Contrasting Korean and Japanese grammar

I'm curious about the differences between Korean and Japanese grammar. Though these languages are thought to be unrelated, their grammar is remarkably similar on the surface. (Note that I have no interest in debating whether or not they're related. It's quite possible that the proximity of Korea and Japan brought about this similarity and not any direct relation.) For instance, both are agglutinating, topic-prominent SOV languages with a heavy reliance on particles. Both have a strong emphasis on politeness and complex honorific systems. Both have adjectives that conjugate like verbs. Both languages lack articles, grammatical gender, and special markering for plurals. Both allow omission of implied subjects/objects/etc., but require a verb in grammatical sentences. Neither one marks for person or plurality in verbs. Both use special counter words, like Chinese.

But where do these languages differ grammatically? I'm aware that Korean has more "politeness levels" than Japanese -- though in practice some of these are seldom used -- and sometimes particles change for reasons of euphony, but what else?

- Kef

Well, Korean does have a plural marker: '-dul', which, though not as commonly used today, is still required when using certain words like 'aidul' - children, 'saramdul' - people/men, 'kudul' - they, etc. and can be added to any noun to make clear the distinction between 'one' vs. 'more than one', as in 'saedul' - birds vs. 'sae' - [one] bird.

Generally, though, when it is not absolutely necessary to indicate a disctinction, it is often ommitted: 'sae' - bird or birds.

Korean also does have an article: 'ku' which means 'the'/'the [one there with you]'. Again, it is oftentimes ommited in speech and writing, but it is used for times when greater clarification is required.

Hope these help.

Do Korean and Japanese belong to the same linguistic family? And are they related to Turkish and Hungarian?

Hmm. Clearly I was too hasty in assuming Korean doesn't use articles or plural markers. Thanks for the clarification. :)

<< Do Korean and Japanese belong to the same linguistic family? >>

No, Japanese has its own language family, the Japonic languages, of which Japanese is the only major language. The other languages are also spoken only within Japan.

<< And are they related to Turkish and Hungarian? >>

Well, Turkish and Hungarian aren't even related to each other. Some scholars have hypothesized that Turkish belongs to an "Altaic" family, which Korean might also belong, but the Altaic language hypothesis is very far from being proven, let alone whether or not Korean is part of that family. The current consensus is that Korean is a language isolate.

- Kef

Korean also still employs a type of vowel harmony no longer used in Japanese, if I am not mistaken (although it is found in Old Japanese).

For instance, the verb 'issda' (to be, in sense of 'there is') uses the particle -oss- to form the past tense > 'issossda' - there were/there was where a verb such as 'jabda' (to catch), with an 'a' in its stem, uses -ass- > 'jabassda' - caught.

This vowel harmony must agree. There are generally three classes of vowels, one thought of as positive, the other as negative/pejorative, and a neutral.

This type of harmony is also used to distinguish between adjectives, adverbs, etc where the form is similar but where one wants to alter the meaning to be slightly different.

Korean language also uses indefinite articles - *Khopee han chhan* = *A cup of coffee*
han = a, an

We have a plural marker '들(deul)' though it is not commonly used in real life.
I actually had a hard time to figure out what 'ku' is, as the guest mentioned above as an equivalent article to 'the'.
Now I've found what that is - '그(Geu or Gu)'.
Yes, it can be an article and function as 'the', but still it's very different from the English 'the' in many ways.

In terms of indefinite articles, we rarely use them.
A cup of coffee is an unusual case.
We never use an article in most sentences such as 'I have a book', 'It's a cat' or 'He is a doctor.' We never put 'han(한)' in those sentences.

That article 'han(한)' is only used in the specific cases like 'a cup of coffee', 'a piece of cake' or 'a pair of shoes'.

<<Yes, it can be an article and function as 'the', but still it's very different from the English 'the' in many ways. >>

Yes, that is true; however the original post states that:"Both languages lack articles" and this is simply not the case with Korean. Albeit the articles in Korean are used somewhat differently than those in English, they are still articles nonetheless...

Not even closely related languages, like English and French, use their articles the same way, if I am not mistaken...

btw, my family originates from the North...which is why we pronounce 'geu' a little differently...with a harder sound like 'k'...sorry for the confusion but you got it! : )

All right, all right, I was wrong about articles. I get it already. ;) What other differences are there?

Can I learn Korean without the need of learning Chinese characters? I find them difficult. Could one survive without them, using only Korean ones?

<<Can I learn Korean without the need of learning Chinese characters? I find them difficult. Could one survive without them, using only Korean ones?>>

I thought Korean didn't use Chinese characters anymore, at least not younger generations...

Though I heard a while back that the Korean government (or other) was considering to start using those Chinese characters again... any chances of this happening?

<<Can I learn Korean without the need of learning Chinese characters? I find them difficult. Could one survive without them, using only Korean ones?>>

Of course you can. We barely use Chinese characters in Korea.
I had to learn Chinese characters when taking Japanese courses in high school but if you just want to learn Korean, you do not need to learn Chinese characters.
If you want to learn Korean literature at a professional level, it's good to learn Chinese characters though.

Plus, Hangul(Korean characters) is really easy to learn even though the actual language may be quite difficult!

To furrykef
I learned Japanese for a year back in high school and I haven't found that much differences between the two languages' grammar.
That might be partly because my Japanese is still somewhat lower-intermediate level.
I don't think there are "significant" differences in Korean and Japanese grammar.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of things - they are very minor though.

For example, the verb 'go': 가다(gada)/ 行く (いく, ikú)
If you want to say the negative form of the verb 'go'
Koreans can put the negative word '안(An)' either before the original verb or after the original verb.
We can either say '안 가다 (an gada)' or '가지 않다 (gaji anta)'.
However, in Japanese, they always put the negative word 'ない(nai)' after the original verb which makes it '行かない(ikanai)'.

Another example of the difference, the verb 'eat': 먹다(meokda)/食べる(taberu)
If you want to make it past tense in polite expression
Korean: meok(verb)+eot(past)+seupnida(honorific)
Japanese: tabe(verb)+mashi(honorific)+ta(past)
See? They are a little bit different.

These are all I can think of right now ^^

<<Korean: meok(verb)+eot(past)+seupnida(honorific)
Japanese: tabe(verb)+mashi(honorific)+ta(past)
>>

Right. The only time in Korean that the honorific expression is "infixed" is in reference to a third person, as in: 'Abojiga ka-syeoss-da' [Father has gone/Father went], where the "-syeoss-" (pronounced "shott") contains a palatized form of the honorific particle "-si-" (pronounced 'shi') + the past affix "-eoss-" (the -ss here pronounced "tt" due to the following dental).

Which demonstrates my next point of difference between Kor. & Jap.
Korean, due to it's unique writing style, exhibits a type of liason/elision very similar to French--both languages having been written down centuries ago and fixed in their spelling while the pronunciation became relaxed. The pronunciation is still somewhat artificially maintained by the spelling. For example: In Korean, the word for "thing" is 'gos' pronounced "got" (with a short 'o' and a 't' sound at the end). If a particle beginning with vowel is suffixed to the stem, the "s" sound is activated: 'gosul' ([the] "thing" {accusative case} pronounced "gosul"). If the suffix begins with an "i" ot "y" sound, as in the example far above, the "s" becomes a "sh" sound: 'gosi' (pronounced "goshi"). Finally, if the suffix begins with a consonant, the "s" most often gemminates into the following sound. An example of this is the "-syeoss + -da" above where the "ss" becomes a "tt" to mimmick the following dental in "-da". If we replace the "-da" with "-go" (a noun suffix) we would end up with "-syeossgo" (pronounced "shokkgo").

This type of liason/elision is rampant in Korean, and there are separate rules governing characters ending in a silent "h" (like the negative "-anh-" particle cited in Native Korean's post), silent final "-g", -"-m", etc. etc. etc.

It is an extremely regular but complex (and truthfully to me) a very beautiful process.

Where French liasons between words, I believe Korean sticks mainly to affixes...

Native Korean, can you think of an example offhand where Korean carries a sound between two separate words?