Phone 206.325.4109 email
| << back to Korean Home |
Korean Language Profile 한국어 |
| The origin of Korean is often debated. Some linguists believe that
Korean is part of the Altaic language family, which includes the Turkic,
Mongolic and Tungus-Manchu languages, while others believe that it is
related to Japanese. A few even consider it to be a language isolate,
which means that it shares no demonstrable relationship with other living
languages. Those who believe Korean belongs to the Altaic language family
point to its lack of certain grammatical features such as number, gender,
articles, and relative pronouns, a characterisitic common to all Altaic
languages. The Korean Alphabet, Hangul - as it is called in South Korea - was created in 1443 by a group of appointed scholars under the auspices of King Sejong. In North Korea it is referred to as Choson kul(tcha), Choson mun(tcha), or just Choson mal. Before the creation of the Korean alphabet, only a small percentage of the population was literate as education was limited to high-class families. At that time, Chinese characters were used to represent the Korean language. Hangul consists of 10 vowels and 14 consonants which can be used to form myriad syllabic combinations. This alphabet is both easy to master as well as systematic and comprehensive. Some consider it to be one of the most logical writing systems in the world and it has contributed significantly to Korea's high literacy rate. Hunmin Chongum, the manuscript used for promulgating Hangul, was awarded the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's Memory of the World register in 1997. The official language of both North Korea and South Korea, Korean is spoken by approximately 70 million people. Of these, about five million reside out of country, in China, the former Soviet Union, Australia, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Japan. In spite of the political and cultural differences between the North and South, the Korean language is largely the same in both countries. This is mostly because both countries still recognize the unified standards proposed by the Korean Language Society in 1933. Korean does have several dialects, however. The standard language of South Korea is based on the dialect spoken around Seoul, and the standard for North Korea is based on the dialect spoken around P'yŏngyang. Almost all Korean dialects are intelligible to Koreans speakers, with the exception of the dialect of the Jeju-do province. Some linguists consider this to be a completely different language. |