Korean language
The Korean language is made up of its own alphabet and writing system. It is spoken by almost 80 million people and is the official language of South and North Korea. It’s also an official language in the Yanbian region in China.
Korean is the language spoken by both North Koreans and South Koreans. They have different dialects (South Korean dialect and North Korean dialect), but the fundamental parts of the language are the same. A North Korean and South Korean would be able to communicate with each other fairly easily.
Korean language dialects
Korean has nine different dialects. Both South and North Korea have their own standard Korean dialects, which are used in an official setting. In the South, it is Seoul’s dialect. In the North, it is Seoul’s dialect mixed with Pyeongyang’s region’s dialect.
Additionally, there are two more dialects in use in North Korea and five more dialects in use in South Korea. Of these regional dialects, the most different from standard Korean is the dialect used on Jeju Island. Because of all of the time apart after the Korean War, the dialect used in North Korea has become quite different from the dialect used in South Korea. This is because both regional dialects were influenced by the other countries involved in the Korean War.
South Korea’s version of the language was influenced by English and North Korea’s version of the language was influenced by Russian. Not only have their vocabularies changed but pronunciation as well.
What language is Korean most similar to?
Korean shares some similarities with both the Japanese and Chinese languages. Korean is similar to Japanese in terms of grammar and sentence structure. They both also have their own unique writing systems that are fairly easy to learn. However, the Japanese writing system also uses adopted Chinese characters called Kanji. Most Japanese words are written with Chinese characters. The Korean writing system also used something similar called Hanja, but they’re not used as often as in Japanese.
Many words in Korean have Chinese origin, so in that way, Korean and Chinese languages are similar. However, there are no tones in Korean like there are in Chinese.
Some modern-day newer Korean words, sometimes called Konglish, are adapted from languages such as English and German.
Source: 90daykorean.com
