Korean language

Korean (Hankukmal 한국어/조선말) is the language of the Korean Peninsula in Northeast Asia. It is believed that the ancestors of the Korean people arrived in the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria around 4,000 BC. They displaced or assimilated the early Paleosiberian-speaking colonists.

Many small Korean tribal states were established in these locations between the first century BC and the first century AD. There are many theories about the origin and affiliation of the Korean language. What makes it very difficult to establish a Korean language affiliation is its long history of contact with Chinese and Japanese.

According to the so-called Southern theory, Korean belongs to the Austronesian language family. However, according to Northern theory, supported by several linguists, Korean is part of the Altaic language family. At the same time, some linguists point out certain similarities between Korean and Japanese, and suggest that it may belong to the Japonic language group. With the problem of Korean's affiliation unresolved, many authors classify it as an language isolate.

Dialects of Korean

Old Korean was divided into two dialects: Puyo and Han. Puyo was spoken in Manchuria and North Korea, while Han was spoken in South Korea. When the Korean Peninsula was unified in the 7th century AD, the Han dialect became dominant. At the end of the fourteenth century, a group of Han speakers unified the peninsula, which led to the spread of their dialect throughout the peninsula.

As a result, modern Korean is based on the Han dialect. There are two standard dialects of modern Korean:

  • The South Korean standard is based on the Seoul dialect.
  • The North Korean standard is based on the dialect of P'yŏngyang.

Despite the small size of the Korean peninsula, there are numerous regional dialects within these two great divisions, all of which are mutually intelligible.

Who speaks Korean?

During the Japanese occupation of Korea, Japanese was declared the official language of Korea, and the use of Korean was officially banned. Even the Koreans were forced to change their surnames for Japanese surnames. With the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945, and despite the national division and civil war, Korean became again the official language of both Koreas. After the division of the country in 1945, both Koreas developed its own national standard and language policy. Today, modern Korean is used in all public and private areas in both Koreas.

There are 48.5 million Korean speakers in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and 24 million in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). In addition, Korean is spoken by some 2.7 million people in the Chinese provinces bordering North Korea. There are also large communities of Korean speakers in Japan and Russia, the United States, Singapore, Thailand and many other countries around the world. The total number of Korean speakers worldwide is estimated at about 77.2 million.

Translation agency for Spanish-English-Korean

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