Korean Language

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The Korean language is spoken by approximately 72 million people around the world. In addition to the 42 million people in South Korea (Republic of Korea) and 20 million in North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK), Korean is spoken in Korean communities in China, Japan, United States, Canada, the former Soviet Union, and South America, among other places.

Korean is generally said to belong to the Altaic language group of central Asia, Siberia, and Mongolia. Some linguists maintain that Korean also belongs to the larger Ural-Altaic family, which includes Hungarian and Finnish. Archaeological and anthropological evidence, as shown in similarities in shamanism, language, and archaeological remains, supports the theory that Korean civilization is linked to that of its neighbors in central Asia and Siberia.

People on the Korean peninsula spoke different languages through the Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE–667 CE) until 668 when Shilla unified the lower two-thirds of the peninsula. When the Later Three Kingdoms arose and Shilla fell in 935 to Koryo (918–1392), the northern dialect of Kaesong (also called Kaegyong; the capital of Koryo) became dominant. The language of the Choson dynasty (1392–1910) was similar to the dominant language of Kaesong.

In the early 2000s, there are two official dialects of the capitals of Seoul, South Korea, and P'yongyang, North Korea. South Koreans call their official dialect p'yojuno (standard language), while North Koreans call theirs munhwao (cultured language). The two dialects are very similar and show only minor differences, as in the use of foreign loanwords. There are also numerous regional and provincial dialects, but they are also mutually understandable.

Korean has fourteen consonants (five of which can be doubled) and ten vowels (with eleven additional vowel combinations or diphthongs). A morpheme is the smallest distinct unit of the Korean language, similar to an English syllable. A Korean morpheme must be formed of least one consonant and one vowel, but may have one or two additional consonants at the end.

Korean sentences are verb-final and are ordered subject-object-verb (I-flower-see), whereas English is subject-verb-object (I see a/the flower). The subject or object or both may be omitted in some cases, and in others, the subject and object order may be flipped to convey a specific meaning. The most important point is that the verb is always at the end, and every sentence must have a verb, although it need not have a subject or object.

Korean lacks articles such as a or the, but there are other means of distinguishing a specific noun. For example, ku (that) can be used similarly to the English word the when referring to something that has already been introduced into the conversation.

While there is a plural noun marker (dul), it is often omitted. In the previous example, the listener must discern from context whether the speaker sees one flower or many flowers. Korean nouns are not masculine or feminine, as in French and Spanish. Korean also does not have specific masculine or feminine pronouns such as he or she.

The most commonly used pronouns are I or we. You is rarely used, as Koreans generally use the listener's name and/or title instead. Instead of he/she/they, a speaker might use the referent's name or title or both, or a generic phrase such as this/that person.

Korean is a highly agglutinative language with numerous suffixes that can be added to word stems and each other. These suffixes help clarify the meaning of a sentence. For example, markers can indicate the subject (i/ga), topic (un/nun), or object (ul/rul) of a sentence. The first marker in each example (i, un, ul) is used if the preceding morpheme ends in a consonant. If it ends in a vowel, the second marker (ga, nun, rul) is used. Modifiers precede the nouns they modify. For example, "the flower that is in bloom" would be expressed in Korean as "in-bloom flower."

Korean has different speech levels, specific to the relative social positions of the speaker, the subject of the sentence, and the listener. There are at least six levels of speech in contemporary Korean, but the four most commonly used levels are formal polite (deferential) style (verb stem + [su]mnida), informal polite style (verb stem + ayo/oyo), plain (essay) style (verb stem + [nu]nda), and casual style (verb stem + a/o.)

A verb stem is the root of any verb minus the da ending from its dictionary (infinitive) form. The use of ayo/oyo in the informal polite style and a/o in the casual style depends on the vowel harmony rule and the "bright" (a or the long o) or "dark" vowel (u and the short o) in the verb stem. Bright vowels combine with a, and dark vowels combine with o. This is called the vowel harmony rule because bright vowels complement other bright vowels.

A speaker will choose the speech level most appropriate to his or her relationship to the listener. The speaker also must consider the subject of a sentence in determining if subject honorifics are needed. For example, verbs and certain nouns must be changed to their honorific forms if the subject is older or in some other way superior to the speaker or listener.

Korean language is highly dependent on context. Because nouns and topics are often omitted, and pronouns are not commonly used, the listener must often infer the speaker's intent from nongrammatical clues such as nuance and conversation flow.

Korean has numerous loanwords in its vocabulary, most of which are derived from Chinese. Chinese loanwords have corresponding Chinese characters, but in many cases there are also native Korean counterparts. In recent years, there have also been many loanwords from Japanese and English as well as some European languages. Japanese and English loanwords have become common because of the economic and cultural ties among Korea, Japan, and the United States. The loanword, however, may not retain the exact meaning it had in its original language.

North Koreans do not use as many foreign loanwords because of their relative isolation from other countries. This was further enforced by the North Korean juche ideology, which literally means "selfreliance" and refers to the official nationalist discourse of the DPRK.

Prior to the 1446 promulgation of the hunmin chongum (proper sounds to instruct the people), there was no native writing system. Official documents were translated into and written in classical or literary Chinese. Because of the difficulty of learning Chinese characters, literacy in Korea was generally limited to males of the upper class.

There were two native writing methods involving Chinese characters. Idu was a system utilized by clerks for administrative purposes and was widely used even into the nineteenth century. In idu, some Chinese characters were used for their meaning while others were used to stand for Korean syntax. Hyangch'al was another system that used Chinese characters, but only for their phonetic value. This system was used predominantly to record literature.

Hunmin chongum was used primarily by women and commoners. Official documents continued to be written in classical Chinese and idu. From the 1890s, hunmin chongum became revitalized as the official script and is known today as hangul.

The ease of learning this phonetic script is the reason why Korean literacy is nearly 100 percent. Nonnative speakers often can learn the basics of the modern Korean script in a matter of days. While Chinese characters (hancha) are used less and less in South Korea, and most newspapers are written in hangul, students learn 3,600 Chinese characters by the time they graduate from high school.

Korean Overseas Information Service. (1993) A Handbook of Korea. 9th ed. Seoul, South Korea: Korean Overseas Information Service.

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