Good Luck with your work – Translation into Korean

Korean called Hangugeo 한국어/韓國語, in South Korea and Chosŏnmal, 조선말/朝鮮말 in North Korea, is an East Asian language spoken by about 77 million people. It is both their official and national languages, with different standardized official forms used in each country. It is a recognised minority language in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin Province, China. It is also spoken in parts of Sakhalin, Russia and Central Asia.

Modern Korean is understood to have descended from the Middle Korean, which emerged from the Old Korean, which itself, culminated from the Proto-Koreanic language, that is suggested to have its linguistic homeland somewhere in Manchuria. Studies suggest that the Proto-Koreans, who were present in northern Korea, expanded into the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them). Both had an influence on each other and later a founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families. Chinese characters arrived in Korea with Buddhism during the Proto-Three Kingdoms era (1st century BC) and were adapted for Korean that came to be known as Hanja, and remained as the main script for writing Korean for over a millennium alongside various phonetic scripts that were later invented such as Idu, Gugyeol and Hyangchal. The majority of the population remained illiterate, as Hanja remained reserved for reading and writing by the privileged elites – the nobles!

Thus Hanja came to be the original text ever studied and learnt in Korea, but restricted to study by nobles only. As a result, most people remained illiterate. To increase literacy amongst his subjects, King Sejong the Great, of the 15th century, personally developed an alphabetic featural writing system, (Hun Min Joeong Um meaning correct sounds to educate the people- known today as Hangul) consisting of 28 basic characters, as he strongly believed that restricted use of Hanja, had resulted due to inadequacy to write Korean. Today, Hangul has only 24 are in use with 14 consonants and 10 vowels.

Introduced first in the document Hunminjeongeum, Hangul was called as eonmun (colloquial script) and it spread like fire nationwide to increase literacy in Korea. While Hangul was widely used by all the Korean classes, it was often treated as amkeul (script for women), and disregarded by privileged elites, who upheld Hanja as jinseo (true text). And it wasn’t until the 17th century, the elite class of Yangban started exchanging Hangul letters with their slaves, suggesting a high literacy rate of Hangul during the Joseon era. 

Today, Hanja remains important for historical and linguistic studies only and is largely unused in everyday life due to inconvenience. Hanja is not officially used in North Korea anymore, and their usage in South Korea is reduced to specific publications, such as newspapers, scholarly papers, and disambiguation. 

• Good luck with your work

당신의 작품으로 행운을 빕니다

dangsinui jakpumeuro haenguneul bipnida

• Wish you success in all your endeavours

모든 노력에서 성공하기를 기원합니다.

modeun noryeogeseo seonggonghagireul giwonhapnida.

• may you be successful

성공할 수 있습니다.

seonggonghal su issseupnida.

• wish you success in your work

당신의 일에 성공하기를 기원합니다

dangsinui ire seonggonghagireul giwonhapnida

• good luck at work

직장에서 행운을 빕니다.

jikjangeseo haenguneul bipnida.

IMO, Korean is a beautiful and lovely language to learn. Unlike most East-Asian languages, it is not a tonal language. Chinese and Japanese words have different meanings if you pronounce them in different ways. But in Korean, every sound has one associated meaning. This makes mastering Korean pronunciation infinitely easier than other languages. Even languages that are very similar to English can be a challenge if you lack motivation or use ineffective language learning methods.  As long as you want to learn Korean and you have a good motivation for doing so, you’ll find the language much easier to learn than “easier” languages. Korean also doesn’t have consonant clusters, like Polish for example. Just like in Italian, vowels follow consonants in every syllable. And unlike French or Arabic, Korean doesn’t contain aspirated or throaty sounds. This may surprise you, but Korean grammar isn’t all that complicated either. In fact, it’s easy to master. Of course, there are some concepts that are greatly different from English grammar, but that’s the case with every language. Just like in English, nouns in Korean refer to a person, place, thing, or idea. One great thing about the Korean language is that it doesn’t use genders for nouns. So, you won’t have to worry whether the table is feminine, masculine, or neuter. Korean doesn’t have adjectives. Instead of “red”, they have a verb that means “to be red”. If you want to say that something is red, you need to conjugate that specific verb to describe it. And there are no articles you need to memorize along with the words like in Spanish or French.OptiLingo is the language learning app that brings you results. You can quickly boost your Korean speaking skills. How? By practising the most common words and phrases, you’ll learn to speak exactly like the locals.

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