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| Difficulties in Learning Korean | People are characteristically afraid most of learning Chinese or Japanese because of the complicated system of characters that must be memorized. This is not the case for Korean, though. In fact, Korea has the only truly phonetic alphabet in Asia called Hangul. It was designed on purpose to be simple to learn. At present a modified form of the alphabet is being used to expand literacy among people without an alphabet of their own. So the reading and writing is easy to get down.
The grammar in itself is not hard either. There are not many irregular verbs, the majority of the grammar rules are straightforward and easy to memorize. Even though it is an inflected language, there are only some endings that you must learn and the majority of them can be omitted in spoken speech. Foreign speakers of the language are typically surprised by the Korean language's constancy and internal logic.
About 80 percent of Korean words come from Chinese, and as such are inclined to be short, clear and distinctive. You can trace the etymology to Chinese root words and therefore develop your vocabulary rather quickly. So even though Korean belongs to its own unique language family, the vocabulary can be learned without too much trouble as there is so much constancy in the language.
So the vocabulary is possible to learn particularly if you have experience with Chinese. For all that the Korean language is not easy to use conversationally at all. This is because Korean has a compound system of honorifics that have an effect on both nouns and verbs, with upwards of five levels of respect, in addition to alternate words that you must use when speaking to "higher" people than yourself. Unluckily, the essential form of the language is also one of the least polite.
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