The Korean language an East Asian language spoken by about 77 million people. It is the official and national language of both Koreas: North Korea and South Korea, with some variations in each country. It is a recognised minority language Autonomous County of Jilin province, China. It is also spoken in parts of Sakhalin, Russia, and Central Asia.
Chinese characters arrived in Korea together with Buddhism during the Three Kingdoms era in the 1st century BC. It was adapted for Korean and became known as Hanja, and remained as the main script for writing Korean.
In the 15th century, King Sejong the Great personally developed an alphabetic writing system known today as Hangul.
Today, Hanja is largely unused in everyday life due to its inconvenience, but it is still important for historical and linguistic studies. Neither South Korea or North Korea opposes the learning of Hanja, though they are not officially used in North Korea anymore, and their usage in South Korea is mainly reserved for specific circumstances, such as newspapers, scholarly papers, and disambiguation.
Since the Korean War, through 70 years of separation, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation and vocabulary chosen, but these minor differences can be found in any of the Korean dialects and still largely mutually intelligible.
Comments
Post a Comment