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
|
Old Korean
|
| 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 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 |
Countries with native Korean-speaking populations (established immigrant communities in green).
|
|
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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Wikipedia