Middle Korean is the period in the history of the Korean language succeeding Old Korean and yielding in 1600 to the Modern period. The boundary between the Old and Middle periods is traditionally identified with the establishment of Goryeo in 918, but some scholars have argued for the time of the Mongol invasions of Korea (mid-13th century). Middle Korean is often divided into Early and Late periods corresponding to Goryeo (until 1392) and Joseon respectively. It is difficult to extract linguistic information from texts of the Early period, which are written using adaptations of Chinese characters . The situation was transformed in 1446 by the introduction of the Hangul alphabet, so that Late Middle Korean provides the pivotal data for the history of Korean .
55-614: Hunminjeongeum ( Korean : 훈민정음 ; Hanja : 訓民正音 ; lit. The Correct/Proper Sounds for the Instruction of the People ) is a 15th-century manuscript that introduced the Korean script Hangul . The name of the manuscript was also the original name of the script. King Sejong the Great commissioned the royal research institute Hall of Worthies to write
110-470: A Chinese text. This system became so entrenched that 15th-century efforts to reform it to more closely match the Chinese pronunciation of the time were abandoned. The prestige of Chinese was further enhanced by the adoption of Confucianism as the state ideology of Joseon , and Chinese literary forms flooded into the language at all levels of society. Some of these denoted items of imported culture, but it
165-484: A Korean influence on Khitan. The hypothesis that Korean could be related to Japanese has had some supporters due to some overlap in vocabulary and similar grammatical features that have been elaborated upon by such researchers as Samuel E. Martin and Roy Andrew Miller . Sergei Starostin (1991) found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list . Some linguists concerned with
220-480: A core vowel. The IPA symbol ⟨ ◌͈ ⟩ ( U+0348 ◌͈ COMBINING DOUBLE VERTICAL LINE BELOW ) is used to denote the tensed consonants /p͈/, /t͈/, /k͈/, /t͡ɕ͈/, /s͈/ . Its official use in the extensions to the IPA is for "strong" articulation, but is used in the literature for faucalized voice . The Korean consonants also have elements of stiff voice , but it is not yet known how typical this
275-545: A later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families. Since the establishment of two independent governments, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation and vocabulary chosen. However, these minor differences can be found in any of the Korean dialects , which are still largely mutually intelligible . The Chinese language , written with Chinese characters and read with Sino-Xenic pronunciations ,
330-521: A possible relationship.) Hudson & Robbeets (2020) suggested that there are traces of a pre- Nivkh substratum in Korean. According to the hypothesis, ancestral varieties of Nivkh (also known as Amuric ) were once distributed on the Korean Peninsula before the arrival of Koreanic speakers. Korean syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), consisting of an optional onset consonant, glide /j, w, ɰ/ and final coda /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, l/ surrounding
385-463: A preface, the alphabet letters , and brief descriptions of their corresponding sounds. The first paragraph of the document reveals Sejong the Great's motivation for creating Hangul : The Classical Chinese (Hanja) of the Hunminjeongeum has been partly translated into Middle Korean . This translation is found together with Worinseokbo : an annotated Buddhist scripture and is called
440-535: A result, over half the modern Korean lexicon consists of Sino-Korean words, though they account for only about a tenth of basic vocabulary. Classical Chinese was the language of government and scholarship in Korea from the 7th century until the Gabo Reforms of the 1890s. After King Gwangjong established the gwageo civil service examinations on the Chinese model in 958, familiarity with written Chinese and
495-540: A stilted style influenced by Classical Chinese. The best examples of colloquial Korean are the translations in foreign-language textbooks produced by the Joseon Bureau of Interpreters . Hangul letters correspond closely to the phonemes of Late Middle Korean. The romanization most commonly used in linguistic writing on the history of Korean is the Yale romanization devised by Samuel Martin , which faithfully reflects
550-619: Is also generated by longstanding alliances, military involvement, and diplomacy, such as between South Korea–United States and China–North Korea since the end of World War II and the Korean War . Along with other languages such as Chinese and Arabic , Korean is ranked at the top difficulty level for English speakers by the United States Department of Defense . Modern Korean descends from Middle Korean , which in turn descends from Old Korean , which descends from
605-656: Is an agglutinative language . The Korean language is traditionally considered to have nine parts of speech . Modifiers generally precede the modified words, and in the case of verb modifiers, can be serially appended. The sentence structure or basic form of a Korean sentence is subject–object–verb (SOV), but the verb is the only required and immovable element and word order is highly flexible, as in many other agglutinative languages. Question 가게에 gage-e store- LOC 가셨어요? ga-syeo-sseo-yo go- HON . PAST - CONJ - POL 가게에 가셨어요? gage-e ga-syeo-sseo-yo store-LOC go-HON.PAST-CONJ-POL 'Did [you] go to
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#1732773251310660-427: Is believed to have arisen from a contraction of a pair of syllables with low and high tone. LMK texts do not show clear distinctions after the first high or rising tone in a word, suggesting that the language had a pitch accent rather than a full tone system. Although some Chinese words had previously entered Korean, Middle Korean was the period of the massive and systematic influx of Sino-Korean vocabulary . As
715-511: Is closer to a near-open central vowel ( [ɐ] ), though ⟨a⟩ is still used for tradition. Grammatical morphemes may change shape depending on the preceding sounds. Examples include -eun/-neun ( -은/-는 ) and -i/-ga ( -이/-가 ). Sometimes sounds may be inserted instead. Examples include -eul/-reul ( -을/-를 ), -euro/-ro ( -으로/-로 ), -eseo/-seo ( -에서/-서 ), -ideunji/-deunji ( -이든지/-든지 ) and -iya/-ya ( -이야/-야 ). Some verbs may also change shape morphophonemically. Korean
770-399: Is mainly reserved for specific circumstances such as newspapers, scholarly papers and disambiguation. Today Hanja is largely unused in everyday life but is still important for historical and linguistic studies. The Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in both South Korea and North Korea. The English word "Korean" is derived from Goryeo , which is thought to be
825-399: Is of faucalized consonants. They are produced with a partially constricted glottis and additional subglottal pressure in addition to tense vocal tract walls, laryngeal lowering, or other expansion of the larynx. /s/ is aspirated [sʰ] and becomes an alveolo-palatal [ɕʰ] before [j] or [i] for most speakers (but see North–South differences in the Korean language ). This occurs with
880-476: Is referred to as Hangul today but was originally named as Hunminjeongeum by King Sejong. "Hunmin" and "Jeongeum" are respective words that each indicate "to teach the people" and "proper sounds." Together Hunminjeongeum means "correct sounds for the instruction of the people." There are three versions of Hunminjeongeum. Hunminjeongeum Yeui is written in Classical Chinese / Hanja and contains
935-575: Is sparsely documented. This situation changed dramatically with the introduction of the Hangul alphabet in 1446. Before the 1970s, the key sources for EMK were a few wordlists. In 1973, close examination of a Buddhist sutra from the Goryeo period revealed faint interlinear annotations with simplified Chinese characters indicating how the Chinese text could be read as Korean. More examples of gugyeol ('oral embellishment') were discovered, particularly in
990-544: Is the native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the national language of both North Korea and South Korea . Beyond Korea, the language is recognized as a minority language in parts of China , namely Jilin , and specifically Yanbian Prefecture , and Changbai County . It is also spoken by Sakhalin Koreans in parts of Sakhalin , the Russian island just north of Japan, and by
1045-747: Is well attested in Western Old Japanese and Northern Ryukyuan languages , in Eastern Old Japanese it only occurs in compounds, and it is only present in three dialects of the Southern Ryukyuan language group . Also, the doublet wo meaning "hemp" is attested in Western Old Japanese and Southern Ryukyuan languages. It is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term. (See Classification of the Japonic languages or Comparison of Japanese and Korean for further details on
1100-521: The Koryo-saram in parts of Central Asia . The language has a few extinct relatives which—along with the Jeju language (Jejuan) of Jeju Island and Korean itself—form the compact Koreanic language family . Even so, Jejuan and Korean are not mutually intelligible . The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in contemporary Manchuria . The hierarchy of the society from which
1155-474: The yangban aristocracy, who looked down upon it too easy to learn. However, it gained widespread use among the common class and was widely used to print popular novels which were enjoyed by the common class. Since few people could understand official documents written in classical Chinese, Korean kings sometimes released public notices entirely written in Hangul as early as the 16th century for all Korean classes, including uneducated peasants and slaves. By
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#17327732513101210-486: The Hunminjeongeum to describe the writing system he had invented in 1443. The manuscript was then published in 1446. Hunminjeongeum was intended to be a simpler alternative to the incumbent Chinese-based Hanja , in order to promote literacy among the general populace. It originally included 28 letters, but over time, four of those (ㆆ, ㆁ, ㅿ, ·) were abandoned, leading to the current 24 letters of Hangul. Sejong
1265-634: The Hunminjeongeum Eonhae . Because the speech of this country is different from that of China , it [the spoken language] does not match the [Chinese] letters. Therefore, even if the ignorant want to communicate, many of them, in the end, cannot successfully express themselves. Saddened by this, I have [had] 28 letters newly made. It is my wish that all the people may easily learn these letters and that [they] be convenient for daily use. Korean language Korean ( South Korean : 한국어 , Hanguk-eo ; North Korean : 조선어 , Chosŏnŏ )
1320-460: The Chinese classics spread through the ruling classes. Korean literati read Chinese texts using a standardized Korean pronunciation, originally based on Middle Chinese . They used Chinese rhyme dictionaries , which specified the pronunciations of Chinese characters relative to other characters, and could thus be used to systematically construct a Sino-Korean reading for any word encountered in
1375-502: The Hangul alphabet in 1446 revolutionized the description of the language. The Hunminjeongeum ('Correct sounds for the instruction of the people') and later texts describe the phonology and morphology of the language with great detail and precision. Earlier forms of the language must be reconstructed by comparing fragmentary evidence with LMK descriptions. These works are not as informative regarding Korean syntax, as they tend to use
1430-550: The Jeju language has a distinct reflex of o . In most other varieties it has merged with a in the first syllable of a word and u elsewhere. An exception is found in the Yukchin dialect in the far northeast and dialects along the south coast, where first-syllable o has merged with wo when adjacent to a labial consonant. LMK had rigid vowel harmony , described in the Hunminjeongeum Haerye by dividing
1485-773: The Jilin leishi , Lee Ki-Moon argued for a Korean Vowel Shift between the 13th and 15th centuries, consisting of chain shifts involving five of these vowels: William Labov found that this proposed shift followed different principles to all the other chain shifts he surveyed. Lee's interpretation of both the Mongolian and Jilin leishi materials has also been challenged by several authors. LMK also had two glides , y [j] and w [w] : Early Hangul texts distinguish three pitch contours on each syllable: low (unmarked), high (marked with one dot) and rising (marked with two dots). The rising tone may have been longer in duration, and
1540-589: The Proto-Koreanic language , which is generally suggested to have its linguistic homeland somewhere in Manchuria . Whitman (2012) suggests that the proto-Koreans, already present in northern Korea, expanded into the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them). Both had influence on each other and
1595-568: The Three Kingdoms of Korea (not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula), while " -eo " and " -mal " mean "language" and "speech", respectively. Korean is also simply referred to as guk-eo , literally "national language". This name is based on the same Han characters ( 國語 "nation" + "language") that are also used in Taiwan and Japan to refer to their respective national languages. In North Korea and China ,
1650-889: The 17th century, the yangban had exchanged Hangul letters with slaves, which suggests a high literacy rate of Hangul during the Joseon era. In the context of growing Korean nationalism in the 19th century, the Gabo Reform of 1894 abolished the Confucian examinations and decreed that government documents would be issued in Hangul instead of literary Chinese. Some newspapers were published entirely in Hangul, but other publications used Korean mixed script , with Hanja for Sino-Korean vocabulary and Hangul for other elements. North Korea abolished Hanja in writing in 1949, but continues to teach them in schools. Their usage in South Korea
1705-582: The 1990s. Many of the gugyeol characters were abbreviated, and some of them are identical in form and value to symbols in the Japanese katakana syllabary, though the historical relationship between the two is not yet clear. An even more subtle method of annotation known as gakpil ( 각필 , 角筆 'stylus') was discovered in 2000, consisting of dots and lines made with a stylus. Both forms of annotation contain little phonological information, but are valuable sources on grammatical markers. The introduction of
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1760-408: The 20th century. The script uses 24 basic letters ( jamo ) and 27 complex letters formed from the basic ones. When first recorded in historical texts, Korean was only a spoken language . Since the turn of the 21st century, aspects of Korean culture have spread to other countries through globalization and cultural exports . As such, interest in Korean language acquisition (as a foreign language )
1815-401: The Chinese characters became a symbol of power and privilege. In order to make written language more accessible for common people, Sejong the Great started creating Hangul secretly, since the ruling class would be appalled by the news. Hangul was personally created by Sejong the Great, the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty, and revealed by him in 1443. Although it is widely assumed that Sejong
1870-580: The Great also commissioned the creation of a companion explanatory manuscript entitled Hunminjeongeum Haerye . In 1940, a copy of the Hunminjeongeum Haerye was discovered in Andong, Gyeongsang Province. An original copy of the document is currently located at the Gansong Art Museum in Seoul , South Korea. In 1962, Hunminjeongeum Haerye was designated a National Treasure in South Korea and
1925-675: The Great ordered the Hall of Worthies to invent Hangul, contemporary records such as the Veritable Records of King Sejong and Jeong Inji 's preface to the Hunminjeongeum Haerye emphasize that he invented it himself. This is stated in Book 113 of The Annals of King Sejong (Sejongsillok) on the 9th month and the 28th year of reign of King Sejong and at the end of An Illustrated Explanation of Hunminjeongeum ( Hunminjeongeum Haeryebon ; Hunminjeongeum Haerye ). Afterward, King Sejong wrote
1980-643: The Hangul spelling. The tensed stops pp , tt , cc and kk are distinct phonemes in modern Korean, but in LMK they were allophones of consonant clusters. The tensed fricative hh only occurred in a single verb root, hhye- 'to pull', and has disappeared in Modern Korean. The voiced fricatives /β/ , /z/ and /ɣ/ occurred only in limited environments, and are believed to have arisen from lenition of /p/ , /s/ and /k/ , respectively. They have disappeared in most modern dialects, but some dialects in
2035-591: The Middle Korean period. For example, the Jilin leishi has *posol ( 菩薩 ) 'rice', which became LMK psól and modern ssal . A similar process is responsible for many aspirated consonants. For example, the Jilin leishi has *huku- ( 黒根 ) 'big', which became LMK and modern khu . Late Middle Korean had seven vowels: The precise phonetic values of these vowels are controversial. Six of them are still distinguished in modern Korean, but only
2090-546: The Ming dynasty had just come to power in China, which changed the pronunciation of Chinese characters, making it harder for Koreans to learn the new standard pronunciation to record their words. The illiteracy level also stayed high since reading and learning Chinese characters was restricted among the ordinary people. They were generally used in official documents by the ruling class. The ruling class took advantage of this and learning
2145-455: The beginnings of words. /l/ becomes alveolar flap [ɾ] between vowels, and [l] or [ɭ] at the end of a syllable or next to another /l/ . A written syllable-final ' ㄹ ', when followed by a vowel or a glide ( i.e. , when the next character starts with ' ㅇ '), migrates to the next syllable and thus becomes [ɾ] . Traditionally, /l/ was disallowed at the beginning of a word. It disappeared before [j] , and otherwise became /n/ . However,
2200-399: The first Korean dynasty known to Western nations. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as Koryo-saram or Koryo-in (literally, " Koryo/Goryeo persons"), and call the language Koryo-mal' . Some older English sources also use the spelling "Corea" to refer to the nation, and its inflected form for the language, culture and people, "Korea" becoming more popular in
2255-479: The inflow of western loanwords changed the trend, and now word-initial /l/ (mostly from English loanwords) are pronounced as a free variation of either [ɾ] or [l] . All obstruents (plosives, affricates, fricatives) at the end of a word are pronounced with no audible release , [p̚, t̚, k̚] . Plosive sounds /p, t, k/ become nasals [m, n, ŋ] before nasal sounds. Hangul spelling does not reflect these assimilatory pronunciation rules, but rather maintains
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2310-408: The issue between Japanese and Korean, including Alexander Vovin, have argued that the indicated similarities are not due to any genetic relationship , but rather to a sprachbund effect and heavy borrowing, especially from Ancient Korean into Western Old Japanese . A good example might be Middle Korean sàm and Japanese asá , meaning " hemp ". This word seems to be a cognate, but although it
2365-639: The language is most often called Joseon-mal , or more formally, Joseon-o . This is taken from the North Korean name for Korea (Joseon), a name retained from the Joseon dynasty until the proclamation of the Korean Empire , which in turn was annexed by the Empire of Japan . In mainland China , following the establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, the term Cháoxiǎnyǔ or
2420-472: The language originates deeply influences the language, leading to a system of speech levels and honorifics indicative of the formality of any given situation. Modern Korean is written in the Korean script ( 한글 ; Hangeul in South Korea, 조선글 ; Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea), a system developed during the 15th century for that purpose, although it did not become the primary script until
2475-455: The late 1800s. In South Korea the Korean language is referred to by many names including hanguk-eo ("Korean language"), hanguk-mal ("Korean speech") and uri-mal ("our language"); " hanguk " is taken from the name of the Korean Empire ( 대한제국 ; 大韓帝國 ; Daehan Jeguk ). The " han " ( 韓 ) in Hanguk and Daehan Jeguk is derived from Samhan , in reference to
2530-411: The population was illiterate. In the 15th century King Sejong the Great personally developed an alphabetic featural writing system , known today as Hangul , to promote literacy among the common people. Introduced in the document Hunminjeongeum , it was called eonmun ('colloquial script') and quickly spread nationwide to increase literacy in Korea. The Korean alphabet was denounced by
2585-403: The preface to the Hunminjeongeum , explaining the origin and purpose of Hangul and providing brief examples and explanations, and then tasked the Hall of Worthies to write detailed examples and explanations. The head of the Hall of Worthies, Jeong In-ji , was responsible for compiling the Hunminjeongeum . The Hunminjeongeum was published and promulgated to the public in 1446. The writing system
2640-669: The short form Cháoyǔ has normally been used to refer to the standard language of North Korea and Yanbian , whereas Hánguóyǔ or the short form Hányǔ is used to refer to the standard language of South Korea. Korean is a member of the Koreanic family along with the Jeju language . Some linguists have included it in the Altaic family, but the core Altaic proposal itself has lost most of its prior support. The Khitan language has several vocabulary items similar to Korean that are not found in other Mongolian or Tungusic languages, suggesting
2695-431: The southeast and northeast retain /p/ , /s/ and /k/ in these words. The affricates c , ch and cc were apical consonants, as in modern northwestern dialects, rather than palatals as in modern Seoul. Late Middle Korean had a limited and skewed set of initial clusters: sp- , st- , sk- , pt- , pth- , ps- , pc- , pst- and psk- . It is believed that they resulted from syncope of vowels o or u during
2750-437: The store?' Response 예/네. ye/ne AFF Middle Korean Until the late 19th century, most formal writing in Korea, including government documents, scholarship and much literature, was written in Classical Chinese . Before the 15th century, the little writing in Korean was done using cumbersome adaptations of Chinese characters such as idu and hyangchal . Thus Early Middle Korean, like Old Korean before it,
2805-441: The tense fricative and all the affricates as well. At the end of a syllable, /s/ changes to /t/ (example: beoseot ( 버섯 ) 'mushroom'). /h/ may become a bilabial [ɸ] before [o] or [u] , a palatal [ç] before [j] or [i] , a velar [x] before [ɯ] , a voiced [ɦ] between voiced sounds, and a [h] elsewhere. /p, t, t͡ɕ, k/ become voiced [b, d, d͡ʑ, ɡ] between voiced sounds. /m, n/ frequently denasalize at
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#17327732513102860-464: The underlying, partly historical morphology . Given this, it is sometimes hard to tell which actual phonemes are present in a certain word. The traditional prohibition of word-initial /ɾ/ became a morphological rule called "initial law" ( 두음법칙 ) in the pronunciation standards of South Korea, which pertains to Sino-Korean vocabulary. Such words retain their word-initial /ɾ/ in the pronunciation standards of North Korea. For example, ^NOTE ㅏ
2915-547: The vowels into three groups: Yin and yang vowels could not occur in the same word, but could co-occur with the neutral vowel. The phonetic dimension underlying vowel harmony is disputed. Lee Ki-Moon suggested that LMK vowel harmony was based on vowel height . Some recent authors attribute it to advanced and retracted tongue root states. Loans from Middle Mongolian in the 13th century show several puzzling correspondences, in particular between Middle Mongolian ü and Korean u . Based on these data and transcriptions in
2970-487: Was first introduced to Korea in the 1st century BC, and remained the medium of formal writing and government until the late 19th century. Korean scholars adapted Chinese characters (known in Korean as Hanja ) to write their own language, creating scripts known as idu , hyangchal , gugyeol , and gakpil. These systems were cumbersome, due to the fundamental disparities between the Korean and Chinese languages, and accessible only to those educated in classical Chinese. Most of
3025-518: Was registered by UNESCO in the Memory of the World Programme in 1997. Before Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was created, Koreans used Chinese characters to record their words. Since Chinese language and Korean language share few similarities, borrowing Chinese characters proved to be inefficient to reflect the spoken language. In addition, at the time when Sejong the Great was inventing Hangul
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