I. Introduction of Han’gŭl

Korean Language, language spoken by 49 million people in South Korea and 23 million people in North Korea. In addition, more than 5 million Korean emigrants and their descendants speak Korean, primarily in China, Japan, North America, and Russia.

Scholars have not firmly established a historical relationship between Korean and any language family. Korean does not belong to the same language family as Chinese and also differs from the Chinese language in structural characteristics. In grammatical structure, Korean is closest to the Japanese language. The most widely accepted hypothesis is that Korean, like Japanese, is related to the Altaic language group, which includes Mongolian, Turkish, and other languages of Asia. Within that group scholars consider Korean closest to the Tungusic branch, which consists chiefly of languages spoken in Siberia and Mongolia.

Korean is written in Han’gŭl, a simple yet sophisticated script invented in Korea in the mid-1400s. The Korean writing system is known as Han’gŭl (or Hangeul) in general but as Chosŏn’gŭl in North Korea. It is composed of phonetic symbols that accurately represent the distinctive sounds of Korean. Several systems have been developed to represent Korean in the Roman alphabet, which is used for English and other Western languages. These romanization systems enable English-speaking readers to approximate Korean pronunciation. This article uses the common McCune-Reischauer system of romanization.

II. LETTERS AND WRITING

Korean is the only language to have a true alphabet completely native to East Asia. In a true alphabet, each character corresponds to a phoneme (a basic sound unit that represents a vowel, a consonant, or a vowel-like consonant called a glide). In Japanese each character corresponds to a syllable; in Chinese, each character corresponds to a word or a morpheme (the smallest language unit that carries an independent meaning).

Han’gŭl has many characteristics not found in any other alphabet. For example, in Han’gŭl, letters are assembled in blocks to form syllables. Instead of being strung together in a line, characters appear above or below one another as well as side by side, as in the Korean word for Han’gŭl:

This word is made up of the letters:

Perhaps the most unusual characteristic of Han’gŭl is that it did not evolve over centuries as most alphabets did. King Sejong of Korea invented it and introduced it to the country in 1446.

Han’gŭl also differs from all other alphabets because the letter shapes are not random designs but are constructed to represent various characteristics of the Korean sound system. For example, Han’gŭl has two clearly recognizable kinds of graphic shapes for consonants and vowels. Consonant letters were originally constructed from simpler, basic elements, which schematically represented specific characteristics shared by a group of sounds articulated at the same place in the mouth. Thus, the sounds n, t, t’, tt, and r/l, which are produced by placing the tongue on the ridge above and behind the teeth, are represented by letters that include the basic symbol that shows the tongue in that position, like n:

The letters for Han’gŭl vowels are made up of the three basic symbols in East Asian cosmology: a dot (·) representing Heaven, a horizontal line (—) representing Earth, and a vertical line (|) representing a human being. Not long after the invention of the Korean alphabet, the dot was replaced by a short line, possibly for ease of calligraphy done by brush.

For centuries, Koreans combined the syllables into sentences without spaces to separate words, and they wrote sentences vertically, starting from the top right-hand corner of the page. Spaces between words began to appear in 1896. In the mid-20th century, Western-style writing in horizontal lines, starting from the top left and using Western-style punctuation marks, became the norm in North Korea and gained favor in South Korea.

III. SOUND SYSTEM

Korean has 19 distinct consonants, 10 vowels, and 2 glides, w and y. The Korean consonants, in alphabetic order as observed in South Korean dictionaries (represented here in romanization), are k, kk, n, t, tt, l, m, p, pp, s, ss, ng, ch, tch, ch’, k’, t’, p’, and h. The vowels are a, ae, ŏ, e, o, ö, u, ü, ŭ, and i. In North Korea the order is slightly different, and complex letter shapes such as geminate consonants and the vowels ae, e, and ü are grouped after all the basic letters.

In most languages, stops (consonants produced by blocking the passage of air through the mouth) are categorized as either voiced (produced with vibrating vocal cords) or not. For example, in English, the voiceless stops p, t, and k contrast with the voiced stops b, d, and g. Korean is unusual in that while there is no voiceless-voiced distinction, there is a three-way contrast in stops. That is, Korean stops, which are all voiceless, can be lax (p, t, ch, k), tense (pp, tt, tch, kk), or heavily aspirated (p’, t’, ch’, k’). Tense consonants are produced by tightly constricting the vocal cords; the heavily aspirated consonants are produced by widely opening them. Lax stops are gently articulated with the vocal cords slightly open. Lax stops can become voiced only under certain environments, that is, between voiced sounds. For example, the word mi-kuk (meaning “America [beautiful country]”) is pronounced as miguk, although native Korean speakers do not know that kuk and guk contrast, just as most native English speakers do not know the p in peak and the p in speak are pronounced differently.

In Korean, consonants at the end of a syllable retain the oral contact after articulation, unless they are followed by a vowel. The vowel sound is necessary to distinguish one consonant from another. Koreans may carry the linguistic feature over when speaking English. For example, a native Korean speaker might pronounce the English word set as set’ŭ or pinch as p’inch’i. Not releasing consonants at the end of a syllable causes as many as nine different phonemes (t, t’, tt, ch, ch’, tch, s, ss, h) to become indistinguishable, all being pronounced as an unreleased t. Vowel length, which played a significant role in the language variety of Seoul, South Korea, until recently, is rapidly fading out, especially because modern Korean spelling does not mark vowel length. Thus, younger Korean speakers might have difficulty in distinguishing between the two English words keen and kin, which contrast in vowel length. And today, only some dialects, mainly on the east coast of Korea, maintain distinctive pitch accents, sometimes called tones (high, low).

Korean is rich in sound symbolism (a set of sounds having specific meanings). For example, the gently pronounced voiceless consonant k in the word kamkam (meaning “dark, unclear, faraway looking”) can be replaced by strongly aspirated or tense consonants to change the connotation of the word, although all of them will have the basic meaning that has to do with darkness. Strongly aspirated consonants, such as p’, t’, and k’, carry rough, heavy, and strong meanings, as in the word k’amk’am (meaning “spooky and desolately dark”). These consonants are pronounced with widely open vocal cords. Pronounced with the vocal cords tense and almost touching each other, the consonants pp, tt, and kk carry meanings of tight, compact, and dense, as in the word kkamkkam (meaning “pitch-dark”). Korean vowels are considered either dark (Yin) or bright (Yang). Yang vowels (o, a, oe, ae) symbolize something bright, light, small, or cheerful, in contrast with dark Yin vowels (u, ŏ, wi, e). For example, the words kkogijak and kkugijŏk both mean “crumpling,” but the former has the Yang meaning while the latter has the Yin one. Two vowels, i and ŭ, are neutral.

IV. WORDS

Before Han’gŭl was invented—and for many years afterward—Koreans wrote their language using Chinese characters. In the process they borrowed heavily from Literary Chinese, just as English has borrowed from Literary Latin. Today, many technical and literary words contain roots borrowed from Chinese, as do about 10 percent of Korean’s basic nouns. Many of these nouns turn into verbs with the addition of the suffix (word ending) ha (meaning “do”). As roots borrowed from Chinese continue to be used in forming new words, it is hard to tell exactly what percentage of the total Korean vocabulary is of Chinese origin. In recent years, there have been purification movements, especially in North Korea, to drive all foreign elements out of the Korean language, including Chinese words and characters.

Korean is an agglutinative language—that is, it forms words by combining simple words or word components without alteration. Korean creates words by adding suffixes to a word stem (basic part of a word). Suffixes attached to a verb stem indicate things such as verb tense (past, present, or future), verb aspect (an action complete, repeated, or continuing), and honorification (marking the relative status of the person addressed or referred to from the speaker’s point of view—such as an elder, a stranger, or a close friend). Suffixes also signify the type of situation (the degree of formality or intimacy). Grammatical markers attached to a noun indicate the noun’s function in the sentence (subject or object) as well as in the discourse (focus, topic).

V. SENTENCE STRUCTURE

The basic word order in Korean is subject-object-verb, but grammatical markers on words allow them to appear in different orders within a sentence without changing the basic meaning of the sentence. For example, to write the sentence Yujin reads a newspaper, the name Yujin would be given as yujin-i, with the i marking yujin as the subject. The word newspaper would be given as sinmun-ŭl, with the ŭl marking sinmun as the object. The verb read would be given as po-n-da, with the po indicating to read, the n putting po in the present tense, and the da as a plain declarative ending.

The only strict requirement of sentence structure is that the verb must appear at the end of a sentence. So, the two sentences yujin-i sinmun-ŭl po-n-da and sinmun-ŭl yujin-i po-n-da are both translated into English as Yujin reads a newspaper. Speakers can omit words when the context makes them clear. For example, to answer the question Does Yujin read a newspaper? the speaker could simply say po-n-da, meaning reads.

All modifiers precede the nouns they modify. Therefore, the sentence My son Yujin reads a newspaper that comes from Korea would be written as uri yujin-i han’gug-esŏ o-nŭn sinmun-ŭl po-n-da. The Korean sentence translated literally means Our/Yujin/Korea-from/come-[present tense marker]/newspaper/read-[present tense marker]-[plain declarative].

There are no articles in Korean, such as a, an, and the in English. There is no grammatical gender marking—that is, no words are considered masculine or feminine as in French, Spanish, or German. Plural marking is not obligatory, nor is there a true plural marker in Korean. Korean verbs are not marked for grammatical person, gender, and number, either. Thus there is no agreement in such categories between the predicate and the subject of the sentence. Native Korean speakers often have difficulty in learning these agreements in European languages, where these agreements are important. However, in Korean the verb has to agree with the exaltedness of what is referred to in the subject or the object position and also the listener or addressee’s relationship to the speaker or addresser.

Recognizing social relationships is important in the Korean language. Honorifics establish whether the addressee (listener) is higher or lower in the social order, whether the speaker is familiar with the listener, and so on. There are two kinds of honorifics, addressee-honorific and referent-honorific. The sentence in the paragraph above is stated in a plain or unguarded style, which is used when speaking to a younger person or a childhood friend. When speaking to a clearly senior person or a stranger, the speaker would change the verb to po-mnida (deferential and formal) or to po-ayo (respectful but informal). Verbs can also include the suffix –(ŭ)si to mark the speaker’s deference to the subject referent of the sentence, as in Kim Yujin sŏnsaengnim-i sinmun-ŭl po-si-mnida (Mr. Kim Yujin reads a newspaper). The particular situation brings another dimension to the way people talk. For example, the way a husband and wife address each other often depends on who else is present.

VI. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

Scholars know little about Proto-Korean, the ancestor of current Korean, but the dominant belief is that Korean either branched off from the Altaic language group or from another language from which both Korean and Altaic descended. The Korean language is generally divided into four historical stages: Old Korean, Middle Korean, Modern Korean, and Contemporary Korean. These stages have distinct linguistic features but also refer to historical eras.

A. Old Korean

Old Korean was spoken from the 1st century bc to the 10th century ad. It was the language of Silla, one of three early kingdoms on the Korean Peninsula. In the 7th century ad, Silla conquered the other two kingdoms, and its language became dominant on the unified peninsula.

Old Korean was written using Chinese characters, which were adapted to represent sounds and meanings of the Korean words. Koreans continued to write mostly in Literary Chinese, however. In writing Chinese, Koreans sometimes added Korean grammatical markers called kugyŏl (oral formulae) to Chinese text to make it easier to read. In adapting Chinese characters, which themselves represented words, Koreans borrowed characters that captured either the meaning or the sound of Korean words (without regard to the Chinese meanings) and put the characters together following Korean word order and grammar. This system, called hyangch’al (local letters), is used by the 25 hyangga (local songs) that are the oldest surviving texts written in Korean. Another writing system was idu (clerk readings), which began from a base of written Chinese, mixing pure Chinese words and phrases with Korean words and grammatical elements. The term idu is often used to refer to any kind of representation of Korean that uses Chinese characters.

B. Middle Korean

The Old Korean language of Silla was the parent of Middle Korean, which spans the period from the rise of the Koryŏ dynasty (918-1392) to an invasion by Japan in 1592. Middle Korean itself had two periods, early and late. Early Middle Korean was the language of the Koryŏ dynasty. Late Middle Korean was the language of the Chosŏn dynasty from its rise in 1392 until the Japanese invasion. During the Chosŏn dynasty, the Koreans developed the Han’gŭl alphabet, originally called Hunmin chong’um (the Correct Sounds for the Instruction of the People). This alphabet allowed them to write their language without using Chinese characters. The theoretical underpinnings of the writing system are clearly recorded in Hunmin chŏng’ŭm haerye (Explanations and Examples of the Correct Sounds for the Instruction of the People), a scholarly commentary that accompanied the announcement of the new script in 1446.

Some scholars say that the invention of Han’gŭl was the result of a joint effort by King Sejong and his associates of the Chiphyŏnjŏn (Academy of Worthies). However, various pieces of evidence, including several textual records and evidence of Sejong’s own linguistic knowledge, point to the conclusion that the Korean script was the king’s personal creation.

In spite of the invention of the new efficient writing system, idu continued to be used, and writings in idu were actually far more common, especially in official writings, than those in Han’gŭl, up to modern times.

C. Modern Korean

Modern Korean extends from the early 1600s at the end of the Japanese invasion of 1592-1598 to the late 1800s. It saw several linguistic changes, including the disappearance of the letters for the consonant z and the vowel Λ. During this time Han’gŭl gained little acceptance, and Chinese continued to enjoy prestige and recognition among the intellectual and social elite. Han’gŭl, widely dismissed as ŏnmun (vernacular, or common, writing), was used mainly by women and Buddhist monks.

D. Contemporary Korean

The Korean language spoken and written today is classified as Contemporary Korean. From the early 1900s to the present the people of the Korean Peninsula have had increased contact with foreign cultures, and the language has become an important manifestation of national identity.

In 1910 the Chosŏn dynasty fell to the Japanese. Contemporary Korean was first officially recognized as P’yojunŏ (the Standard Language) in 1912 in the Korean Spelling Guide for Primary School Use, put out by the Japanese colonial government. In 1933 the Korean Language Society gave its approval to this guide. But during much of the 1930s and 1940s the Japanese prohibited Koreans from speaking Korean at schools and from publishing books in Korean. During this time Koreans began to recognize the importance of using Han’gŭl and establishing Korean linguistic independence. Japan controlled Korea until World War II ended in 1945.

After World War II Korea was divided into two countries, North Korea and South Korea, precipitating the Korean War (1950-1953). In 1966 North Korea decided to make the dialect of its capital, P’yongyang, its official language, calling the language Munhwaŏ (the Cultured Language). South Korea retained the Standard Language spoken in Seoul, its capital, as its official tongue, but there are five other major dialect areas in the country: northwestern, northeastern, southwestern, southeastern, and Cheju Island. The presence or absence of tone and pitch accent account for the major differences between the dialects. These differences are gradually lessening because of migration into big cities and increased communication between regions.

The most conspicuous divergence between the Cultured Language of North Korea and the Standard Language of South Korea is in vocabulary, largely because North Korea has a policy of eliminating words of foreign origin. Over the years in North Korea, many words have been replaced by newly coined native-sounding words. In informal writing in South Korea, foreign expressions may be written in the Roman alphabet just as Chinese may be written within a Korean sentence. However, in official documents they may appear only for clarification.

The two parts of the Korean peninsula also have different approaches to the use of Chinese characters. In North Korea, schools teach Chinese characters as a separate subject from Korean, and people never use them in writing. In South Korea, Chinese characters are used more widely, although in recent years the use of Chinese characters has been drastically reduced in schools. In everyday use, people continue to mix Chinese and Korean characters, especially in academic and technical publications.

VII. ROMANIZATION SYSTEMS

Scholars have developed romanization systems to express Korean in the Roman alphabet. The McCune-Reischauer system, created in 1939, became the most widely used system in English and other European languages. The Yale system, created in 1968, is used mainly in linguistic literature. The McCune-Reischauer system long served as the official system in South Korea. However, in 2000 the South Korean government introduced and officially adopted a new system known as the Revised Romanization System. North Korea has traditionally used its own official system, which is a slightly modified version of McCune-Reischauer.

The McCune-Reischauer system represents the Han’gŭl forms in the Roman alphabet in such a way that a reader who does not know Korean may approximate a pronunciation that would be recognizable to a Korean. The Yale system, which is preferred by most linguists, is designed to reflect a one-to-one correspondence with Han’gŭl spellings. For example, the word Han’gŭl, written in McCune-Reischauer, represents the actual pronunciation with a g sound. The Yale system romanizes it as Hankul, with each Roman letter representing a Korean phoneme. This is the form that would appear in written Korean, but it is somewhat removed from the spoken form.

The South Korean government’s new system, like the McCune-Reischauer system, attempts to represent spoken Korean as accurately as possible. The government had deemed it necessary to develop a system that does not use diacritics (marks added to letters to indicate a specific pronunciation). These marks, which are used in McCune-Reischauer, are often dropped for typing convenience. Without the marks, however, the same letters can represent different sounds. (For example, the breve mark on the vowels ŏ and ŭ helps distinguish them from the regular o and u.) Although the new system is less prone to inconsistency, more Internet-friendly, and easier to use, it has been criticized for its own shortcomings and has not gained widespread acceptance in the West.

Contributed By:
Young-Key Kim-Renaud

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