Korean (language)
| Korean | |
|---|---|
| 한국어 / 조선말 | |
| Pronunciation | [han.ɡu.ɡʌ] / [tso.sʌn.mal] |
| Native to | Korea |
| Ethnicity | Korean people |
|
Native speakers
|
77,233,270 (2010) |
|
Early forms
|
Proto-Korean
|
|
Standard forms
|
Pyojuneo (South Korea)
Munhwaŏ (North Korea)
|
| Dialects | Korean dialects |
|
Hangul (primary) Hanja (subsidiary) Romaja (subsidiary) 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 |
|
| Regulated by |
National Institute of Korean Language (국립국어원), South Korea Language Research Institute, Academy of Social Sciences (사회과학원 어학연구소), North Korea Korean Language Commission (中国朝鲜语规范委员会 / 중국조선어사정위원회), China |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | ko |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 | Variously: kor – Modern Korean okm – Middle Korean oko – Old Korean oko – Proto Korean jje – Jeju |
|
Linguist list
|
okm Middle Korean
|
oko Old Korean
|
|
| Glottolog |
kore1280 (Korean)
|
| Linguasphere | 45-AAA-a |
Countries with native Korean-speaking populations (established immigrant communities in green).
|
|
Korean (/, see below) is the official language of both Koreas: the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, with different 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 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 Dravido-Korean family has been largely discredited, particularly with the modern academic consensus debunking the Altaic language group entirely. There is still debate on whether Korean and Japanese are related languages. The Korean language is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax.
Modern Korean descends from Middle Korean, which in turn descends from Old Korean, which descends from the language spoken in Prehistoric Korea (labeled Proto-Korean), whose nature is debated, in part because Korean genetic origins are controversial. A relation of Korean (together with its extinct relatives which form the Koreanic family) with Japonic languages has been proposed by linguists like William George Aston and Samuel Martin. Roy Andrew Miller and others suggested or supported the inclusion of Koreanic and Japonic languages in the purported Altaic family (a macro-family that would comprise Tungusic, Mongolian and Turkic families); the Altaic hypothesis has since been largely rejected by most linguistic specialists.
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Wikipedia