Characteristics of Korean Language

So learning Korean is not on your New Year's resolution list? You are not the only one!! Around 80 to 90 million people speak Korean, which makes it the 15th most spoken language in the world. So why not give it a try. If you know a little bit of Chinese, you will find Korean words have adopted many words from Chinese. If you know a little bit of Japanese, you will find Korean grammar is very similar to Japanese. Besides, Korean writing systems are far simpler than Chinese and Japanese. If you remember how to say something in Korean you will be able to write anything. Whether for cultural interest or business purposes, learning Korean will be an interesting experience for you.
Korean language is classified in the Altaic linguistic family, which includes Mongolian, Hungarian, and Finnish. Spoken Korean is called Hanguk-mal 한국말, which means Korean speech. Written Korean is called Hangul 한글 invented in 1443 by King Sejong 세종대왕 (he also appears on the 10,000 won bill) and his scholars. The invention of Hangul was published in 1446 in a document entitled Hunmin Jeong’eum 훈민정음, which means “The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People”.

The standard language of Korean is Pyojuneo 표준어, based on the dialect of the area around Seoul. Its alphabet consists of forty letters, twenty one vowels, and nineteen consonants. Korean is phonetic, which means each sign represents a sound, and it is written in syllabic units made up of two, three, or four letters. Up to five letters join to form a syllabic unit. The shapes of the individual Hangul letters were designed to model the physical morphology of the tongue, palate, and teeth.

Let’s look at some characteristics of the Korean language.

• Korean uses SOV (subject + object + verb) structure and has an unmarked phrase order for time + manner + place, the reverse of English order.
• Korean is a topic prominent language. Topics are marked separately from the subject with a special postposition.
• Korean is a pronoun-dropping language. Pronouns, such as he, she, I, you, can be deleted when considered unnecessary by the speaker, not only for subjects, but for practically all grammatical contexts.
• Korean uses extensive classifiers to indicate the word class of a noun, and does not have gender.
• Korean verbs are conjugated to show tenses and moods.
• Korean has many ways to express different levels of politeness, including a different conjugation for verbs, special verbs and pronouns, verbs indicating relative status, or the use of different nouns.