Korean orthography

Korean
한국어 (韓國語) / 조선말 (朝鮮말)
Pronunciation	[han.ɡu.ɡʌ] / [tɕo.sʰʌn.mal]
Native to	Korea
Ethnicity	Korean people
Native speakers	77,233,270 (2010)
Language family	Koreanic
Early forms	Proto-Korean Old Korean Middle Korean
Standard forms	Pyojuneo (South Korea) Munhwaŏ (North Korea)
Dialects	Korean dialects
Writing system	Hangul (primary) Hanja Romaja Korean Braille
Official status
Official language in	Republic of Korea  Democratic People's Republic of Korea  People's Republic of China (Yanbian, Changbai)
Recognised minority language in	CIS
Regulated by	National Institute of the Korean Language 국립국어원 / 國立國語院 (Republic of Korea) The Language Research Institute, Academy of Social Science 사회과학원 어학연구소 / 社會科學院 語學研究所 (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) China Korean Language Regulatory Commission 중국조선어규범위원회 中国朝鲜语规范委员会 (People's Republic of China)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ko
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3	Variously: kor – Modern Korean jje – Jeju okm – Middle Korean oko – Old Korean oko – Proto Korean
Linguist list	okm Middle Korean
	oko Old Korean
Glottolog	kore1280
Linguasphere	45-AAA-a
Countries with native Korean-speaking populations (established immigrant communities in green).
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National Institute of the Korean Language 국립국어원 / 國立國語院 (Republic of Korea)

The Korean language (/, see below) is the official and national language of both Koreas: the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, with different standardized official forms used in each nation-state. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of the People's Republic of China. Approximately 80 million people worldwide speak Korean.

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 somewhat considered distinct) form the Koreanic language family. This implies that Korean is not an isolate, but a member of a small family. The idea that Korean belongs to the controversial Altaic language family or to the more contentious Dravido-Korean family are both discredited, particularly with the modern academic consensus debunking the Altaic language group entirely. There is still debate about a relation to Austronesian languages and on whether Korean and Japanese are related to each other. The Korean language is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax.