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Welcome to First Step Korean! We’re glad you’re here. Start learning today by watching your first video: Welcome to First Step Korean!.

Transcript

00:00Hello, everyone. I would like to welcome all of you to the lecture on the Korean language,

00:10First Step Korean. My name is Seung-Hye Kang, and I'm a professor currently in charge of

00:17Korean education as a foreign language in the Graduate School of Education at Yonsei

00:23University. It is my pleasure to have the opportunity to meet all of you. Before we

00:30start this lecture, I would like to briefly talk about the Korean language. Currently,

00:37there are 77 million native Korean speakers and 5.6 million that consider Korean as their

00:45heritage language. Out of over 3,000 languages that exist on this planet, Korean is considered

00:55to be the 13th most commonly used language. Among these various languages, languages without their

01:04own letters and characters have vanished one after another. Korean is a language that has

01:12its own letters and characters. There isn't a precedent in which a king had created letters

01:21and characters for his subjects. You may already know, but Sejong the Great created the Korean

01:28alphabet, Hangul. The original purpose was to devise a writing and reading system that would

01:36allow the common people to read and write the Korean language, as opposed to only the nobles,

01:42who at that time were only ones educated in reading and writing Chinese characters. If any

01:52of you have experience studying Japanese or Chinese, you will understand how easy it is to

01:58learn the Korean alphabet, Hangul, compared to other alphabets. And for those who have already

02:06studied Japanese, mastering Korean will be an easy and simple task. This is because the Japanese

02:14language and the Korean language are quite alike in terms of their grammar structure. Though many

02:22Korean words originate from Chinese characters, Korean is quite different from Chinese in terms

02:28of its grammar. The Korean vocabulary is comprised of 35% native words, 60% Sino-Korean words, and 5%

02:42loanwords, mostly from the English language. Loanwords are pronounced differently depending

02:50on the sound's patterns in Korean. For instance, the word computer is pronounced com-PU-ter in Korean.

03:00First, a unique characteristic of the Korean language lies in its syntax. The sentence

03:09structure, or the word order in Korean, is different from that of English. Korean is a

03:17language in which the verb or the predicate comes at the end. Thus, a sentence ends in a verb or an

03:26adjective. In English, a sentence is constructed in the order of S-V-O, which is subject, verb, and object.

03:40But in Korean, it is in the order of S-O-V. For example, the sentence Jane studies Korean, in Korean becomes

03:52Jane Korean studies. Korean is also a language free from word order. As long as there is a verb or an adjective

04:03at the end, the sentence would make grammatical sense. For example, if you want to say, Bob and Jane study Korean at school,

04:13in Korean, you can say, Bob and Jane at school Korean study. Or, Bob and Jane Korean study at school.

04:27Another characteristic of the Korean language is that it is a situation-oriented language. This means that in specific

04:36contexts or situations, certain components, such as the subject of a sentence, can be omitted. For example, going home means,

04:47are you going home? In Korean, when you ask, did you meet the friend? You can skip you and simply say, met the friend?

05:00Lastly, Korean is a language with honorifics. In using honorifics, there can be different speech levels of respect according to the

05:10person you are speaking with. The way you talk to your father is different from the way you talk to your friends or colleagues.

05:21For example, in English, you and your father would say, good morning, in the same way. However, in Korean, there is a distinction between

05:32the way a father speaks to his son and the way a son speaks to his father. If you pay close attention, you will be able to notice that

05:43the two ways are very different. You can use honorific words or you can use expressions that differentiate speech levels.

05:53Well, understanding such characteristics about the language will be beneficial before starting to study Korean.

06:04And regarding the structure of this course, it consists of 5 individual modules and each module is made up of 4 units.

06:16The 4th unit is every module is a review session to go over all the things learned in the previous 3 units.

06:26Each module covers topics including Korean alphabet Hangul, greetings, family, daily life, time and date, and so on.

06:41Let me explain the composition of the units. We provide the learning objectives of the according unit and listen to a conversation.

06:55After listening to the conversation, we repeat what was said.

07:02We then practice pronunciations of key words in the conversation.

07:09We will explain the words and sentence structures in the conversation.

07:16And using more vocabulary, practice the sentences.

07:21You will mostly practice making sentences by substituting words that you learn in the unit.

07:29We will also provide additional vocabulary for you to practice on your own.

07:36After studying each unit, a quiz will be given to test your abilities and to review the contents.

07:45I hope through this lecture on Korean, you will be even more drawn to Korea and the Korean language.

07:54And I hope you enjoy studying and have a wonderful experience throughout this course.

08:00Thank you so much and see you soon.

08:06Thank you for watching.

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