[KS] Korean edge: Japanese learning Korean and Korean becoming Japanese?

[Cedar Bough Blomberg]

Just to reply to one small part of your posting:

The similiar pronunciations of many Sino-Korean words is an enormous
bonus for Korean students of Chinese, and conversely for Chinese
students of Korean.  Whether that explains why Koreans in China lose
Korean, I wouldn't know.  I would think that they lose Korean more
because of the overwhelming presence of Chinese and the (subtle?)
propaganda by the Chinese government that leads people living in China
to feel so overwhelmingly proud of the country, and all it's assets
including the Chinese language.   If Koreans in China lived in more
isolated areas that were economically still quite depressed, then
perhaps they'd have more of a community feeling leading to more
preservation of their own language.  But Koreans in China live along
the more densely populated Eastern cresent, are less isolated and more
economically integrated in Chinese society.

As for how Sino-Korean similarities in pronunciation help, I think
it's mostly a sort of word-association memory trick... for example,
many English speaking foreigners can remember the Korean word 많이
because it sounds so similiar to 'many' and has a fairly similiar
meaning as well.