![]() ![]() ![]() However, most of the population was illiterate. Mainly privileged elites were educated to read and write in Hanja. They were adapted for Korean and became known as Hanja, and remained as the main script for writing Korean for over a millennium alongside various phonetic scripts that were later invented such as Idu, Gugyeol and Hyangchal. Along with other languages such as Chinese and Arabic, Korean is ranked at the top difficulty level for English speakers by the United States Department of Defense.Ĭhinese characters arrived in Korea (see Sino-Xenic pronunciations for further information) together with Buddhism during the Proto-Three Kingdoms era in the 1st century BC. As such, interest in Korean language acquisition (as a foreign language) is also generated by longstanding alliances, military involvement, and diplomacy, such as between South Korea–United States and China–North Korea since the end of World War II and the Korean War. Since the turn of the 21st century, aspects of Korean culture have spread to other countries through globalization and cultural exports. Later, Chinese characters adapted to the Korean language, Hanja ( 漢字), were used to write the language for most of Korea's history and are still used to a limited extent in South Korea, most prominently in the humanities and the study of historical texts. When first recorded in historical texts, Korean was only a spoken language all written records were maintained in Classical Chinese, which, even when spoken, is not intelligible to someone who speaks only Korean. The script uses 24 basic letters ( jamo) and 27 complex letters formed from the basic ones. Modern Korean is written in the Korean script ( 한글 Hangul in South Korea, 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea), a system developed during the 15th century for that purpose, although it did not become the primary script until the 20th century. The hierarchy of the society from which the language originates deeply influences the language, leading to a system of speech levels and honorifics indicative of the formality of any given situation. The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in contemporary Manchuria. Even so, Jejuan and Korean are not mutually intelligible with each other. ![]() The language has a few extinct relatives which-along with the Jeju language (Jejuan) of Jeju Island and Korean itself-form the compact Koreanic language family. It is also spoken by Sakhalin Koreans in parts of Sakhalin, the Russian island just north of Japan, and by the Koryo-saram in parts of Central Asia. īeyond Korea, the language is recognised as a minority language in parts of China, namely Jilin Province, and specifically Yanbian Prefecture, and Changbai County. North Korea criminalizes the use of the South's standard language, and South Korean education and media often portray the North's language as alien and uncomfortable. The two countries have established standardized norms for Korean, and the differences between them are similar to those between Standard Chinese in mainland China and Taiwan, but political conflicts between the two countries have highlighted the differences between them. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea (geographically Korea). Korean ( South Korean: 한국어, hangugeo North Korean: 조선말, chosŏnmal) is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Korean descent. ![]()
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