Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea. About 78 million people speak Korean around the world. For more than a millennium, Korean has been written with adapted Chinese characters, called hanja, and complemented by different phonetic systems. A national writing system called hangul was commissioned in the 15th century, but only came into widespread use in the 20th century.
It is a common language, but with different regional dialects. In North Korea, the default language is based on the dialect spoken in Pyongyang while in South Korea on the dialect spoken in Seoul. However, the differences between the dialects are not particularly large, and Koreans have no problem understanding each other. However, there are relatively many ‘foreignisms’ in the Korean language of South Korea coming from the English, which are avoided in North Korea.
When it comes to classifying the Korean language into a family of languages, there are two points of view:
- Some classify Korean into Altaic languages
- Other do not classify it at all
Korean is a binder language, which means that times and cases are expressed by prefixes or suffixes attached to verbs. Therefore, the verb is also the most important element of the Korean language, and you can create sentences that consist only of one verb. Particularly important in this context are the forms of courtesy.
Hangul
Korean writing is the only one in the world that was created by the promulgation of a king. In Korea until the 15th century, Chinese written language was the official language. Ordinary people used the vernacular, but they could not read and write. Mid-15th century, King Sejong adopted an alphabet with 28 letters. Of these, 24 still exist today and form the basis of Hangul writing.
There are 21 vowels and 19 consonants.
Hangul is written from left to right and top to bottom.
Korean Facts
- Seoul, the capital of South Korea, means “the capital” in Korean. It is the largest city in South Korea.
- Kimchi is the most popular dish in Korean cuisine. There are hundreds of varieties, but essentially it is pickled vegetables and fermented cabbage mostly with a mixture of spices.
- Sometimes Koreans prefers the word “our” instead of “my”. For Koreans, saying my country, my mother and my husband / wife may seem very egocentric. It sounds better to say our country, our mother and, odd to non-Korean ears, our husband / wife.
- Bibimbap is a Korean meal made from rice, vegetables, pepper and meat or a fried egg.
Korean may be a difficult language to master, because it is very different from Indo-European languages. But, do not give up if things get difficult. Treat Korean language learning as solving a great puzzle and have fun!