From: furufuru@... (Ryo Furue)
Date: 2004-10-07T12:24:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Bit of the Matz Interview (in Rubyist Magazine)

Jamis Buck <jgb3@email.byu.edu> wrote in message news:<41647522.4060103@email.byu.edu>...
[...]
> (On an almost-related note--Japanese is pretty similar to Korean, yes? 
> Assuming one had a basic grasp of Korean, about how hard would it be to 
> learn Japanese, at least sufficiently to read and write it?)

Korean and Japanese are *very* similar in grammar and in pronunciation.
So, if you speak Korean, it shouldn't be very difficult to learn to
speak Japanese.  Although I have only superficial knowlegde about
Korean, everyone who knows both languages well says the same.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean you can easily learn to read and
write Japanese even if you read and write Korean fluently.  The
problem is that the Japanese language uses Chinese characters
extensively, while modern Korean is usually written without Chinese
characters.  I know this from Korean friends of mine who speak fluent
Japanese and yet have difficulty in reading and writing Japanese.

By the way, I'm a native speaker of Japanese.

Cheers,
Ryo