(Probably the hardest thing is listening comprehension. But this isn't specific to Korean. When we hear our native language, we recognize and process the speech signal almost instantaneously, retrieving words from a mental lexicon and deconstructing sentences in a split second. When I hear actual Korean, I struggle to match up what my ears catch with what I know about the language. It's too fast—my ears aren't nearly fast enough—and words change shape when they're shoved next to each other in people's mouths. Again, that's not a Korean thing. That's a speech thing. I think of myself as someone with a great ear: I'm "good at accents," I can easily identify voices, I'm sensitive to slight differences in speech. I studied phonetics in grad school. This is supposed to be my thing. But when I hear Korean—even simple Korean I should have no trouble with—I just sit there staring dumbly. My reading comprehension, though just at a beginner level, leaves my listening comprehension in the dust. I'm really self-conscious about this. Now that I think of it, I had the same problem with Russian in college. I enjoyed learning Russian grammar, and my vocabulary and pronunciation were pretty good. But when I was faced with an actual person speaking Russian to me—or at me, as it often felt—my ears just couldn't keep up. One of my professors was so eager to keep me taking Russian she told me to concentrate on learning grammar and vocabulary. "So, you won't talk. That's OK.")
One thing that doesn't contribute much to the challenge is hangeul, the ingenious Korean writing system. It's just an alphabet, after all—only 33 symbols. Yes, the letters are arranged into units in a way that takes a little getting used to, but an alphabet isn't too tough to learn.
But Korean does have a number of features that cause me a lot of problems. (I'm ignoring the not inconsiderable fact that, at all levels, Korean is structured in such a way that renders it a backward English.) The one I want to talk about now is Korean's systems of marking deference and politeness.
Korean requires (polite, respectful) speakers to employ different verb forms, different case markers, and even completely different words when speaking to those worthy of a heightened level of respect. If I ask my friend about renovations going on at his house, I will use the word 집 (chip "house"), but if I ask about, say, the renovations undertaken by my math professor*, I have to use the word 댁 (taek). There's a whole list of word-pairs like this, covering (mostly) highly personal matters, like age, name, birthday, health, and eating.
The Honorific System
Then there are different words for things like giving and meeting with someone, depending on their status or the level of deference due to them. If I want to say, "I gave my friend a book," that might be 전 친구한테 책을 줬어요 (Cheon ["I"] chinguhante ["to my friend"] chaegeul ["a book"] jweosseoyo ["gave"]). But "I gave my grandfather a book" could be 전 하라버님께 책을 드렸어요 (Cheon ["I"] harabeonimkke ["to my grandfather"] chaegeul ["a book"] deuryeosseoyo ["gave"]). The two things that make this frustrating are 1) there's a different dative marker depending on the status of the recipient of the action (한테 for regular-old people vs. 께 for those deserving special respect), and 2) there's a different verb entirely! When you give something to your friend or someone of your social level, you use 주다 (juda)—which shows up here as 줬어요 (jweosseoyo)—but for those you wish to honor, you use 드리다 (deurida)—which shows up here as 드렸어요 (deuryeosseoyo). Actually, 드리다 doesn't really mean "give"—it means "give to someone to whom you show respect"! (Maybe 드리다 should be translated as "bestow upon," which would at least indicate its heightened sense.)
And when there isn't a special verb, Korean requires you to stick in the particle (으)시 ([eu]shi) when speaking about someone you wish to (or need to) honor. To say "The dog lives in the city" I could say, 개가 도시에 살아요 (Kaega toshie sarayo). But if I want to say, "The president of the company lives in the city," that would be 사장님께서 도시에 사세요 (Sajangnimkkeseo toshie saseyo). It might not look like that special honorific particle (으)시 is in that president-of-the-company example, but it is. It just helpfully changed shape. So that everything would be just that much more complicated.
Wrapping your head around this is a challenge. Remembering when to use different vocabulary and how to form the honorific forms of regular verbs takes real effort. For an American English speaker, this whole system goes against the grain. For one thing, English grammar (that is, the entire system of rules and patterns underlying the language) just doesn't do this stuff. While English speakers (of course) modify their speech depending on context—you probably wouldn't speak to your friend's elderly grandmother the same way you'd speak to your friend—we don't have anything that matches the systematic nature of this kind of code-switching. And while it would be laughable to claim that America is a society without class distinctions (ha ha?), I think it is true that American customs—in general—speak to a certain (perhaps illusory) egalitarianism. It's not unusual to call your boss by his or her first name. We sometimes like to pretend class distinctions don't exist. Calling attention to or emphasizing someone's (or even one's own) status can seem impolite.
So that's hard. Korean requires you to pay attention to this and make judgments about it, if only to select the correct words and case endings and verb forms. But it gets worse.
It Gets Worse
As tricky as this can be, the whole thing is complicated by the fact that there's a separate set of considerations and forms overlaid on top of the honorific system: the system of politeness. (Or maybe it's best thought of as formality? Or social distance? Or I'm not really sure what? You might need to grow up inside this to really get it.)
Whereas the honorific system deals with your relationship to the person you're talking about, the politeness system deals with your relationship to the person you're talking to. If you're talking to a stranger or someone of higher status (and maybe in certain formal situations?), your sentences must end in -요 (yo). That particle doesn't really mean anything, exactly. It merely signals or acknowledges that the nature of your discourse is of a certain degree of formality or social distance.
(There are other sentence-ending markers, too, corresponding to yet other relationships between speaker and listener, but I think I understand them even less. And enough is enough, already.)
The part that's especially annoying is that the honorific markers and the politeness marker are independent of each other. You can make well-formed sentences with every combination of deference and formality: 1) talking about an "honored" person to a person with whom you share a degree of social distance, 2) talking about an "honored" person to a person with whom you have a more intimate relationship, 3) talking about someone who isn't "honored" to a person with whom you share a degree of social distance, and 4) talking about someone who isn't "honored" to a person with whom you have a more intimate relationship.
So! If our situation involves me talking to someone about someone, say, traveling —여행하다 (yeohaenghada)—the verb will take four different forms, depending on who I'm talking about and who I'm talking to.
1) Talking about my math professor* to my friend's parents: 여행하세요 (yeohaenghaseyo)
2) Talking about my math professor* to my buddy: 여행하셔 (yeohaenghasyeo)
3) Talking about my buddy to my friend's parents: 여행해요 (yeohaenghaeyo)
4) Talking about my buddy to my other buddy: 여행해 (yeohaenghae)
You know, looking at all this, I don't feel quite so bad about having trouble with the whole mess.
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