language as many Western languages borrowed their words from Latin and Greek.
However, language itself is very very different!

Japanese and Korean may be distantly related as they have similar grammar patterns, sentence structure and word orders.
It is quite easy for Koreans to learn Japanese because of those similarities.
Both Japanese and Korean language are classified as language isolate, but the closest foreign language to Korean is Japanese and vice versa.

In terms of phonology, you might find Chinese is distinctive because it has various intonation and tones.
As a native Korean speaker, Japanese sounds softer while Korean sounds harder. Well that's my impression on East Asian language.
Native Korean   Mon Jul 09, 2007 6:45 am GMT
Standard Korean(Seoul accent) sounds monotonous as it does not have tones and intonation while Japanese language have some intonation.

Japanese have less vowels than Korean.