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| The '''Korean language''' is spoken primarily in ]. | The '''Korean language''' is spoken primarily in ]. | ||
| Its speakers call it "Han-guk-eo" or "Han- |
Its speakers call it "Han-guk-eo" or "Han-gung-mal". | ||
| === Classification === | === Classification === | ||
Revision as of 02:16, 26 November 2002
] The Korean language is spoken primarily in Korea. Its speakers call it "Han-guk-eo" or "Han-gung-mal".
Classification
Korean, as such, is often classified as being a separate language in a family of its own. Its links, like those of Japanese, to Altaic and proto-Altaic also have been much argued of late. It does have some semblances considering the morphology to some languages of the Eastern Turkic group, namely, Yakutsk and some of its variants.
Alphabet
Hangul, the Korean alphabet, consists of 24 letters -- 14 consonants and 10 vowels that are written in groups of 2 to 5 characters. Unlike the Chinese writing system and the Japanese Kanji system, Hangul is not an ideographic system. The shapes of the individual Hangul letters were designed to model the physical morphology of the tongue, palate and teeth; up to four letters join to form a syllabic unit.
King Se-Jong of Korea created the Korean script with the help of his advisors. It initially was not well received by the educated populace, who already used chinese characters to write Korean. When Japan invaded Korea and banned Korean publications, many Koreans recognized that the Korean script created a stronger cultural language identity and adopted it.
However, the chinese characters are still used to some extent. (See, e.g. Kim Il Sung, his name is in Hangul and chinese).
Grammar
Korean grammar is similar to that of the Japanese language. The basic form of a Korean sentence is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV), and modifiers precede the modified word. So whereas in English we would say, "I'm going to the store to buy some food", in Korean it would be something like: *"I food in-order-to-buy to-store am-going."
In Korean, "unnecessary" words (see theme and rheme) can be left out of a sentence as long as the context makes the meaning clear. So a typical exchange might translate word-for word to the following:
- H: *"store are-going?"
- G: "yes."
which in English would translate to:
- H: "are you going to the store?"
- G: "yes."
Unlike European languages, Korean does not conjugate verbs using agreement with the subject. 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/honored persons, another. This loosely echoes the tú/usted duality in the Spanish language, or Du/Sie in the German language
External links: Hangul syllables (7MByte PDF) and Jamo