I’m a native Korean speaker, and I’m trying to learn Japanese as a fourth language. The problem is, I started to mix up some parts of Japanese when I try to speak Korean (but weirdly not vice versa). For example, “これは” is synonymous to “이것은”, so I sometimes say “이것와” by combining the two words, which is incorrect. The two languages have many similarities in vocab and structure, which I think is the cause. Is anybody else having a similar problem?
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How would you write that in Romaji?
저도 어쩔땐 그러는데…
Lol kinda same.
“ga” in my language is informal particle for all subject types but in japanese it is either “wa” or “ga”.
So every time I am supposed to use “wa” I always misuse “ga” instead .
Huh, interesting that it’s bleeding into your native language. I have lots of issues with Japanese bleeding into my Spanish, but they’re both TLs for me. Is Korean your dominant language? Did you grow up in Korea going to a school where you were educated in Korean or did you go to an English language school or grow up abroad? Do you live in Korea now? If you have a lot of experience living abroad/being in English immersive enviornments then that be a factor
I’m a beginner at Korean but I’ve noticed I tend to say 가 when I’m supposed to be saying 이. Cause it’s が…
English is my native language and every so often I catch myself starting to say that I’m “not very detailed on (that subject)” because 詳しい is just a useful word to express that.
Weirdly enough Spanish seemed to leak through a lot when I was new to learning Japanese. Some words in Spanish have a similar sound to the Japanese sound profile so it would trip me up. I haven’t even touched Spanish in like 8 years lol.
It gets better the more proficient you become at japanese. I used to mix up japanese and french a lot but it eventually stopped.
As a native English speaker, when I was living I’m Japan and studying like 10 hours a day, I would naturally speak English with Japanese grammar on accident. Like use Japanese word order with English words. Was always a crazy experience.
Not in Korean, but when I first started Japanese I mixed it up with French a lot (the foreign language I previously studied).
My husband does the same with Japanese and German. Even though the languages are different, the brain seems to just pull from the “language” section at times!
I’m kind of surprised that, as a native Korean speaker, you’d say 이것와 (also, do you pronounce the ㅅ when you say 이것와?). Have you never said これ는？
By the way, it’s written これは, not これわ！
일본어 하나실때 저도 실수 해요 ;P
I speak and read Japanese as a second language, English as my first. Never studied Korean. My wife is Japanese. During the pandemic I started watching a lot of Korean Dramas on Netflix, with Japanese subtitles for my wife’s convenience. I started to identify many words in Korean that are the same as Japanese, though pronounced a bit differently of course. These are words based on Chinese terms both languages seem to share.
At one point, I started having dreams where people were speaking to me in Korean, but I was understanding it as Japanese. Fortunately, when things opened up, I started to get out more.
I took German and French in high school then the next 5 years was all Japanese so often I think something like
今日 je suis 遅いね
I think それはやばい but that’s just moi
Or some kind of mash up like that 😂 way too often
At present, I sometimes jumble:
Japanese words into Malay sentences.
Mandarin words into Japanese sentences.
They also seem to only be exclamations, articles/particles or certain expressions; occasionally verbs, rarely nouns, and never the main point of the sentence.
Try to listen to a japanese conversation video or listen to japanese music so your mind can mimic how those japanese speakers speak with their accent instead of sticking with the korean accent.
Depending on when you left Korea to live overseas, it can affect your Korean because your grasp of the language wasn’t as ‘set in’ as it would’ve been had you left when you were older. Especially so if most of your daily life is spent talking English or other languages.
In my case, I sometimes get what I call brain farts and combine words just like you. Basically, I get stuck code-switching and it comes out similar to what you just mentioned. When it happens, I immediately correct myself just to try to not make into a habit.
I took Spanish in high school years ago and it’s super super rusty, but I think my Japanese and Spanish are stored in the same spot in my brain under “Second Language X”
Anyway on the rare occasion I need to try to belt out Spanish irl, I quickly realize my brain is trying to pull from the singular “Second Language X” folder and starts trying to form Japanese sentences immediately.
I can relate to a lesser degree. English is my first language and I’m studying Japanese. I’ve dabbled in Spanish and Spanish is spoken on occasion by some of the students in my work environment.
Sometimes I open my mouth to say Spanish words (from my limited knowledge, haha) and Japanese is at the tip of my tongue.
YES!!!!!! Korean and Japanese are both foreign languages for me. I learned Korean first and am just now studying Japanese. All during Japanese class, I want to throw in Korean vocab/grammar for all the things I don’t know yet.
For example, I don’t know the verb form for “want to (V),” so I’ll be like, “公園に行き고 싶어요.” Or maybe I tell someone that I come to school by “지하てつ.” Luckily, my brain usually figures it out when the other person has no idea what I’m talking about.
Then, during break time, when I talk to the Korean guy down the hall, I can’t remember a goddamned thing in Korean because my brain is used to supressing it to learn Japanese! It makes me want to blow my brains out!
Relatable. I live in the region where most of people speak mix of 2 local languages, adding on top of this english and a little bit of japanese and in the result I feel like my head is a mess. I can’t proficiently convey my mind in neither one without thinking twice or even more -_-
What’s the difficulty level for a mid N1 Japanese learner if he wants to study Korean?
OMG YES, ME TOO. I love learning languages so I started learning Korean after I got to be around JLPT N5 level. But later I realised that I started to mix up vocabulary a lot, so I stopped with Korean to focus on Japanese.
I don’t mix up Chinese or English with any other languages, because they’re both my native languages. Hence I guess it’s just a 3rd and 4th language kind of problem, which is FURTHER EXACERBATED by both of them being East Asian languages lol…
Although I don’t consciously learn Korean anymore, I still consume a lot of K-media from YouTube videos. Even at N3 level now, the other day I was speaking Japanese and wanted to say “hair”, but I accidentally blurted out 머리 (mori) before immediately correcting myself because I remembered that it’s Korean. Maybe some part of my brain categorised the word as Japanese because もり (mori) also exists in the Japanese language, except that it means very different things haha.
I sometimes get mixed up between Chinese hanzi and kanji because they are the same, just pronounced different
I have the same problem but I mix Japanese words into Korean sentences and vice versa •_•
I studied Korean for a bit because an ex was Kor-Am but divorced from his native language and I wanted to help him practice. I had already been learning Japanese for 4 years at that point, so I thought, “huh yeah, the grammar is similar enough this should be easy.”
Nope.
For me it was “same Chinese root” words that I fucked up all the time: 시간 and 時間(じかん) both mean time, and both sound similar to my dumb western ears so I would end up with bastard sentences in spoken Korean like: 우리는 じかんに 없어
Like….brain, what are you doing? Why Japanese noun and particle? That’s not even the right particle?
This only happened during speaking, however. Reading and writing made my brain go, “no, idiot, those are two separate languages stop that” real quick so I *want* to say it’s probably a “better with exposure” thing. Unfortunately, I stopped learning Korean after about 7 weeks because he made fun of my accent, so I can’t guarantee it gets better with time, but I’d hazard a guess that slip ups between native and learned languages happen all the time regardless of fluency level. I’m fluent in Spanish and sometimes English brain will default to a Spanish word. Likewise, when I can’t Japanese I default to a Spanish word over an English one. Brains are weird.
A fourth language, wow! You’re English is amazing by the way. I’d recommend either taking a break, or reading a lot in Korean. Maybe even read out loud. I grew up bilingual with English and Spanish, so when I learned French I would constantly mix up words. I ended up taking a break from French, and that helped.
I think it’s because the foreign language side of your brain combines everything. I speak Spanish natively. But I think English is my predominant language. However, I used to mix up “pero” and “demo” when speaking Japanese. As time passed, Japanese has become more native and I don’t have instances like that anymore (unless I’m translating in a relatively high pressure / high speed moment). Perhaps, as time passes, and you increase your speaking ability, it will not mix up so much anymore. 🙂
everyone that is a Korean speaker has this issue, but they are still way better off than any other trying to learn japanese.
I didn’t realize Filipino and Japanese words could be so similar lmfao
I’ve studied Japanese for almost 20 years and I’ve lived in Japan for some (still can’t speak it properly but ok) but a few years ago I took a Korean language class at university and I just couldn’t do it. It’s so similar, yet so different, it’s very confusing. Many words that are onyomi readings in japanese sound a lot like the same word in Korean but a little different still. And this confused me so much that I had to abandon Korean… I’m sad