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|name=Korean |nativename=한국어, 조선어 ''Hangugeo, Chosŏnŏ'' |familycolor=Isolate |states= North Korea , South Korea , northeastern part of China , Japan , United States |speakers=71 million |rank=13 (in a near tie with Vietnamese , Telugu , Marathi , Tamil ) |family=Unclassified: perhaps an Altaic language or a Language Isolate |script= Hangul |nation=Statewide: ( Yanbian Korean Autonomous Perfecture in Jilin Province ) |agency= National Institute Of Korean Language (국립 국어원) |iso1=ko|iso2=kor|iso3=kor}} The Korean language ( 한국어 / 조선어 , see below) is the official language of both North and South Korea . The language is also spoken widely in neighbouring Yanbian , China . Worldwide, there are around 78 million Korean speakers, including large groups in the former Soviet Union , Australia , the United States , Canada , China , Brazil , Japan , and more recently the Philippines and South Africa . The genealogical Classification of Korean is debated. Many linguists place it in the Altaic language family; some others consider it to be a Language Isolate . Korean is Agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax. Much vocabulary has been imported from Chinese , or created on Chinese models. This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language. See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system. Names The Korean names for the language are based on the Names For Korea used in North and South Korea. In North Korea, the language is most often called ''Chosŏnmal'' (조선말), or more formally, ''Chosŏnŏ'' (조선어). In South Korea, the language is most often called ''Hangungmal'' (한국말), or more formally, ''Hangugeo'' (한국어) or ''Gugeo'' (국어, national or domestic language). It is sometimes colloquially called ''Urimal'' ("our language"; 우리말 in one word in South Korea, 우리 말 with a space in North Korea). Classification and related languages Korean classification is often debated. Many Korean and Western linguists recognize a kinship to the Altaic Languages . However, this is not well demonstrated, and many consider Korean a Language Isolate . Others believe that Japanese and Korean may be related; still others believe this is not so, and any similarities are simply due to a '' Sprachbund '' effect – see Here for morphological features shared among languages of the East Asian ''sprachbund''. The Korean relationship with Altaic and proto-Altaic has been much argued as of late. Korean is similar to Altaic languages in that they both have the absence of certain grammatical elements, including Number , Gender , Articles , fusional morphology, voice, and Relative Pronoun s (Kim Namkil). Korean especially bears some Morphological resemblance to some languages of the Eastern Turkic group, namely Sakha (Yakut) . The possibility of a Korean-Japanese linguistic relationship is a delicate subject because of the complex historical relationship between the two countries. The possibility of a Baekje -Japanese linguistic relationship has been studied, with Korean linguists pointing out similarities in Phonology , including a general lack of consonant-final sounds. There are plenty of apparent Cognates between Baekje and Japanese, such as ''mir'' and ''mi'', respectively, for “three”. Furthermore, there are cultural links between Baekje and Japan: the people of Baekje used two Chinese characters for their surnames, like the people of Japan today, and more notably, the Baekje elite had cordial relations with the Japanese elite, with the Baekje upper classes probably fleeing to Japan when the kingdom fell. The Korean language also contains some similarities with Uralic Languages (such as the Finno-Ugric languages Finnish and Hungarian ). However, these languages are not necessarily related. Goguryeo and Baekje languages are considered related, likely descended from Gojoseon (see Fuyu Languages ). Less is known about the relationship between the languages of Gojoseon, Goguryo, and Baekje on one hand, and the Samhan and Silla on the other, although many Korean scholars believe they were mutually intelligible, and the collective basis of what in the Goryeo period would merge to become Middle Korean (the language before the changes that the Seven-Year War brought) and eventually Modern Korean. The Jeju Dialect preserves some archaic features that can also be found in Middle Korean, whose ''arae a'' is retained in dialect as a distinct vowel. Dialects See Also: Dialects of Korean Korean has several use stress very little, and standard South Korean has a very flat intonation; on the other hand, speakers of Gyeongsang Dialect have a very pronounced intonation that, to Western ears, often sounds European. There is a very close connection between the dialects of Korean and the Regions Of Korea , since the boundaries of both are largely determined by mountains and seas. Here is a list of traditional dialect names and locations: Sounds Consonants Example words for consonants: The IPA symbol <> (a subscript double straight quotation mark) is used to denote the tensed consonants . Its official use in the Extended IPA is for 'strong' articulation, but is used in the literature for Faucalized Voice . The Korean consonants also have elements of Stiff Voice , but it is not yet known how typical this is of faucalized consonants. They are produced with a partially constricted Glottis and additional subglottal pressure in addition to tense vocal tract walls, laryngeal lowering, or other expansion of the larynx. Sometimes the tense consonants are indicated with the apostrophe-like symbol <>, but this is inappropriate, as IPA <> represents the Ejective consonants, with their piston-like upward glottal movement and non-pulmonic air pressure, which the Korean tense consonants do not share. Vowels Monophthongs Korean has 8 different vowel qualities and a length distinction. Two more vowels, the close-mid front rounded vowel and the close front rounded vowel , can still be heard in the speech of some older speakers, but they have been largely replaced by the diphthongs and respectively. In a 2003 survey of 350 speakers from Seoul, nearly 90% pronounced the vowel 'ㅟ' as . Length distinction is almost completely lost; length distinction for all vowels can still be heard from older speakers, but almost all younger speakers either do not distinguish length consistently or do not distinguish it at all. The distinction between and is another decreasing element in the speech of some younger speakers, mostly in the area of Seoul, whereas in other dialectal areas the two vowels can be distinctly heard. For those speakers who do not make the difference seems to be the dominant form. Long is actually for most speakers. Diphthongs and glides and are considered to be components of diphthongs rather than separate consonant phonemes. Source: ''Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' Phonology becomes an Alveolo-palatal before or . This occurs with the tense fricative and all the affricates as well. becomes a Bilabial before or , a Palatal before or , a Velar before , a voiced between voiced sounds, and a elsewhere. become voiced between voiced sounds. becomes alveolar flap between vowels, or at the end of a syllable or next to another , disappears at the beginning of a word before in normal speech, and otherwise becomes in normal speech. All Obstruent s (plosives, affricates, fricatives) are Unreleased at the end of a word. Plosive stops become nasal stops before nasal stops. Some of these phonetic Assimilation rules can be seen in the following:
Hangul spelling does not reflect these assimilatory pronunciation rules, but rather maintains the underlying Morphology . One difference between the pronunciation standards of North and South Korea is the treatment of initial , and initial before or . For example,
Phonological constraints Korean syllables may not start or end with Consonant Cluster s, except in a few cases. Consequently, consonant clusters in Korean are usually limited to clusters of two consonants where two syllables have been joined. Only seven consonant allophones are found at the end of syllables: and . Vowel harmony Traditionally, the Korean language has had strong Vowel Harmony ; that is, in pre-modern Korean, as in most Altaic languages, not only did the inflectional and derivational affixes (such as Postposition s) change in accordance to the main root vowel, but native words also adhered to vowel harmony. It is not as prevalent in modern usage, although it remains strong in Onomatopoeia , Adjective s and Adverb s, Interjections , and Conjugation . There are also other traces of vowel harmony in Korean. There are three classes of vowels in Korean: positive, negative, and neutral. The vowel ŭ is considered partially a neutral and negative vowel. The vowel classes loosely follow the mid (negative) and front (positive) vowels; they also follow orthography. Exchanging positive vowels with negative vowels usually creates different nuances of meaning, with positive vowels sounding diminuitive and negative vowels sounding crude. Some examples:
Grammar Korean is an Agglutinative Language . The basic form of a Korean sentence is Subject-Object-Verb ( SOV ), and modifiers precede the modified word. As a side note, a sentence can break the SOV word order, however, it must end with the verb.
In Korean, "unnecessary" words (see Theme And Rheme ) can be left out of a sentence as long as the context makes the meaning clear. A typical exchange might translate word-for word to the following: ::H: "가게에 가세요?" (''gage-e gaseyo?'') ::G: "예." (''ye.'')
::G: "yes." which in English would translate to: ::H: "Going to the store?" ::G: "Yes." Unlike most European languages, Korean does not conjugate verbs using agreement with the subject, and nouns have no gender. Instead, verb conjugations depend upon the verb tense and on the relation between the people speaking. When talking to or about friends, you would use one conjugate ending, to your parents, another, and to nobility/honoured persons, another. This loosely echoes the T-V Distinction of most Indo-European Languages . Speech levels and honorifics The relationship between a speaker or writer and his or her subject and audience is paramount in Korean, and the grammar reflects this. The relationship between speaker/writer and subject is reflected in Honorific s, while that between speaker/writer and audience is reflected in '''speech level'''. Honorifics When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer has to use special nouns or verb endings to indicate the subject's superiority. Generally, someone is superior in status if he/she is an older relative, a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, or an employer, teacher, customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if he/she is a younger stranger, student, employee or the like. On rare occasions (like when someone wants to pick a fight), a speaker might speak to a superior or stranger in a way normally only used for, say, animals, but it would be foolhardy to do so without seriously considering the consequences to one's physical safety first. One way of using honorifics is to use special nouns in place of regular nouns with "honorific" ones. A common example is using 진지 (''jinji'') instead of 밥 (''bap'') for "food". More often, special nouns are used when speaking about relatives. Thus, the speaker/writer may address his own grandmother as 할머니 (''halmeoni'') but refer to someone else's grandmother as 할머님 (''halmeonim''). The honorific suffix -님 (''-nim'') is affixed to many kinship terms to make them honorific; thus, 형님 (''hyeongnim'') is the formal term for an older sibling of the same sex (derived from 형 ''hyeong''), the informal term for man's older brother. Similarly, 누님 (''nunim'') is the formal term for a man's older sister (derived from 누나 ''nuna'') and 오라버님 (''orabeonim'') is the formal term for a woman's older brother (derived from 오라버니 ''orabeoni'', another formal variant of 오빠 ''obba''). All verbs can be converted into an honorific form by adding the infix -시- (''-si-'', pronounced ''shi'') after the Stem and before the verb ending. Thus, 가다 (''gada'', "go") becomes 가시다 (''gasida''). A few verbs have special honorific equivalents. Therefore 계시다 (''gyesida'') is the honorific form of 있다 (''itda'', "exist"); 드시다 (''deusida'') and 잡수시다 (''japsusida'') is the honorific form of 먹다 (''meokda'', "eat"); and 주무시다 (''jumushida'') is the honorific form of 자다 (''jada'', "sleep"). A few verbs have special humble forms, used when the speaker is referring to him/herself in polite situations. These include 드리다 (''deurida'') and 올리다 (''ollida'') for 주다 (''juda'', "give"). ''Deurida'' is substituted for ''juda'' when the latter is used as an Auxiliary verb, while ''ollida'' — which literally means "raise up" — is used for ''juda'' in the sense of "offer". , or title in place of "you" in English, ii) use plural 여러분 ''yeoreobun'' where applicable, or iii) avoid using a pronoun, relying on context to supply meaning instead). Speech levels There are no fewer than 7 verb Paradigm s or speech levels in Korean, and each level has its own unique set of verb endings which are used to indicate the level of formality of a situation. Unlike "honorifics" — which are used to show respect towards a subject — speech levels are used to show respect towards a speaker's or writer's audience. The names of the 7 levels are derived from the non-honorific Imperative form of the verb 하다 (''hada'', "do") in each level, plus the suffix 체 ('che'), which means "style." The highest 5 levels use final verb endings and are generally grouped together as ''chondaenmal'' (존댓말), while the lowest 2 levels (해요체 ''haeyoche'' and 해체 ''haeche'') use Non-final endings and are called 반말 (''banmal'', "half-words") in Korean. (The ''haeyoche'' in turn is formed by simply adding the non-final ending -요 (''-yo'') to the ''haeche'' form of the verb.) Taken together, honorifics and speech levels form a Cartesian Product of 14 basic verb stems. Here is a table giving the 7 levels, the Present Indicative form of the verb 하다 (''hada'', "do" in English) in each level in both its honorific and non-honorific forms, and the situations in which each level is used. These days, some of these speech levels are disappearing and people don't use them much in everyday lives. Hasoseoche, which is only used in movies or dramas describing old times, is barely used by Koreans, and Hageche exists almost only in novels. But interestingly, Haoche is becoming more and more popular among people in their 10's and 20's, and this phenomenon is considered to be one of the influences by internet users. Usually Haoche is used in only movies and dramas (similar with Hasoseoche) but it is now popular (in some internet websites, e.g. dcinside.com) among internet users but not in everyday lives. Haoche is usually considered as a male-tongue, but interestingly today's internet-based Haoche is very popular in Ewhaian.com which is for students of Ewha Womans University . Vocabulary The core of the Korean vocabulary is made up of native Korean words. More than 50% of the vocabulary, however, especially scholarly terminology, are Sino-Korean words, either
Like Japanese, Korean has two Number Systems : one native, and one borrowed from the Chinese. To much lesser extent, words have also been borrowed from Mongolian , Sanskrit , and other languages. In modern times, some words have also been borrowed from Japanese , Western Languages such as German and more recently English . Concerning daily usage vocabulary except what can be written in hanja, more words have possibly been borrowed from English than from any other language. North Korean vocabulary shows a tendency to prefer native Korean over Sino-Korean, and either of those over foreign borrowings. Thus, many concepts that in South Korean may have several Sino-Korean, foreign or native Korean terms tend to lack the foreign term in North Korean. These days, however, increasing attempts are made to promote the use of native Korean terms over foreign loanwords. Writing system See Also: Hangul The Korean language was originally written using " Hanja ", or Chinese Character s; it is now mainly written in Hangul , the Korean alphabet, optionally mixing in Hanja to write Sino-Korean words. South Korea still teaches 1800 Hanja characters to its children, while the North has abolished the use of hanja decades ago. Hangul consists of 24 letters — 14 consonants and 10 vowels that are written in syllabic blocks of 2 to 5 components. Unlike the Chinese writing system (including Japanese Kanji ), Hangul is not an Ideographic system. Below is a chart of the Korean alphabet's symbols and their canonical IPA values: ''See also: Hangul Consonant And Vowel Tables '' Modern Korean is written with Space s between Word s, a feature not found in Chinese and Japanese. Korean Punctuation marks are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns from top to bottom, right to left, but is now usually written in rows from left to right, top to bottom. Differences in the language between North Korea and South Korea The Korean language used in the North and the South exhibits differences in pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.Kanno, Hiroomi (ed.) / Society for Korean Linguistics in Japan (1987). ''Chōsengo o manabō'' (『朝鮮語を学ぼう』), Sanshūsha, Tokyo. ISBN 4-384-01506-2 Pronunciation In North Korea, Palatalization of is optional, and can be pronounced as in between vowels. Words that are written the same way may be pronounced differently, such as the examples below. The pronunciations below are given in Revised Romanization , McCune-Reischauer and Hangul, the last of which represents what the Hangul would be if one writes the word as pronounced. Spelling Some words are spelt differently by the North and the South, but the pronunciations are the same. Spelling and pronunciation Some words have different spellings and pronunciations in the North and the South, some of which were given in the "Phonology" section above: Grammar Some grammatical constructions are also different: Vocabulary Some vocabulary is different between the North and the South: Others In the North, 《 and 》 are the symbols used for quotes; in the South, quotation marks equivalent to the English ones, “ and ”, are used. See also
References External links
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