Korean is spoken by more than 72 million people living on
the Korean peninsula. Although it differs slightly in spelling, alphabetization, and
vocabulary between the two regions, Korean is the official language of both South Korea
and North Korea. Outside of the Korean peninsula, there are about two million people in
China who speak Korean as their first language, another two million in the United States,
700,000 in Japan, and 500,000 in the Russian regions of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
The Korean language has five major dialects in South Korea
and one in North Korea. Despite the geographical and socio-political dialect differences,
Korean is relatively homogeneous, being mutually intelligible among speakers from
different areas. The Korean elementary school system plays an important role in
proliferating standard Korean.
Korean is historically and grammatically related to
Japanese, but the two languages sound dramatically different when spoken. It is not clear
to anthropologists whether these two languages have a common ancestor or have just influenced
each other through social contact. Some scholars have suggested that Korean and Japanese
are remotely related to the Altaic languages (such as Manchu, Mongolian, and Turkish).
Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, was created in 1443 by Sejong,
the fourth king of the Yi Dynasty. The Korean alphabet consists of 40 letters, including
compounds: 10 pure vowels, 11 compound vowels, 14 basic consonants, and 5 double
consonants. The basic Korean alphabet, though, consists of 10 vowels and 14 consonants.
The individual consonant and vowel letters of Hangeul are
combined into syllabic blocks to create Korean words and sentences. This syllabic writing
system is highly systematic and relatively easy to learn. It was not, however, used by
scholars or the upper classes until after 1945, due to the influence of Confucianism
and Chinese culture. After the emancipation from Japanese rule at the end of World War II,
Chinese characters yielded their status, and Hangeul has been predominantly used in modern
Korean.
Korean has imported many words from Classical Chinese.
These Sino-Korean words constitute about 55% of Korean vocabulary. Such words as
san
(mountain) and
kang (river) were written in Chinese characters until recently.
Korean also has more than 10,000 loanwords that it has borrowed from English.
One Korean word that you probably know is
tae-kwon-do.
The Chinese character for
tae means "leg,"
kwon means "to
raise," and
do means "way of life." (The latter is the Korean
equivalent of the Chinese
tao.)
Beware of some Korean words that look like English words but do not have the same meaning. For example, if you pursue your studies of the Korean language, you
will come across the word
pool. Pronounced short like "pull" it means
weed,
but pronounced long like "pool" it means
glue. Watch out, because it
never refers to a swimming pool! Another example is the word
check, which means
book.
What if they say
book, then? Does that mean "check"? No-- it means
drum!
Korean has many forms of address and reference terms
that are sensitive to degrees of social stratification and to the relationship between the
speaker and the person being spoken to or spoken about. Koreans tend to use people's
titles, such as "Director" or "President," in business situations, and
to use the names of relationships, such as "Brother" or "Sister," when
addressing each other in a family setting.
Korean culture is characterized by a seniority system,
resulting in many variations of written and spoken styles. Sentences can hardly be uttered
without the speaker's knowledge of the social relationship between the speaker and
the addressee in terms or age, social status, and kinship. An individual's
relationship to a given group also plays a key role in the form of address that is used.
Unlike the Subject-Verb-Object order used in English
sentences (e.g. "I speak Korean"), the basic Korean sentence order is
Subject-Object-Verb ("I Korean speak"). The verb usually comes at the end of a
sentence or a clause. Because there are no relative pronouns in Korean, sentences tend
to be longer and more complicated than they are in English.
Many people study languages but stop using them and forget
what they have learned. That's why good
Korean software programs can be so useful. Now that you can use and enjoy Korean independently with
Transparent Language's software programs, not
only will you learn it, but you will also remember it. In addition, if you use other means
to learn Korean, you will enhance your new skills since you are using it regularly. We
wish you all the best with your study of Korean!
