By Honorary Reporter Seema Thomas from India

Photo = Seema Thomas

Since watching Korean movies and dramas, I keep noticing similarities between Indian and Korean culture, especially in language.

Korean is a foreign language to me, but certain words I've heard in movies and dramas sound so similar to my native tongue. I eventually started paying more attention to the audio along with the subtitles. After I started to learn Korean, I found similarities between Korean and Indian languages.

The vast number of Indian languages ​​can be broadly classified into two groups based on roots: the Indo-Aryan family prominent in northern India and Dravidian in the south. More than the former group, Dravidian languages ​​​​have similarities to Korean, especially Tamil. I learned Tamil years ago and it greatly helped me when I started learning Korean. From letters to word structure and even vocabulary, Tamil has many similarities with Korean.

Letters and sentence structure
Most Indian languages ​​​​have a specific letter for each sound even if each is a slight variation of another sound. Thus most ​​​​have a large set of consonants. Tamil is similar to Korean in this aspect as it has only a few sets of consonants and even certain letters with a similar structure.

The Korean and Tamil alphabets have similarities.

The sentence structures of Korean and Tamil are also similar.

Similar words
Many words in Korean have similar counterparts in Tamil. The illustration below presents examples.

Both Korean and Tamil have similar words like eomma (mother) and nal (day).

enny0611@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.