Japanese vs Korean
How to tell Japanese from Korean
Japanese and Korean have strikingly similar grammar (subject-object-verb, particles, honorific verb forms) and both have a large Chinese-derived vocabulary, but no proven genetic relationship. Korean writes in the Hangul alphabet; Japanese mixes kanji and kana.
The short answer
Hangul gives Korean away: blocks of circles and straight lines such as 한국어, with spaces between words. Japanese mixes kanji with curly hiragana and angular katakana and uses no spaces. In speech, Korean syllables often end in consonants, while Japanese ones mostly end in a vowel or n.
The verdict
Circles and stacked blocks (ㅇ, 한) mean Korean. Curvy kana and Chinese characters mean Japanese.
Closeness score
9 / 30
Mutually intelligible?
no
Shared vocabulary
Roughly 60% of Korean dictionary vocabulary and about half of Japanese is Chinese-derived; many such words correspond
Which first?
Either order works; grammar transfers almost 1:1.
Kungfucius says: Grammatical twins raised by different scripts.
Side by side
toshokan도서관 (圖書館)
doseogwanSino-Japanese and Sino-Korean readings of the same characters; Japanese writes the shinjitai 図.
junbi준비 (準備)
junbiOne of the cognates where Japanese and Korean readings coincide exactly.
wa은/는
eun/neunBoth languages mark the topic with a particle after the noun; Korean picks 은 after a consonant and 는 after a vowel.
yakusoku약속 (約束)
yaksokA clear cognate pair: same characters, closely related readings.