Talk:Korean language

Many Koreans have vociferously denied my observation that similarities exists between Japanese and Korean. I suppose this is a reaction to the 1910-1945 Japanese annexation of Korea and Japan's attempt to wipe out Korean language and culture. --Ed Poor

My guess is that they are not familar with the Japanese language. The grammar is strikingly similar to Japanese, and that should be mentioned in the article. -- Wsxyz

English speakers emphatically deny the textual affinities between their language and the harsh, thundering German. And Vietnamese sounds downright awkward to Cantonese ears even though speakers of other languaguages can't tell them apart. Koreans are of course awfully familiar with Japanese. But "similarity" is subjective when the question comes to whether ones "own" language is similar to another. It's often the case that the more objectively similar a language is to ones own, the more awkward it sounds to his/her ears, thus the less likely he/she is to acknowledge its affinity. For analogy in ethnic identities, please read Michael Ignatieff The Warrior's Honor. He has devoted a large chapter on how Serbs who can perfectly accept Americans as fellow human beings, have such a hard time tolerating Croats.

When one says two languages are similar, the first thing comes to mind is that "can a Korean native understands what a Japanese person speak or write?" That was my first reaction. The two languages are NOT similar. However, if you look at the two languages in terms of their grammar structures or other linguistic aspects, you may get a different observation. If you have evidences that show the similarities, you should point them out. This claim is as wild as saying all European languages are similiar because they all use similar alphabets.

Korean and Japanese ARE similar for the large numbers of neologisms of Sinitic etymologies contained in both, many of which identical in construct. Similarities are also remarkable in terms of grammar and some basic words, even though the two languages stem from separate ancestries. It is speculated that the Japanese people migrated to their islands in 4th century A.D., carrying a language that might well have formed a "sprachbund" with the ancestor of modern Korean. However, great deal of Oceanic(possibly Austronesian or Ainu) influences are detected in Japanese phonetics and lexical formation, which is meager, if any, in the Korean language which bare more phonetic affinities with Ural-Altaic Sprachbund languages.

For example, Taiwanese and Fujianese are very similar dialects because a Taiwanese native can visit Fujian and guess 80% of what the locals say. Mandarin and Cantonese are not similar because one may be able to guess perhaps 10%. The Chinese dialects are all influenced by the same written language, yet, speakers cannot understand each others. Korean and Japanese are totally different in terms of writing and volcaburaries. It is not an easy task to show their similiarities.

Taiwanese IS friggin Fujianese! lol It's a variety of Hoklo. Hoisan Cantonese is "not similar to" Metropolitan Cantonese, or Sichuan Mandarin is not similar to Putonghua only in the sense that they sound "awkward" to speakers of the standard variants of these languages.

It is worth pointing out that, in linguistic terms, calling two languages "related" or "similar" does not necessarily mean that the two have to be mutually intelligible. The relation between Korean and Japanese has little to do with similar Sinic vocabulary, primarily words borrowed wholesale from Chinese, and everything to do with structure and grammar. Writing systems are irrelevant -- if I wanted to, I could write Dutch in Arabic script, but that would not change the fundamental fact that it is related to both English and German. A rose by any other name, or a word in any other script, as the case may be.

It is also worth pointing out that languages change over time. English and Icelandic are relatives, but that does not mean that an Icelandic speaker would know what an English speaker was saying. Linguistic drift over time is an important factor to bear in mind, as two separate languages may have once started from the same pool of speakers. One cannot make sweeping statements that languages A and B are completely unrelated simply on the basis of their modern forms; one must look back over the historical record (if one exists) and/or attempt to linguistically reconstruct how the languages might have changed in order to gain some insight into what roots each might have sprung from.

For example, the ending particle yo in Japanese was used differently in ages past, in a way that seems to match the use of the ending copula ieyo in modern Korean. Both languages also have a particle e used to mark direction, as in ǒdi e kayo in Korean and doko e iku in Japanese, both of which ask "where to go?" This usage remains largely unchanged in Japanese for at least a thousand years. I suspect a similar timeline for the Korean particle, though I have not yet had the opportunity to delve as deeply into the historical record.

But the similarities go beyond just a few particles and the overall SOV structure to include the social deictic whereby verb forms change depending on the speaker's relation to their audience and the subject(s) being spoken about. There are even some fun idiomatic similarities; both Korean and Japanese speakers proclaim "that's cold!" when someone makes a clever pun -- samui in Japanese and solǒng'e in Korean (if memory serves).

There are also some theories in linguistics suggesting that looking solely at vocabulary can be very misleading, for words can be quite easily swapped for imports, whereas grammar and basic structure cannot be so quickly exchanged as they are more integral to the system of the language. If the words of two languages are completely different, but the grammars identical, chances are they come from similar roots. According to some (admittedly narrow) definitions of what a language is, identical grammars would necessarily mean identical languages, for the actual pronunciation of any word is ultimately arbitrary. Why do we call a common four-legged mammalian companion creature a "dog" and not a "broccoli", for instance? And if I were to arbitrarily decide to change the pronunciation of a series of words, but kept the meanings and underlying grammar the same, such as: "Gnu mink lek broccoli fim ki farptut" to mean, word for word, "I took the dog for a walk," would that not still be English?

Anyway, my basic point here is that you really need to study some linguistics and both languages before you make any strong claims either that they are related, or that they are unrelated. It's great that people are interested in whether or not there is a relationship between Korean and Japanese; some good related pages to look at include: Deixis, Comparative method, Historical linguistics (aka "Diachronic linguistics"), Etymology, and Linguistic typology and its daughter pages, for a good start. Here's to having a good, meaty, and informed discussion! :)

Cheers, --- Eiríkr Útlendi 10:03, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comparing modern Korean and Japanese can be misleading. For example, the particle "yo" in Korean comes from "-io" and "-shio." Furthermore, the particle "e" does not mark direction in Korean; rather, it marks location. The particle "ro," however, does mark direction, and is used simultaneously for the instrumental noun case. As for the semantic shifts of these particles: in the three kingdoms time period, the locative particles were "a" and "ae," depending on the vowel class of the noun; and in Middle Korean, the directional particle was "rae." Also, the difference in Korean and Japanese phonology is unaccountable for, such as the lack of consonant endings in Japanese. If these languages were related genetically, they would at least have some cognates such as numbers and body parts; but they do not. Arguing that these languages are genetically related through grammar structure alone is too misleading. One could make an argument that Korean is related to Farsi, Hindi, and Dravidian languages through grammar and structure alone. Some already have: British scholar Homer B. Hulbert tried to relate Korean to Dravidian through the similar syntax in both languages. -- Zippie

two articles

Why are there two articles on this page, divided by a line through the middle? -- Zoe

The second part was pasted in from Korean (now a redirect) in November. --Brion 07:15 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

Overemphasis of similarities from Japanese

Removed the following paragraph of little relevancy to general article on Korean:

Though some may think that the Korean language is clearly different from Japanese, this is due to the Japanese using non-Chinese readings to some Chinese characters. For instance, the city of "Hitachi" (日立) is pronounced "Il-lip" in Korean. This is a case where the Japanese word "Tachi" (meaning "standing") is used instead of Chinese-based "Ritsu". In other words, there are irregularities for pronouncing Hanja (or "Kanji") in the Japanese language, due to Japanese using and adapting the Chinese script to the Japanese language. Korean knows no such deviation, due to adoption of the Korean alphabet Hangul.

So Japanese may share some similiarities with Korean. How does this related to the larger picture of the Korean language? This paragraph over-emphasizes an unconfirmed kinship between the Korean and Japanese language by exemplifying with a Chinese-derived word (Hanzi/Hanja/Kanji). --Menchi 01:09, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

Add two paragraphs at Korean language#Classification to address the Korean-Japanese-Western linguistic research views as of late 1990s. --Menchi 00:07, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

Do not use the Sino-etymology

When trying to link the similarities between Korean and Japanese, one should not use their "sino-etymology." Rather, one should look at "native" Korean and "native" Japanese words, since "sino-etymology" is basically Chinese loanwords. It is like trying to say English is a romance language due to the great amount of the vocab in German is from Latin. I believe that the similarity between Japanese and Korean is from convergence, not genetic. -Bezant

I agree with your point on not looking at vocabulary borrowed from Chinese. However, there seems to be considerable evidence at least in the archaeological record that suggests the core population that became today's Nihonjin came originally from the Korean peninsula. Haniwa findings on the main island of Honshu and also on Kyushu depict a warrior class very similar to concurrent cultures on the mainland. Other finds in the kofun tombs including implements and frescoes likewise depict a society in close relation to groups in the south of the Korean peninsula.

The archaeological record suggests that the kofun and haniwa culture was an arrival from elsewhere, rather than an outgrowth of the previous Jōmon culture -- a number of changes come all together, including rice agriculture, lacquerware, metalworking, and different construction techniques, suggesting that this was not the product of the previous primarily hunter-gatherer society but rather the appearance of something altogether new.

Given also that Japanese sticky rice seems to be closely related to varieties found in Laos, as well as the apparently Polynesian architectural elements in ancient Japanese rooflines still echoed today in more traditionalist shrines (particularly the one at Ise), and the decidedly continental warrior culture, it seems Japan may have been the site of similar cultural admixing to what was seen some time later in Great Britain, giving rise to a mixed language with a structure markedly similar to Korean, but a quite different vocabulary, including some Ainu and Polynesian elements.

Ultimately, the structural similarities between Japanese and Korean, combined with the archaeological record, would seem to point toward a genetic relationship. But then, as with any mixture, narrowing down the list of clear relatives can be quite difficult. At any rate, it merits study. :)

Cheers, --- Eiríkr Útlendi 14:20, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Regardless, the difference in phonetics between these two languages are too great. The argument that these differences between the two languages were caused by isolation is not plausible, since these two peoples traded with each other often. Therefore, it is most likely convergence, not genetic that these languages are similar in grammar. --Zippie

However, the differences seem to be mostly limited to the phonetics, whereas the structures are quite similar. My agrument is not so much that isolation alone was the cause of the present divergence between the two, but rather that it was isolation combined with mixing of vocabulary from other languages. Furthermore, my argument is not that Japanese and Korean began their divergence only around 2,000 some years ago with the apparent colonization of Japan by a continental people, but rather that proto-Japanese and proto-Korean were already distinct but related tongues prior to the Yayoi people arriving in Japan, with subsequent isolation and linguistic mixing widening the gap still further.

Note that there is some similarity found between one of the ancient dialects spoken in Manchuria and Korea and old Japanese, mentioned on the page for the ancient Goguryeo kingdom. Also note that Japanese has lost three additional vowel sounds just over the course of the historical record, and might conceivably have lost final consonants sometime in the prehistoric stage. The phonetic differences are historically not so great as may initially appear when looking solely at the two modern languages.

The thrust of my argument in looking at the archaeological record is to state that the ancient Japanese were not just trading partners with the ancient Koreans, but were in fact very likely emigres from the Korean peninsula. The influx of so much continental culture over a relatively short time span would seem to indicate migration trends rather than simply trading. Should the people themselves have been from the Korean peninsula, and therefore likely speakers of some Korean-related dialect, it would go a long way to explaining the structural similarity between Japanese and Korean. Simple trading relationships are not enough to bring about the degree of similarity found between the two. Korean states have been trading with China extensively for almost the whole of the historical record, and yet Korean and Chinese remain structurally very distinct -- the former an agglutinative synthetic language with a subject-object-verb structure, marked by an omissible subject and complex honorifics following a socially hierarchical deixis, much like Japanese, and the latter a decidedly analytic language with a subject-verb-object structure and a non-omissible subject, and an apparent lack of the honorifics found in both the Japanese and Korean languages. Frankly, aside from borrowed words and the writing system, the Chinese language has about squat to do with either Korean or Japanese despite centuries of trade, which would seem to nullify the "convergence through trading contacts" hypothesis regarding grammatical structure. Ultimately, the problem would seem to come down to the fact that most trading relations are carried out by small groups of traders, envoys, and ambassadors, thus limiting inter-linguistic contact. The vast bulk of the two speaking groups in any such relation would have nothing to do with each other, much like today.

I think it's great people are interested in this issue of possible relation. Does anyone have any references that state the case for convergent as opposed to divergent evolution? I'd be interested in reading them; most of what I've read to date that touches upon potential Japanese and Korean linguistic relatedness suggests they come from similar roots, and anthropological and archaeological findings seem to back that up, but I'm open to other arguments. :) --- Eiríkr Útlendi 08:39, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Firstly, I agree that people are interested in this issue; sadly, due to time constraints, I cannot join in to my fullest ability. Secondly, as for the topic, most Korean linguists see that the Baekje dialect, rather than the Goguryeo dialect, since the Baekje dialect seems to have similar phonetics like that of Japanese [[1] (http://www.donga.com/docs/magazine/shin/2003/08/25/200308250500014/200308250500014_1.html)]. For instance, according to this site, Baekje words lack final consonants. Also, there seems to be cognates with the numbers: Mir (3), Ochi (5), Nanan (7). One should note that "mir" meant 3 in the Shilla dialect too [[2] (http://www.chosun.ac.kr/~ongmi/teaching/korhistory/kh4-8.htm)]. In addition, something I forgot to mention before, most Korean historians agree that an en masse of Baekje aristocrats left Baekje for Japan as the kingdom collapsed. -- Zippie

Thank you for the links, Zippie. It's clear I need to work on my Korean! :) There's also the overlap in the word for "water", with Goguryeo and Silla mir loosely coinciding with the modern Japanese mizu, and in the word for "bear", with Goguryeo komok and Baekje komā none too far from modern Japanese kuma. Fun food for thought.

I also did some googling today in my downtime and found a couple interesting articles. One of those is this article (http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2351.html) on the Association for Asian Research site. It's Part IV of a series about the likely origins of the modern Japanese people and language, the most pertinent piece to this discussion of language, but if anyone's interested the series starts at this link (http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2348.html). The article addresses seem to be in sequential order; just add one to the number at the end of the link to get the next bit. For that matter, article 2352 (http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2352.html) also looks quite interesting, but I don't have time now to read it in full. Cheers, --- Eiríkr Útlendi 09:22, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I still believe that it is convergence, rather than genetic. I believe this mostly due to the unaccountable differences in phonetics. For instance, Japanese lacks consonants clusters --it does not seem to appear also Old Japanese, but I have not looked into it much. In middle Korean, there used to be even three consonant consonant cluters, both in the initial and final (i.e. dalks-bsdae meaning the hour of the rooster). There still is consonant clusters in modern Korean, but at most two in the batchim. Furthermore, Japanese totally lacks final consonants, except for the "n" final consonant. Also, some of the postpositions in modern Korean are loans, such as "ga." All of these observations lead me to conclude that it is convergence, rather than genetic, that relates Korean to Japanese. --zippie

Hi Zippie --

Interesting discussion here, thank you for participating.

Given your tantalizing links about the Baekje dialect, what of the possibility that Japanese and Korean share a genetic ancestor, such that modern Japanese and modern Korean are not directly related? If modern Korean is based largely on the Silla form of early Korean, and Japanese is not too distant (possibly) from some earlier relative of Baekje, plus likely combinations with Austronesian constructs and words (c.f. Shibatani, Masayoshi: The Languages of Japan), it would seem to suggest some genetic relation between the two, albeit quite possibly further back than we can comfortably reconstruct at present.

I'll grant that ga might be a more modern loan, though I admit I lack the historical overview of modern Korean to really know. What about e though, in terms of the directional marker --> Japanese doko e iku vs Korean ǒdi e gada? What of the extensive honorific systems present in both, both in terms of special noun forms and verb forms? What of the lexical overlap, where it can be found and shown to be not just recent borrowing (c.f. Martin, S.E.: Lexical evidence relating Japanese to Korean)? I'm not claiming that the two are sister languages by any means, simply that there's so much overlap for so long (the whole of the historic record) that I find it difficult to account for solely by means of convergence. Where I'm aware that convergence has been found, it has generally been less than would be required of a hypothesis whereby Japanese comes to resemble Korean as much as it does. Or am I mistaken? By all means reply, I find this all very interesting. :)

Also, content-wise, is this getting long enough that we should move this discussion to a dedicated page? Cheers, --- Eiríkr Útlendi 17:56, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is an interesting discussion for me, since I've been researching possible Korean-Japanese cognate sets. Leaving aside the grammatical similarities (which are interesting, but generally involve widespread linguistic traits), and the phonological differences (which could, perhaps, be compared to the differences between, say, Italian and Russian), there are quite a number of plausible cognates among the native vocabulary of both languages. This includes a lot of basic vocabulary concerning the natural world, such as the examples mentioned by Eiríkr Útlendi above: 'bear' (Modern Korean gom: Japanese kuma) and 'water' (Modern Korean mul: Japanese mizu). Some of these words could be ancient loanwords, and even if they are the result of a genetic relationship, it could hardly be described as close. Korean and Japanese, despite being very distinct languages, may share a common origin deep in antiquity. --Chamdarae

Chinese v. Japanese

As I wrote in "Hanja", most of "modern" Sino-Korean word were loaned from Japanese, technically changing their pronunciations. --Nanshu 02:05, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That is not so. Most words were loaned from the Chinese pronounciation, not Japanese. - Anon 66.156.33.26

No. Few were coined in by missionaries Shanghai, but massive translation was made in Japan. Basic vocaburary like 會社, 社會, 自由, 思想, 法律, 文明, 哲學 and 民族 were coined in Japan. It is symbolic that within the official name of the People's Republic of China 中華人民共和國, 人民 (peole) and 共和國 (republic) were coined in Japan and loaned into Chinese. --Nanshu 01:38, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Does it even extends to the Chinese at modern times? Because "Canada" is not Ka in Chinese (as it could), but Jia like it is in Japan. It seems like a borrowing from Japanese into Chinese. --Menchi 02:21, Aug 13, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but 加拿大 is pronounced "kanada" in Japanese. Here is a list of Sino-Japanese representations of various place names: http://member.nifty.ne.jp/maryy/japanese/country-names.htm 倫敦 (London) and 西班牙 (Spain) must have Chinese origins. --Nanshu 02:02, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"Canada" is never written fully in Hanja in Korean. The Hangul 캐나다 (or more rarely 카나다) is used instead. However, when using Hanja as an abbreviation for the country (like 美 for the US or 獨 for Germany), Koreans use 加 ("ga") for Canada—at least partly because there are no Hanja pronounced 카. --Sewing 20:19, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I heard Korean nationalists are irritated at irregular proper names like Dogil (독일) and Pullanseo (불란서). 獨逸 is "doitsu" and 彿蘭西 is "furansu" in Japanese but they don't fit for Korean pronunciation. --Nanshu 03:44, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nanshu: if—like you think—Koreans got all their modern character usage from Japan, why do they call the USA "Miguk" with a 美 (like the Chinese) and not with a 米 (like the Japanese)? And of course Koreans wouldn't say "doitsu" or "furansu" since they have their own pronunciations for the characters, Nanshu! Anyhow, while Koreans say "Dogil" for Germany, they do not call France "Bullanseo" but rather Peurangseu (프랑스), which when pronounced sounds quite close to the French pronunciation, except for the initial "P." But the abbreviation for France is "Bul" (불; 佛) --Sewing 19:32, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Not all, of course. I just let you know that people had the assumption that place names must have been written in Chinese characters regardless of what Hangul nationalists think. --Nanshu 04:07, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I must add that very few Sino-Korean forms are used for place names outside the Chinese sphere nowadays. The few that remain in common usage are due to their conciseness. Compare "Dogil 獨逸" with "Doichillanteu 도이칠란트", a difference of two vs five syllables. It is the same with "Miguk 美國" vs "Amerika 아메리카", "Yeongguk 英國" vs "Dae Beuriteun 대 브리튼 (Great Britain, which Yeongguk designates)" or "Inggeullaendeu 잉글랜드 (England, the source of the Sino-Korean form)", "Hoju 濠洲" vs "Oseuteureillia 오스트레일리아 (Australia)". These forms survived for their conciseness, useful especially for headline writers who could represent a country with a single Chinese character (another example would be 伊 for Italy, although Koreans say Itallia). Note that careful usage prefers "Oseuteureillia" for Australia (this is the form that will appear in encyclopedia entries, for example), and "Doichillanteu" is used to a lesser extent for Germany. "Yeongguk" and "Miguk" are used almost exclusively.

Nanshu, from the list on the link you provided, the average Korean would recognise, beside the ones already mentioned, 印度 for India, 西班牙 for Spain (although he would use Seupein or Eseupanya, 泰 for Thailand (although he would always say 泰國 or use the form 타이 Tai), plus the forms for Vietnam and Mongolia. I think at least some of these forms are Chinese in origin. He may also recognise the forms for the Netherlands, California, and Austria (and find them vaguely amusing), and is likely to recognise the first character at least for the names of Asia, Africa, and Europe (as they are often used in newspaper headlines). My guess though is that such knowledge will become more and more esoteric as the younger generation is further removed from the generation that received knowledge of the outside world through Japan or China. --Iceager 07:52, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Nanshu, you are so anti-Korean that you even don't stand up for Chinese issues such as the Diaoyu Islands. --Zippie

Well, I am quite surprised that Nanshu's claim is not accepted here. I am a native Korean and I've learnt it from my history class that most "modern" words (i.e., scientific terms, social science concept words, the names of European countries) were borrowed directly from Japan or indirectly through China which borrowed the words from Japan earlier than Korea. This is because Japan had been modernized before Korea or China. During westernization, the Japanese scholars had to translate european words into their language. Being educated men, they chose to use Hanja (or Kanji) characters to convey advanced concepts. When the burden of translation turned to Korean or Chinese scholars, they simply borrowed Sino-Japanese terms. Why bother to invent another word if there's already a word of the same meaning in familiar Chinese charaters? I don't know why Nanshu brought this issue in the first place, but the fact is fact. -- Anon

Anon vandalism

Anon user 65.112.248.130 changed the number of Korean speakers from 78 million to 180 million without citing a source for the change. The 78 million number comes from the Ethnologue report linked at the bottom of the page [3] (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_iso639.asp?code=kor). It's entirely possible the Ethnologue numbers are wrong (it cites a date of 1999 for that number, 5 years ago), but this new number 180 million seems like too big of a jump. South Korea gives 48 million for the population and North Korea gives 22 million for the population, leaving about 8 million Korean speakers outside of Korea, for a total of 78 million, which seems reasonable. 180 million, OTOH, seems to have emerged from nowhere. I'm reverting for now. Nohat 22:27, 2004 Apr 6 (UTC)

LOL. Maybe it was a typo for 80 million... That's the estimate found in [4] (http://www.language-museum.com/k/korean.htm), which includes a breakdown by country as well. I'm not sure how much to trust the numbers for Korean speakers of the former Soviet Union though. Most of them have lost Korean but still identify themselves as Korean speakers. The Korean they do speak is very different from the Korean spoken in North and South Korea, being influenced by Russian and other languages. One of these days I'll get around to writing an article about the Korean language spoken by these people... --Iceager 21:28, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Dialects

Doesn't linguists count Gangwon-mal as a dialect? It seems somewhat different from others in vocabulary, etc. --PuzzletChung @DATE@

You are right. How could people in Yeongdong speak with the same dialect as people in Seoul? I will fix this. --Sewing 17:10, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ollim

Current text: Derived from ollida is the noun ollim, which is the humble form of seonmul ("gift").

I have never heard the noun ollim being used with this meaning (I am a native Korean speaker). The Korean dictionaries I've consulted do not give this definition either. I am inclined to think this is a mistaken statement, and will delete it unless people object. --Iceager 07:22, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Deleted. --Iceager 09:30, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

But what about "올림이야," as said by a nephew to me? Don't 올리다 and 드리다 have similar meanings? --Sewing 17:10, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

seven

My ears pick up some sort of phonetic change that happens in the word /ilgop/ meaning "seven". The /i/ sounds somehow different, perhaps rounded or close central? Is there a rule to explain this change?--Sonjaaa 19:00, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

Vowel harmony

I think we need to beef up vowel harmony in the Korean language. Toktok sounds cute but tuktuk sounds crude. Saljjak sounds diminuitive but seuljjuk sounds mischievious.

o, a sound cute
u, eo sound crude
eu is neutral, more or less

Traditionally, o and a tend to appear together, and u and eo form a pair too. This is particularly evident in onomatopoeia.

i and ae sound diminuitive because they're front vowels, but I don't know if it's just me. I'm not too sure about e, ye, or yae either. Kjoonlee 09:29, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

Vowel harmony in Korean:

(From Unilang) "The Korean language has three kinds of vowels - Positive (ㅏ, ㅗ), Neutral (ㅣ), and Negative (ㅓ, ㅡ, ㅜ).... In modern Korean, vowel harmony rule is no longer generally obeyed, and it appears in only certain kinds of words; words with negative vowels stress the meaning.

Bezant 09:36, 2005 Feb 24 (ETS)

Help with language display

I see only question marks where I think Hangul characters should be, using firefox, and squares when I use IE. Can someone explain how to correct this, preferably in firefox?

At least some of the squares may represent IPA characters. The answer to this is that the article needs to be upgraded to use the IPA template around the IPA transcriptions. For instance, without the template: tʰɛˈjaŋ - with the template . I may get round to doing this, unless someone else would like to. :) rossb 13:09, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Korean language

In the text of the article Koreans, it is said that there are around 70 million Korean speakers of the Korean language. In the table in the article Koreans, it states that 71 million Koreans speak the Korean language. In the article Korean language, it says that there are, in total, 78 million speakers of the Korean language. Does that mean that there are 7 million non-Korean Korean language speakers in the world? - 68.72.139.128 01:48, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Korean script vs writing system

Unless someone has substantive objections, I propose collapsing sections 2 and 10 into one -- section 10 Writing System has more info, but section 2 Script pretty much just seems to overlap the info in 10. --- Eiríkr Útlendi 03:10, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Given the absence of any dissenting opinions, I have collapsed the two, moving the content from Script into Writing System and adjusting to fit. --- Eiríkr Útlendi 06:03, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Reduplication

Does anyone know any references on reduplication in Korean? I can think of:

어디 (eodi) where vs. 어디어디 (eodieodi) in which places
Onomatopoeic adjectives/adverbs. Sometimes optional, sometimes not.

Lenis/fortis consonants

I've noticed that you're using the IPA character for ejective consonants for the so-called "tensed" plosives. I read the Korean phonology written by Hyun Bok Lee in the IPA Handbook, and he's describing these quite differently. Instead of "tensed", which is not really any standard phonetic terminology, these phonemes are described as voiceless unaspirated lenis plosives and instead of the ejective characters are used. The same description is used for the two "s"-phonemes, and the characters used are /s, z/. The allophones of these sounds changes depending on phonotactic context, but syllable-inititally, they following character are used (they don't work in all browser configurations).

The non-standard terminology used in this article is explained in the following way:

"The symbol is used to denote the tensed consonants (, , , , and ) 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. However, it may be argued that such a manner of articulation can still be categorized as glottalization, justifying the use of ."

This seems very confusing to me. To describe these lenis plosives and fricatives as something similar to ejective plosives seems awfully tentative. I have listened to plenty fo samples of ejective as well as lenis plosives as spoken by native speakers, and even as a layman they sound very different from one another. I would recommend using the IPA characters as they were intended by the IPA rather than borrowing them to use in this very non-standard fashion. Add to this the fact that the allophones of the "tensed plosives" often are just as your average English [z], [g] or [d] and you get one very confusing terminology.

Peter Isotalo 19:25, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure they're "lenis" either (which by the way is another term "which is not really any standard phonetic terminology", since "tensed" is just layman talk for "fortis", which is itself ill defined), but I'm making the change. The ejective symbol is just utterly wrong. Better to use Ladefoged's asterisk: [p*, t*, k*, s*]. At least using a voiceless symbol on a voiced letter (or, perhaps, a voice symbol on a voiceless letter?) will make people scratch their head and read the description. There's been a lot of argument about what's really going on with these sounds (no one can even agree on whether they're lenis or fortis, though they seem fortis to me), so don't expect this to end the debate! kwami 08:47, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

Just looked at the IPA Handbook, and we got their account backwards: it is the "lenis" alveolar (Hangul d) that is transcribed and , while the "fortis" ("tense") alveolar (Hangul tt) is transcribed . I was puzzled why they would use the under-ring for "tense", since that would be equivalent to slack voice. They don't: they use it to mean tenuis. Therefore the expected IPA usage of the under-wedge (for stiff voice) is not out of sync with the Handbook. Of course, it's another question whether the 'tense' obstruents are actually 'stiff voice'. kwami 11:41, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)

Spacing and Punctuation.

Can anyone tell me more about spacing? I read here that every word is supposed to be seperated by a space, but often I see things like “을”이 or 중도금(기성), where you'd expect spaces between the quotes/parentheses and the next letter/word (or you'd expect them to be within the quotes/parentheses). Any ideas?

Also, I've seen Japanese-style quotes alongside English-style. Should this be included in the article?

Concering IPA

Korean language have consonant allophones, one of which is recorded on the article but others not:

ㄴ - Other than [n], there is [ɲ].
ㄹ - Other than [l], there are [ɾ], [ɭ], and [ʎ].
ㅎ - Other than [h], there are [ɦ], [ç]

And pronunciations ㅈ and ㅊ are generally perceived as [ʦ], not [c], and [ʣ] is an allophone.

--Puzzlet Chung 06:04, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

WP:FAC

I'm not a linguist, but what an impressive article. If some references (and possibly an image or two) we added, it would surely stand a good chance of becoming a featured article. -- ALoan (Talk) 09:21, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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