Korean language

Korean
한국어 (Hanguk-eo) (South Korea) 조선어 (Chosŏnŏ) (North Korea)
File:Hangugeo-Chosono.svg Hangugeo written (left) vertically in Korean alphabet for South Korean and Chosŏnŏ written (right) for North Korean when referring to the language
Region	Korea
Ethnicity	Koreans, formerly Jaegaseung
Native speakers	81 million (2019–2022)
Language family	Koreanic Korean
Early forms	Proto-Koreanic Old Korean Middle Korean Early Modern Korean
Standard forms	Pyojuneo (South Korea) Munhwaŏ (North Korea)
Dialects	See Korean dialects
Writing system	In South Korea: Hangul Hanja (Supplementary use) Korean mixed script (archaic; limited) In North Korea: Chosŏn'gŭl (identical to South Korean Hangul) Historically: Hanja only (Idu, Hyangchal and Gugyeol)
Official status
Official language in	North Korea South Korea
Recognised minority language in	China (Yanbian Prefecture and Changbai County)
Regulated by	In South Korea: National Institute of Korean Language In North Korea: The Language Research Institute, Academy of Social Science In China: China Korean Language Regulatory Commission
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ko
ISO 639-2	kor
ISO 639-3	kor
Glottolog	kore1280
ELP
Linguasphere	45-AAA-a
File:Idioma coreano.png
South Korean name
Hangul	한국어
Hanja	韓國語
RR	Hangugeo
MR	Han'gugŏ
IPA	[ha(ː)n.ɡu.ɡʌ]
North Korean name
Hangul	조선어
Hanja	朝鮮語
RR	Joseoneo
MR	Chosŏnŏ
IPA	[tso.sɔ.nɔ]

Korean is the native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the national language of both North Korea and South Korea. In the south, the language is known as () and in the north, it is known as (). Since the turn of the 21st century, Korean popular culture has spread around the world through globalization and cultural exports.

Beyond Korea, the language is recognized as a minority language in parts of China, namely Jilin, and specifically Yanbian Prefecture, and Changbai County. It is also spoken by Sakhalin Koreans in parts of Sakhalin, the Russian island just north of Japan, and by the in parts of Central Asia. The language has a few extinct relatives which—along with the Jeju language (Jejuan) of Jeju Island and Korean itself—form the compact Koreanic language family. Even so, Jejuan and Korean are not mutually intelligible. The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in contemporary Manchuria. The hierarchy of the society from which the language originates deeply influences the language, leading to a system of speech levels and honorifics indicative of the formality of any given situation.

Modern Korean is written in the Korean script (; in South Korea, ; in North Korea), an alphabet system developed during the 15th century for that purpose, although it did not become the primary script until the mid 20th century (Hanja and mixed script were the primary script until then). The script uses 24 basic letters (jamo) and 27 complex letters formed from the basic ones.

Interest in Korean language acquisition (as a foreign language) has been generated by longstanding alliances, military involvement, and diplomacy, such as between South Korea–United States and China–North Korea since the end of World War II and the Korean War. Along with other languages such as Chinese and Arabic, Korean is ranked at the top difficulty level for English speakers by the United States Department of Defense.

History

Modern Korean descends from Middle Korean, which in turn descends from Old Korean, which descends from the Proto-Koreanic language, which is generally suggested to have its linguistic homeland somewhere in Manchuria. Whitman (2012) suggests that the proto-Koreans, already present in northern Korea, expanded into the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them). Both had influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families.

Since the establishment of two independent governments, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation and vocabulary chosen. While there tends to be strong political conflict between North and South Korea regarding these linguistic "differences," regional dialects within each country actually display greater linguistic variations than those found between North and South Korean standards. Nevertheless, these dialects remain largely mutually intelligible.

Writing systems

File:Hunminjeongum.jpg

King Sejong's proclamation of the Hangul script, written in Classical Chinese

The Chinese language, written with Chinese characters and read with Sino-Xenic pronunciations, was first introduced to Korea in the 1st century BC, and remained the medium of formal writing and government until the late 19th century. Korean scholars adapted Chinese characters (known in Korean as Hanja) to write their own language, creating scripts known as idu, hyangchal, gugyeol, and gakpil. These systems were cumbersome, due to the fundamental disparities between the Korean and Chinese languages, and accessible only to those educated in classical Chinese. Most of the population was illiterate.

In the 15th century King Sejong the Great personally developed an alphabetic featural writing system, known today as Hangul, to promote literacy among the common people. Introduced in the document , it was called ('colloquial script') and quickly spread nationwide to increase literacy in Korea.

The Korean alphabet was denounced by the aristocracy, who looked down upon it for being too easy to learn. However, it gained widespread use among the common class and was widely used to print popular novels which were enjoyed by the common class. Since few people could understand official documents written in classical Chinese, Korean kings sometimes released public notices entirely written in Hangul as early as the 16th century for all Korean classes, including uneducated peasants and slaves. By the 17th century, the had exchanged Hangul letters with slaves, which suggests a high literacy rate of Hangul during the Joseon era.

In the context of growing Korean nationalism in the 19th century, the Kabo Reform of 1894 abolished the Confucian examinations and decreed that government documents would be issued in Hangul instead of literary Chinese. Some newspapers were published in Hangul, but other publications used Korean mixed script, with Hanja for Sino-Korean vocabulary and Hangul for other elements. North Korea abolished Hanja in writing in 1949, but continues to teach them in schools. Their usage in South Korea is mainly reserved for specific circumstances such as newspapers, scholarly papers and disambiguation. Today Hanja is largely unused in everyday life but is still important for historical and linguistic studies.

Names

The Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in both South Korea and North Korea. The English word "Korean" is derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be the first Korean dynasty known to Western nations. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as or (literally, 'Koryo/Goryeo people'), and call the language . Some older English sources also use the spelling "Corea" to refer to the nation, and its inflected form for the language, culture and people, "Korea" becoming more popular in the late 1800s.

In South Korea the Korean language is referred to by many names including ('Korean language'), ('Korean speech') and ('our language'); "" is taken from the name of the Korean Empire (; ; ). The "" () in and is derived from Samhan, in reference to the Three Kingdoms of Korea (not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula), while "" and "" mean "language" and "speech", respectively. Korean is also simply referred to as , literally "national language". This name is based on the same Han characters ( 'nation' + 'language') that are also used in Taiwan and Japan to refer to their respective national languages.

In North Korea and China, the language is most often called , or more formally, . This is taken from the North Korean name for Korea (Joseon), a name retained from the Joseon period until the proclamation of the Korean Empire, which in turn was annexed by the Empire of Japan.

In mainland China, following the establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, the term or the short form Cháoyǔ has normally been used to refer to the standard language of North Korea and Yanbian, whereas Hánguóyǔ or the short form Hányǔ is used to refer to the standard language of South Korea.

Classification

Korean is a member of the Koreanic family along with the Jeju language. Some linguists have included it in the Altaic family, but the core Altaic proposal itself has lost most of its prior support. The Khitan language has several vocabulary items similar to Korean that are not found in other Mongolian or Tungusic languages, suggesting a Korean influence on Khitan.

The hypothesis that Korean could be related to Japanese has had some supporters due to some overlap in vocabulary and similar grammatical features that have been elaborated upon by such researchers as Samuel E. Martin and Roy Andrew Miller. Sergei Starostin (1991) found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list. Some linguists concerned with the issue between Japanese and Korean, including Alexander Vovin, have argued that the indicated 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. A good example might be Middle Korean sàm and Japanese asá, meaning 'hemp'. This word seems to be a cognate, but although it is well attested in Western Old Japanese and Northern Ryukyuan languages, in Eastern Old Japanese it only occurs in compounds, and it is only present in three dialects of the Southern Ryukyuan language group. Also, the doublet wo meaning 'hemp' is attested in Western Old Japanese and Southern Ryukyuan languages. It is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term.

Hudson & Robbeets (2020) suggested that there are traces of a pre-Nivkh substratum in Korean. According to the hypothesis, ancestral varieties of Nivkh (also known as Amuric) were once distributed on the Korean Peninsula before the arrival of Koreanic speakers.

Phonology

File:Ko-구매자는 판매자에게 제품 대금으로 20달러를 지급하여야 한다.ogg

Spoken Korean (adult man):
구매자는 판매자에게 제품 대금으로 20달러를 지급하여야 한다.
gumaejaneun panmaejaege jepum daegeumeuro isip dalleoreul ($20) jigeuphayeoya handa.
"The buyer must pay the seller $20 for the product."
lit. [the buyer] [to the seller] [the product] [in payment] [twenty dollars] [have to pay] [do]

Korean syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), consisting of an optional onset consonant, glide and final coda surrounding a core vowel.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Alveolo- palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal
Plosive/ Affricate	plain			or
	tense			or
	aspirated			or
Fricative	plain		or
	tense		or
Approximant
Liquid			or

Assimilation and allophony

The IPA symbol ⟨⟩ () is used to denote the tensed consonants . 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.

is aspirated and becomes an alveolo-palatal before or 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, changes to (example: beoseot () 'mushroom').

may become a bilabial before or , a palatal before or , a velar before , a voiced between voiced sounds, and a elsewhere.

become voiced between voiced sounds.

frequently denasalize at the beginnings of words.

becomes alveolar flap between vowels, and or at the end of a syllable or next to another . A written syllable-final '', when followed by a vowel or a glide (i.e., when the next character starts with ''), migrates to the next syllable and thus becomes .

Traditionally, was disallowed at the beginning of a word. It disappeared before , and otherwise became . However, the inflow of western loanwords changed the trend, and now word-initial (mostly from English loanwords) are pronounced as a free variation of either or .

All obstruents (plosives, affricates, fricatives) at the end of a word are pronounced with no audible release, .

Plosive sounds become nasals before nasal sounds.

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.

The traditional prohibition of word-initial became a morphological rule called "initial law" () in the pronunciation standards of South Korea, which pertains to Sino-Korean vocabulary. Such words retain their word-initial in the pronunciation standards of North Korea. For example,

• "labor" (勞動) – north: rodong (), south: nodong ()
• "history" (歷史) – north: ryeoksa (), south: yeoksa ()
• "female" (女子) – north: nyeoja (), south: yeoja ()

Vowels

File:Korean short vowel chart.svg

Short vowel chart

File:Korean long vowel chart.svg

Long vowel chart

The standard Korean monophthongs and their pronunciation principles are as follows:

Monophthongs	[A]     or [B]                 ,   ,  ,
Vowels preceded by intermediaries, or diphthongs	or         ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,

^[A] is closer to a near-open central vowel (), though ⟨a⟩ is still used for tradition.

^[B] ㅓ is generally pronounced as [ə] when it becomes a long vowel.

However, in Korea, with the exception of older generations in certain regions, most people neither pronounce nor distinguish clearly between the two monophthongs 'ㅐ' (ae) and 'ㅔ' (e). Similarly, 'ㅟ' and 'ㅚ' are sometimes pronounced as [wi] and [we] respectively. The demographic that maintains monophthongal realizations of 'ㅟ' and 'ㅚ' is reportedly limited to elderly speakers in the Gyeonggi, Gangwon, and Chungcheong provinces. The official standard pronunciation guidelines acknowledge this variation by permitting both monophthongal and diphthongal pronunciations of these vowels.

In South Korea, while the distinction between long and short vowels is not clearly pronounced in contemporary speech, this distinction is maintained in standard language norms for reasons of tradition and semantic differentiation.

Morphophonemics

Grammatical morphemes may change shape depending on the preceding sounds. Examples include -eun/-neun () and -i/-ga ().

Sometimes sounds may be inserted instead. Examples include -eul/-reul (), -euro/-ro (), -eseo/-seo (), -ideunji/-deunji () and -iya/-ya ().

• However, -euro/-ro is somewhat irregular, since it will behave differently after a ㄹ (rieul consonant).

Korean particles

After a consonant	After a ㄹ (rieul)	After a vowel
-ui ()
-eun ()		-neun ()
-i ()		-ga ()
-eul ()		-reul ()
-gwa ()		-wa ()
-euro ()	-ro ()

Some verbs may also change shape morphophonemically.

Grammar

Korean is an agglutinative language. The Korean language is traditionally considered to have nine parts of speech. Modifiers generally precede the modified words, and in the case of verb modifiers, can be serially appended. The sentence structure or basic form of a Korean sentence is subject–object–verb (SOV), but the verb is the only required and immovable element and word order is highly flexible, as in many other agglutinative languages.

Question Response

The relationship between a speaker/writer and their subject and audience is paramount in Korean grammar. The relationship between the speaker/writer and subject referent is reflected in honorifics, whereas that between speaker/writer and audience is reflected in speech level.

Honorifics

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 they are 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 they are 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.

Honorifics in traditional Korea were strictly hierarchical. The caste and estate systems possessed patterns and usages much more complex and stratified than those used today. 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, such as older people, teachers, and employers.

Speech levels

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. Unlike honorifics—which are used to show respect towards the referent (the person spoken of)—speech levels are used to show respect towards a speaker's or writer's audience (the person spoken to). The names of the seven levels are derived from the non-honorific imperative form of the verb (hada, "do") in each level, plus the suffix (che, Hanja: ), which means "style".

The three levels with high politeness (very formally polite, formally polite, casually polite) are generally grouped together as jondaenmal (), whereas the two levels with low politeness (formally impolite, casually impolite) are banmal () in Korean. The remaining two levels (neutral formality with neutral politeness, high formality with neutral politeness) are neither polite nor impolite.

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 banmal. 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.

Vocabulary

File:The oldest Korean dictionary.jpg

The oldest Korean dictionary (1920)

The core of the Korean vocabulary is made up of native Korean words. However, a significant proportion of the vocabulary, especially words that denote abstract ideas, are Sino-Korean words. To a much lesser extent, some words have also been borrowed from Mongolian and other languages. More recent loanwords are dominated by English.

In South Korea, it is widely believed that North Korea wanted to emphasize the use of unique Korean expressions in its language and eliminate the influence of foreign languages. However, according to researchers such as Jeon Soo-tae, who has seen first-hand data from North Korea, the country has reduced the number of difficult foreign words in a similar way to South Korea.

In 2021, Moon Sung-guk of Kim Il Sung University in North Korea wrote in his thesis that Kim Jong Il had said that vernacularized Sino-Korean vocabulary should be used as it is, not modified. "A language is in constant interaction with other languages, and in the process it is constantly being developed and enriched," he said. According to the paper, Kim Jong Il argued that academic terms used in the natural sciences and engineering, such as (; 'computer') and (; 'hard disk') should remain in the names of their inventors, and that the word (; 'chocolate') should not be replaced because it had been used for so long.

South Korea defines its vocabulary standards through the 표준국어대사전 (Standard Korean Language Dictionary), and North Korea defines its vocabulary standards through the 조선말대사전 (Korean Language Dictionary).

Sino-Korean

Number	Sino-Korean cardinal numbers			Native Korean cardinal numbers
	Hangul	Hanja	Romanization	Hangul	Romanization
1			il		hana
2			i		dul
3			sam		set
4			sa		net
5			o		daseot
6	,		yuk, ryuk		yeoseot
7			chil		ilgop
8			pal		yeodeol
9			gu		ahop
10			sip		yeol

Sino-Korean vocabulary consists of:

• words directly borrowed from written Chinese, and
• compounds coined in Korea or Japan and read using the Sino-Korean reading of Chinese characters.

Therefore, just like other words, Korean has two sets of numeral systems. English is similar, having native English words and Latinate equivalents such as water-aqua, fire-flame, sea-marine, two-dual, sun-solar, star-stellar. However, unlike English and Latin which belong to the same Indo-European languages family and bear a certain resemblance, Korean and Chinese are genetically unrelated and the two sets of Korean words differ completely from each other. All Sino-Korean morphemes are monosyllabic as in Chinese, whereas native Korean morphemes can be polysyllabic. The Sino-Korean words were deliberately imported alongside corresponding Chinese characters for a written language and everything was supposed to be written in Hanja, so the coexistence of Sino-Korean would be more thorough and systematic than that of Latinate words in English.

The exact proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary is a matter of debate. Sohn (2001) stated 50–60%. In 2006 the same author gives an even higher estimate of 65%. Jeong Jae-do, one of the compilers of the dictionary Urimal Keun 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 Sino-Korean vocabulary in the Korean language might be as low as 30%.

Western loanwords

The vast majority of loanwords other than Sino-Korean come from modern times, approximately 90% of which are from English. Many words have also been borrowed from Western languages such as German via Japanese (e.g. (areubaiteu) 'part-time job', (allereugi) 'allergy', (gibseu or gibuseu) 'plaster cast used for broken bones'). Some Western words were borrowed indirectly via Japanese during the Japanese occupation of Korea, taking a Japanese sound pattern, for example "dozen" > dāsu > daseu. However, most indirect Western borrowings are now written according to current "Hangulization" rules for the respective Western language, as if borrowed directly. In South Korean official use, a number of other Sino-Korean country names have been replaced with phonetically oriented "Hangeulizations" of the countries' endonyms or English names.

Because of such a prevalence of English in modern South Korean culture and society, lexical borrowing is inevitable. English-derived Korean, or "Konglish" (), is increasingly used. The vocabulary of the South Korean dialect of the Korean language is roughly 5% loanwords (excluding Sino-Korean vocabulary). However, due to North Korea's isolation, such influence is lacking in North Korean speech.

Gender

In general, Korean lacks grammatical gender. As one of the few exceptions, the third-person singular pronoun has two different forms: 그 geu (male) and 그녀 geunyeo (female). Before 그녀 was invented in need of translating 'she' into Korean, 그 was the only third-person singular pronoun and had no grammatical gender. Its origin causes 그녀 never to be used in spoken Korean but appearing only in writing.

To have a more complete understanding of the intricacies of gender in Korean, three models of language and gender that have been proposed: the deficit model, the dominance model, and the cultural difference model. In the deficit model, male speech is seen as the default, and any form of speech that diverges from that norm (female speech) is seen as lesser than. The dominance model sees women as lacking in power due to living within a patriarchal society. The cultural difference model proposes that the difference in upbringing between men and women can explain the differences in their speech patterns. It is important to look at the models to better understand the misogynistic conditions that shaped the ways that men and women use the language. Korean's lack of grammatical gender makes it different from most European languages. Rather, gendered differences in Korean can be observed through formality, intonation, word choice, etc.

However, one can still find stronger contrasts between genders within Korean speech. Some examples of this can be seen in: (1) the softer tone used by women in speech; (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) females sometimes using more tag questions and rising tones in statements, also seen in speech from children.

Between two people of asymmetric status in 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. In traditional Korean society, women have long been in disadvantaged positions. Korean social structure traditionally was a patriarchically dominated family system that emphasized the maintenance of family lines. That structure has tended to separate the roles of women from those of men.

Cho and Whitman (2019) explore how categories such as male and female and social context influence Korean's features. For example, they point out that usage of jagi (자기 you) is dependent on context. While jagi is usually used as a reflexive pronoun, especially as 'oneself', its meaning has become diverse in modern times. For example, among middle-aged women, jagi is used to address someone who is close to them, while young Koreans use jagi to address their lovers or spouses regardless of gender.

Korean society's prevalent attitude towards men being in public (outside the home) and women living in private still exists today. For instance, the word for husband is bakkannyangban (바깥양반 'outside nobleman'), but a husband introduces his wife as ansaram (안사람 an 'inside' 'person'). Also in kinship terminology, oe (외/外 'outside') is added for maternal grandparents, creating oeharabeoji and oehalmeoni (외할아버지, 외할머니 'grandfather and grandmother'), with different lexicons for males and females and patriarchal society revealed. Further, in interrogatives to an addressee of equal or lower status, Korean men tend to use haennya (했냐? 'did it?')' in aggressive masculinity, but women use haenni (했니? 'did it?')' as a soft expression. However, there are exceptions. Korean society used the question endings -ni () and -nya (), the former prevailing among women and men until a few decades ago. In fact, -nya () was characteristic of the Jeolla and Chungcheong dialects. However, since the 1950s, large numbers of people have moved to Seoul from Chungcheong and Jeolla, and they began to influence the way men speak. Recently, women also have used the -nya (). As for -ni (), it is usually used toward people to be polite even to someone not close or younger. As for -nya (), it is used mainly to close friends regardless of gender.

Like the case of "actor" and "actress", it also is possible to add a gender prefix for emphasis: biseo (비서 'secretary') is sometimes combined with yeo (여 'female') to form yeobiseo (여비서 'female secretary'); namja (남자 'man') often is added to ganhosa (간호사 'nurse') to form namja ganhosa (남자 간호사 'male nurse').

Another crucial difference between men and women is the tone and pitch of their voices and how they affect the perception of politeness. Men learn to use an authoritative falling tone; in Korean culture, a deeper voice is associated with being more polite. In addition to the deferential speech endings being used, men are seen as more polite as well as impartial, and professional. While women who use a rising tone in postposition with -yo () are not perceived to be as polite as men. The -yo () also indicates uncertainty since the ending has many prefixes that indicate uncertainty and questioning while the deferential ending has no prefixes to indicate uncertainty. The -hamnida () ending is the most polite and formal form of Korea, and the -yo () ending is less polite and formal, which reinforces the perception of women as less professional.

Hedges and euphemisms to soften assertions are common in women's speech. Women traditionally add nasal sounds neyng, neym, ney-e in the last syllable more frequently than men. Often, l is added in women's for female stereotypes and so igeolo (이거로 'this thing') becomes igeollo (이걸로 'this thing') to communicate a lack of confidence and passivity.

Women use more linguistic markers such as exclamation eomeo (어머 'oh') and eojjeom (어쩜 'what a surprise') than men do in cooperative communication.

Writing system

File:Yeongdong Expressway Entrance Sign in Wonju Interchange.JPG

The Latin alphabet used in romanization on road signs, for foreigners in South Korea

File:Street sign in Daejeon.jpg

Road Name Address sign in Hangul and Latin script in South Korea

Modern Korean is written with an alphabet script, known as in South Korea and in North Korea. The Korean mixed script, combining Hanja and Hangul, is still used to a certain extent in South Korea, but that method is slowly declining in use even though students learn Hanja in school.

Below are charts of the letters of the Korean alphabet and their Revised Romanization (RR) and canonical International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) values:

Consonants

Hangul
RR	g	kk	n	d	tt	r (initial), l (final)	m	b	pp	s	ss	silent (initial), ng (final)	j	jj	ch	k	t	p	h
IPA						,

Vowels

Hangul
RR	i	e	oe	ae	a	o	u	eo	eu	ui	ye	yae	ya	yo	yu	yeo	wi	we	wae	wa	wo
IPA			,														,

The letters of the Korean alphabet are not written linearly like most alphabets, but instead arranged into blocks that represent syllables. So, while the word bibimbap (Korean rice dish) is written as eight characters in a row in the Latin alphabet, in Korean it is written , as three "syllabic blocks" in a row. Mukbang ( 'eating show') is seven characters after romanization but only two "syllabic blocks" before.

Modern Korean is written with spaces between words, a feature not found in Chinese or Japanese (except when Japanese is written exclusively in hiragana, as in children's books). The marks used for Korean punctuation are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns, from top to bottom, right to left, like traditional Chinese. However, the syllabic blocks are now usually written in rows, from left to right, top to bottom, like English.

Dialects

File:Korean dialect zones.svg

Korean dialect zones

Korean has numerous small local dialects (called mal (; lit. 'speech'), saturi (), or bangeon (; )). South Korean authors claim that the standard language (pyojuneo or pyojunmal) of both South Korea and North Korea is based on the dialect of the area around Seoul (which, as Hanyang, was the capital of Joseon-era Korea for 500 years), but since 1966, North Korea officially states that its standard is based on the Pyongyang speech. All dialects of Korean are similar to one another and largely are mutually intelligible (with the exception of dialect-specific phrases or nonstandard vocabulary unique to dialects) though the dialect of Jeju Island is divergent enough to be generally considered a separate language. The Yukjin dialect in the far northeast is also quite distinctive.

One of the more salient differences between dialects is the use of tone: speakers of the Seoul dialect make use of vowel length, but 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, and others are highly innovative.

, , and suggest that the modern Seoul dialect is currently undergoing tonogenesis based on the finding that in recent years lenis consonants (ㅂㅈㄷㄱ), aspirated consonants (ㅍㅊㅌㅋ) and fortis consonants (ㅃㅉㄸㄲ) were shifting from a distinction via voice onset time to that of pitch change; however, disagree with the suggestion that the consonant distinction shifting away from voice onset time is due to the introduction of tonal features, and instead proposes that it is a prosodically conditioned change.

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 a basic vocabulary that is etymologically distinct from vocabulary of identical meaning in Standard Korean or other dialects. For example, "garlic chives" translated into Gyeongsang dialect is (; ), but in Standard Korean, it is (; ). This suggests that the Korean Peninsula may have at one time been much more linguistically diverse than it is today. See also the Japanese–Koreanic languages hypothesis.

North–South differences

The language used in the North and the South exhibit differences in pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.

Pronunciation

In North Korea, palatalization of is optional, and can be pronounced 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 modified Hangul (what the Korean characters would be if one were to write the word as pronounced).

Word		Meaning	Pronunciation
			North			South
					Chosŏn'gŭl			Hangul
	ilgo	to read (continuative form)	ilko	ilko		ilkko	ilkko
	amnokgang	Amnok River	amrokgang	amrokkang		amnokkang	amnokkang
	dongnip	independence	dongrip	tongrip		dongnip	tongnip
	gwannyeom	idea / sense / conception	gwallyeom	kwallyŏm		gwannyeom	kwannyŏm
*	hyeoksinjeok	innovative	hyeoksinjjeok	hyŏksintchŏk		hyeoksinjeok	hyŏksinjŏk

* In the North, similar pronunciation is used whenever the Hanja "" is attached to a Sino-Korean word ending in , or .

* In the South, this rule only applies when it is attached to any single-character Sino-Korean word.

Spelling

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

Word		Meaning	Pronunciation (RR/MR)	Remarks
North spelling	South spelling
		sunshine	haeppit (haepit)	The "sai siot" ('' used for indicating sound change) is almost never written out in the North.
		cherry blossom	beotkkot (pŏtkkot)
		cannot read	modikda (modikta)	Spacing.
		Hallasan	hallasan (hallasan)	When a combination is pronounced as ll, the original Hangul spelling is kept in the North, whereas the Hangul is changed in the South.
		rules	gyuyul (kyuyul)	In words where the original Hanja is spelt "" or "" and follows a vowel, the initial is not pronounced in the North, making the pronunciation identical with that in the South where the is dropped in the spelling.

Spelling and pronunciation

Basically, the standard languages of North and South Korea, including pronunciation and vocabulary, are both linguistically based on the Seoul dialect, but in North Korea, words have been modified to reflect the theories of scholars like Kim Tu-bong, who sought a refined language, as well as political needs. Some differences are difficult to explain in terms of political ideas, such as North Korea's use of the word rajio ().:

Word				Meaning	Remarks
North spelling	North pronun.	South spelling	South pronun.
	ryeongryang (ryŏngryang)		yeongnyang (yŏngnyang)	strength	Initial r's are dropped if followed by i or y in the South Korean version of Korean.
	rodong (rodong)		nodong (nodong)	work	Initial r's are demoted to an n if not followed by i or y in the South Korean version of Korean.
	wonssu (wŏnssu)		wonsu (wŏnsu)	mortal enemy	"Mortal enemy" and "field marshal" are homophones in the South. Possibly to avoid referring to Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un as the enemy, the second syllable of "enemy" is written and pronounced in the North.
	rajio (rajio)		radio (radio)	radio	In South Korea, the expression rajio is considered a Japanese expression that was introduced during the Japanese colonial rule and does not properly represent the pronunciation of Korean.
	u (u)		wi (wi)	on; above
	anhae (anhae)		anae (anae)	wife
	kkuba (kkuba)		kuba (k'uba)	Cuba	When transcribing foreign words from languages that do not have contrasts between aspirated and unaspirated stops, North Koreans generally use tensed stops for the unaspirated ones while South Koreans use aspirated stops in both cases.
	pe (p'e)		pye (p'ye), pe (p'e)	lungs	In the case where ye comes after a consonant, such as in hye and pye, it is pronounced without the palatal approximate. North Korean orthography reflects this pronunciation nuance.

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:

Original name	North Korea transliteration		English name	South Korea transliteration
	Spelling	Pronunciation		Spelling	Pronunciation
Ulaanbaatar		ullanbattareu (ullanbattarŭ)	Ulan Bator		ullanbatoreu (ullanbat'orŭ)
København		koeppenhabeun (k'oeppenhabŭn)	Copenhagen		kopenhagen (k'op'enhagen)
al-Qāhirah		kkahira (kkahira)	Cairo		kairo (k'airo)

Grammar

Some grammatical constructions are also different:

Word				Meaning	Remarks
North spelling	North pronun.	South spelling	South pronun.
	doeyeotda (toeyŏtta)		doeeotda (toeŏtta)	past tense of (doeda/toeda), "to become"	All similar grammar forms of verbs or adjectives that end in in the stem (i.e. , , , , and ) in the North use instead of the South's .
	gomawayo (komawayo)		gomawoyo (komawŏyo)	thanks	-irregular verbs in the North use (wa) for all those with a positive ending vowel; this only happens in the South if the verb stem has only one syllable.
	halgayo (halkayo)		halkkayo (halkkayo)	Shall we do?	Although the Hangul differ, the pronunciations are the same (i.e. with the tensed sound).

Punctuation

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).

Vocabulary

Some vocabulary is different between the North and the South:

Word				Meaning	Remarks
North word	North pronun.	South word	South pronun.
	munhwajutaek (munhwajut'aek)		apateu (ap'at'ŭ)	Apartment	(appateu/appat'ŭ) is also used in the North.
	joseoneo (chosŏnŏ)		hangugeo (han'gugŏ)	Korean language	The Japanese pronunciation of 조선말 was used throughout Korea and Manchuria during Japanese imperial rule, but after liberation, the government in the South chose the name 대한민국 (daehanminguk) which was derived from the name immediately prior to Japanese imperial rule, and claimed by government-in-exile from 1919. The syllable 한 (han) was drawn from the same source as that name (in reference to the Han people). Read more. (joseoneo/chosŏnŏ) is officially used in the North.
	gwakbap (kwakpap)		dosirak (tosirak)	lunch box
	dongmu (tongmu)		chingu (ch'in'gu)	Friend	was originally a non-ideological word for "friend" used all over the Korean peninsula, but North Koreans later adopted it as the equivalent of the Communist term of address "comrade". As a result, to South Koreans today the word has a heavy political tinge, and so they have shifted to using other words for friend like chingu () or beot (). Today, beot () is closer to a term used in literature, and chingu () is the widest-used word for friend. Such changes were made after the Korean War and the ideological battle between the anti-Communist government in the South and North Korea's communism.

Geographic distribution

Korean is spoken by the Korean people in both South Korea and North Korea, and by the Korean diaspora in many countries including the People's Republic of China, the United States, Japan, and Russia. In 2001, Korean was the fourth most popular foreign language in China, following English, Japanese, and Russian. 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

• Highway sign in Korean, Reunification Highway, Pyongyang, Korea
  Highway sign in Korean,
  Reunification Highway, Pyongyang, Korea
• Highway sign in Korean and English, Gyeongbu Expressway, Daegu, Korea
  Highway sign in Korean and English,
  Gyeongbu Expressway, Daegu, Korea
• Highway sign in Korean and Chinese, Hunwu Expressway, Yanbian, China
  Highway sign in Korean and Chinese,
  Hunwu Expressway, Yanbian, China

Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea. It, along with Mandarin Chinese, is also one of the two official languages of China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.

In North Korea, the regulatory body is the Language Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences (; ; ). In South Korea, the regulatory body for Korean is the Seoul-based National Institute of Korean Language, which was created by presidential decree on 23 January 1991.

King Sejong Institute

Established pursuant to Article 9, Section 2, of the Framework Act on the National Language, the King Sejong Institute is a public institution set up to coordinate the government's project of propagating Korean language and culture; it also supports the King Sejong Institute, which is the institution's overseas branch. The King Sejong Institute was established in response to:

• An increase in the demand for Korean language education;
• a rapid increase in Korean language education thanks to the spread of the culture (hallyu), an increase in international marriage, the expansion of Korean enterprises into overseas markets, and enforcement of employment licensing system;
• the need for a government-sanctioned Korean language educational institution;
• the need for general support for overseas Korean language education based on a successful domestic language education program.

King Sejong Institute has 59 in Europe, 15 in Africa, 146 in Asia, 34 in the Americas, and 4 in Oceania.

TOPIK Korea Institute

The TOPIK Korea Institute is a lifelong educational center affiliated with a variety of Korean universities in Seoul, South Korea, whose aim is to promote Korean language and culture, support local Korean teaching internationally, and facilitate cultural exchanges.

The institute is sometimes compared to language and culture promotion organizations such as the King Sejong Institute. Unlike that organization, however, the TOPIK Korea Institute operates within established universities and colleges around the world, providing educational materials. In countries around the world, Korean embassies and cultural centers () administer TOPIK examinations.

Foreign language

For native English-speakers, Korean is generally considered to be one of the most difficult foreign languages to master despite the relative ease of learning Hangul. For instance, the United States' Defense Language Institute places Korean in Category IV with Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), and Arabic, requiring 64 weeks of instruction (as compared to just 26 weeks for Category I languages like Italian, French, and Spanish) to bring an English-speaking student to a limited working level of proficiency in which they have "sufficient capability to meet routine social demands and limited job requirements" and "can deal with concrete topics in past, present, and future tense." Similarly, the Foreign Service Institute's School of Language Studies places Korean in Category IV, the highest level of difficulty.

The study of the Korean language in the United States was dominated by Korean American heritage language students; in 2007, these students were estimated to form over 80% of all students of the language at non-military universities. However, Sejong Institutes in the United States have noted a sharp rise in the number of people of other ethnic backgrounds studying Korean between 2009 and 2011, which they attribute to rising popularity of South Korean music and television shows. In 2018, it was reported that the rise in K-Pop was responsible for the increase in people learning the language in US universities.

Testing

There are two widely used tests of Korean as a foreign language: the Korean Language Ability Test (KLAT) and the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK). The Korean Language Proficiency Test, an examination aimed at assessing non-native speakers' competence in Korean, was instituted in 1997; 17,000 people applied for the 2005 sitting of the examination. The TOPIK was first administered in 1997 and was taken by 2,274 people. Since then the total number of people who have taken the TOPIK has surpassed 1 million, with more than 150,000 candidates taking the test in 2012. TOPIK is administered in 45 regions within South Korea and 72 nations outside of South Korea, with a significant portion being administered in Japan and North America, which would suggest the targeted audience for TOPIK is still primarily foreigners of Korean heritage. This is also evident in TOPIK's website, where the examination is introduced as intended for Korean heritage students.

Example text

From Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Korean (South Korean standard):

See also

• Korean Wave
• Miracle on the Han River
• Outline of Korean language
• Korean count word
• Korean Cultural Center (KCC)
• Korean dialects
• Korean language and computers
• Korean as a foreign language
• Korean mixed script
• Debate on mixed script and Hangul exclusivity
• Korean particles
• Korean proverbs
• Korean words
• Korean sign language
• Korean romanization
  • McCune–Reischauer
  • Revised romanization of Korean
  • Yale romanization of Korean
• List of English words of Korean origin
• Vowel harmony
• History of Korean

Further reading

• In 3 volumes.
• Unpublished Harvard University PhD dissertation.

External links

• Linguistic and Philosophical Origins of the Korean Alphabet (Hangul)
• Sogang University free online Korean language and culture course
• Beginner's guide to Korean for English speakers
• U.S. Foreign Service Institute Korean basic course
• asianreadings.com, Korean readings with hover prompts
• Linguistic map of Korea
• dongsa.net, Korean verb conjugation tool
• Hanja Explorer, a tool to visualize and study Korean vocabulary