By Korea.net Honorary Reporters Esraa Elzeny and Salwa Elzeny from Egypt

Did you know that you've mastered one of the most difficult 10 languages in the world?

Yes, Korean is one of the most difficult languages in the world. Around the world, there are nearly 80 million Korean speakers, mostly in South Korea and North Korea, but also in China, Australia, the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Japan and the Philippines.

For many, the Korean language is one of the most important elements of their self-identity. It is a language of adhesion. It's characterized by its great dependence on the construction of vocabulary and the demonstration of the grammatical relations of adhesion. Its words consist of a root of the word and a set of elements that give clear meaning, and function sticks to the first root and to the last.

This leads some linguists to say that the distant roots of modern Korean belong to a single family of extremely diverse languages such as Mongolian, Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish.

Korean and Japanese share many grammatical characteristics, but they differ in terms of vocabularies and the suffixes that attach to the root of the word, which makes it unlikely that their origins are common.

Although the Korean language is one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn for people whose native language is English, the internet has made the world a small village and it has become easier and simpler to learn, no matter what your native language is. Talk To Me In Korean is a website to learn Korean. It's a very special site and is followed by many Korean language learners. The website teaches Korean in English only. Korea.net sat down for an interview with the team at Talk To Me In Korean to learn more about how to learn Korean at home.

- Where did the idea for Talk To Me In Korean come from and how did you all meet? Is there someone or company that supports you and helps you, or are you the only six people who work on the site?

Back in the early 2000s, I, Hyunwoo, the founder, started making non-Korean friends for the first time. Back then, there were already Korean language schools and books that people could study with, but not entirely on their own. If they weren't a student, they had to learn by themselves, but there were very few books or resources online to help them study Korean. So many of them just had to rely on asking their friends. I also got a lot of the same, repeated questions over time about the Korean language and modern-day Korean society, and I didn't have enough time to answer all the questions for everyone. So, naturally, I started making online content that people could just read, listen to, or watch on their own. That eventually evolved into a proper website and a business, which is now Talk To Me In Korean.

As for how we all met, Kyeong-eun and I first became friends through a language exchange group that I was hosting. I found that she was also very interested in teaching Korean, and she was willing to dedicate a lot of her time and energy to this project, so I asked her to quit her job and join me. I met all the other members as well through chance encounters, getting to know them one-by-one in casual settings, but then I also found them passionate about helping people teach Korean, so we are all now working together.

We are a six-person team for now, and we are fully supported by ourselves through the revenue we generate through our sales of book, e-books and video courses. We are very happy about it, because we've been able to create a niche market that didn't exist before.

- Was the great success achieved by the site expected?

In a way, yes. We didn't know how long it would take us to establish a brand, but we had total and absolute confidence in what we were going to do. For us, this is only the beginning. We launched the site eight years ago, and we are very excited about where we will be eight years from now.

- To which level of Korean ability can followers of Talk To Me In Korean study?

With our books and online lessons, you can go from knowing absolutely nothing about the Korean language to becoming very fluent, like newspaper-reading and movie-watching-without-subtitles fluent.

- What are the new plans to increase the number of Korean speakers around the world?

We want to make our books and lessons available to more people. We are currently publishing about four free lessons every week on our website, but we want to increase that number. We are currently publishing about four new textbooks a year and we want to increase that number, too. We also want to reach out to other organizations around the world and create new distribution channels.

- We know that your books are sold on your website, but where can anyone who visits Korea get books from a physical bookshop in Korea?

You can go to any major bookstore in Korea, like Kyobo or Youngpoong, to buy our books.

- Are there any plans to teach Korean in more languages other than English, such as simplified Chinese or Mandarin, Arabic or French?

For now, there is still a lot to be done in teaching Korean through the English language, so we won't be able to expand into teaching Korean through other languages any time soon, but we definitely want to do that in the future.

- Through your statistics, what's the largest country in terms of the number of followers you have or Korean learners you see?

We have the largest number of users from the U.S., and then surprisingly the number two country in our statistics is Korea. There are many people who have moved to Korea for work or to study and who want to learn Korean on their own, so they use our online lessons and books.

- What is the most successful way to learn Korean for someone who's native language is English?

We get this question a lot. There can be a million different ways and methods to study any language. The most important thing is not how you study, but it is that you continue to study. As long as you figure out how you will continue to learn, you will definitely learn and succeed in your learning.

- What are the most common mistakes that you see students make?

The most universally made mistake is using casual language to someone with whom you shouldn't. We always tell people to always, always, always stick to formal language at first until you get approval from the other person to speak informally, especially if the other person is older than you.

wisdom117@korea.kr

* This article is written by a Korea.net Honorary Reporter. Our group of Honorary Reporters are from all around the world, and they share with Korea.net their love and passion for all things Korean.