Search results
Aug 28, 2017 · The national and official language of South Korea is Korean. Korean, also referred to as Hangul, is the national and official language in South Korea as well as North Korea. The language is drastically different from western languages. South Korea is home to close to 51 million residents, half of whom reside in and around the bustling capital ...
Korean ( South Korean: 한국어, Hangugeo; North Korean: 조선말, Chosŏnmal) is the native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Korean descent. [a] [2] It is the national language of both North Korea and South Korea .
- Overview
- General considerations
- Writing and transcriptions
- Digraphs and separators
Korean language, language spoken by more than 75 million people, of whom 48 million live in South Korea and 24 million in North Korea. There are more than 2 million speakers in China, approximately 1 million in the United States, and about 500,000 in Japan. Korean is the official language of both South Korea (Republic of Korea) and North Korea (Dem...
While much is known about Middle Korean, the language spoken in the 15th century (when the script was invented), information about the language before that time is limited. Several hundred words of early Middle Korean were written with phonograms in the vocabularies compiled by the Chinese as far back as 1103. A still earlier form of the language, sometimes called Old Korean, has been inferred from place-names and from the 25 poems (called hyangga) that were composed as early as the 10th century and reflect the language of the Silla kingdom. Written with Chinese characters used in various ways to stand for Korean meanings and sounds, the poems are difficult to decipher, and there is no consensus on the interpretation of the content.
Nor is there general agreement on the relationship of Korean to other languages. The most likely relationships proposed are to Japanese and to the languages of the Altaic group: Turkic, Mongolian, and especially Tungus (-Manchu-Jurchen).
When Korean words are cited in English and other languages they are transcribed in a variety of ways, as can be seen from the spellings seen for a popular Korean surname: I, Yi, Lee, Li, Ree, Ri, Rhee, Rie, Ni, and so on. For English speakers the most popular transcription is that of the McCune-Reischauer system, which writes words more or less as they sound to the American ear. Despite its clumsiness, McCune-Reischauer is the system used in this description, and following that system the common surname is written Yi; it sounds like the English name of the letter e. In citing sentences, many linguists prefer the Yale romanization, which more accurately reflects the Korean orthography and avoids the need for diacritics to mark vowel distinctions. For a comparison of the two systems, see the Click Here to see full-size tableTable.
Britannica Quiz
Languages & Alphabets
The writing system dates from 1443, and for many years it was known as Ŏnmun ‘vernacular script,’ though in South Korea it is now called Hangul (han’gŭl; or Hankul in the Yale romanization) and in North Korea Chosŏn kŭl(tcha), Chosŏn mun(tcha), or just Chosŏn mal ‘Korean.’ Very simple symbols are provided for each of the phonemes. Words can be spelled by putting these symbols one after another, as most writing systems do, but Koreans have preferred to group the symbols into square blocks like Chinese characters. The first element in the block is the initial consonant; if the syllable begins with a vowel, a small circle serves as a zero initial. What follows, either to the left or below (or both) is the vowel nucleus, which may be simple or complex (originally a diphthong or triphthong). An optional final element at the bottom (called patch’im) writes a final consonant or a cluster of two consonants. The 15th-century script had a few additional consonant letters that became obsolete in the following centuries and an additional vowel distinction that survived in the spellings until 1933; that vowel is usually transcribed as ă. On Cheju Island, where the distinction is maintained, the phoneme is pronounced [ɔ], very close to the modern Seoul version of the vowel transcribed ŏ, which in many parts of the country is still pronounced [ə]. That accounts for the first vowel of the usual spelling Seoul (= Sŏul), based on a French system of romanization, and for the use of the letter e to write ŏ in the Yale system.
The earlier language had a distinctive musical accent. In the far south and the northeast, the accent is still maintained as distinctions of pitch, vowel length, or a combination of the two. In the 15th century, low-pitched syllables were left unmarked but a dot was placed to the left of the high-pitched syllables and a double dot (like a colon) was put beside syllables that rose from low to high. The rising accent was maintained as vowel length in central Korea after the other distinctions eroded, but it, too, is vanishing in modern Seoul, even in initial syllables, where it has persisted longest. Like French, Seoul Korean no longer uses accent to distinguish words. The few apparent exceptions are due to intonation: nu-ga wassŏ (spoken with a rising pitch) ‘Did someone come?’, nu-ga wassŏ (spoken with a falling pitch) ‘Who came?’.
Are you a student? Get Britannica Premium for only 24.95 - a 67% discount!
All transcriptions of Korean include digraphs of one kind or another and use separators to distinguish a string of two letters in their separate values from their single value as a digraph. When no other mark (such as a hyphen or space) is in order, the McCune-Reischauer system uses the apostrophe to distinguish such pairs as hangŏ (= hang-ŏ) ‘resi...
- Samuel E. Martin
Oct 27, 2022 · Korean As The Official Language. South Korea has one official language, Korean..of course. It is the language that is most widely spoken in the country, with an estimated 77.2 million people speaking it at home or as a native language.
Apr 9, 2024 · It is spoken by almost 80 million people and is the official language of South and North Korea. It’s also an official language in the Yanbian region in China. The word “Korean” can refer to the language, people, or an aspect of the culture. Typically when people say Korean, they are referring to South Koreans.
Apr 3, 2024 · According to Ethnologue, with 82 million native speakers, Korean is the 23rd most spoken language in the world. Nearly 80 million speak Korean as their mother tongue, of whom 50 million live in South Korea and 26 million in North Korea. Plus, 6 million diasporas live in China, the USA, Japan, Canada, and other countries.
People also ask
What language does North Korea speak?
Does South Korea have a language?
Which language is most spoken in Korea?
What is the national and official language of South Korea?
As of April 2016, the population in South Korea was estimated to be roughly 50.8 million and it was noted that the total fertility rate and the working age population was declining continuously. The main language spoken in South Korea is Korean. This and other languages spoken in the country will be discussed in brief below.
![Dialects of the Korean language [1150 x 1398] : r/MapPorn](https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=what+language+is+spoken+in+south+korea+map&ei=UTF-8&th=111.2&tw=91.5&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F8js0ccvmwq901.png&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FMapPorn%2Fcomments%2F7q1qkp%2Fdialects_of_the_korean_language_1150_x_1398%2F&size=45KB&name=Dialects+of+the+Korean+language+%5B1150+x+1398%5D+%3A+r%2FMapPorn&oid=4&h=1398&w=1150&turl=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.nOf-Y-P4UfyPr8BBNGkaUwHaJA%26pid%3DApi%26rs%3D1%26c%3D1%26qlt%3D95%26w%3D91%26h%3D111&tt=Dialects+of+the+Korean+language+%5B1150+x+1398%5D+%3A+r%2FMapPorn&sigr=rI0D6VxtIza4&sigit=02EkceOWwBo8&sigi=I1F_0MUSujw8&sign=jJy4C_hRDvom&sigt=jJy4C_hRDvom "Dialects of the Korean language [1150 x 1398] : r/MapPorn")
