 |
|
| |
|
||||
The native Korean writing system—called Hangul—is syllabic and phonetic. Sino-Korean characters (Hanja) are also used in writing. While the most commonly used words in the language are of native Korean origin, well over 50% of the language's vocabulary consists of words composed from Hanja. Korean is agglutinative in its word formation and SOV in its syntax.
Names"Korean" is not the name used by Korean speakers as the name of their language. The Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in North and South Korea. In North Korea, Korea is called "Chosŏn" (조선), and the language is most often called "Chosŏnmal" (조선말) or more formally, "Chosŏnŏ" (조선어). In South Korea, Korea is called "Hanguk" (In Hangul: 한국). There and outside of Korea, the language is most often called "Hangungmal" (한국말), or more formally, "Hangugeo" (한국어). The language is also sometimes referred to colloquially as "Urimal" (우리말; "our language"). The standard language taught in schools is often referred to as "Gugeo" (국어; "national language"). Korea was also called "Chosŏn" ("Chosen" in Japanese) during the Japanese Colonial Period (1910-1945), and so many important linguistic works written during that period also refer to the language by the names "Chosŏnŏ" or "Chosŏnmal." HistoryThe native written script, Hangul, was devised in 1446, under the decree of King Sejong. Hanja has also been used extensively since the early first millennium, mainly to represent Sino-Korean words, but also in the period before the introduction of Hangul, to represent words of native Korean origin. Classification and related languagesKorean is often classified as being a separate language in a family of its own (a language isolate). In addition, most Korean and some Western linguists recognize Korean's kinship to the Altaic languages. On the other hand, traditional Western (since the 18th century) and many Japanese linguists believe that Korean has a linguistic relationship with Japanese. In Korea, the possibility of Korean-Japanese linguistic relationship has been ignored mostly; the often strained relations between the two countries throughout history tend to make any discussion of a relationship between their languages a controversial one. However, the Korean relationship with Altaic and proto-Altaic also have been much argued as of late. It does bear some morphological resemblance to some languages of the Eastern Turkic group, namely, Yakut and some of its variants, and some linguists believe that Altaic itself forms part of a larger Ural-Altaic language family. The opponents of this view believe that much of the Altaic influences in the language was infused later in Korean history during the Mongol rule over Korea during the Goryeo dynasty. Geographic distributionMost of the speakers of the Korean language live in North and South Korea. However, there are some ethnic Koreans in China, the former Soviet Union, and the United States. DialectsMain article: Dialects of Korean (under construction) Korean has several dialects (called mal (literally speech), bang-eon, or saturi in Korean). The standard language (Pyojuneo or Pyojunmal) of South Korea is based on the dialect of the area around Seoul, and the standard for North Korea is based on the dialect spoken around P'yŏngyang. These dialects are similar, and in fact all dialects except that of Jeju Island are largely mutually intelligible. The dialect spoken there is classified as a different language by some Korean linguists. One of the most notable differences between dialects is the use of stress: speakers of Seoul Dialect use stress very little, and standard South Korean has a very flat intonation; on the other hand, speakers of Gyeongsang Dialect have a very pronounced intonation that makes their dialect sound more like a European language to western ears. There is a very close connection between the dialects of Korean and the regions of Korea, since the boundaries of both are largely determined by mountains and seas. Here is a list of traditional dialect names and locations:
SoundsConsonants
Example words for consonants:
[c], [cʰ], and [c'] have more frication than the other stops and are sometimes described as affricates. The symbol [’] is used to denote the tensed consonants ([p’], [t’], [c’], [k’], and [s’]) but its official IPA usage is for ejective consonants, which the tensed stops in Korean are not. The tensed stops are produced with a partially constricted glottis and additional subglottal pressure. Vowels
MonophthongsKorean has 8 different vowel qualities and a length distinction. The close-mid front rounded vowel [ø] can still be heard in the speech of some older speakers, but it has largely been replaced by the diphthong [we]. Similarly, the length distinction for all vowels can still be heard from older speakers, but it is no longer made by most younger speakers.
Diphthongs and glides[j] and [w] are considered to be components of diphthongs rather than separate consonant phonemes.
Source: Handbook of the International Phonetic Association Phonology[s] becomes palatalized as [ʃ] or [ɕ] before [j] or [i]. [h] becomes labialized [ɸ] before [o] and [u] and palatalized [ç] before [i] or [j] [p], [t], [c], and [k] become voiced [b], [d], [ɟ], and [ɡ] between sonorant segments. [l] becomes alveolar flap [ɾ] between sonorant segments, such as between two vowels. Phonetic rules, mostly assimilation, transform the pronunciation of some words. For example,
Stop consonants are generally voiceless, but lightly aspirated stops become voiced and unaspirated in intervocalic position. For example,
Stops are nasalized before a nasal. For example,
Hangul spelling does not reflect these assimilatory pronunciation rules, but rather maintains the underlying morphology. One difference between the pronunciation standards of North and South Korea is the treatment of initial [r] (also the initial [n] before [i] or [y]). For example,
Vowel harmonyTraditionally, the Korean language has had strong vowel harmony. It is not as prevalent in modern usage however, although it remains strong in onomatopoeia, adjectives, and adverbs. GrammarKorean is an agglutinative language. The basic form of a Korean sentence is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV), and modifiers precede the modified word. Accordingly, whereas in English, one would say, "I'm going to the store to buy some food,” in Korean it would be: *"I food to-buy in-order-to store-to going-am." In Korean, "unnecessary" words (see theme and rheme) can be left out of a sentence as long as the context makes the meaning clear. A typical exchange might translate word-for word to the following:
which in English would translate to:
Unlike most European languages, Korean does not conjugate verbs using agreement with the subject, and nouns have no gender. Instead, verb conjugations depend upon the verb tense and on the relation between the people speaking. When talking to or about friends, you would use one conjugate ending, to your parents, another, and to nobility/honoured persons, another. This loosely echoes the T-V distinction of most Indo-European languages. Speech levels and honorificsThe relationship between a speaker or writer and his or her subject and audience is paramount in Korean, and the grammar reflects this. The relationship between speaker/writer and subject is reflected in honorifics, while that between speaker/writer and audience is reflected in speech level. HonorificsWhen talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer to use special nouns or verb endings to indicate the subject's superiority. Generally, someone is superior in status if he/she is an older distant relative (grandparent's sibling, older sibling's spouse, etc.), a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, or an employer, teacher, customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if he/she is a close relative (grandparent, parent, spouse, or sibling), younger stranger, student, employee or the like. On rare occasions (like when someone wants to pick a fight), a speaker might speak to a superior or stranger in a way normally only used for, say, animals, but no one would do this without seriously considering the consequences to their physical safety first! One way of using honorifics is to use special nouns in place of regular nouns with "honorific" ones. A common example is using jinji instead of bap for "food". More often, special nouns are used when speaking about relatives. Thus, the speaker/writer may address his own grandmother as halmeoni but refer to someone else's grandmother as halmeonim. The m comes from the honorific suffix -nim (님), which is affixed to many kinship terms to make them honorific; thus, hyeongnim is the formal term for an older sibling of the same sex (derived from hyeong, the informal term for man's older brother; eonni is the informal term for a woman's older sister). All verbs can be converted into an honorific form by adding the infix -si- (시, pronounced shi) after the stem and before the verb ending. Thus, gada ("go") becomes gasida. A few verbs have special honorific equivalents. Therefore gyesida is the honorific form of itda ("exist"); japsusida is the honorific form of meokda ("eat"); and jumusida is the honorific form of jada ("sleep"). A few verbs have special humble forms, used when the speaker is referring to him/herself in polite situations. These include deurida and ollida for juda ("give"). Deurida is substituted for juda when the latter is used as an auxiliary verb, while ollida--which literally means "raise up"--is used for juda in the sense of "offer". Pronouns in Korean have their own set of polite equivalents: thus, jeo is the humble form of na ("I"); jeoheui is the humble form of uri ("we"); and dangsin ("friend," but only used as a form of address and more polite than "chingu", the usual word for "friend"; also, whereas uses of other humble forms are straightforward, "dangsin" must be used only in specific social contexts, such as between two married couple--"dangsin" can often be used in ironic sense when used between strangers) is the honorific form of neo ("you" (singular). Note: in general, Koreans avoid using second person singular pronoun, especially when using honorific forms, and either i) use the person's name or title in place of "you" in English, or ii) use plural "ieoreobun" where applicable). Speech levelsThere are no fewer than 7 verb paradigms or speech levels in Korean, and each level has its own unique set of verb endings which are used to indicate the level of formality of a situation. Unlike honorifics--which are used to show respect towards a subject--speech levels are used to show respect towards a speaker's or writer's audience. The names of the 7 levels are derived from the non-honorific imperative form of the verb hada ("do") in each level, plus the suffix che, which means "body." The highest 5 levels use final verb endings, while the lowest 2 levels (haeyoche) and (haeche) use non-final endings and are called banmal ("half-words") in Korean. (The haeyoche in turn is formed by simply adding the non-final ending yo (요) to the haeche form of the verb.) Taken together, honorifics and speech levels form a cartesian product of 14 basic verb stems. Here is a table giving the 7 levels, the present indicative form of the verb hada (하다; "do" in English) in each level in both its honorific and non-honorific forms, and the situations in which each level is used.
VocabularyThe core of the Korean vocabulary is made up of native Korean words. More than 50% of the vocabulary, however, is made up of Sino-Korean words, which are words borrowed from Chinese, and traditionally written using Hanja (Chinese characters). To a much lesser extent, words have also been borrowed from Mongolian, Sanskrit, and other languages. In modern times, many words have also been borrowed from Western languages such as German and, more recently, English. The numbers are a good example of borrowing. Like Japanese, Korean has two number systems—one native and one borrowed from the Chinese—so Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and some other languages such as Thai all appear to have similar words for numbers. Writing systemMain article: Hangul The Korean language was originally written using "Hanja", or Chinese characters; it is now mainly written in Hangul, the Korean alphabet, optionally mixing in Hanja to write Sino-Korean words. Hangul consists of 24 letters -- 14 consonants and 10 vowels that are written in blocks of 2 to 5 characters. Unlike the Chinese writing system (including Japanese Kanji), Hangul is not an ideographic system. The shapes of the individual Hangul letters were designed to model the physical morphology of the tongue, palate and teeth; up to five letters join to form a syllabic unit. Below is a chart of the Korean alphabet's symbols and their canonical SAMPA values:
(See also: Hangeul consonant and vowel tables) Modern Korean is written with spaces between words, a feature not found in the other CJK languages (Chinese and Japanese). Korean punctuation marks are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns from top to bottom, right to left, much as in other East Asian cultures. Korean is still sometimes written in columns (especially in poetry), but is now usually written in rows from left to right, top to bottom. See also
External links
de:Koreanische Sprache eo:Korea lingvo es:Idioma coreano et:Korea keel fi:Korean kieli fr:Coren id:Bahasa Korea ja:朝鮮語 nl:Koreaans ko:한국어 pl:Język koreański sv:Koreanska th:ภาษาเกาหลี zh:韓語 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Copyright 2009 wordIQ.com - Privacy Policy
::
Terms of Use
:: Contact Us
:: About Us This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Korean language". |