Korean Language

History of the Korean language. Moreover, you will find other useful resources about Korean like words, schools, Korean literature and more

Korean Language History

ROOTS OF THE KOREAN LANGUAGE

There is a consensus among linguists that Korean is a member of the Altaic family of languages, which originated in northern Asia and includes the Mongol, Turkic, Finnish, Hungarian, and Tungusic (Manchu) languages. Despite the fact that Korean and Japanese have some similar grammatical structures, a historical relationship between the two languages has not been established so far.

The Korean language may be written using a mixture of Chinese ideograms ("Hanja") and a native Korean alphabet known as "Hangul", or in "Hangul" alone, much as in a more limited way Indo-European languages sometimes write numbers using Arabic symbols and at other times spell numbers out in their own alphabets or in some combination of the two forms.

Because of its greater variety of sounds, Korean does not have the problem of the Japanese written language, which some experts have argued needs to retain a sizable inventory of Chinese characters to distinguish a large number of potentially ambiguous sounds.

Although the Korean and Chinese languages are not related in terms of grammatical structure, more than 50 percent of all Korean vocabulary is derived from Chinese loanwords, a reflection of the cultural dominance of China over 2 millennia.

Large numbers of Chinese character compounds coined in Japan in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries to translate modern Western scientific, technical, and political vocabulary came into use in Korea during the colonial period. Post-1945 United States influence has been reflected in a number of English words that have been absorbed into Korean. Unlike Chinese, Korean does not encompass dialects that are mutually unintelligible. There are, however, regional variations both in vocabulary and pronunciation.

THE NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE

It is unclear to what extent the honorific language and its grammatical forms have been retained in the north. The North Korean regime has a policy that has attempted to eliminate as many foreign loanwords as possible, as well as older terms of Chinese origin. Western loanwords are also being dropped.

Pyongyang regards "Hanja", or Chinese characters, as symbols of "flunkeyism" and has systematically eliminated them from all publications. An attempt has also been made to create new words of exclusively Korean origin. Parents are encouraged to give their children Korean rather than Chinese-type names. Nonetheless, approximately 300 Chinese characters are still taught in North Korean schools.

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