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Hangul is superior to Japanese katakana

Korean students have posted this video on YouTube in which they display how the Korean language outperforms Japanese when it comes to saying “McDonald’s hamburger”:

[via Brian in Jeollanam-do]

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82 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - October 13, 2009 at 7:31 pm

Categories: General Japan Tags: korean

Canadian

Korean language is often referred as “the language that white people attract when they give up learning Japanese”. Mostly because of the easy-going learning of the alphabet.

And despite this, the IPA is more superior for options to expand phonemes and make a “sequential” flow of reading. Also IPA has the option to distinguish syllables with periods depending on the situation.

But Katakana is superior for exclusive mora-oriented reading. (Mora, not syllable. Don’t forget)

I should say that both writing systems in this part of East Asia are superior in their own unique fields.

longus dickus

and i bet i can drop more shit over than you!!

Canadian

Bitter much because you don’t know what I’m talking about?

longus dickus

neither of both.
Canadian

You can always grab a linguistics book at your local library.
Joe

What is this ‘library’ thing we keep hearing about?
Canadian

Near at your place. Today’s library keeps handful of linguistics books.

Cereal

Koreans have to be the most insecure people on the planet. Seriously.

Canadian

Compare to us Canadians? Not really. It’s more like Koreans are simultaneously self-hating and self-priding in a high level than being insecure.
Bad Wolf

My thoughts exactly Cereal.

helical

I’ll withhold making a judgment on which actually sounded more like the American pronunciation, since I’ve only learned to listen and distinguish spoken Japanese and English.
But it tickles me inside whenever praise for Hangul is adorned with superlatives, because for all the claim of the potential it has that it can produce any sound, not once have I heard it in action without a heavy Korean accent making it very hard to pick up what’s being said (to me at least).

And they just HAD to put in something showing that it’s superior to the Chinese or Japanese language. Nope. Not surprising at all.
The Overthinker

Wonder how it does a Bushman click…..
steve

I learned some Hangul a number of years back, but to me it was like trying to read japanese that is written entirely in hiragana or katakana. I know it must be different for a native speaker, though.

redd

Then you are a really really strange (and that’s an euphemism) person. Hangul is an alphabet, just like the Latin alphabet u use when writing English -_-’

helical

redd,

What steve probably means with “Japanese that is written entirely in hiragana or katakana”, is that it’s hard to read and understand because of the conventions.

I’m not an expert so this is all just from experience, but very roughly speaking, I believe Japanese can be described as being written with logographic kanji characters and words representing meanings, “strung together” with phonetic alphabets of hiragana or katakana representing sounds. Individual meanings are in chunks of kanji words, so spaces between words in western alphabets aren’t necessary.
And fluent people are used to reading Japanese writing by looking at common kanji writing versions of words, rather than it being all sounded out in hiragana only.

So when kanji is taken away from that, trying to read it is liketryingtoreadEnglishwrittenwithoutusingspaces. Not impossible but certainly harder.
Just to give an example, textbooks or picture books for young kids just learning kanji have hiragana writing separated by spaces.

pixel_bomber

Unless you have been trained to understand them none of those pronunciations sounded remotely like English. I bet it would take them several minutes just to order a hamburger in the states. I know that’s not saying much when consider the quality of some of the employees there.
http://www.japanprobe.com dmcinjapan

why is one being compared to the other? why is one to be considered superior to the other, I am just glad they are trying at least, and when I speak another laugage I whould hope they are gald that at least I am trying.
seiray

Again, Korean? Why is it that they always try to compare that they are better than Japan anyway? Can’t they just compare themselves with other country for once? These people never realise that they only give South Korea bad names. English is still much more superior, and French and Latin sound much more beautiful than Korean hangul anyway.

helical

If you don’t give a reason why you claim English is superior you’re just as bad as one claiming likewise for Korean.
And “beautiful” is quite a subjective quality …

Canadian

In this world, there are more people claiming English is superior than any other languages “over” people claiming Korean is superior than any other languages. Sad reality.

English should be a common language, not an uber-duber superior language.

helical

True, superior penetration rate doesn’t always equal superior function (VHS, IE6, etc.)
steve

IE 6… my thoughts exactly.
Shelly

“True, superior penetration rate doesn’t always equal superior function (VHS, IE6, etc.)”

That’s what guys always say…
helical

My language is harder than yours!
longus dickus

English should be a common language, not an uber-duber superior language.–

lol. not realy..

The Overthinker

English is superior because if Korean was so great then Shakespeare would have written in Korean….
Seriously, English is WAAAY better than Korean for trying to say “McDonald’s Hamburger.” No contest.

helical

Sir, you’re seriously making it hard for me to keep my mugicha in my mouth.
pixel_bomber

English is indeed the superior language to say McDonald’s Hamburger.

Also I disagree, I think superior penetration is always better. Who doesn’t appreciate penetration? Doesn’t matter if its on VHS, IE6 DVD etc.
http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

Yes, and German is the superior language to say Schadenfreude, yet I hear native English speakers use that word in the English language from time to time, along with lots of other German words.
Ok ok, there are also a lot of English words being used in the German language. And since both languages have the same ancestor, I’d say we’re even.

And I think the word penetration was meant in another sense…
The Overthinker

The real question is, is German or English better to say “Hamburger”?

Canadian

I taught English overseas before and I will proudly say that English is the worst language to speak and to learn.
Doodie

The people in the film look somewhat like from a mental home. All four pronounciations sound crap too. Poor Korea
Level3

Yeah, English is screwed up and complex, I suppose that’s part of the hybridized nature of the language, but I’d wager that makes English all the more ripe for making jokes. Unfortunately, they don’t translate well.

Anyone ever tried translating an English joke into Japanese?

Who has the worse sense of humor though, Japanese nationalists, or South Korean nationalists?

anti

Depends if the joke is American or English. In general I find English jokes to be funnier than American. They got a darker sense of irony.
helical

Most can be kind of translated with varying degrees of success, but the Russian Reversal is notable for completely and utterly failing in retaining any of the funniness after translation.

longus dickus

i agree jokes in russian language can shake the world.

aside that its the best regulated language.

Kevin

How in the hell can one language be superior to another? What are the qualifications for superiority? And who’s to say that shorter is better. Maybe the German for McDonald’s Hamburger makes it superior than all others: Das Mkdonalden Hamburgerheizen.

We should all be learning !Xóõ, anyway.

helical

I suppose the best one could do is come up with a language that best fits the qualities that are important to specific fields.
Personally, I prefer English and its conciseness for things like textbooks for technical applications (maybe only because I went to college in America), but I prefer Japanese for more artistic and literary uses as I personally feel a greater range of expressions comes easier.

Oh, and English wins for cursing and insults.

anti

I do not understand how having sexual intercourse becomes a cursing word. Thats odd. English curse words, talking about shit and intercourse just sounds like potty 3 year old to a Scandinavian.

In Scandinavian the curse words are more from folk lore. Troll is a Scandinavian being from folk lore also meaning an internet c@nt or a fake person in the cyber world. In English they say wanker where as in Scandinavian it is called a jaevel which is more graphic. It is a dwarf like folk lore troll looking creature out in the woods with his pants half down wanking. Thats a jaevel.More like a devil. Where as devil in English don´t have such strength. While no one cares about the Scandinavia languages being influenced by folklore and mythology makes the curse words quite interesting.

We rock the curse words the hardest. Black satan church burning anti Christ Vikings.

The Overthinker

Correct, in fact, as far as an
Understanding of the use of simple
Normal bodily functions
To symbolise great anger…
!!

After all, as a hetero male I rather like the word I spelled out on the left, but it is also seen as such as vile curse word that if the spam filters don’t catch it, those of tender temperaments will swoon. Weird how a slang term for something so many people like is so bad….
Garamon

Anti: “In English they say wanker where as in Scandinavian it is called a jaevel which is more graphic.”

Yeah, I guess “jaevel” is a pretty good translation but I’d rather say “runkepelle”.

vvv

In the construction of the Korean rapid transit railway, it was recognized that all the railroad ties were defective articles before.
The reason is because they cannot distinguish “absorbing water”（吸水） from “waterproofing “（防水）in the Hangul Alphabet.

Canadian

//In the construction of the Korean rapid transit railway, it was recognized that all the railroad ties were defective articles before.
The reason is because they cannot distinguish “absorbing water”（吸水） from “waterproofing “（防水）in the Hangul Alphabet.//

I romanized them.

吸水 (“Bang soo” as written in Hangul)
防水 (“Hoop soo” as written in Hangul)

Two very different pronunciations and spellings.

Canadian

//吸水 (”Bang soo” as written in Hangul)
防水 (”Hoop soo” as written in Hangul)//

Correction -

吸水 (”Hoop soo” as written in Hangul)
防水 (”Bang soo” as written in Hangul)

My bad.
vvv

Sorry,memory was incorrect me.They cannot distinguish the following words in the Hangul.
防水（waterproof)
放水 (drainage)
防守 (guard)

radical pikachu

They did not say in video that Korean outperforms Japanese. These are international students talking and comparing how to McDonalds hamburger sounds in their languages.

By the way that guy is real international macho. I wish to be in his place.

pixel_bomber

The title of this article is “Hangul is superior to Japanese katakana”. I don’t know if thats true but if we are debating the written language I’ll take my 26 character alphabet over both of them any day of the week.

yea

If you are talking about the English language. There are actually 52 characters in the alphabet because of Capitalization and lower-class, just to be an ass about it…

yea

lower-class haha.
Karisu

Nah, really there’s only 26. You could consider it 52 if there was a difference in how lower-case and upper-case letters were pronounced. It’s purely a visual change.
The Overthinker

So does that mean katakana and hiragana are only one? After all, it’s purely a visual change….
LB

Or 104 if you count cursive and printed letters, upper- and lower-case. And what should we do with the ampersand, number (sharp) sign, and the several others? Call them “English kanji”?

yochi

I love both Languages..

they are unique in some way and sexy..

in comparison with english, korean is a bit better in pronunciation but dont forget Japan always create ‘Kawaii or Kakkoi” pronunciations or words.. like moshimoshi, soyo soyo, ee… etc
the truth

WoW!! what a beutiful annoying language….I choose Japanese any day, its fun and cute….I cant wait to see the hon bok clown dress, Im sure the kimono kicks ass on that….
nescire

They’re right I guess, but this is really like shooting fish in a barrel.

An alphabet should always be more accurate than a syllabary when it comes to rendering arbitrary sounds. And as far a syllabaries go, katakana are very lossy when representing any language but Japanese.

Seems kind of childish to brag about this, especially since the Koreans in the video can’t seem to pronounce English correctly, no matter how well it’s rendered in Hangul script.
Buster

That are some seriously ugly women there… there’s no single writing system thats superior to another, as long as it fulfills its purpose, letting the native speakers write down and read their language.
Vonskippy

So do you think all that self delusional brainwashing the Koreans undergo is painful?
Rip

Too bad that learning Korean is completely useless and a total waste of time.

jc

Late by more than ten years? Sure. Completely useless and a total waste of time? Not really. Better than Japanese? Hardly… just another manifestation of self-centric Korean superiority at work.

Luke

Anyone else notice the uh… Korean rendition of The Beatles, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in the intro?

JJ

haha. i noticed it.

K9

言葉や文字は車やテレビとちゃうからのう。いっくら性能がええ言われてもよう使えへん。やっぱりこれからは中国語とちゃう？強い国の言葉覚えた方が何かと得ちゃいまっか？

togu

I dont understand

Weirdo

関西弁やねん、方言ねん。
ponta

「やっぱ、ハングル！！
ザジズゼゾ、ファフィフフェフォ、なんてもう、１０円のいや、５０銭の価値もないんですよ」、ということ・・・・では全然ない、と思う。

dude

obnoxious much, Koreans?
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com Brian

Actually, I like that rendition of the Beatles. The couple times I’ve taken a train here they play gayageum Beatles when the train is going to pull into the station.
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com Brian

That said, doesn’t help your argument when you have to not only sample other songs, but sample so many words from another language. Like a few days ago, Starbucks put Hangeul on their cups for the first time for Hangeul Day . . . and they wrote something out in English.
ij487i

I think the title of your post is a bit misleading, James, although it makes for a very sensationalist article that’s sure to attract the anti-Korea squad.

These people certainly aren’t your typical flag-burning nationalists, or even that annoying Korean professor who explicitly mentioned the “inferiority of Japanese language” in his discussion of Nobel prize winners. It’s more of a cheesy video explaining why Korean is supposedly better adapted for pronouncing foreign sounds (presumptuous, I know, but cultural pride isn’t anything uncommon in almost every country of the world). If there is an implicit message of superiority, it’s more like “Korean is cooler than all other languages” rather than “ours is better than yours, Japan.”

Oh well, at least you didn’t stick it in the “anti-Japan” category
k

I’d have to say, when I went to college in Japan, Korean’s tend to speak English with a better hatsuon than Japanese people. “Really” is a word that will pretty much take a Japanese speaker out of the game, because they usually flick their tongue on the back of their teeth when the say R and L sounds, so it sounds more like “riri” instead of really.

Korean is in no way a beautiful language though. Yea they make some kick ass dramas, but if you’ve ever date a girl from Korea and she complains to you, it just hits this like really childish whining tone that I just cant handle, like apooo or oopppaaaa haajiiimaaaaa. oh man.
Mister M

The superior language is the humbe language lol
Mister M

Comment by Mister M
2009-10-14 14:55:27
The superior language is the humble language
Ditto81

So are these Korean women going to then delve into which East Asian country sais Burger King Whooper better? This whole video shows Korea not sparkling, but fizzing in desperation of acknowledgement. Why make yourselves look desperate is what I would ask them.
Nova

what a stupid debate. is that video kind of north korean produced?
:p

LOL. Frankly, i don’t think language is that special, every language holds some kind of beauty but it was created as a means of communication. By the way, superiority isn’t determined by the sounds, its determined by how many people speak the language. But, I guess they wanted to focus on the beauty of languages cuz they weren’t physically pretty
WangKon936

I had a friend who taught English in Japan for nine years and ironically, had a Korean girlfriend for a few years while teaching in Japan. He said when comparing the two languages and English teaching, it appeared Koreans picked up English better than the average Japanese student (although overall, both Koreans and Japanese had difficulty in learning the language). The simple fact was that Korean had more sounds than Japanese. I think any linguist will tell you, Japanese has relatively few sounds.

Now I don’t know if this means that Hangul is inherently better than katakana. I doubt that’s what it means. It may allude to the fact that languages are different that that’s it. Furthermore, although Mandarin may be a tonal language, I’ve heard that it’s comparatively easiler for a native Mandrain speaker to learn English than a Korean or Japanese native speaker given Chinese grammar is more similar to Indo-European language grammar.

Canadian

As a matter of fact, there are handful of languages in SE Asia that has a similar syllable structure to Japanese. There aren’t many MORA-oriented languages in the world and Japanese is the expection. In this case, Katakana is better to describe those particular languages than Roman alphabet or Hangul.

My greatest problem with this is that Japanese people don’t know this fact.

longus dickus

He said when comparing the two languages and English teaching, it appeared Koreans picked up English better than the average Japanese student (although overall, both Koreans and Japanese had difficulty in learning the language).—

well. koreans are longer in touch with american culture. aside the have no cultural pressure to speak bad engulish in the shool.

JustSomeKoreanGuy

I am korean myself who lived abroad for quite a few years, and I have to say what they are posting on youtube are absolutely embarrassing. Their argument is based on some stupid English word translations that doesn’t make much sense. I am proud of my language and have no doubt that it easier to learn than Chinese or Japanese (this is strictly personal but i actually tried to learn Chinese for a few years). I won’t say its the most beautiful language since I’m learning Arabic and I must say writing their language is kinda fun. (also personal) I’m sorry for what my fellow Korean’s rather stupid presentations of their groundless opinions. I wish they can come up with more rational arguments next time.

Oh, and I’m not embarrassed about Korean’s having a big time grudge against the Japanese (not because I’m brainwashed or anything ) because that’s just how it is when a country gets invaded and occupied by another country who was, in fact, culturally inferior to us for millenniums(“millenniums” is bit too exaggerated but whatever). Japanese people – the ones I’ve met at least- are generally nice people and I feel sorry for them because they have the anger that their parents have provoked through the second world war is directed towards them.
http://twitter.com/ASAGIRIJP ASAGIRI

The thing to boast of the pronunciation of the other language is proof of the thing that the mother tongue is demoted to the second language.
poopypants

your failure is epic.
Intricate

lol..

and in order to actually say something about this whole thing: comparing cultures (languages) is probably going to cause the next big war in the future. Plus, it’s completely pointless to compare cultures.

Hangul is superior to Japanese katakana

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