Korean language

KOREAN LANGUAGE

The Korean language (South Korean: 한국어/韓國語 Hangugeo; North Korean: 조선말/朝鮮말 Chosŏnmal) is an East Asian languagespoken by about 80 million people.^[3] It is a member of the Koreanic language family and is the official and national language of both Koreas: North Korea and South Korea, with different standardized official forms used in each territory. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin province, China. Historical and modern linguists classify Korean as a language isolate; however, it does have a few extinct relatives, which together with Korean itself and the Jeju language (spoken in the Jeju Province and considered somewhat distinct) form the Koreanic language family. This implies that Korean is not an isolate, but a member of a micro-family. The idea that Korean belongs to the controversial Altaic language family is discredited in academic research. Korean is now often included in Paleosiberian, a group of ancient languages in Northeast Asia. Paleosiberian is not a language family person, but a term of convenience for genetically unrelated languages that predate other regional language families such as Tungusic and Turkic. Korean is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax.

If you are just starting to learn Korean, or already learn Korean, this page will be a great resource for you! Although it is a beginners Korean section, it contains A lot of free lessons that will get you well on your way to Korean mastery. The first couple lessons will teach you everything you need to know about reading in the actual Korean alphabet, while the following lessons will give you vocabulary and grammar usage that you will definitely need. To build a solid vocabulary effectively.

If you wish to really learn Korean, I highly recommend you check out the lessons at Learn Korean Now. The free lessons on this site can teach the basics of Korean. There will not be many cute pictures to take up space and distract you from the learning, but if you can deal without all the cute pictures that do not teach you anything, and simply wish to learn the language as fast as possible correctly then this site is perfect for you. I will admit, I am a hardcore fan of the Korean language, so these lessons will be intense and contain a lot of information!

Dialects

Dialects of Korean

Korean has numerous small local dialects (called mal (말) [literally "speech"], saturi (사투리), or bang'eon (방언 in Korean). The standard language (pyojun-eo or pyojun-mal) 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), though the northern standard after the Korean War has been influenced by the dialect of P'yŏngyang. All dialects of Korean are similar to each other and largely mutually intelligible (with the exception of dialect-specific phrases or non-Standard vocabulary unique to dialects), though the dialect of Jeju Island is divergent enough to be sometimes classified as a separate language. One of the more salient differences between dialects is the use of tone: speakers of the Seoul dialect make use of vowel length, whereas 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, whereas others are highly innovative.

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 basic vocabulary that is etymologically distinct from vocabulary of identical meaning in Standard Korean or other dialects, such as Gyeongsang dialect /t͡ɕʌŋ.ɡu.d͡ʑi/ vs. Standard Korean /puːt͡ɕʰu/ "garlic chives". This suggests that the Korean Peninsula may have at one time been much more linguistically diverse than it is at present. See also the Buyeo languages hypothesis.

Nonetheless, the separation of the two Korean states has resulted in increasing differences among the dialects that have emerged over time. Since the allies of the newly founded nations split the Korean peninsula in half after 1945, the newly formed Korean nations have since borrowed vocabulary extensively from their respective allies. As the Soviet Union helped industrialize North Korea and establish it as a communist state, the North Koreans would therefore borrow a number of Russian terms. Likewise, since the United States helped South Korea extensively to develop militarily, economically, and politically, South Koreans would therefore borrow extensively from English. In response to the diverging vocabularies, an app called Univoca was designed to help North Korean defectors learn South Korean terms by translating them into North Korean ones. The differences among northern and southern dialects have become so significant that many North Korean defectors reportedly have had great difficulty communicating with South Koreans after having initially settled into South Korea.More info can be found on the page North-South differences in the Korean language.