Why study Korean?

Korean is the sixteenth most widely spoken language in the world, spoken by more than 67 million people (more than there are native speakers of French). Although relatively few non-Koreans learned Korean until quite recently, the number of new learners has grown extremely rapidly in the past decade, as Korea has grown to be one of the world centers of academic, economic, technical, cultural, and political interest.

The grammar and phonetics of Korean are quite different from those of most European languages. Korean has no close linguistic relatives. Japanese shows some similarities to Korean in word order and certain other grammatical features, but the phonetic features of the two languages are quite different and so are the writing systems. The Korean alphabet, Hangeul, was originally invented by Great King Sejong in the 15th century. Hangeul is phonetic, and unlike Japanese or Chinese it is very easy to read and write. The Korean language has many other interesting linguistic and cultural features, such as multiple speech levels, honorific expressions, frequent borrowing from English, and different types of particles.

The Korean language program at Boston University offers three years of language study and additional cultural courses such as Korean Cinema. Students report that learning Korean at BU is an enjoyable and fascinating experience. During the lessons, students will gain insight into many cultural, historical, anthropological aspects of Korean civilization. Methods include conversation, group work, viewing of recent Korean films, and language-exchange sessions with native speakers.