Korean Dictionaries

The Korean language is spoken by over 80 million people all over the world. It is the official language of both North and South Korea. Though disputed, it is commonly known to be a descended of the Altaic family of languages. Korean writing is highly influenced but the Chinese language. In fact, till 1440 A.D, the Koreans used the Chinese script for writing purpose.


Origin


The origins of Korean language are highly controversial. The roots of the languages have not been defines as yet. There are basically two theories that try to solve the mystery of this language which are called as the southern theory and northern theory. These theories say that a Korean language is related to the Dravidian Ainu (southern theory) and Mongolian, Finnish and Hungarian (northern theory). The Korean language is also known to have some similarity with the Japanese language specially the grammar. Basically, the scholars are at a consensus that it is a part of the Ural-Altaic family of language but some do consider it as a language isolate.


Dialects


The Korean language has many dialects. In fact, the Korean dialects are based on the regions they are spoken. They are:


Þ Seoul: spoken in Seoul (basically in South Korea)
Þ P’youngan: spoken in P’youngan( basically in North Korea)
Þ Chungcheong: Daejeon , chungcheong region (south Korea)
Þ Gang won: Gang won do( south Korea) or kang wo(north Korea)
Þ Jeju: Jeju island(South Korea)


There are many other regional dialects. The Koreans understand all the dialects except for the jeju. The jeju is referred by some as a separate language but it has not been established.


Grammar


Korean language is agglutinative. That means most of its words are formed by combining two or more words. It follows the subject-object-verb as its syntax. This makes it highly confusing for the English speaking student to learn Korean language.
The Korean people also omit most of the words that deems unnecessary for them to mention. If you can understand the sentence without mentioning the object, they feel it’s better to omit the object. They prefer shorter sentences.
They also have different naming structure for different positions. The Korean language is highly hierarchical and use different words for superiors, inferiors, equals and young ones. It is the hierarchy than the gender that makes the difference in speech.
Writing


Till 1440s, the Koreans used Chinese scripts for writing. However, the Chinese script failed them in two scores. First is the phonetics that Koreans use and Chinese don’t and second is the difference in the sounds that the two languages make when speaking.
Therefore a different writing system known as HunMinChongUm or what is now called the hangul.
The old language consisted of 28 letters but the modern hongul has 24 comprising 10 vowels and 14 consonants.
The hangul system is a very easy system to write. It is written by combining two more components thus forming syllabic blocks.


Though Korean language is spoken by both North and South Korea but there are some differences in pronunciations, vocabulary and grammar.