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Korean is spoken by more than 72 million people living on the Korean peninsula. Although it differs slightly in spelling, alphabet, 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 understandable among speakers from different areas.
Originally written using "Hanja" (Chinese characters), Korean is now mainly spelled in "Hangul", the Korean alphabet. "Hangul" consists of 24 letters - 14 consonants and 10 vowels - that are written in blocks of 2 to 5 characters. Unlike the Chinese writing system (including Japanese "Kanji"), "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 five letters join to form a syllabic unit.
Like in other Asian languages, 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 the speaker/writer and subject is reflected in honorifics, while that between speaker/writer and audience is reflected in speech level.
When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer has to use special nouns or verb endings to indicate the subject's superiority. Generally, someone is superior in status if he/she is an older distant relative (grandparent's sibling, older sibling's spouse, etc.), a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, an employer, teacher or a customer.
Someone is equal or inferior in status if he/she is a close relative (grandparent, parent, spouse, or sibling), student, employee, etc. On rare occasions (like when someone wants to pick a fight), a speaker might talk to a superior or stranger in a way normally only used for, say, animals. But no one would do this without seriously considering the consequences to their physical safety first...
Korean language
10 things about "Korean language" :
1 Korean language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Korean (??? / ???, see below) is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous ... 2 Korean language Korean language schools, vocabulary and other resources. ... Welcome to the Korean Language Web site. Here you'll find some useful resources to help you to understand the Korean ... 3 Download details: Office XP Tool: Korean Language Pack The Korean Language Pack installs Korean language support files for the operating system.4 Hangul - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Hangul (pronounced /?h?????l/, or Korean [ha?n??l] (help info)) is the native alphabet of the Korean language, as distinguished from the logographic Sino-Korean ... 5 Korean language: Information from Answers.com Korean language Official language of North Korea and South Korea, spoken by more than 75 million people, including substantial communities of ethnic6 Korean alphabet, pronunciation and language Korean Origin of writing in Korea. Chinese writing has been known in Korea for over 2,000 years. It was used widely during the Chinese occupation of northern Korea from 108 BC to ...  ... 7 Korean language - Definition The Korean language is the most widely used language in Korea, and is the official language of both North and South Korea. The language is also spoken widely in neighbouring ... ... 8 Korean Korean is the language of the Korean Peninsula in northeast Asia.There are many theories about the origin of the Korean Language. According to the so-called Southern theory, Korean ... ... 9 Korean Language Learning Tutorial, Korean Software, Korean Dictionary ... Hundreds of Korean language related products and information including Movies, Language Learning & Tutorials, Computer Training, Microsoft Korean Windows & Office, Handheld ... ... 10 Korean Language Practice- main Learn the Korean language with Life in Korea's practice sections. ... The Korean language is classified as a member of the Ural-Altaic family (other members of this family include ... ...
- This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language. See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system.
Korean (한국어/조선말, see below) is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers,[1] with large groups in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, the United States, CIS (post-Soviet states), and more recently the Philippines. It was formerly written using Hanja, borrowed Chinese characters pronounced in the Korean way. In the 15th century a national writing system was developed by Sejong the Great, nowadays called Hangul.
The genealogical classification of the Korean language is debated. Some linguists place it in the Altaic language family, while others consider it to be a language isolate. It is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax.
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North Korea
South Korea
People's Republic of China)
United States (minority and auxiliary)
