The Korean Language

hello everyone welcome to the Laing focused Channel and my name is Paul today's topic is the Korean language or handle mail as it's called in Korean and actually in North Korea it's called Chosun my Korean is one of the major languages of Northeast Asia it's spoken as a first language by a total of around 80 million people including around 50 million in South Korea 25 million in North Korea and around 2.5 million in China including the Jung Byung and Chong BEC Korean autonomous areas which are both in Jilin province near the border with North Korea it's also spoken by minorities in Japan Russia and numerous other countries throughout the world the roots of the Korean language are unclear and are the subject of much debate some think it's a member of the Altaic language family alongside Turkic mongolic and Tengu sick and japonic languages but these days the Altai ik language family is no longer widely accepted or shall we say it's unproven others think that korean shares ancient roots with the Dravidian languages of southern india and sri lanka and there's another theory that korean derives from the Austronesian language family but there's no definitive proof for any of these theories so Korean is often defined as a language isolate the sole member of the chorionic language family the lack of evidence for any of these theories is largely because of the lack of samples of older korean writing the oldest samples that we are aware of are less than a thousand years old and the written and chinese characters making them hard to decipher old korean the first century CE II marked the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period on the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria the kingdoms were Co Korea Peck je and Shilla it's not known for sure just how closely the languages of these kingdoms were related they may have all been closely related dialects of old Korean or they may have been distinct members of the chorionic language family from limited information mainly place names it appears that the languages were similar but not exactly the same there may have been two groups of chorionic languages the Puyo group including Puyo co korea and puia peck je and the hun group which included Shilla in South Korea it's widely believed that Shilla is the direct ancestor of modern Korean in North Korea it's widely believed that Goguryeo is the direct ancestor of modern Korean during the unified silla period beginning in the 7th century when Shilla conquered the other kingdoms the Shilla variety became the dominant language of the peninsula this is the form of old Korean that became the ancestor of middle Korean Korea has been tremendously influenced by China throughout its history due to invasion attempts alliances and extensive trade the influence on Korean culture includes stunning influence on the Korean language since Korean didn't have its own writing system it adopted the Chinese writing system and used it well into the era of middle Korean and a huge amount of Chinese vocabulary entered Korean through the literary language middle Korean when the Korea dynasty began in the 10th century the capital moved to Kaesong so the Kaesong dialect became the prestige language it seems that by this time the peninsula basically spoke the same language so this was simply a dialectal change the first written record of Korean that we know of beyond place names comes from this time period the sources Chinese and gives a few hundred examples of Korean words written phonetically using Chinese characters one feature of middle Korean is that it featured four tones and on top of that Chinese loanwords still retained their tones as well these tone distinctions have disappeared in modern Standard Korean but there are a couple of dialects that do retain some of these distinctions we know that middle Korean had tones because there were markings indicating tone in the Hangul writing system which was created in 1444 by King Sejong the great of the Chosun dynasty Hangul was created to increase literacy among the poor and people without a formal education prior to the creation of Hangul Korean went through a number of different writing systems that used Chinese characters in various ways to represent Korean none of which were an ideal match for Korean or very easy to learn in the beginning elites and scholars opposed the introduction of Hangul but over the following centuries it became widespread and Hangul is such an ingenious writing system that it's really hard to imagine how wouldn't have become widespread for a long time Korean was often written and published in a mixed script using Hangzhou Chinese characters for content words and Hangul for functional or grammatical words and inflections it was quite similar to how Japanese is still written today speaking of Japanese Korea was occupied by Japan from 1910 until 1945 during the occupation Japanese was made the official language and policies were implemented that would have replaced Korean with Japanese if the occupation had not been ended Japanese was made the language of Education except for Korean class and speaking Korean at school was banned Koreans were pressured to replace their Korean names with Japanese names and Korean language newspapers were ordered to shut down these assimilationist policies were gradually introduced and speeded up in the later years of the occupation thankfully the Korean language survived the occupation but a significant amount of Japanese vocabulary was absorbed into the language in the decades since the occupation ended honja have gradually become de-emphasized in favor of Hangul nowadays most texts are written entirely or mostly in Hangul with han chaeah mainly used to prevent possible ambiguity between homophones and in North Korea specifically hangzhou were eliminated from all official publications in 1949 I'm going to speculate that the growing emphasis on Hangul was partly a reaction to the Japanese occupation that a growing sense of Korean sovereignty made the Korean people want to use more of their nation's homegrown script the existence of the Hangul script is now celebrated every year on Hangul day October 9th in South Korea and on Chosun cool day January 15th in North Korea both Koreas have a literacy rate of over 99% so I guess there is reason to celebrate so what's Korean like well there's a lot to say about Korean and there's no way I can give a complete comprehensive overview of the whole language in a single video but we'll look at some of its important features Tongo Tongo is a fantastic writing system that you can learn to read very quickly there is a basic set of consonant and vowel symbols that are arranged together to form compact syllables this says Hangul this symbolism huh this is ah this is mm this is good this is and this is oh this system is ingenious because once you get used to the most common combinations of symbols then you can instantly recognize them the consonant symbols fall into groups of different letters these consonants are velar and the basic shape shows the tongues position in the mouth this point indicates the place of articulation near the back of the mouth these consonants are alveolar x' and the basic shape shows the tongue touching the roof of the mouth these consonants are by labial and the basic shape shows a mouth with two lips these consonants are dentals and the basic shape shows the place of articulation at the upper teeth these consonants are glottal and the basic shape shows that the place of articulation is in your throat vocabulary in most current examples of written Korean all or almost all of the words are written in Hangul including native Korean words and sino-korean words words of Chinese origin believe it or not sino-korean words account for over 60% of Korean vocabulary their most prevalent in formal and academic vocabulary but they're very common in everyday speech as well let's look at the Chinese vocabulary that appears in the following sentences this sentence means do you like your teacher so using memes hua Hale notice the word Sun sang which means teacher this word is of Chinese origin this sentence means what's your phone number Chon Abu Nidal ale the words for telephone and number are of Chinese origin when Korean is written in a mixed hunga hunga script you can more easily identify the sino-korean words and you can more easily distinguish between words that sound the same because they are written with different Chinese characters but these days they are mainly written in Hangul Korean also contains more recent loan words from other languages mainly English words like choose meaning juice puku meaning fork sin do Ichi meaning sandwich obviously the pronunciation of these words has naturally changed and become suited to Korean phonology some loan words are abbreviated or used in ways that the original words were not used for example the word saved con means selfie which came from the words self and camera another example Ayesha open means window-shopping and comes from the words eye and shopping sentence structure korean is a verb final language with the verb at the end of the sentence a typical sentences sov this sentence means I play baseball nan in Yahoo inhale here's the subject na here's the object ya goo and here's the verb heyo it's also possible to save this sentence with no subject if it's clear from the context but let's go back to the original sentence for a minute in addition to the subject object and verb there are two other words in the sentence these words are particles words that are placed after nouns to indicate their function or relationship to other words in the sentence rule is a direct object marker showing that yah goo baseball is the object of the verb lo is the form that follows a word ending in a vowel o is the form that follows words ending in a consonant nun is a topic marker the form that comes afterwards ending in a consonant is own na is the subject of the sentence but it's also the topic that means na is information that has previously been mentioned or as clear from the context in that it's the topic being elaborated on there are also subject markers e after a consonant and cop after a vowel subject markers are used to introduce new information or to introduce the importance of existing information in other words to emphasize it we could change the sentence above to make not the subject de gallo guru Hale notice that na is pronounced as nae when followed by a car in the pronunciation of car changes to gah in this sentence daga shows that I is the new information or emphasized information this might be said in response to a question asking who plays baseball in English we might stress this subject like I play baseball here's another example of when you might use the subject marker real mother panatela say the sentence means my mother entered the room actually this part literally means our mother but it's used to mean my when referring to your own in-group anyway in this case my mother is new information because before that she wasn't present she wasn't in the room so the subject particle is suitable here this word here a is another particle showing Direction like the english preposition to or into but technically speaking since the particle comes after the noun it's a post position rather than a preposition in korean modifiers come before the things that they modify that means that adjectives come before nouns do Pinton this means a tall mountain this is the word for tall and this is the word for mountain this part in connects the adjective to the noun longer modifiers also come before the noun you want them to modify this phrase means the mountain i want to climb naega lugozshe printin word for word this phrase is i subject marker climb want connector mountain but if we take the whole modifying clause as a single unit this modifier plus noun pattern is like saying the i want to climb mountain so whereas in english the modifier would come after the noun in korean it comes before by the way this sentence could mean a mountain i want to climb with indefinite meaning korean doesn't have definite or indefinite articles so definiteness can be understood from context verbs and adjectives every sentence in korean must end in either a verb or an adjective and verbs and adjectives act very similar to each other in korean with both being conjugated for past or non past and for different politeness levels first let's look at verbs the dictionary form of verbs all end in da for example this verb made an meaning to stop and this verb chata meaning to sleep in order to conjugate these verbs you remove da and you are left with the verb stem which you add affixes to so let's conjugate these verbs in the present tense or non past tense to be precise this sentence means he stops eating Koonin Bob tomorrow so look at how we conjugate the verb to stop the stem is mul the informal present tense ending is aa and the polite suffix is yo so this is the informal polite conjugation for verb stems whose final vowel sound is R or all this verb ends in a consonant but when the verb ends in the vowel R then only your is added for example Coonans Heil he sleeps note that with either of these verbs you could remove yo to make an informal non polite sentence in other words a more casual sentence if the stem ends in a it's replaced with IO here's an example with the verb meaning to try as Saddam could do de Nesle this sentence means they try if the last vowel of the stem is are you or E or a combined vowel then AA or IO is added to the stem not done again we have the verb meaning to eat Nannan topokki remove oil this sentence means I eat topokki let's take a look at how the past tense is formed by changing some of those sentences into the past before we had this sentence Coonan bob de Mayo meaning he stops eating let's change this to he stopped eating in the past Coonan bob de maras sale he sleeps inhale he slept enjoys soil let's remove the polite suffix yo for a moment notice that the past tense form equals the present tense form with this affix saw attached then to make it polite we can add yo future tense Korean technically doesn't have a future tense only passed and non past but there are ways to express the future the most common being the probable future form to use the probable future form you add little calle o to the verb stem Nannan tokido mago ale this sentence means I'm going to eat topokki when talking about things aside from yourself the probable future refers to things that you think are likely to happen but when referring to yourself it shows determination rather than speculation so we can translate this as I'm going to eat topokki or I shall eat to pogey by the way I'm probably pronouncing this word top pogi the way it's pronounced in Japanese I live in Japan so I've eaten a lot more topokki here than in Korea adjectives when an adjective is in the predicative position in other words after the subject then it functions similarly to a verb and is conjugated sani new pile the sentence means the mountain is tall the present tense Afric and polite affix are added to the adjectives stem just like a verb and we can make this past tense to sani new peso the mountain was tall this is conjugated just like a past tense verb speech levels when looking at verbs in the previous section we looked mainly at the informal polite forms of verbs like Mario from Merida and I briefly mentioned that we could make the informal non polite form by removing yo like Mara these are two of seven politeness levels in Korean luckily for learners not all seven of them are commonly used three or maybe four are commonly used the other two are formal polite man Mita and formal non polite manda the informal polite form is used when speaking to friends and acquaintances colleagues of a similar status to you shop staff etc the informal non polite form is used when speaking to very close friends a brother or sister someone a few years younger than you or someone you want to be rude to the formal polite form is used when speaking to someone of higher status than you and people you are meeting for the first time the formal non polite form is basically a neutral form that you can use when you don't know who the reader or listener is in other words when you're speaking to many types of people it can also be used in speaking to friends of the same age range let's look at a couple more sentences in Korean and see what we find this sentence means I have a bicycle but I don't have a car none in Hodgenville I sell hajiman tacos so word-for-word it's AI topic marker bicycle subject marker there is but car subject marker there isn't this sentence shows us how to express possession or have in Korean the topic of the sentence is the possessor then the thing that is possessed is the subject of the sentence with a subject marker followed by the existence verb meaning there is or there are then we start a new sentence with but and there is a subject car with a subject marker followed by the negative verb of existence meaning there isn't or there aren't notice that there's no topic in the second sentence the topic can be skipped if it's already clear another sentence this means this food is delicious did you cook it you Michigan mush so the so word-for-word it's this food topic marker delicious informal polite conjugation you subject marker cooking did informal non polite conjugation this first sentence follows a very common pattern here's the subject which is also the topic of the sentence with a topic marker and before the noun we can see the demonstrative e meaning this and here we have the adjective which is conjugated like a verb in the second sentence the subject is the word for you followed by the subject marker kah Yoli is the word for cooking or cuisine and haisa is the verb meaning do conjugated in the past tense informal non polite form this is the same as the informal polite form with the syllable yo removed from the end of both sentences when talking directly to someone it's very common to drop the subject pronoun for example judy has so but in this case the subject and subject marker kah are included to emphasize you like did you cook it as opposed to someone else next we see something very common and important in Korean we have a verb that consists of two parts a noun of Chinese origin followed by the verb hada which means to do or to make many many Korean verbs are constructed this way for example inada meaning to work kun da meaning to study there were also some words of English origin that form verbs this way for example Sawada meaning to shower let's look at one last sentence conan-kun hot singing ale this sentence means she is a good student word-for-word it's she topic marker good connector student be informal polite so here we have the subject which is also the topic with a topic marker then we have the adjective meaning good and since it comes before the noun there's a connector Huck sang means student and the verb is at the end this verb is the informal polite form of EDA which basically means to be and usually comes after nouns there is also a negative form of this verb anita so we could make this sentence negative like this Coonans hoon singing on Yale now the sentence means she is not a good student notice that in the negative form of this sentence the subject marker II comes after axing so with this particular verb you have the topic and then the complement actually becomes the subject of the sentence there's really so much more I could say about Korean and there's no way I can cover everything in a single video but hopefully that gave you a taste of the language and sparked your interest in some ways Korean is strikingly similar to Japanese but in some ways it's quite different you might want to check out my video from a couple of years ago on the differences and similarities between Korean and Japanese be sure to follow Lange focus on Facebook Twitter and Instagram and once again thank you to all of my wonderful patreon supporters especially my top-tier patreon supporters right here on the screen many thanks to them and to everyone thank you for watching and have a nice day [Music]

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Keywords: language study, polyglot, foreign language, travel, phrases, linguist, linguistics, phonology, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, Hangeul alphabet, Hangul alphabet, Hanja, South Korea, North Korea, Chinese characters, Japanese language, Korean history, Three Kingdoms period, Korean verbs, Speech levels, Politeness levels, Sino-Korean words, Joseon Dynasty, Sejong The Great, Northeast Asian languages, Altaic languages, Language isolate, Koreanic languages

Id: cJPQEVnr0fg

Length: 21min 11sec (1271 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 09 2018