저는 학생이에요 in Korean and 私は学生です in Japanese both mean "I'm a student." They even line up piece by piece: I, a small word that marks the topic, student, and then "am" at the very end.
The biggest difference is the writing.
| Korean | Japanese | |
|---|---|---|
| Writing | Hangul, with 24 basic letters that stack into blocks, one block per syllable | Hiragana and katakana, with 46 basic letters each, plus kanji |
| Chinese characters | Hardly used in everyday writing | In almost every sentence; the everyday list has 2,136 kanji |
| Sounds | Three kinds of k, like ㄱ, ㅋ and ㄲ, and the same for p, t and ch | Five vowels, each short or long, and a pitch accent |
| Word order | The verb comes last, and particles follow nouns | The verb comes last, and particles follow nouns |
| Polite speech | Verb endings change with who you're talking to | Verb endings change with who you're talking to |
| Where it's spoken | South Korea and North Korea, with about 81 million speakers in all | Japan, with about 123 million speakers in all |
Yes, many, because both took a large share of their words from Chinese. About 57% of the words in the main Korean dictionary and about 60% of the words in modern Japanese dictionaries are built from Chinese characters.
| Meaning | Korean | Japanese | Chinese characters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Student | 학생 | 学生 | 學生 |
| Library | 도서관 | 図書館 | 圖書館 |
Korean writes these words in Hangul, so you see the sound. Japanese keeps the characters, so you see the meaning.
The U.S. Foreign Service Institute (FSI) plans the same time for both: 88 weeks, or 2,200 class hours, for its English-speaking students to speak and understand either one at a professional level.
| Study per week | FSI full-time course, Korean or Japanese (2,200 hours) |
|---|---|
| 3½ hours | About 12 years 1 month |
| 7 hours | About 6 years |
| 14 hours | About 3 years |
| 28 hours | About 1 year 6 months |
These are hours in class. FSI students also study about 17 hours a week on their own.
| If you want to… | Start with |
|---|---|
| Watch K-dramas or read webtoons in Korean | Korean |
| Watch anime or read manga in Japanese | Japanese |
| Live in Seoul or Busan | Korean |
| Live in Tokyo or Osaka | Japanese |
| Talk with a partner or family who speaks one of them | Their language |
Korean: Ordering at a Cafe
카페에서 주문하기
This is inside a cafe.
Is this a cafe? Do you have coffee?
Yes, it is a cafe. Americano is popular.
Please give me an Americano.
Japanese: A Break at a Cafe
カフェでひと休み
Kenta goes to a cafe.
I will drink coffee.
The tea is not hot.
I will eat cake.
It is delicious.
Poppy, your AI tutor, wrote both of these Level 1 lessons in Bubblegum, a language app.
Bubblegum
Bubblegum is the best app for serious learners. You learn from text and audio you can mostly understand, which is called comprehensible input.
Choose Korean or Japanese, and Poppy writes each lesson around a topic you like. If a line is hard, ask her about it.
- Start with the Hangul course for Korean, or with the Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji Basics courses for Japanese.
- Japanese lessons can show furigana over the kanji, and Korean words can show the Hanja they come from.
- Pick Busan Korean, or Kansai or Fukuoka Japanese, if that's the way the people you know talk.
- When you save a word, Regenerative Review™ has Poppy use it again in a later lesson.
- Clear, expressive AI voices read every lesson aloud, with a different voice for each speaker.
- A manga or webtoon you own can't become a lesson. Send Poppy a photo of the page you're stuck on, and she explains it line by line.
- Poppy is an AI, so for real conversations, add lessons with a tutor.
- A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so your first one is free, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn.
- Regenerative Review™
Mobile
Are Korean and Japanese Related?
No family link has been proven. Some linguists say they look alike because their speakers lived side by side for a long time, and because early Japanese took many words from early Korean.
Are Japanese Kanji the Same as Korean Hanja?
They come from the same Chinese characters, but Japan made many of them simpler in 1946. That's why Japanese writes "country" as 国, while Korean keeps the older 國 for the same word.
Which App Should a Beginner Choose?
If you are serious about learning a language, start with Bubblegum. Poppy writes lessons at your level about things you like. To compare more options for each language, see the Korean app comparison and the Japanese app comparison.
Is Bubblegum Free?
Yes. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn. It holds lessons that other learners asked Poppy for. A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so your first one is free, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Korean language (about 81 million speakers; subject–object–verb order; Hanja largely unused in everyday life; Vovin on borrowing and contact between Korean and Japanese)
- Wikipedia, Japanese language (around 123 million speakers; Japan the only country where it is the national language; subject–object–verb order with particles; five vowels with short and long versions; pitch accent)
- Wikipedia, Hangul (24 basic letters: 14 consonants and 10 vowels)
- Wikipedia, Hiragana (48 base characters, two of them used only in some proper names, so 46 in everyday use)
- Wikipedia, Katakana (46 basic letters)
- Wikipedia, Korean phonology (a three-way contrast of plain, tense and aspirated consonants)
- Wikipedia, Jōyō kanji (the list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010)
- Wikipedia, Sino-Korean vocabulary (about 57% of the Standard Korean Language Dictionary of the National Institute of Korean Language)
- Wikipedia, Sino-Japanese vocabulary (about 60% of the words in modern Japanese dictionaries are kango, built from Sino-Japanese elements)
- Wikipedia, Korean honorifics (speech levels marked by verb endings)
- Wikipedia, Honorific speech in Japanese (polite, respectful and humble language)
- Wikipedia, Shinjitai (the simplified kanji used in Japan since 1946, such as 国 for 國)
- Wiktionary, 国 (Japanese kanji for country, whose old form is 國; Korean lists 国 only as an alternative form of 國)
- Wiktionary, 학생 (student; Hanja 學生)
- Wiktionary, 学生 (student, Japanese)
- Wiktionary, 도서관 (library; Hanja 圖書館)
- Wiktionary, 図書館 (library, Japanese)
- U.S. Department of State, Foreign Language Training (Category IV: Japanese and Korean, 88 weeks or 2,200 class hours, for an ILR 3 in speaking and listening; a typical week is 23 hours in class and 17 hours of self-study)
- Bubblegum
Checked on October 5, 2026 against each app's own pages.
