Korea is a small stretch of land in the eastern most part of Asia. The Korean Peninsula encompasses approximately 684 miles jutting out from continental Asia. Once on the waters of the Pacific Ocean, it is surrounded by the East China Sea to the south, the Sea of Japan to the east, and the Yellow Sea to the west. Then there is a small body of water called the Korea Strait that forms a connection between the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea.
The Korean language is a topic of sum debate with the linguistics experts who study it. Some scholars think that it has a similarity to Japanese but others classify it to be a member of, what is known as, the Altaic subfamily of languages. Still there are others who think that it is a standalone language that is not similar to any spoken language today.
Regardless of how the language might be classified, there are about 78 million people who speak Korean worldwide. It is the official language of both South Korea and North Korea, with a few variations of spelling, vocabulary and alphabetization between the two. It is also one of the official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture located in China. Sejong the Great, the 4th king of the Yi Dynasty is credited for created the Korean alphabet (also known as Hangeul) in the 15th century (approximately 1443). Consisting of 40 letters, overall, it is made up of 10 pure vowels, 14 basic consonants, 5 double consonants and 11 compound vowels. Each of the individual letters are then made up of a syllabic sequence in order to create words and sentences. One way it is strikingly different from Chinese is the pronunciation that is used. Korean does not use tones or voice pitches to make distinctions in language semantics as the Chinese language does. There are also differences in sentence structure that an English speaker would notice as foreign-sounding.
The verbs, for instance, usually occur at the end of sentences instead of the middle, as in an English sentence. Instead of saying, “He speaks Korean” (English structure) someone from Korea would say, “He Korean speaks”. There are also no relative pronouns in the Korean language. Because of this, the sentences in the language are usually longer and more drawn out than a lot of Latin-based languages.
Being that most of the difficulties of the language are contextual and grammatical, Korean is a language that most people can teach themselves without, or with little need for, tutors, programs for schools or classes. Most grammatical rules and exceptions on any language can be found on a good online language site and can serve as a replacement for live tutors. A new speaker might have a little trouble when it comes to pronunciation or learning the Korean alphabet but that can really either be learned on the internet, in adult-learning programs, in schools or in a class setting. In most any language, the most important thing is to learn the basics of syntax and construction. Since these things can be demonstrated and learned by word-explanations one can be successful at learning Korean either online or in live classes.