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Korean Language

Korean
(韓國語) / 조선말 (朝鮮말)
Hanguk-eo, Chosŏnmal
Native to Korean Peninsula
Native speakers
c. 75 million (2008–2012)
Koreanic / isolated
    Early forms
    Dialects
    Hangul (primary)
    Hanja (mixed script)
    Korean Braille
    Chesili script (Koryo-mar)
    Official status
    Official language in
     Republic of Korea
     Democratic People's Republic of Korea
     People's Republic of China's Yanbian and Changbai
    Recognised minority
    language in
    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
    okm – Middle Korean
    oko – Old Korean
    oko – Proto Korean
    Linguist list
    okm Middle Korean
      oko Old Korean
    Glottolog kore1280
    Linguasphere 45-AAA-a
    Map of Korean language.png
    Countries with native Korean-speaking populations (established immigrant communities in green).
    This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

    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)

    Korean language (, see below) is the official language of the Republic of Korea and 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.

    Korean has a few extinct relatives, which together with Korean itself form the Koreanic language family. Despite this, historical and modern linguists classify Korean as a language isolate. The idea that Korean belongs to the controversial Altaic language family or to the Dravido-Korean family has been generally discredited. 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), now not accepted by most specialists.


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