1. Japanese: I like the kanji, it is very recognizable, even the character set is different. Most Chinese will have no problem reading traditional Chinese characters, though somewhat slower. The rest...not so much, kanas are my biggest headache.
2. Korean: First thing I noticed is the presence of circle, which is not part of Chinese radicals until very recently. Because it looks like bubbles, so it looks somewhat ... cute? No meaning can be inferred beyond that. Also the use of spaces are noticeable.
The Sound:
1. Japanese: Fast. Less variation in the speech itself. Notice the presence of pitch. The kanji based words sound very different from what it would sound like in Chinese
2. Korean: Not as fast as Japanese, but still faster than Chinese. A lot of unfamiliar sounds that are absent in Chinese pronunciation. Sometimes I would be able to find one word or two that sounds like Chinese and makes sense in the context, but the rest is just foreign.
Question to Korean speakers:
Do you guys recognize each individual Hangul character's meaning (under the context of the word of course) if that word has a Chinese origin? Or the word is recognized as whole. For example 부동산(real estate), comes from the Japanese kanji word, 不動産, which in Chinese means 不(not)動(moving)産(assets). Does this inferential aspect of Chinese still apply in certain cases once it is written in Hangul?
> 1. The kanji based words sound very different from what it would sound like in Chinese
This is because you are probably speaking in mandarin which has deviated a great deal from Middle Chinese ever since the Jurchen Jin conquered northern China.
But if you were to compare it to a more conservative Chinese language like min-nan or some other southern chinese language, the similarities are unmistakable.
美人： Bi Jin (JP) , Bi Jin (minnan), meiren(mandarin)
簡単: Kantan(JP), Kan Tan (minnan), jiandan (mandarin)
時間: JiKan (JP), Si Kan (minnan), shijian (mandarin)
世界: sekai (JP), Sei Kai (minnan), shijie (mandarin)
速度: sokudo (JP), Sok Do (minnan), shudu (mandarin)
確認: kakunin (JP), Kak Nin or Kak Lin (minnan), queren
(mandarin)
区别: ku betsu (JP), ku piat (minnan) , qu bie (mandarian)
人類: jin rui (JP), Jin Lui (minnan), ren lei (mandarin)
and korean:
金 ： Kim (kr), Kim (minnan), Jin (mandarin)
新婦： Sim Pu (kr) , Sim Pu (minnan), Xin fu (mandarin)
學生： hag saeng (kr) , hak seng (minnan), xue sheng
(mandarin)
參加：Cham Ga (kr) , Tsham Ka (minnan), Can Jia (mandarin)
Notice how minnan and korean preserves the ending consonants like "t" and "g" sounds while Japanese simulates the ending consonant with a new character. So the character 速 is pronounced Sok but in Japanese is split into So & Ku where ku simulates the ending consonant.
Mandarin just does away with ending consonants completely. Many other changes such as the lack of the "f" and "v" sound in early middle chinese which is preserved in korean and minnan but not in other Chinese languages where many "b" consonants are converted into "f" consonants. Or the lack of ending "m" consonant in mandarin which is still present in minnan and korean.
> For example 부동산(real estate), comes from the Japanese kanji word, 不動産, which in Chinese means 不(not)動(moving)産(assets). Does this inferential aspect of Chinese still apply in certain cases once it is written in Hangul?
It depends. For this particular example, I think most Koreans will treat 부동산 as a single word meaning "real estate", because it's not a very productive combination: the alternative 동산 (moveable properties?) is a legal term which is much less common, and 산(産) as "property" isn't common either.
On the other hand, a word like 고밀도화(高密度化 - densification) is transparently decomposable to 고(高 high) + 밀도(密度 density) + 화(化 -ify). Few people can write it down in hanja (I just copy-pasted from dictionary), but most people will immediately recognize its meaning, even if they've never seen the word before.
That example is interesting. The Japanese word for real estate, 不動産, actually came from French [1], 'immobilier' (real estate, by opposition to what is movable or 'mobile' such as 'meubles' or 'mobilier', i.e. furniture). And of course the French word comes from Latin...
The Japanese would treat the whole combination as a single word (in my experience) and wouldn't analyse the components either (although 'they make sense').
The etymology is often more apparent in Japanese and Chinese thanks to the characters, whereas it's not always easy to see it in other language (unless you speak Latin or Greek..). But this is a borrowed word and in this particular case it's very intuitive to French speakers as immobilier / mobilier / mobile are all common words.
I think this answers part of my question as how modern Korean create new words/concepts, if not via English loanwords. So those word roots could still be applied in certain cases.
As native Chinese speaker:
The Look:
1. Japanese: I like the kanji, it is very recognizable, even the character set is different. Most Chinese will have no problem reading traditional Chinese characters, though somewhat slower. The rest...not so much, kanas are my biggest headache.
2. Korean: First thing I noticed is the presence of circle, which is not part of Chinese radicals until very recently. Because it looks like bubbles, so it looks somewhat ... cute? No meaning can be inferred beyond that. Also the use of spaces are noticeable.
The Sound:
1. Japanese: Fast. Less variation in the speech itself. Notice the presence of pitch. The kanji based words sound very different from what it would sound like in Chinese
2. Korean: Not as fast as Japanese, but still faster than Chinese. A lot of unfamiliar sounds that are absent in Chinese pronunciation. Sometimes I would be able to find one word or two that sounds like Chinese and makes sense in the context, but the rest is just foreign.
Question to Korean speakers:
Do you guys recognize each individual Hangul character's meaning (under the context of the word of course) if that word has a Chinese origin? Or the word is recognized as whole. For example 부동산(real estate), comes from the Japanese kanji word, 不動産, which in Chinese means 不(not)動(moving)産(assets). Does this inferential aspect of Chinese still apply in certain cases once it is written in Hangul?