Korean
한국어, 조선말 韓國語, 朝鮮말 Hangugeo, Chosŏnmal
Two names for Korean, Hangugeo and Chosŏnmal, written in vertical hangul
Spoken in	South Korea, North Korea, People's Republic of China
Native speakers	74 million  (no date)[1] not counting 2 million in China (2000)
Language family	Language isolate or Altaic (controversial)
Dialects	Jeju
Writing system	Exclusive use of hangul (both Koreas) or mix of hangul and hanja (some professional use in South Korea); occasionally Cyrillic in Koryo-mar
Official status
Official language in	North Korea  South Korea Yanbian, People's Republic of China
Regulated by	South Korea: The National Institute of the Korean Language 국립국어원/ 國立國語院 North Korea: Sahoe Kwahagwon Ŏhak Yŏnguso The Language Research Institute of Social Science 사회과학원 어학연구소
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ko
ISO 639-2	kor
ISO 639-3	kor
Linguasphere	45-AAA-a
Countries with native Korean-speaking populations
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

This article contains Korean text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hangul or Hanja.

Korean (한국어/조선말, see below) is the official language of South Korea and North Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. Approximately 78 million people speak Korean worldwide. For over a millennium, Korean was written with adapted Chinese characters called hanja, complemented by phonetic systems like hyangchal, gugyeol, and idu. In the 15th century, a national writing system called hangul was commissioned by Sejong the Great, but it only came into widespread use in the 20th century, because of the yangban aristocracy's preference for hanja.

The genealogical classification of the Korean language is debated by a number of historical linguists. Most classify it as a language isolate^[2] while a few consider it to be in the controversial Altaic language family.^[3] The Korean language is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax.

Names[link]

The Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in North and South Korea.

In South Korea, the language is most often called Hangungmal (한국말; 韓國말), or more formally, Hangugeo (한국어; 韓國語) or Gugeo (국어; 國語; literally "national language").

In North Korea and Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China, the language is most often called Chosŏnmal (조선말; 朝鮮말), or more formally, Chosŏnŏ (조선어; 朝鮮語).

On the other hand, Korean people in the former USSR, who refer to themselves as Koryo-saram (고려사람; also Goryeoin [고려인; 高麗人; literally, "Goryeo person(s)"]) call the language Goryeomal (고려말; 高麗말).

In mainland China, following the establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, the term Cháoxiǎnyǔ (朝鲜语 or the short form: Cháoyǔ (朝语)) has normally been used to refer to the standard language of North Korea and Yanbian, while Hánguóyǔ (韩国语 or the short form: Hányǔ (韩语)) is used to refer to the standard language of South Korea.

Some older English sources also used the name "Korean" to refer to the language, country, and people. The word "Korean" is derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be the first dynasty known to western countries.

Classification[link]

Since the publication of the article of Ramstedt in 1928, some linguists^[4] support the hypothesis that Korean can be classified as an Altaic language or as a relative of proto-Altaic. Korean is similar to the Altaic languages in that they both lack certain grammatical elements, including articles, fusional morphology and relative pronouns. However, linguists agree today on the fact that typological resemblances cannot be used to prove genetic relatedness of languages^[5] as these features are typologically connected and easily borrowed.^[6] Such factors of typological divergence as Middle Mongolian's exhibition of gender agreement^[7] can be used to argue that a genetic relationship is unlikely.^[8]

The hypothesis that Korean might be related to Japanese has had some supporters due to some apparent overlap in vocabulary and similar grammatical features that have been elaborated upon by such researchers as Samuel E. Martin^[9] and Roy Andrew Miller.^[10] Sergei Starostin (1991) found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list, which—if valid—would place these two languages closer together than other possible members of the Altaic family.^[11]

Other linguists, most notably Alexander Vovin, argue, however, that the similarities are not due to any genetic relationship, but rather to a sprachbund effect and heavy borrowing especially from ancient Korean into Western Old Japanese.^[12] A good example might be Middle Korean sàm and Japanese asa ‘hemp’.^[13] This word seems to be cognate, but while it is well-attested in Western Old Japanese and Northern Ryūkyū, in Eastern Old Japanese it only occurs in compounds, and it is only present in three subdialects of the South-Ryūkyūan dialect group. Then, the doublet wo ‘hemp’ is attested in Western Old Japanese and Southern Ryūkyū. It is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term.^[14] See East Asian languages for morphological features shared among languages of the East Asian sprachbund, and Classification of Japonic for further details on the discussion of a possible relationship.

Among ancient languages, various closer relatives of Korean have been proposed, constituting a possible small Koreanic language family.

History[link]

Korean is descended from Proto-Korean, Old Korean, Middle Korean and Modern Korean. Since the Korean War, contemporary North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variance in pronunciation, verb inflection, and vocabulary.

Geographic distribution[link]

Korean is spoken by the Korean people in North Korea and South Korea and by the Korean diaspora in many countries including the People's Republic of China, Japan, and the United States. Korean-speaking minorities exist in these states, but because of cultural assimilation into host countries, not all ethnic Koreans may speak it with native fluency.

Official status[link]

Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea. It is also one of the two official languages of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China.

In South Korea, the regulatory body for Korean is the Seoul-based National Institute of the Korean Language (국립국어원; 國立國語院), which was created by presidential decree on January 23, 1991. In North Korea, the regulatory body is the Language Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences (사회과학원 어학연구소; 社會科學院語學研究所, Sahoe Kwahagwon Ŏhak Yŏnguso).

Dialects[link]

Dialects of Korean

Korean has numerous small local dialects (called mal (말) [literally "speech"], saturi (사투리), or bang-eon (방언) in Korean). The standard language (pyojuneo or pyojunmal) of both South Korea and North Korea is based on the dialect of the area around Seoul, though the northern standard has been influenced by the dialect of P'yŏngyang. All dialects of Korean are similar to each other and at least partially mutually intelligible, though the dialect of Jeju Island is divergent enough to be sometimes classified as a separate language.^[15][16][17] One of the more salient differences between dialects is the use of tone: speakers of Seoul dialect make use of vowel length, whereas speakers of the Gyeongsang dialect maintain the pitch accent of Middle Korean. Some dialects are conservative, maintaining Middle Korean sounds (such as z, β, ə) which have been lost from the standard language, whereas others are highly innovative.

There is substantial evidence for a history of extensive dialect levelling, or even convergent evolution or intermixture of two or more originally distinct linguistic stocks, within the Korean language and its dialects. Many Korean dialects have basic vocabulary that is etymologically distinct from vocabulary of identical meaning in Standard Korean or other dialects, such as South Jeolla dialect /kur/ vs. Standard Korean 입 /ip/ "mouth" or Gyeongsang dialect /t͡ɕʌŋ.ɡu.d͡ʑi/ vs. Standard Korean /puːt͡ɕʰu/ "garlic chives". This suggests that the Korean Peninsula may have at one time been much more linguistically diverse than it is at present. See also the Buyeo languages hypothesis.

There are few clear boundaries between Korean dialects, and they are typically partially grouped according to the regions of Korea.

Sounds[link]

Consonants[link]

The Korean consonants

The IPA symbol ⟨◌͈⟩ (a subscript double straight quotation mark, shown here with a placeholder circle) is used to denote the tensed consonants /p͈/, /t͈/, /k͈/, /t͡ɕ͈/, /s͈/. Its official use in the Extensions to the 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.

Vowels[link]

The Korean basic vowels

^* ㅏ is closer to a Near-open central vowel ([ɐ]), though ⟨a⟩ is still used for tradition.

Allophones[link]

/s/ becomes an alveolo-palatal [ɕ] before [j] or [i] for most speakers (but see North–South differences in the Korean language). This occurs with the tense fricative and all the affricates as well. At the end of a syllable, /s/ changes to /t/ (Example: beoseot (버섯) 'mushroom').

/h/ may become a bilabial [ɸ] before [o] or [u], a palatal [ç] before [j] or [i], a velar [x] before [ɯ], a voiced [ɦ] between voiced sounds, and a [h] elsewhere.^{[citation needed]}

/p, t, t͡ɕ, k/ become voiced [b, d, d͡ʑ, ɡ] between voiced sounds.

/l/ becomes alveolar flap [ɾ] between vowels, and [l] or [ɭ] at the end of a syllable or next to another /l/. Note that a written syllable-final 'ㄹ', when followed by a vowel or a glide (i.e., when the next character starts with 'ㅇ'), migrates to the next syllable and thus becomes [ɾ].

Traditionally, /l/ was disallowed at the beginning of a word. It disappeared before [j], and otherwise became /n/. However, the inflow of western loanwords changed the trend, and now word-initial /l/ (mostly from English loanwords) are pronounced as a free variation of either [ɾ] or [l]. The traditional prohibition of word-initial /l/ became a morphological rule called "initial law" (두음법칙) in South Korea, which pertains to Sino-Korean vocabulary. Such words retain their word-initial /l/ in North Korea.

All obstruents (plosives, affricates, fricatives) have no audible release, [p̚, t̚, k̚], at the end of a word.

Plosive stops /p, t, k/ become nasal stops [m, n, ŋ] before nasal stops.

Hangul spelling does not reflect these assimilatory pronunciation rules, but rather maintains the underlying, partly historical morphology. Given this, it is sometimes hard to tell which actual phonemes are present in a certain word.

One difference between the pronunciation standards of North and South Korea is the treatment of initial [r], and initial [n]. For example,

• "labor" – north: rodong (로동), south: nodong (노동)
• "history" – north: ryŏksa (력사), south: yeoksa (역사)
• "female" – north: nyŏja (녀자), south: yeoja (여자)

Morphophonemics[link]

Grammatical morphemes may change shape depending on the preceding sounds. Examples include -eun/-neun (-은/-는) and -i/-ga (-이/-가). Sometimes sounds may be inserted instead. Examples include -eul/-reul (-을/-를), -euro/-ro (-으로/-로), -eseo/-seo (-에서/-서), -ideunji/-deunji (-이든지/-든지) and -iya/-ya (-이야/-야). However, -euro/-ro is somewhat irregular, since it will behave differently after a rieul consonant.

Some verbs may also change shape morphophonemically.

Grammar[link]

Korean is an agglutinative language. The Korean language is traditionally considered to have nine parts of speech. For details, see Korean parts of speech. Modifiers generally precede the modified words, and in the case of verb modifiers, can be serially appended. The basic form of a Korean sentence is subject–object–verb, but the verb is the only required and immovable element.

"Did [you] go to the store?" ("you" implied in conversation)

"Yes."

Speech levels and honorifics[link]

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 referent is reflected in honorifics, while that between speaker/writer and audience is reflected in speech level.

Honorifics[link]

When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer usually uses 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. Nowadays, there are special endings which can be used on declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences; and both honorific or normal sentences. They are made for easier and faster use of Korean.

Honorifics in traditional Korea were strictly hierarchical. The caste and estate systems possessed patterns and usages much more complex and stratified than those we have now. The intricate structure of the Korean honorific system flourished in traditional culture and society. Honorifics in contemporary Korea are now used for people who are psychologically distant. Honorifics are also used for people who are superior in status. For example, older relatives, people who are older, teachers, and employers.^[19]

Speech levels[link]

There are seven verb paradigms 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.^{[citation needed]} Unlike honorifics—which are used to show respect towards the referent (whom you are talking about) —speech levels are used to show respect towards a speaker's or writer's audience (whom you are talking to). The names of the seven levels are derived from the non-honorific imperative form of the verb 하다 (hada, "do") in each level, plus the suffix 체 ("che", hanja: 體), which means "style".

The highest six levels are generally grouped together as jondaenmal (존댓말), while the lowest level (haeche, 해체) is called banmal (반말) in Korean.

Nowadays, younger-generation speakers no longer feel obligated to lower their usual regard toward the referent. It is common to see younger people talk to their older relatives with ban-mal (반말). This is not out of disrespect, but instead it shows the intimacy and the closeness of the relationship between the two speakers. Transformations in social structures and attitudes in today's rapidly changing society have brought about change in the way people speak.^[19]

Gender and Korean language[link]

In traditional society, Korean women often place themselves in a position of powerlessness, and this in turn is observed in their everyday speech patterns. Some examples of this can be seen in: (1) a woman’s use of softer tone in order to minimize conflict or aggression; (2) a married woman introducing herself as someone’s mother or wife, not with her own name; (3) the presence of gender differences in titles and occupational terms (for example, a sajang is a company president and yŏsajang is a female company president.); (4) and females sometimes using more tag questions and rising tones in statements, much like the way that young children talk.^[20]

In western societies, individuals will avoid expressions of power asymmetry, mutually addressing each other by their first names for the sake of solidarity. Between two people of asymmetrical status in a Korean society, people tend to emphasize differences in status for the sake of solidarity. Koreans prefer to use kinship terms rather than any other terms of reference.^[21] In traditional Korean society, women have long been in disadvantaged positions. Korean social structure traditionally consisted of a royal monarch, a patriarchically dominated family system that emphasizes the maintenance of family lines. This structure has tended to separate roles of women from those of men.^[22]

Vocabulary[link]

The core of the Korean vocabulary is made up of native Korean words. A significant proportion of the vocabulary, especially words that denote abstract ideas, are Sino-Korean words,^[23] either

• directly borrowed from written Chinese, or
• coined in Korea or Japan using Chinese characters,

in a similar way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek.

The exact proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary is a matter of debate. Sohn (2001) stated 50–60%.^[23] Later, the same author (2006, p. 5) gives an even higher estimate of 65%.^[19] Jeong Jae-do, one of the compilers of the dictionary Urimal Kun Sajeon, asserts that the proportion is not so high. He points out that Korean dictionaries compiled during the colonial period include many unused Sino-Korean words. In his estimation, the proportion of native Korean vocabulary in the Korean language might be as high as 70%.^[24]

Korean has two numeral systems: one native, and one borrowed from Sino-Korean.

To a much lesser extent, some words have also been borrowed from Mongolian, Sanskrit, and other languages. Conversely, the Korean language itself has also contributed some loanwords to other languages, most notably the Tsushima dialect of Japanese.

The vast majority of loanwords other than Sino-Korean come from modern times, 90% of which are from English.^[23] Many words have also been borrowed from Japanese via Western languages such as German (areubaiteu "part-time job", allereugi "allergy", gibseu or gibuseu "plaster cast used for broken bones"). Some Western words were borrowed indirectly via Japanese, taking a Japanese sound pattern, for example "dozen" > ダース dāsu > 다스 daseu. Most indirect Western borrowings are now written according to current hangulization rules for the respective Western language, as if borrowed directly. There are a few more complicated borrowings such as "German(y)" (see names of Germany), the first part of whose endonym [ˈd̥ɔɪ̯t͡ʃʷ.la̠ntʰ] the Japanese approximated using the kanji 獨逸 doitsu that were then accepted into the Korean language by their Sino-Korean pronunciation: 獨 dok + 逸 il = Dogil. In South Korean official use, a number of other Sino-Korean country names have been replaced with phonetically oriented hangulizations of the countries' endonyms of English names.

Because of such a prevalence of English in modern Korean culture and society, it is only inevitable that a sense of diglossia emerges. It is not rare to find instances where one would mix both English and Korean in the same sentence. The vocabulary of the Korean language is roughly 5% loanwords (excluding Sino-Korean vocabulary); people often use English words and end up code-switching without even realizing it. This is often referred to as konglish.^[19]

As in Japanese, Korean uses words adapted from English in ways that may seem strange to native English speakers. For example, in soccer heading (헤딩) is used as a noun meaning a 'header', while fighting (화이팅) is a term of encouragement like 'come on'/'go (on)' in English. Something that is 'service' (서비스) is free or 'on the house'. A building referred to as an 'apart' (아파트) is an 'apartment' and a type of pencil that is called 'sharp' (샤프) is a mechanical pencil.

North Korean vocabulary shows a tendency to prefer native Korean over Sino-Korean or foreign borrowings, especially with recent political objectives aimed at eliminating foreign influences on the Korean language in the North. In the early years, the North Korean government tried to eliminate Sino-Korean words. Consequently, South Korean may have several Sino-Korean or foreign borrowings which are not in North Korean.

Writing system[link]

Formerly, the languages of the Korean peninsula were written using hanja, called hyangchal or idu: the use of Chinese characters either as rebuses to stand for Korean words, or as synonyms for those words. Writing was confined to the ruling elite, who most often wrote only in Classical Chinese.

Sejong the Great promulgated the Korean alphabet in 1446. Korean is now written almost exclusively in hangul. While South Korean schools still teach 1,800 hanja, North Korea abolished hanja decades ago.

Below is a chart of the Korean alphabet's symbols and their canonical IPA values:

Modern Korean is written with spaces between words, a feature not found in Chinese or 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 between North Korean and South Korean[link]

The Korean language used in the North and the South exhibits differences in pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.^[25]

Pronunciation[link]

In North Korea, palatalization of /si/ is optional, and /t͡ɕ/ can be pronounced [z] 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 were to write the word as pronounced.

* Similar pronunciation is used in the North whenever the hanja "的" is attached to a Sino-Korean word ending in ㄴ, ㅁ or ㅇ. (In the South, this rule only applies when it is attached to any single-character Sino-Korean word.)

Spelling[link]

Some words are spelled differently by the North and the South, but the pronunciations are the same.

Spelling and pronunciation[link]

Some words have different spellings and pronunciations in the North and the South, some of which were given in the "Phonology" section above:

In general, when transcribing place names, North Korea tends to use the pronunciation in the original language more than South Korea, which often uses the pronunciation in English. For example:

Grammar[link]

Some grammatical constructions are also different:

Vocabulary[link]

Some vocabulary is different between the North and the South:

Others[link]

In the North, guillemets 《 and 》 are the symbols used for quotes; in the South, quotation marks equivalent to the English ones, “ and ”, are standard, although 『 』 and 「 」 are also used.

Study by non-native learners[link]

The United States' Defense Language Institute places Korean in Category IV, which also includes Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese. This means that 63 weeks of instruction (as compared to just 25 weeks for French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian) are required to bring an English-speaking student to a limited working level of proficiency in which he or she has "sufficient capability to meet routine social demands and limited job requirements" and "can deal with concrete topics in past, present, and future tense."^[26] Furthermore, the study of the Korean language in the United States is dominated by Korean American heritage language students; they are estimated to form over 80% of all students of the language at non-military universities.^[27]