Grammatical Error Analysis of Korean Learners of Hindi: Focusing on Beginning Learners

Abstract

This study presents an empirical analysis of grammatical errors produced by beginning-level Korean learners of Hindi enrolled in a university course. Drawing on exam data from 30 students (20 female, 10 male) who took a beginning Hindi class at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in the second semester of 2025, a total of 450 error tokens were collected. Errors were classified into five categories: morphological errors, syntactic errors, postposition (case-marker) errors, tense–aspect errors, and transfer errors. Excluding transfer errors, the core grammar set (N = 415) showed the following distribution: morphological errors—including gender–number and subject–verb agreement—were most frequent (38.1%), followed by postposition errors (27.2%), syntactic errors (21.7%), and tense–aspect errors (13.0%). These results suggest that structural differences between Korean and Hindi, cross-linguistic influence from English, and the developmental trajectory of learners’ interlanguage operate jointly to shape error patterns. Pedagogically, the findings argue for error-based instruction in Hindi grammar, emphasizing explicit, systematic teaching at the beginning level—particularly focused on agreement systems and postposition use. agents.